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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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60
Woody Allen in 'Sleeper'
Sleeper (1973)
Dir Woody Allen (Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, John Beck)
‘My brain! It's my second favorite organ!'
Woody Allen’s cryogenically frozen New York clarinetist wakes up two centuries on from the 1970s and finds himself in a dystopian future world of robotic servants, inflatable suits and Diane Keaton. 'It’s hard to believe you haven’t had sex in 200 years,’ the uninhibited Keaton wonders at the neurotic Allen. ‘Two hundred and four, if you count my marriage,’ Allen deadpans. An inspired mix of slapstick and Chaplinesque satire, this is Allen’s ultra-'Modern Times'. EL
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59
Adam Sandler in 'Happy Gilmore'
Happy Gilmore (1996)
Dir Dennis Dugan (Adam Sandler, Christopher McDonald, Julie Bowen)
'I eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast!' 'You eat pieces of shit for breakfast?'
The career of Adam Sandler is a cinematic minefield. For every ‘Wedding Singer’ there’s a ‘Click’, for every ‘Punch Drunk Love’ a ‘You Don’t Mess With the Zohan’. The general rule of thumb seems to be: respectable director and/or co-star – risk it. Involvement of Rob Schneider and/or Adam Shankman – avoid like the plague. But ‘Happy Gilmore’ is the joker in Sandler’s deck: on the surface, this tale of golfing hi-jinks is just another one of his shrill, low-rent, high-concept shitcoms. But actually watch it, and ‘Happy Gilmore’ is revealed as something unexpectedly special: an unashamedly stoopid, genuinely funny old-skool riff on ‘Caddyshack’-era 'Saturday Night Live' antics with a remarkably high strike rate and some classic cameos. Fore! TH
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58
Terry Jones in 'Monty Python's Meaning of Life'
Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983)
Dir Terry Jones (Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, Michael Palin)
‘It’s only wafer-thin…’
An apt swan song for the Pythons, this feature abandoned the sustained narratives of ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’ and ‘The Life of Brian’ in favour of a return to the sketch format that made them famous. And what sketches! From the gluttonous Mr Creosote to public-school sex education, a Catholic conception showtune to a macabre visitation from organ-donation representatives, they’re consistently hilarious and memorable while showcasing a decidedly dark sensibility with more sex ’n’ violence than in previous outings. The troupe is on typically strong form and goes out with a bang, thanks in large part to a topless Christmas-in-heaven dance routine. BW
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57
Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis and Ed Helms in 'The Hangover'
The Hangover (2009)
Dir Todd Phillips (Zach Galifianakis, Bradley Cooper and Ed Helms)
‘I just added two more guys to my wolf pack. Four of us wolves, running around the desert together, in Las Vegas, looking for strippers and cocaine. So tonight, I make a toast!’
The great British ‘stag do’ may involve some sort of outdoor pursuit, a few jars of the local ale and perhaps a late-night visit to an illicit table-dancing boudoir, but for the red-blooded males of the US, it’s Vegas all the way. Frat messiah Todd Phillips – who gave us ‘Road Trip’ in 2000 and ‘Old School’ in 2003 – offers a comic salute to that timeworn institution as he packs off four buddies to Nevada’s gaming Valhalla with only a bottle of Rohypnol-laced Jägermeister to their name. The film duly places us in the beer-moistened-boots of these four reprobates as we flash forward to see them coming round from their extended blackout, trying to recall their chemically enhanced antics. It’s basically the ‘Animal House’ wreckin’ crew re-enact ‘Memento’ with a Mike Tyson cameo thrown in. DJ
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56
Chico Marx, Allan Jones and Groucho Marx in 'A Night at the Opera'
A Night at the Opera (1935)
Dir Sam Wood (Groucho Marx, Chico Marx and Harpo Marx)
‘I saw Mrs Claypool first. Of course, her mother really saw her first but there’s no point in bringing the Civil War into this.’
Even funnier than the overblown Queen album of the same name, this was the Marxes at their anarchic apogee, an excoriating dissection of snot-nosed, Jazz-age, high-society wags that contained some of their most memorable comic riffs. The story, in which Groucho falls in with a moneyed has-been and has to assist a struggling opera company, plays second fiddle to an intense barrage of puns, tongue-twisters and wisecracks. Chico’s on hand, too, with his unhinged cod-Italiano witterings, while Harpo’s energetic feats of slapstick repeatedly threaten to steal the show. And if you’ve ever pondered how many people can fit into the cabin of an art deco transatlantic ocean liner, then this, sir, is the movie for you. DJ
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55
Jim Carrey in 'Ace Ventura: Pet Detective'
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994)
Dir Tom Shadyac (Jim Carrey, Courteney Cox, Sean Young)
‘If I'm not back in five minutes... just wait longer.’
Long before Jim Carrey was the go-to guy for anodyne family comedies with computer-generated penguins, he was a wildly inventive, toweringly talented performer fuelled by a sugar-rush of comic energy that made Robin Williams look positively subdued. ‘Ace Ventura’ captures him in his prime. Playing the world’s finest – erm, only – pet detective, he’s a whirling dervish of silly voices, rubber faces and long-limbed pratfalls who inhabits his role so commandingly his co-stars may as well be digital penguins. EL
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54
The Blues Brothers (1980)
Dir John Landis (John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Cab Calloway)
‘Boys, you got to learn not to talk to nuns that way.'
Based on a sketch John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd performed on 'Saturday Night Live', the blues brothers were a couple of black-suited, pork-pie-hatted, nimble-footed reprobates with a yen for vintage R&B and an appetite for destruction that leaves most of the Chicago police force's fleet of cop cars in the scrapyard. The irreverent, gleeful mayhem is staged to a matchless soundtrack performed by a genuinely jaw-dropping array of blues and funk stars. Hit it! EL
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53
Stan and Ollie in the magnificent 'Way Out West'
Way Out West (1937)
Dir James W Horne (Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, James Finlayson)
‘Any bird can build a nest, but it’s not everyone that can lay an egg.’
The only one of Stan and Ollie’s sweet lunkhead opuses to make it onto this list, 1937’s barmy western pastiche ‘Way Out West’ makes for a worthy (just!) feature-length stand-in for such classic shorts as ‘The Music Box’, ‘Towed in the Hole’ and ‘Our Relations’ (to name just a few). Best known for the duo’s impromptu and extremely effete little dance to ‘The Trail of the Lonesome Pine’ outside a saloon, this rambling film brims with hilarious, multi-layered gags and some monumental proto-bromance bickering. The pair are charged with placing the deeds to a goldmine in the hands of a poverty-stricken washerwoman, but they are duped by a conniving bar owner and his femme fatale spouse. During the proceedings, donkeys are foolishly used as abseiling counterweights, necks are stretched past their breaking points, Stan demonstrates a clever way of lighting a pipe and there’s an epic fight sequence based entirely around the act of tickling. Bliss, and then some. DJ
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52
Marty Feldman in 'Young Frankenstein'
Young Frankenstein (1974)
Dir Mel Brooks (Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle)
'For what we are about to see next, we must enter quietly into the realm of genius.'
‘Young Frankenstein’ is a wonderfully absurd pastiche of the monster genre with knockout comic performances by co-scriptwriter Gene Wilder as the grandson of Frankenstein and the late, great Marty Feldman as his humpback helper, Igor. The fourth in Brooks’s impressive oeuvre, the film was considered pretty out of kilter at the time; after all, here was a movie purposefully shot in black and white for effect alone. There are plenty of scenes here worthy of a YouTube compilation, but for my money, ‘Young Frankenstein’ ultimately confirmed Wilder as one of the very finest comic actors of all time. His manic mannerisms, funny body language and plaintive timbre are sorely missed. DA
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51
Michael Caine and Steve Martin in 'Dirty Rotten Scoundrels'
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988)
Dir Frank Oz (Steve Martin, Michael Caine, Glenne Headly)
‘Lawrence Fells. Lawrence Feings. Forest Lorenston. Low. Lars. LARS. Lawrence. Lawrence. Luch. Lawrence. Tuh. His name is James Jesenthon. Lawrence Fell. Lawrence Jesterton. LAWRENCE JESTERTON!’
Originally conceived as a vehicle for thespian heavyweights and legendary cut-ups Mick ‘Oo-er, missus!’ Jagger and David ‘Mr Saturday Night’ Bowie, this remake of 1964’s ‘Bedtime Story’ (which featured another odd-couple pairing in David Niven and Marlon Brando) overcame its somewhat larky origins to become one of the drollest, most assured and outright caddish films of the ’80s. Oz’s delicious comedy of (bad) manners sees Michael Caine and Steve Martin spark up an immediate and gently simmering chemistry as smoothie con-men battling for the pocketbooks of bored and gullible high-tone dowagers on the French Riviera in a knowing throwback to an age when comedy traded upon charm and wit, élan and – above all – pencil moustaches. ALD
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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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