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100 best comedy movies
The 100 best comedy movies, picked by experts from across film, TV and comedy
Explore the full list of 100 films
Read our contributors' top tens
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The experts have spoken
From Dan Aykroyd to Edgar Wright, browse through the film lists submitted by over 200 contributor...
Discover more Time Out film lists
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100 Best British Films
The 100 best British films as chosen by a panel of 150 film industry experts, including directors Sam Mendes, Mike Leigh, Ken Loach and Wes Anderson.
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Time Out's 50 greatest animated films
Time Out ushers in the help of master animator Terry Gilliam to run down 50 of the greatest animated features of all time.
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50 Essential comic-book Movies, with Edgar Wright
Strap on your utility belt, starch up your cape, pull your underpants over your trousers and prepare to fly faster than a speeding bullet with Time Out's superheroic countdown.
By Tom Huddleston, David Jenkins, Adam Lee Davies, Derek Adams, Edward Lawrenson, Wally Hammond, Ben Walters, Gabriel Tate and Phil Harrison. Explore the individual top tens of every contributor.
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100
Whoopi Goldberg in 'Sister Act'
Sister Act (1992)
Dir Emile Ardolino (Whoopi Goldberg, Maggie Smith)
‘Expectum. Espertum. Ca coomb. Too Too. Eplubium. Amen.’
White hot from an Oscar win for ‘Ghost’ and anticipating the next 20 years of song and dance-based TV light entertainment, Whoopi Goldberg stars in possibly the funniest nunsploitation soul-review chase comedy since Ken Russell’s ‘The Devils’. Having accidentally witnessed a mob hit, she’s forced to lay low in a San Fran nunnery, where she duly drops a 20-megaton sass bomb all over the place and before you can say, ‘Hey isn’t this all a bit racist and/or sacrilegious?’, she’s got a gaggle of nervy white nuns gospelling their way to the pulpit. An everyday story. DJ
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99
Carry On Screaming! (1966)
Dir Gerald Thomas (Kenneth Williams, Harry H Corbett)
'Frying tonight!'
Britain's best loved low-budget comedy outfit pays tribute to its best loved low-budget horror outfit: the Hammer studio. The twelfth movie in the ‘Carry On’ series revolves around monsters and mad scientists in Edwardian London, features perfectly over-the-top performances from Kenneth Williams and Harry H Corbett (standing in for an unavailable Sid James) and lovingly sends up the lurid style and torrid blood-letting of the Hammer crowd. It's surprisingly scary, too. EL
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98
Jonathan Pryce in 'Brazil'
Brazil (1985)
Dir Terry Gilliam (Jonathan Pryce, Robert De Niro, Michael Palin)
'An empty desk is an efficient desk.'
Terry Gilliam’s dark, dystopian sci-fi isn’t, by a long stretch, a happy-go-lucky film, but its absurd, appalled, incredulous portrait of a repressive future state is, without doubt, richly comic, its savage wit owing a debt to diverse sources from Franz Kafka to Monty Python. The American studio behind ‘Brazil’ didn’t see the joke: they refused to release the film, and relented only after it won a major US award that year. Superb performances all round: De Niro plays a revolutionary, balaclava-clad plumber (naturally) and that nice Michael Palin off the telly is a government torturer. EL
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97
Swingers (1996)
Dir Doug Liman (Vince Vaughn, Heather Graham, Jon Favreau)
‘There's nothing wrong with letting the girls know that you're money and that you want to party.’
Cast your mind back, way back to the days when critics would ritually employ the term ‘bequiffed stringbean quipster’ to describe Vince Vaughn, and you’re slap bang in the middle of ‘Swingers’ territory. Definitely one of the stronger titles in the cloying late-’90s wave of post-Tarantino, cine-literate genre flicks, this sweet ’n’ loose, Jon Favreau-penned buddy comedy managed to add a bit of heart and soul to the nose-tapping, movie-referencing shenanigans. Favreau and his limelight-stealing crony Vaughn are the slick-haired minnows in the shark pool of LA’s dating scene, and their comic search for some old-school action takes them on a eventful twilight tour of long-forgotten hostelries and nightspots. The fluid, naturalistic patter between the two leads is what makes the film: you might even see it as the missing link between John Cassavetes, Mumblecore and an X-rated Rat Pack Christmas special. DJ
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96
BASEketball (1998)
Dir David Zucker (Trey Parker, Matt Stone)
‘Only my friends can call me pigfucker.’
Based on an epistolary novel by a little-known eighteenth-century French novelist, this is a casually erudite comedy of romantic manners and linguistic confusion set among a group of Marxist semioticians, attending an academic conference in Geneva, and performed entirely in rhyming iambic pentameter… Oh no, hang on, it’s actually a sports comedy directed by the ‘Airplane!’ guy and starring the dudes who wrote 'South Park', with puke jokes and stuff like that. EL
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95
Herbert Lom and Peter Sellers in 'The Pink Panther Strikes Again'
The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)
Dir Blake Edwards (Peter Sellers, Herbert Lom, Burt Kwouk)
'Now then, what do we know? One, that Professor Fassbinder and his daughter have been kidnapped; two, that someone has kidnapped them; three, that my hand is on fire!'
For many, this is the most consistently funny film of the Inspector Clouseau series, which is bizarre considering it is the fourth in the chain. It earns its place on this list with a surfeit of hilarious scenes, most notably the famous dentist sequence during which Clouseau administers laughing gas to himself and Herbert Lom's increasingly insane former Chief Inspector Dreyfus. In fact, this scene alone sums up Peter Sellers in a nutshell – his laughter is so infectious, so authentic and so emotionally uplifting that your heart melts at the thought that we'll never see the likes of him again. DA
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94
Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin in 'Midnight Run'
Midnight Run (1988)
Dir Martin Brest (Robert De Niro, Charles Grodin)
‘Nothing personal, but fuck off.’
The movie that silenced those critics who complained Robert De Niro could not play comedy, 'Midnight Run' sees the method man as a bounty hunter taking bail jumper Charles Grodin on a cross-US trip back to prison, pursued by the mafia, the FBI and memories of his broken past. De Niro's streetwise belligerence is perfectly matched by Grodin’s deadpan suavity, and they’re beautifully served by Martin Brest's punchy direction and the salty, wisecracking script. So after this splendidly funny turn, De Niro only ruined it with those 'Focker' films. EL
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93
Priscilla Lane and Cary Grant in 'Arsenic and Old Lace'
Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
Dir Frank Capra (Cary Grant, Priscilla Lane)
‘Insanity runs in my family... it practically gallops.’
Although Frank Capra is best known for his occasionally maudlin studies of working-class triumph over the political machine, this madcap screwball farce feels more in line with the motor-mouth comedies of George Cukor or Howard Hawks. A theatre critic who has gone on record as detesting the institution of marriage, Cary Grant’s Mortimer Brewster is finally ready to bite the bullet and get hitched to (literal) girl-next-door Priscilla Lane, but the ensuing chaos in trying to save his name leads him to discover some dark secrets about the two little old ladies who brought him up. Based on a mammoth Broadway hit, some have criticised the film for being too theatrical, and you can see how Capra simply allows Julius and Philip Epstein’s gag-laden script to do the talking. But it’s damn funny stuff: Grant floors it from beginning to end, especially good when sharing the screen with Uncle Teddy (John Alexander) who lives his life as Teddy Roosevelt. Charge! DJ
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92
Roger Sloman and Alison Steadman in 'Nuts In May'
Nuts in May (1976)
Dir Mike Leigh (Roger Sloman, Alison Steadman, Anthony O'Donnell)
‘"I want to see the zoo," she said. "I want to see the zoo."’
Although Mike Leigh is a director known for finding humour in a number of unlikely locations (the incessant, free-form ramblings of a rapist-on-the-run in ‘Naked’ or the frigid mutterings of courting suburbanites in ‘Bleak Moments’), his 1976 ‘Play for Today’ about a pair of socially maladjusted, aggressively persnickety, tea-cosy-hat-wearing campers is probably his funniest film. On one level, ‘Nuts in May’ presents the queer British pastime of camping as a fool’s game: logistically awkward, deathly boring and a magnet for various different types of (generally low-income) souls who perhaps shouldn’t be thrown together in a big empty field. Tossing out a conventional three-act structure in favour of small, tragicomic vignettes, the film’s humour comes from sustained moments of intense unease rather than a hackneyed string of contrived gags. Very funny but also, in the end, very sad. DJ
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91
Ben Stiller in 'Dodgeball'
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (2004)
Dir Rawson Marshall Thurber (Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn)
‘If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.’
‘Aim low’ is the motto of the dodgeball team Vince Vaughn sets up to compete for a cash prize that will stop the slimy Ben Stiller from taking over his gym. With plenty of jokes revolving around weedy, unfit men being hit in the most sensitive regions by big, rubber balls, the film also adopts Vaughn’s words as its guiding principle. For newcomers to the sport, this movie provides a quick primer to the rules of dodgeball but you don’t need them to enjoy this very daft, amiable movie. Dressed in a pneumatic codpiece and helipad-sized shoulder pads, Stiller checks in his dignity from the word go, and he’s rarely been funnier. EL
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Comments
Elf deserves to be there despite whatever the comments say - it is the funniest Christmas movie I have ever seen. Why isn't Coming to America in the top 10? Why isn't Office Space in the top 10? This is Spinal Tap is NOT FUNNY. There were way too many Woody Allen movies and where is Superbad? Galaxy Quest - are you serious? Movies 100 - 91 were not funny. How can you have a movie that is not funny at number one? Are you at all serious?
Down with the naysayers, This is Spinal Tap at No. 1 - need I say more
Egregious omissions:
"Death at a Funeral" had me in apoplectics more than 90% of these films.
"The In-Laws" (original with Peter Falk) and "Blazing Saddles" are also superior to many of these picks.
I do agree with "Top Secret" and "Galaxy Quest".
Spinal Tap at number one? Above Life Of Brian?
Nah mate, nah.
Spinal Tap is one of the most overated THINGS ever, let alone comedies.
Spinal Crap more like....
the list is made by a moron who are the the morons who are supposed to be these experts
This list sucks. I don't think that top 10 movies r really top ten.. I give you 2 out of 10. The point 2 is for your hardwork to make this list not for the movies you add. It's ridiculous.
Wow...most best of lists are awful but this is among the worst Ive seen :(
Shows how subjective a genre comedy is...well any genre to be honest, because I have watched Spinal Tap twice now, and I still think it's not really very funny at all... maybe it's something about the rock n roll attitude thing, but apart from a few very funny moments I thought it was a pretty limp, flat experience. Each to their own...but I would personally have Duck Soup well above Spinal Tap -- it's 50 years younger and about 4 times as funny.
Placing The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) at place 95 makes this list a joke!!
sorry
Travis Bickle's list is a helluva lot better than yours. Were the people who made this list list born in 1990?
Missing in action:
Bringing Up Baby
Our Man Godfrey
The Awful Truth
The Palm Beach Story
The Lady Eve
Ninotchka
Love Me Tonight
It Happened One Night
Modern Times
The Gold Rush
City Lights
Our Hospitality
National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
Christmas Story
MASH
Moonstruck
My Favorite Year
The Twelve Chairs
A Shot In The Dark
The Lavender Hill Mob
Mon Oncle
Paper Moon
The Graduate
Election
Sideways
Honeymoon In Vegas
Ruthless People
Clueless
Thank You For Smoking
The Cooler
Welcome To The Dollhouse
Something's Gotta Give
As Good As It Gets
Jerry McGuire
Porkies (Just kidding!)
This list is complete b.s. These guys have a chubby for Woody Allen... No 'dazed and confused',happy Gilmore, but no billy Madison? Dont think I saw one John Hughes film... HorsePoop
ok why so much woody allen films? and furthermore where is beetlejuice, brother, where art thou?, in bruge, grosse point blanke and to a lesser extent the exorcist.
This list is absolutely terrible. Napoleon Dynamite was entertaining but should NOT be in the top 100
How much did Woody Allen pay you to take so many spots with his outdated unfunny films?
Factor in the omission of Spaceballs, Idiocracy, Super Troopers, Beverly Hills Cop, PCU and Out Cold and this list is pretentious pointlessness.
Anybody who thinks Will Ferrell is funny ought not to be allowed out of The Home for the Bewildered.
I only had time to look at the top 10, and was astonished that the two laugh-out-loud funniest films ever were not there: Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday, both directed by Howard Hawks and starring Cary Grant. I assume they are lower down the list, but not in the top 10?!!!
its a mad mad mad mad world
the private war of harry frigg
the tiger makes out
THislist is very imcomplete! and the expert used to make that list are from most of them old generation 40 to up...years old, so as we can most of the movies selected are oldies...or unknown at all....There are a lot great cool comedy missing on it....like super heroes parodies or SC-FI parodies are totaly absent that clearly show partiality in jugment....
Napoleon Dynamite is on this list, thus rendering it invalid. Move along.
The downside of the internet is that even someone who ranks Borat and Team America above The Big Lebowski is allowed to publish their "thoughts" to a wide audience.
The Big Lebowski should be number 1, one of the greatest (and funniest) films of all time. Good list though, Spinal Tap had a monumental influence, a deserving candidate for the top spot :)
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I like the choices on this list, for sure, and althought I think some should've been higher than others, I think its a decent list, except for the following:
1) Glaring omission of two Pink Panther jewels: "The Return of the Pink Panther" and, especially, "A Shot in the Dark", both of which are funnier than the original film itself, and as funny as "The Pink Panther Strikes Again" (really happy to see this one included, I must note). "A Shot in the Dark:", especially, showcases, along wtih to "Dr. Strangelove", Peter Sellers's complete comedic forte as a perfomer, and in contrast to Kubrick's opus, while portraying only one role. Just genius.
2) The placing of "Spinal Tap" as number One. Why not "Life of Brian"?
3) Baseketball?! Really? The film is free-loading bunch of BS. Its painfully unfunny, steretypical scatology at its best. Its not only nowhere near Team America or South Park, but its nowhere near the top 500 - no, I did mean five hundred.
4) Glarring omission of M*A*S*H? One of the greatest, bravest anti-war satires of all time is not here - but Baseketball is?
5) Glarring omission of "Spaceballs", aka Mel Brooks's Final Laugh. Why? Maybe it didn't have Gene Wilder in it... Although it should've!!
6) Not-as-glarring omission of "Beverly Hills Cop" and "48 Hrs". Eddie Murphy's shining in them. i can understand not having them, but still missed anyhow.
Otherwise, not a bad list. But the omissions are just glaring - did I mention that? :-D
I hate the number one choice,that doesn`t mean i hate the film but number 1,come on! Also no MASH,no Lost in America,no What About Bob? no Bringing Up Baby?
Not as atrocious as the recent 100 songs list but still a very poor list. And any 100 greatest comedy films list that doesn't include Clueless is not to be taken seriously. And where is Happiness, Love Me Tonight, Singin' in the Rain, The Man Who Came to Dinner, and Welcome to the Dollhouse? A joke.
Team America is much funnier than Ghostbusters.. Anchorman, also, definitely top 10 IF YOU HAVE SMOKED AN INCREDIBLE AMOUNT OF CRACK COCAINE.
Ghostbusters is the best action/comedy to ever grace the silver screen. It is a work of comedic art, true genius, and should be in the top 5 of this list, if not top 3. That is all.
Baseketball?
REALLY?!
Any semblance of respectability goes out of the window with that dross there.
And this is coming from someone who absolutely loves South Park, Team America & The Book of Mormon!
The Annie Hall quote is not actually Woody Allen's, and he mentions that in the film.
The snubbing of the better side of Apatow Productions in this list is disgraceful.
A mockumentary? Really? I hate bloated, self-aggrandizing deadpan bs. Comedies are supposed to be funny.
List is rubbish. It includes Elf, Dodgeball, GalaxyQuest, etc, but leaves out many others far more deserving such as Idiocracy.
Fantastic that Monty Python is in the top 10 twice. Fantastic. I'm a little sad that StepBrothers isn't on the list, though (unless I missed it?).
This was rather awkward way to try to see if my movie is in there but I love the movie "Real Genius" with a teenage Val Kilmer.
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