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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...
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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
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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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1
Christopher Guest in 'This Is Spinal Tap'
This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
Dir Rob Reiner (Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer)
‘What’re the hours?’
They may have spent years floundering in mid-chart obscurity, but The Tap have finally made it to number one. ‘This Is Spinal Tap’ is of course a bogus ‘rockumentary’ in which indefatigable commercials director Marti DeBergi (Reiner) takes it on himself to monitor the corroding relationships between three members of a has-been hair metal band from London as they tour the US with their grotesque new LP, ‘Smell the Glove’. The core band line-up (those who haven’t fallen foul of spontaneous combustion) is Christopher Guest as Nigel Tufnel on lead, Michael McKean as David St Hubbins also on guitar and Harry Shearer as Derek Smalls on bass. They pride themselves on exuberance, raw power and punctuality, but they’re also baffled by the mysteries of the cosmos: the geometry of sandwiches, the correct way to the stage door and the difference between feet and inches.
Rent this DVD on Lovefilm
It’s sublimely funny and sharp – a comedy built for the long haul which matures with each viewing. It’s so perfectly constructed and performed, the characters so rich and realistic, that it’s initially a challenge to determine the dividing line between reality and fiction. The film doesn’t have any ‘jokes’, per se, but the humour is derived from a pile-up of non sequiturs, loopy proclamations and painfully spot-on observations, all delivered in implausibly effete cockney accents.
But the thing that pushes ‘Spinal Tap’ ahead of the pack is what a radical and immaculately crafted piece of cinema it is. Gags are built around deadpan edits and dialogue pauses rather than slick punchlines. As funny as the hallowed scene in which Nigel boasts of his custom made Marshall amps that go up to 11 (it’s one louder), you wonder if it would have been as brilliant had the exchange gone on just a second longer. It cuts off at the exact point where nothing more needs saying.
Few films have been so successful in employing the mock-doc template for comic ends: Guest’s own ‘Best in Show’ (2000) is perhaps the other outstanding example. But the legacy of ‘Spinal Tap’ can be seen on our television screens in sitcoms like ‘The Office’ and ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’. Even though the film is set in the distinctive (and often very smelly) world of heavy rock, it’s about real people who earn our empathy, despite their manifold faults. The band may bash out egregious anthems like ‘Sex Farm’, but that’s even funnier in the light of the heartbreaking shot at the end of the film where David gently coaxes Nigel on stage after he’s walked out on the band. Forget best comedy, this is one of the best films of all time. DJ
Comments
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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