I love funny films, but a good comedy is often hard to find. I’m always looking for ones I haven’t seen, but mostly the genre seems full of garbage that isn’t worth looking at (at least in modern times).
What are your good ones?
Have you seen UHF?
oh yeah love UHF!
UHF is among my favorites too.
The oldest great comedy I know is His Girl Friday (1940).
A List of Favorites
It’s a Gift (WC Fields)
Duck Soup (Marx Brothers)
The Gold Rush (Charles Chaplin)
The General (Buster Keaton)
Some Like it Hot (Billy Wilder)
Blazing Saddles (Mel brooks)
Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
Amarcord (Fellini)
Le Gendarme de Saint-Tropez (Louis de Funès)
The Naked gun: From the files of Police Squad (David Zucker)
Slap Shot (George Roy Hill)
Animal Crackers (Marx Brothers)
La Chèvre (Depardieu & Richard)
Mon Oncle (Jaques Tati)
Jour de Fête (Jaques Tati)
Life of Brian (Monty Python)
Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (Jaques Tati)
They Call me Trinity (Barboni)
Singin’ in the Rain (Donen/Kelly)
The Lavender Hill Mob (Ealing)
City Lights (Charles Chaplin)
Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amelie Poulain (Jean-Pierre Jeunet)
La Grande Vadrouille (De Funès/Bourvil)
Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick)
Vivement Dimanche (Truffaut)
La Vita è Bella (Benigni)
Fargo (Coen Bross.)
I must have seen this movie 8 or 9 times as a kid. I genuinely love this film.
I like stuff from any country, that isn’t predictable.
I can’t really think of un-watchable examples… Something like John Goldfarb, Please Come Home was awful. (Eine zuviel im Harem (1965) - IMDb) But it’s gotten a little better with age. There’s a ton of those titles floating around.
Some favorites:
Duck Soup
Way Out West
Young Frankenstein
The Party
Annie Hall
But there’s lots more I enjoy from Keaton, Lloyd, Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy, Marx Brothers, Jerry Lewis, Woody Allen, Monty Python, Mel Brooks, Hill & Spencer…
Slap Shot
Bachelor Party
Meatballs
Stripes
Revenge of the Nerds
Revenge of the Nerds II:Nerds in Paradise
Beverly Hills Cop
Beverly Hills Cop II
Coming to America
Young Frankenstein
See No Evil, Hear No Evil
Stir Crazy
Police Academy movies
Hot Fuzz
World’s End
This Is The End
Green Hornet
Pineapple Express
Borat
Bruno
The Dictator
Kevin Smith’s movies (Clerks and so on)
Jabberwocky and Holy Grail
The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen
Mighty Boosh
Zoolander
Forgot Jerry Lewis, The Nutty Professor.
There must be a few other titles I didn’t think of.
The Coens are a special case, I like their comedies, so to speak, as long as they’re not trying to make a comedy. I think Fargo and The Big lebowski are genuinely funny, but they aren’t real comedies; on the other hand I find some of their movies that were certainly meant to be comedies (notably Raising Arizona and The Hudsucker Proxy) particularly awful.
Fellini did a few better movies (Otto e Mezzo in particular), but Amarcord is his funniest movie, the closest he got to genuine comedy.
Play Time by Tati is a wonderful piece of film making, but I can hardly see it as a comedy either.
But this is probably the same discussion as the one we had in relation to westerns: when is a movie a western and when is a western no longer a western?
I’m not gonna mention any of the well known films since you’ve probably seen them all but a hugely underrated comedy that you might not have seen is “Some Kind of Hero” 1982 with Richard Pryor, Ronnie Cox, Margot Kidder. Its not the funniest comedy that Pryor’s ever done but its just great seeing him play a Vietnam POW coming home and taking on the mob.
Abel (Dutch movie)
Thanks for the suggestions, will be checking some of them out soon
Abel looks very interesting, and looking at the rest of Alex van Warmerdam’s films- seems like these may be good also
Virtually everything Van Warmerdam did is fine, my favorite is De Noorderlingen.
Might be a problem to find it with English subs, but if you do it’s definitely worth a watch. Quirky, original stuff.
Reminds me: A friend of mine still hasn 't returned my DVD.
Looks like CG has his whole Filmography with English subs ;D
The Jerk with Steve Martin still makes me laugh after all these years.
The Jerk is great… goofy humor, love the scenes at the gas station. Has been a favorite for as long as I can remember
A few favorites of mine:
Film Geek (2005)
Buffalo '66 (1998)
Harold & Maude (1971) - really been wanting to watch this again but trying to hold out till I can buy the Criterion bluray
Cecil B DeMented (2000) - also like most John Waters stuff, but this is a good one for film fans - “Action fans, unite!”
Of the comedies of the last few years I thoroughly enjoyed Pineapple Express.