I want to watch a funny movie but I feel like compared to TV shows, movies rarely make me really laugh. I've cried laughing watching shows like I Think You Should Leave but most movies I can honestly say I've only ever mustered a chortle or snort every now and then. What is the funniest movie(s), to you? For me, just off the cuff, I'd probably have to say Airplane!
Airplane is definitely the GOAT.
In the Loop is great, especially if you're old enough to have been politically conscious during the Iraq war madness.
Monty Python, especially Holy Grail and Life of Brian
Airplane wins for me. Every scene is consistently funny and every joke is quotable. The only other comedy with so many bangers is Blazing Saddles.
Airplane has aged horribly. The jokes don't make sense unless you overwatched 70s made-for-TV disaster movies, there is child abuse and that awful racist scene with Barbara Billingsley from Leave it to Beaver.
unless you overwatched 70s made-for-TV disaster movies
whomst amongst us has not seen the towering inferno? the disaster movie bits track if you've seen more recent disaster films tho, the genre has not evolved a milimeter, lol.
Airplane is a parody of the endless parade of Airport movies that was inflicted on the American public in the 1970s. The entire low quality made-for-TV-movie genre has completely disappeared, the disaster subgenre along with it, satirizing it makes no impact today.
Meanwhile I have never seen any of those movies and I find Airplane! hilarious.
9/11 kind of killed the obnoxious airport movie, but they kept making disaster movies up till like an hour ago.
Actually it's a 1:1 parody of 1957 disaster flick Zero Hour
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have some pretty funny movies. Otherwise Mel Brooks comedies are always solid. Sometimes you just age out of stuff. I tried to watch The Mask recently but couldn't get through it and I loved it as a kid. Maybe try a stand up special instead.
Gonna go with The Big Lebowski with runners up Office Space (shout out to the McKinsey bros) and The Naked Gun.
And Sorry to Bother You of we consider "particularly funny to lefties".
Mel Brooks is always a pretty safe bet.
The Christopher Guest canon is also good, Spinal Tap, Best in Show, etc.
You have to like his aesthetic, but Wes Anderson is very enjoyable if you like the diorama style.
"The Little Hours" is incredibly funny if you enjoy profanity (in all sorts).
Blazing Saddles or Young Frankenstein get me laughing every time
acab, but
I feel like we stopped needing use this qualifier after Disco Elysium became the left's favorite video game.
[A 7-paragraph diatribe about how the DE cops aren't really cops because history, material conditions, and cool outfits]
Second comment because my real answer to the OP is The Big Lebowski. Most comedies are hard to rewatch but this is the one that I actually do because it never stops being funny to me.
the fucking Ralph's customer card ID is such a minor bit but man not a shot in this movie feels wasted lmao
I feel like this movie becomes more funny each time. It rewards repeat viewing
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for active filmmakers i don't think anyone is quite as good at making me cackle like Martin Mcdonagh or Yorgos Lanthimos
In Bruges, The Lobster, Banshees of Inisherin, Killing of a Sacred Deer... just goddamn losing it at this shit. these guys are masters of the absurdities of violence
Almodovar also made some fucking kneeslapping films but not all of them are comedies or do comedy in the same ways. like don't go into Bad Education to laugh, even though there's funny bits in it. Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is a pretty conventional comedy ooth
as a bonus i'll assert that Godard's funniest film is Weekend--i would not say it really competes with anything else here in terms of comedy but if you want that film patrician cred with a funny film, accept no substitute
Banshees rocks, especially if you watch it with an old friend
I feel like a lot of people didn't get Killing of a Sacred Deer, that shit was hilarious
idk about funniest, so just trying to think of funny-ish movies that aren't already in the thread
walk hard is pretty good if you like that style of parody
a lot of coen brothers: serious man, burn after reading, oh brother where art thou
dr strangelove
The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! is another 1960s classic. It's a wonderful, hilarious movie that lampoons just how crazy Americans were at the thought of communism. Crucially, it doesn't fall into anti-communist tropes nearly at all.
The Gods Must Be Crazy is probably really racist and terrible, i haven't seen it in 20 years, but 2 hours of a San guy going on a quest to destroy a horrible artifact that was disrupting the peace of his community and basically just staring in disbelief at how bizarre and insane "civilized" people are was pretty funny.
Basically anything Buster Keaton did. Dude was incredible. It's unbelievable that some of the best comedy movies ever made were made within like 10 years of the wide adoption of cinema.
Marx bros and Chaplin are also stand outs.
This is Spinal Tap is probably pretty tied to it's moment in music history but it was hilarious.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail is pretty well loved by nerds of a certain age
I don't know if there's been anything quite like Airplane! It's like an hour and a half of memorable slapstick gags.
Dr. Strangelove is fucking amazing. Nothing has changed since 1964, we're still ruled by geriatric psychopaths and Nazis
Blazing Saddles is just a masterpiece of comedy.
Three Amigos is another one that's probably super racist but fortunately I forgot all the bad parts in the last two decades.
The Blues Brothers. The movie that, as far as I know, still holds the record for most destroyed cop cars in one movie
Wayne's World. Good shit
Bill and Ted's adventures are also good.
Top Secret. Probably has brain worms but some of the bits were pretty incredible
Harold and Maude was such a fuck you to prevailing norms.
Hot Fuzz. Yeah it's abut cops whatever it's my one exception
Mean Girls. Again, people of a certain age
Old comedies are tricky because you'll be laughing so hard it hurts and then the most disgusting racist or mysogynist or homophobic bit will come up and it'll be like 'Oh shit actually the past was horrible" and ruin the mood.
The Gods Must Be Crazy
Oh man I also have this hazy memory of having seen this movie twenty years ago. The premise of a guy from an African tribe assuming that white people are gods is definitely racist, but then again the movie frames tribal culture as obvious and correct and city culture as ridiculous :anprim-pat:
iirc the San people think the coke bottle was dropped by some god or other, rather than white people being gods directly. The idea that San people had never seen a coke bottle is racist, but it does make a good critique of society and I like the idea that something extremely useful, but extremely scarce, might cause more trouble and division than it's worth. I can't think of another story where people get their hands on something extremely useful, but there's only one, and they decide to get rid of it because even though it's useful it's causing too many problems.
Crucially though, the San people thought the premise was hilarious, which is why they agreed to the movie, because of the moral dimension to it. The thing they thought was weird was specific behaviors, like hugging and raising your children up when you get back home (something they did not do).
I can’t think of another story where people get their hands on something extremely useful, but there’s only one, and they decide to get rid of it because even though it’s useful it’s causing too many problems.
Lord of the Rings?
Yeah, that was the closest I could think of, too. Right down to a dude having to carry the thing all over the world then huck it off of the edge of a mountain to resolve the plot.
Bill and Ted’s adventures
Only the first one and that bit in the 2nd when they get to STAY-SHUN! air guitar
The Blues Brothers. The movie that, as far as I know, still holds the record for most destroyed cop cars in one movie
It held the record for years until it was broken by its own sequel by 1 car
