The 14 best comedies on Netflix right now

A brilliant, bonkers satire of the way Black people often have to contort themselves just to survive in America, Sorry to Bother You stars Atlanta standout LaKeith Stanfield (Get Out) as a starving artist who takes a job to as a telemarketer to make ends meet and finds his values compromised as he climbs the company ladder. But that description barely scratches the surface of the leftfield turn the film takes near its end, plunging off the edge from biting sociopolitical send-up to a surrealist mindfuck worthy of Buñuel.

Director: Greta Gerwig

Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Lucas Hedges, Timothée Chamalet, Beanie Feldstein

Quite possibly one of the best comedies of the past decade, Lady Bird is phenomenal for many reasons. The material is fresh, creative and previously unexplored; Gerwig's directing is the stuff of cinematic legend and the cast of actors is outstanding. 

Director Kitao Sakurai

Cast Eric André, Tiffany Haddish, Lil Rel Howery

On paper, Bad Trip sounds a lot like a tired mix of Borat and Bad Grandpa, featuring a lovesick Eric André on a road trip interacting with real people via elaborate pranks involving crashed cars, projectile vomit and plenty of nudity. What a surprise, then, when the film reveals itself not as a ‘gotcha’ flick seeking to show the dark underbelly of the American south, but rather one in which its marks prove to be kind, helpful and empathetic. The movie is uneven, but when the laughs hit, they hit hard, all while positioning Bad Trip as an unexpected feel-good comedy classic.

Director: Nicholas Stoller

Cast: Jason Segel, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Russell Brand

Very few movies succeed on sheer likeability more than this Judd Apatow-produced rom-com. (It might be blasphemous to say, but it holds up better than a lot of classic Apatow projects, including Knocked Up and The 40-Year-Old Virgin.) A schlubby musician (Jason Segel) goes to Hawaii to rehab from a breakup with a hot TV star (Kristen Bell), only to find himself staying at the same resort as said hot TV star and her new rock star boyfriend (Russell Brand). Everyone is perfectly cast – particularly Brand and Paul Rudd as an airhead surf instructor – and while every character is flawed, no one is painted as the villain. And the tropical background is nice to look at, too.   

Directors: Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones

Cast: Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Michael Palin

The Pythons stick a big fat skewer into religious intolerance in their most controversial (unless you’re a medieval French knight, in which case it’d be The Holy Grail) and arguably, funniest film. Brian Cohen (Graham Chapman) is the young Jewish man who lives next door to Jesus and is mistaken for the messiah by a swelling army of followers. Of course, the more he tells them he’s not, the more devoted they become. The cross and a rousing singalong of ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’ await.

Director: Adam McKay

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Will Ferrell, Dwayne Johnson, Samuel L Jackson

Another in a long line of odd-couple buddy cop action-comedies, this one gets elevated above the fray by its winking gestures toward its own genre and the surprising chemistry of its leads. Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell play NYPD desk jockeys suddenly forced into the field, to the chagrin of their hard-nosed foils, Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L Jackson.  

Director: Craig Brewer

Cast: Eddie Murphy, Wesley Snipes, Keegan Mike Epps

Eddie Murphy fulfils his destiny to don the shimmering hat of Blaxploitation star Rudy Ray Moore in Craig Brewer’s dense, often hilarious biopic that chronicles the rise of the legendary kung-fu star, low-budget auteur and bonafide ladies’ man. Seemingly taking Moore’s signature Disco Godfather plea to ‘put your weight on it‘ fully to heart, Murphy delivers one of his most nuanced performances in the title role. Brewer smartly surrounds the comedy god with capable supporting players (Wesely Snipes damn near steals the thing) while developing a rich period tapestry that fully immerses viewers into the seedier side of ‘70s entertainment, crafting a film of a piece with Boogie Nights.

Director: Taika Waititi

Cast: Sam Neill, Julian Dennison, Rachel House

Before he conjured a Thor film from a potion of Zeppelin album covers and LSD, Kiwi director Taiki Waititi took on this endearing tale of an orphan on the lam with a grizzled father-figure. The film expands on the indie chops presented in Boy and Eagle Vs. Shark and emerges as a twee, Wes Andersonian tale of outsiders finding solace in one another. Slight though it may be, Waititi’s film plays out like a heartwarming live-action Pixar flick, a Up-lite adventure that proves that the director doesn’t need Marvel money to craft a film full of rich characters and inventive action. 

Director: Radha Blank

Cast: Radha Blank, Peter Kim, Imani Lewis

If you took 8 Mile and made it about a middle-aged female playwright trying to muscle in on the rap game, it might look a little like this Sundance award winner. It’s a pitch-perfect intro to Radha Blank, writer-actor-star of an autobiographical comedy-drama that tackles creative compromise, the Black experience, hip hop and theatre culture and a fair few big laughs in its exploration of New York’s not-that-rich and not-quite-famous. TLDR? She’s great.

Director: David Dobkin

Cast: Will Ferrell, Rachel McAdams, Dan Stevens

Eurovision gave viewers exactly what they needed in the middle of the pandemic: A shot of Will Ferrell silliness surrounded by a surprisingly earnest entry into Europe’s extremely befuddling (for Americans, at least) pop-culture Olympics. What could have been another eye-rolling exercise in questionable European accents instead unfurled as a legitimately touching underdog saga masquerading as another comedy in the Talladega Nights mold, and while it’s a bit uneven, it’s impossible not to get pulled into the siren song of ‘Jaja Ding-Dong.’ 

Director: Spike Lee

Cast: Tracy Camilla Johns, Tommy Redmond Hicks, John Canada Terrell

Spike Lee formally announced his arrival with this low-budget, script-flipping rom-com. Nola Darling (Tracy Camilla Johns) is a young Brooklyn woman enjoying casual sexual relationships with three men, each desperate to convince her to get serious. Aside from a misjudged rape scene that Lee has retroactively disavowed, it’s an incisive reversal of typical gender roles. Its presentation of African-American romantic relationships was revolutionary at the time. In 2017, it was spun off into a TV series for Netflix.

A ‘minor’ Coen brothers movie is better than most directors’ highlights, and this particular entry is in the upper tier of the Coens’ sillier films. When a ’50s movie idol (George Clooney) is kidnapped, a Hollywood fixer (Josh Brolin) is called in by the studio to collect the ransom money while also keeping the scandal out of the gossip pages. Tilda Swinton is a delight (as per) in two roles as Hedda Hopper-alike gossip columnists ​​Thora and Thessaly Thacker. Try saying that quickly. 

Director: Woody Allen

Cast: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Kathy Bates

Woody Allen’s Parisian vacation was ballyhooed as a ‘return to form’ but it’s really just a charming trifle, closer to his 1996 musical foray Everyone Says I Love You than Annie Hall. Still, it may end up enduring as his best late-period project. Owen Wilson stars as Gil Pender, a screenwriter on vacation in Paris who stumbles upon a rip in the space-time continuum that transports him to the 1920s to party with his literary idols: F Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway. It's a fairy tale for English lit majors.

Director: Kyle Newacheck

Cast: Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston, Luke Evans

A bit silly but still entertaining, this Netflix production was one of the first semi-successful attempts at comedy releases by the streaming giant. Adam Sandler is a New York police officer who takes his wife Audrey (Jennifer Aniston) on a European vacation that turns out to be anything but relaxing.