Log in to My Time Out for your personalised guide to what's on in London. It's fast, easy and FREE!
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
-
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
-
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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
10
Steve Martin in 'The Jerk'
The Jerk (1979)
Dir Carl Reiner (Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters, Carl Gottlieb)
'A Cosmetologist? Really? Wow. Must tough to handle the weightlessness.'
How sweet to be an idiot… Surely Navin R Johnson’s tireless, gormless and outright hilarious pursuit of his ‘special purpose’ is an odyssey that we all of us must eventually undertake. Weren’t we all born poor black children? Didn’t we all fail everything on our astronaut application forms but our dates of birth? Aren’t we all – after all is said and done – jerks? Steve Martin’s big-screen calling card is such a soaring hymn to stupidity, such a canticle to folly, such a hosanna to hubris that only the sanest souls could resist the temptation to join in with the chorus.
Rent this DVD on Lovefilm
It would have been easy and, indeed, understandable, if Martin – then at the giddy and, judging from his bittersweet comedy memoir ‘Born Standing Up’, personally and professionally unfulfilling zenith of his wildfire ’70s superstardom – had simply cashed in on his absurdist stage act for his first feature. The smart, structured, cine-literate film – imagine Preston Sturges on an ether high – that resulted was not only a revelation, and a monster hit at the box office, but served notice that 'the wild and crazy guy' was more than just a non sequitur in a white suit with an arrow through his head. He was, rather, a true screen-comedy great, and he was here to stay.
As Les Dawson used to say of his comically awful piano playing, you have to know how to play it right before you can play it so very wrong, and the same applies to ‘The Jerk’. To be this stupid, you have to be an absolute genius. ALD
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 :)
Dear sir/madam,
I'm pleased to inform you that I'm having few scripts for humorous video clips by using a new character called Sri Lankan Mr. Bean, just similar to Rowan Atkinson. And here I've used my own scripts which was written by me. Sure, whole world will be get laughed once they go through this. I'm having a idea on producing this videos. I'm looking for a video sponsor or a media sponsor. If you're interested contact me on my e-mail........
agskag@yahoo.com
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.
Time Out guides and magazines
Useful links
Things to do in London
- London restaurants
- London events
- London theatre
- London bars and pubs
- London clubs
- Film listings
- London tickets and offers
- Alternative London
- London museums
- London music
- London art
- London shopping
- London Olympics
- Gay and lesbian London
- London cabaret
- London comedy
- London for kids
- Books and poetry
- Dance in London
- Festivals
- London hotels
- Classical music in London
London by area
- Brixton guide
- Borough guide
- Bermondsey guide
- City of London guide
- Dalston guide
- Mayfair guide
- Camden guide
- Clapham guide
- Covent Garden guide
- Greenwich guide
- Stoke Newington guide
- Hammersmith guide
- Hampstead guide
- Highgate guide
- Holborn guide
- King's Cross guide
- Islington guide
- West End guide
- Hackney guide
- Marylebone guide
- London Bridge guide
- Little Venice guide
- Richmond guide
- Shoreditch guide
- Soho guide
- South Bank guide
- Wimbledon guide
- Notting Hill guide
Time Out Worldwide
Get the latest news from Time Out
Share your thoughts