I found that “Napoleon Dynamite” completely changed my concept of what a comedy can be. Detractors say that Napoleon is a loser, and that the humor comes from ridicule, but I took away the exact opposite. Napoleon thinks everyone else is a loser, which somehow makes him a winner. It also made me think about how funny it is when good things happen to people who have no reason to expect good things to happen to them. Speaking of the Coens, a great example of this is the scene in “Oh Brother Where Art Thou” where Clooney et al perform their hit song to an audience that erupts in cheers, to their complete astonishment. That scene made me so happy I could hardly stand it.
Someday, I will die from laughter…watching “Annie Hall”.
All of the above are guaranteed to chase away the clouds, but my personal Holy Comedy Trinity would be “Some Like It Hot,” “Bringing Up Baby” and “The Court Jester.”
Top Secret
Dumb and Dummer
The Big Lebowsky (a.k.a. “veeere is thi moni lebowsky?”)
A Fish Called Wanda
Any Abbott and Costello Universal Horror Film
My favorite funniest movie is Young Frankenstein. It seems everyone involved in making the picture what it became is at the top of their game. Gene Wilder, Mel Brooks, Cloris Leachman, Teri Garr, Madeline Khan, Marty Feldman. The script and its accompanying performances are hysterical, ridiculous, intelligent, theatrical, touching, I could go on. This movie is pure genius, a masterpiece from the score to the editing, the art direction, all of it fried gold.
I don’t think I’ve ever laughed harder during a movie than in the Farrelly Brothers’ “Kingpin.”
I also enjoy Preston Sturges enormously. His comedies, especially :Sullivan’s Travels," “Miracle at Morgan’s Creek” and “The Palm Beach Story,” hold up extremely well.
Raising Arizona, repeatedly, had me in tears of laughter. But I must give a respectful nod to Caddy Shack and Anchorman.
Nobody’s mentioned the Marx Brothers yet? That makes me feel old. I have undying love for all their early films up through Duck Soup, Also I dearly love Blazing Saddles and The Producers and W. C. Fields’ work, especially the short, “The Fatal Glass Of Beer”, which is one of the most completely insane things I’ve ever seen in my life.
i’ll give a big vote to “blazing saddles”.
i finally saw “some like it hot” for the first time earlier this year, and it wasnt nearly as funny as i thought it was going to be.
GHOSTBUSTERS just keeps getting funnier every single time I see it.
A Fish Called Wanda… ha ha ha!!! You will just fall for it hook, line and sinker. Kevin Kline was legendary!
I came completely unhinged watching Palindromes. Genius!
How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)! I keep on loving it a little more each time I watch it.
The ‘Burbs and Clifford are the two funniest movies I’ve ever seen.
Monkey Business
Horse Feathers
The Bank Dick
Kind Hearts and Coronets
Some Like It Hot
Shaun of the Dead
Modern Times
Those are off the top of my head. The ’Burbs and Clifford have been my definitive favorites for years, though.
Amongst some of my favorites already mentioned, how about Airplane! and 10 Things I Hate About You.
A Night at the Opera (Most other Marx Brothers as well)
Way Out West (Any Laurel & Hardy can do it , really. I haven’t seen anything from them that failed to make me laugh at all.)
The Blues Brothers
The Big Lebowski
Tootsie
Young Frankenstein
Blazing Saddles
Spaceballs
Airplane!
Porky’s
Some Like It Hot
All the Monty Python movies
Most Three Stooges
Easy Money )Both Rodney and Joe Pesci at their funniest)
Cheech & Chong’s first four movies (especially Next Movie)
Hands down it’s ‘Trading Places’ for me.
I’m obsessed with the Coen Brothers and I adore The Big Lebowski, but the amount of hype that movies gets, eleven years later, mind you, is more than excessive. It is not that good.
Anything Buster Keaton. Our Hospitality had me rolling the entire time.
you cant go wrong with a little lebowski, and Woody Allen has some great comedies, love & death is my favorite of his “early, funny ones”. Although i hate to say it, on certain days, Waynes world makes me laugh harder than any other movie.
I was lucky enough to experience these movies in packed houses:
There’s Something About Mary
Annie Hall
Tootsie
The Party
Airplane
Blazing Saddles
Young Frankenstein
National Lampoon’s Animal House
Wayne’s World.
Just watched the DVD of Tropic Thunder, which I found screamingly hilarious.
How you can tell a movie is really funny: watch it by yourself and see if you laugh until your sides hurt. That’s what I did with this one. Of all the post-mod, self-aware Hollywood spoofs, this was the best I’ve seen in forever.
Young Frankenstein is my favorite comedy of all time. Some of the gags fall flat, but overall it’s just timelessly hilarious, and what a cast! Gene Wilder is a genius.
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, I don’t give a fuck. Every second of this movie has made me laugh at some point or another.
also O’ Brother Where Art Thou- same thing.
nobody’s called:
lock, stock, and two smoking barrels; snatch — brit humor is grossly underrated.
but i also loved the big lebowski, anything the coen brothers put out,
anything buster keaton, charlie chaplin— all of the silent film era is charming and can get anyone laughing.
and what about muppet movies…..?
W.C. Fields can get me to waste my breath like no one else.
Preston Sturges’ ‘Unfaithfully Yours’ is awesome.
And I have a thing for Wilder’s ‘One, Two, Three’.
Something about all that “Commie”-Cold War angst.
kent
for me nothing tops the comedic brilliance of “the big lebowski”one of the most perfectly cast movies ever and with 2 of the greatest performances in film history by jeff bridges and john goodman,,,one of my 10 all time favorite movies…kent in georgia.