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100 best comedy movies

The 100 best comedy movies, picked by experts from across film, TV and comedy

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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    Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in 'Some Like it Hot' Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in 'Some Like it Hot'

    Some Like it Hot (1959)

    Dir Billy Wilder (Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon)

    ‘Real diamonds! They must be worth their weight in gold!’

    IAL Diamond’s scripts for director Billy Wilder certainly were sparklers. He worked wonders converting the source material of an unpublished story and a laugh-free German farce into this most glorious of Prohibition-era gender-benders. It helped, of course, that everybody involved in the movie was also at the top of their game – including Monroe, despite the on-set mayhem she caused for Wilder. In the event, Monroe turned in the most touching and vulnerable (rather than humorous) performance of her career, as the ukelele-strumming, gin-addicted Sugar, always the receiver of the fuzzy end of life’s lollipop.

    As musicians disguised as women in a ruse to escape the mob, Tony Curtis (as Josephine) looked like he was having fun, while Jack Lemmon went overboard as Daphne – ‘We wouldn’t be caught dead with men. Rough, hairy beasts! Eight hands. And they...they all just want one thing from a girl!’ – finding his master in Wilder, with whom he went on to make seven films. And if Wilder himself knew Thurber’s definition of humour – emotional chaos remembered in tranquillity – he majored in the former and jettisoned the latter, fairly delighting in the script’s innuendo and cross-dressing confusions, producing one of the finest, funniest and most audacious comedies of the ’50s. Charles Lang should have won an Oscar for his superb black-and-white cinematography, as should Ted Hayworth for his spot-on period recreations. In the event, the film won one sole Oscar – for Orry-Kelly’s flapper costumes – but then nobody’s perfect, not even the Academy. WH

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Comments

By johnny - Mar 18 2012

Tropic Thunder??......

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By Guest - Feb 29 2012

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?

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By Maxi - Feb 16 2012

good list but no place for my cousin vinny??

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By CaptainBeefheart - Feb 10 2012

Down with the naysayers, This is Spinal Tap at No. 1 - need I say more

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By Pierre - Jan 29 2012

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".

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By Ross - Jan 27 2012

a load of crap

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By Soup - Jan 23 2012

any list with Woody Allen in is worthy of ignoring.

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By VampireJack - Jan 21 2012

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....

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By johnGGG - Jan 8 2012

airplane is so overated

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By kiran david - Jan 7 2012

the list is made by a moron who are the the morons who are supposed to be these experts

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By Sanu - Jan 5 2012

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.

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By james - Jan 1 2012

Mr Beans Holiday!!!! funniest film ever.

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By JiveKiwi - Dec 30 2011

Wow...most best of lists are awful but this is among the worst Ive seen :(

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By eggnog - Dec 15 2011

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.

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By Litton - Dec 3 2011

Placing The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976) at place 95 makes this list a joke!!

sorry

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By Mr C - Nov 14 2011

Travis Bickle's list is a helluva lot better than yours. Were the people who made this list list born in 1990?

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By Travis Bickle - Nov 12 2011

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!)

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By Dane - Oct 26 2011

Might as well have put 'dudes, where's my car? ' at number 1.

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By Dane - Oct 26 2011

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

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By theshiznech - Oct 25 2011

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.

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By rob - Oct 16 2011

one film name

ferris beauller (sp)

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By Bad List - Oct 11 2011

This list is absolutely terrible. Napoleon Dynamite was entertaining but should NOT be in the top 100

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By A. Nerd - Oct 5 2011

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.

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By Brian - Sep 30 2011

Anybody who thinks Will Ferrell is funny ought not to be allowed out of The Home for the Bewildered.

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By Alan Pavelin - Sep 29 2011

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?!!!

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By Pleasance - Sep 26 2011

NO "CLUELESS"?????

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By stinky - Sep 26 2011

its a mad mad mad mad world
the private war of harry frigg
the tiger makes out

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By Pierre - Sep 25 2011

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....

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By Stewart - Sep 24 2011

Napoleon Dynamite is on this list, thus rendering it invalid. Move along.

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By Sylvie - Sep 24 2011

The fact that MASH is not on the list, makes it worthless.

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By Phil Tischler - Sep 23 2011

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.

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By sammaslammajamma - Sep 22 2011

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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By Mary - Sep 18 2011

No Will Hay!!!
ps - American films are NEVER funny

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By Alexander Chatzipantelis - Sep 18 2011

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

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By E A Dobson - Sep 17 2011

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?

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By Anton - Sep 17 2011

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.

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By Susan Vance - Sep 17 2011

No Bringing Up Baby? Are you kidding me?

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By jack francis - Sep 17 2011

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.

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By Tralalala - Sep 16 2011

Any comedy ranking list without Albert Brooks movies is invalid.

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By PhilTimm - Sep 16 2011

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!

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By jojo - Sep 16 2011

The Annie Hall quote is not actually Woody Allen's, and he mentions that in the film.

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By spaceballs? - Sep 16 2011

where is Spaceballs?

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By yerp - Sep 16 2011

The snubbing of the better side of Apatow Productions in this list is disgraceful.

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By anna - Sep 16 2011

A mockumentary? Really? I hate bloated, self-aggrandizing deadpan bs. Comedies are supposed to be funny.

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By noatapunk - Sep 16 2011

List is rubbish. It includes Elf, Dodgeball, GalaxyQuest, etc, but leaves out many others far more deserving such as Idiocracy.

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By Laila - Sep 16 2011

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?).

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By Edy Wine - Sep 15 2011

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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