The 100 best comedy movies

‘Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.’

Directors: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker

Cast: Leslie Nielsen, Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty

‘Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?’ A movie that raises belly laughs after countless viewings, this was the second film (after 1977’s Kentucky Fried Movie) from Jim Abraham and the Zucker brothers, who went on to make the Naked Gun and Hot Shots movies. Overflowing with on-target visual gags and one-liners, it’s a playful and deeply silly spoof of 1970s disaster movies and stars Robert Hays as a troubled ex-pilot forced to land an airliner when the real pilot collapses from food poisoning. Leslie Nielsen steals the film as an onboard doctor. Just don’t call him Shirley.

‘He’s not the Messiah. He’s a very naughty boy.’

Director: Terry Jones

Cast: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Michael Palin

The Pythons’ second feature is their masterpiece. The story is rooted in purest farce, as the Three Wise Men arrive at the wrong manger and unsuspecting everyman Brian Cohen is declared the Messiah. He duly bumbles alongside The Greatest Story Ever Told, ending the film on a Calvary Cross for a reluctant chorus of ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’.

What a dizzying achievement this is. The Life of Brian takes potshots at everything from schoolroom Latin to Biblical epics (most of which it shames with its attention to period detail) and religious hypocrisy – but, crucially, never religion itself. Needless to say, this didn’t stop predictable accusations of blasphemy.

‘I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me as a member.’

Director: Woody Allen

Cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton

'Annie Hall' is as Woody Allen as Woody Allen gets – hilarious, neurotic and occupied by the realisation that whatever happens, life is going to trample all over you. It’s also one of the greatest romantic comedies every made (with some of the funniest lines: ‘Don’t knock masturbation. It’s sex with someone I love’). Allen is Alvy Singer, who’s just split from scatty singer Annie (Diane Keaton, his real-life ex). What follows is an anatomy of their relationship. Allen has said that the film is not autobiographical – he co-wrote it with Marshall Brickman – but that’s not what we want to hear.

‘I'll give you a winter prediction: It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life.’ 

Director: Harold Ramis

Cast: Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell 

The faux-meteorological American tradition known as Groundhog Day predates the movie Groundhog Day by a good century and a half. Worldwide, however, the words ‘Groundhog Day’ are best known as shorthand for history repeating itself – in fact, there’s probably a not-insignificant population who know the phrase but not the film. It’s not too late to correct that mistake, in the same way poor Phil Connors discovers that it’s not too late to become a better person – in fact, he’s got all the time in the world. Bill Murray gives his most iconic performance as a grumpy, self-absorbed Pennsylvania weatherman who, by some inexplicable cosmic glitch, is forced to live the same day over and over and over and over (and over and over and over and over…) until he learns to look outside himself and let a little love into his heart. Enough movies and TV shows (Palm Springs and Russian Doll, to name two) have lifted the time-loop concept to explore similar themes, usually with a heavier hand. But Groundhog Day remains the gold standard by taking a more lighthearted approach that nonetheless manages to deliver a poignant message about the things that really matter.

There's something I want to say that's always been very difficult for me to say: ‘I slit the sheet, the sheet I slit, and on the slitted sheet I sit’. 

Director: Carl Reiner

Cast: Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters 

When people claim that certain movies ‘couldn’t get made today’, it’s usually just anti-woke grumbling from humourless dolts. But it is a bit hard to imagine many contemporary films opening with a plainly white derelict sitting in a stairwell and proclaiming ‘I was born a poor Black child’. So begins one of the most brilliantly stupid comedies ever. Sure, dumb comedies are a constant in American cinema, but comedies that truly revel in their dumbness really don’t get made often these days. Of course, high-concept stupidity was Steve Martin’s raison d’etre as a standup, and his turn as a spectacularly guileless twentysomething orphan – adopted by African-American sharecroppers as a child – leaving home to discover himself and his ‘special purpose’ made him a bona fide movie star. Comedy superstars from Jim Carrey to Jack Black would follow a similar trajectory, but none ever quite achieved the same level of surreal brainlessness.

‘I feel like a pig shat in my head!’

Director: Bruce Robinson

Cast: Richard E Grant, Paul McGann, Richard Griffiths

The funniest parts of Withnail & I are the early scenes, when, festering in a Camden flat resembling the inside of a cancerous lung, Withnail and Marwood stumble towards the end of an epic speed and booze bender. There are delirious flights of fancy, bouts of druggy nonsense (‘my thumbs have gone weird’), an abortive attempt to clean the kitchen and a cherishable visit from terrifying drug dealer Danny (Ralph Brown). Later, though, tragedy looms large – and Withnail’s despairing traipse through rain-sodden Regent’s Park ranks among the most heartbreaking closing scenes in all cinema. 

‘I’ve got five terrorists going south-east on Bakalakadaka Street!’

Directors: Trey Parker, Matt Stone

Cast: Trey Parker, Matt Stone

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone had no idea what they were taking on when they decided to make a Thunderbirds-style puppet movie about the War on Terror. A year of 20-hour days later – Stone described it as ‘the worst time of my life’ – the film was unleashed, and justified every minute of the duo’s hard work. As concerned with skewering the twin pomposities of mainstream action cinema and liberal Hollywood as it is with the terrorist armies of Durkadurkastan and North Korea, the film borders on genius in its self-aware use of wooden marionettes, particularly in the notorious sex scene. Even Matt Damon thinks it’s funny.

‘I could dance with you till the cows come home. But I’d rather dance with the cows till you come home.’

Director: Leo McCarey

Cast: Groucho Marx, Harpo Marx, Chico Marx

What to say when a film is creeping towards its first century but still feels as timely, relevant and subversive as it did on release? The Marx Brothers’s best movie, Duck Soup takes them far out of their New York music hall milieu and into a kind of twisted miniature Mittel-Europa filtered through immigrant memory and fairytales, where war is brewing between the proud people of Freedonia and the crypto-fascists of neighbouring Sylvania. With a far lighter touch than Chaplin’s Great Dictator, the film lampoons not just fascism but patriotism and politics in general: this is satire deployed both with a sledgehammer and a scalpel, often in the same scene.

'Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!’

Directors: Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones

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

We all love Monty Python’s slapstick savaging of the legend of King Arthur, but we always forget about the llamas: according to the credits, Holy Grail was the creation of Reg Llama of Brixton, and thousands of his llama friends across the world (as well as Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones). Well, Reg and co. created a masterpiece. With its Bergman-ribbing credit sequence, its one-liners and its extravagantly gruesome violence, Holy Grail was Python’s launchpad to international stardom. Neil Innes’s music and Gilliam’s animations are touchstones for British absurdist humour, while the late Graham Chapman, playing it straight as King Arthur, was never finer. 

‘When you chase a dream, especially one with plastic chests, you sometimes do not see what is right in front of you.’

Director: Larry Charles

Cast: Sacha Baron Cohen, Ken Davitian

No one who saw Borat – and that’s a lot of damn people – should claim to have been surprised by the election of Donald Trump, or the general social climate of the country today. In fact, a decade and a half later, the movie plays less like a mockumentary and more like an anthropological study that could be part of political science curriculums. Spinning off from his brilliant Channel 4 and HBO series, prankster genius Sacha Baron Cohen criss-crosses the United States in the guise of Kazakhstani journalist Borat Sagdiyev, saying and doing offensive things which, in turn, causes the real-life Americans he interacts with to say and do things that are even more offensive, precisely because they are real. In terms of committing to the role, Baron Cohen outworks any Method actor you can think of; last we checked, Jared Leto does not have a naked hotel brawl on his résumé. Amazingly, ten years later, Baron Cohen was able to trick America again – but by that point, we’d all been living the joke too long to find it quite as funny.

‘This aggression will not stand, man.’

Directors: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen

Cast: Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore

When stoner Jeffrey ‘The Dude’ Lebowski is mistaken for a local millionaire with the same name, he sets out on a big adventure with his bowling team. There are so many one-liners in this Coen Brothers comedy that you could easily credit the film’s success to its pithy dialogue alone, but with a supporting cast including Walter John and Julianne Moore, it brings so much more to the table, including life lessons about friendship and heroism.

‘I promise you: whatever scum did this, not one man on this force will rest one minute until he’s behind bars. Now let’s grab a bite to eat.’

Director: David Zucker

Cast: Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, OJ Simpson

Second only to Airplane! in the gag-for-gag hit-rate stakes, The Naked Gun never met a dumb pun, slapstick pratfall or deadpan one-liner it didn’t like. The film made Leslie Nielsen a bigger star than he’d ever been playing straight-man roles in ‘proper’ disaster movies – though it has to be said, he tossed away that goodwill almost immediately in the likes of Dracula: Dead and Loving It – and spawned a fistful of sequels, of which the first is well worth watching for the amazing ‘awfully big moustache’ line alone.

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

Director: Billy Wilder

Cast: Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon

Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis star as Jerry and Joe, two musicians who are forced to flee Chicago after witnessing the 1929 Valentine’s Day Massacre and disguise themselves as female members of a band travelling to Florida. Joe falls for the band’s seductive singer, Sugar (Marilyn Monroe), while Jerry has to fight off the lusty attentions of a wealthy old man. Billy Wilder delivers a pacy, racy cross-dressing farce, full of gags and sauce.

‘It ain’t cool being no jive turkey so close to Thanksgiving.’

Director: John Landis

Cast: Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd, Jamie Lee Curtis

America’s love-hate relationship with capitalism has rarely been more cannily explored than in this sadistic fairytale of two conniving businessmen who decide to replace one of their finest employees – Harvard elitist Dan Akyroyd – with Eddie Murphy’s sharp-witted street bum. The image of Aykroyd, drunk and suicidal in a Santa suit on Christmas Eve, says more about the realities (and brutalities) of Wall Street than a hundred financial-crash docs – and means that when he and his erstwhile rival pull together for the big climactic switcheroo, you’re firmly in their corner.

‘Please. Have mercy. I’ve been wearing the same underwear since Tuesday.’

Director: John Hughes

Cast: Steve Martin, John Candy, Laila Robins, Michael McKean

An underdog contender for the best film in John Hughes’ beloved oeuvre, Planes, Trains & Automobiles isn’t just a Thanksgiving movie. It is the Thanksgiving movie – one of the few that isn’t about how painful it is to spend an evening with your relatives, and thus the only one many families make a point to watch together every year. But it’s not just that, either. Even if the holiday doesn’t exist where you live, its themes resonate: everyone has people they’d go through hell to get home to – and if you don’t, you recognise the loneliness that sits just outside the movie’s zany core. It helps, of course, that Steve Martin and John Candy are an unbeatable comic dream team: hilarious when arguing in cramped hotel rooms and burned-out rental cars, and emotionally devastating in the film’s tearjerking final moments. 

‘I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.’

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Cast: Peter Sellers, George C Scott, Sterling Hayden

It takes some kind of genius to make a comedy out of a thermonuclear holocaust – and arch pessimist and master filmmaker Stanley Kubrick was that very genius. Originally intent on a serious treatment (based on Peter George’s book Red Alert), Kubrick abandoned the attempt because most of his ideas for it ‘were so ludicrous’. The black comedy that resulted – detailing the terminal implications of a mad, lone general’s decision to push the nuclear button – was arguably the director’s greatest achievement. 

‘Apparently my son was on something called acid, and was shooting a bow and arrow into a crowd.’

Director: Adam McKay

Cast: Will Ferrell, Christina Applegate, Paul Rudd


Will Ferrell stepped up from the big-boned manchild of Zoolander and Elf to musky, manly movie star in a film that recalls a simpler, polyester time. A time when a man was not judged by the contents of his character but on the raw, unchecked ferocity of his cologne, the lustre of his moustache and the quantity of leather-bound books that lined the mahogany shelves of his apartment. But although everyone is ultimately in the shadow of the glistening chestnut bombast of Ron’s towering hair, Anchorman is very much an ensemble effort, and everyone brings their A-game to the bullpen.

‘Rubber-dinghy rapids, bro!’

Director: Chris Morris

Cast: Riz Ahmed, Nigel Lindsay, Kayvan Novak

This first (and so far only) feature from British TV and radio comedian Chris Morris dared to mock the stupidity of homegrown British jihadis in the wake of 2005’s terror attacks on London. Framed as a slapstick sitcom and built on solid satirical foundations, Morris and his co-writers based much of their script on evidence and court transcripts relating to real cases of DIY terrorism. In the years since, the film has become a regular reference point in the news as life – tragically and comically – continues to imitate art.

‘For what we are about to see next, we must enter quietly into the realm of genius.’

Director: Mel Brooks

Cast: Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, Peter Boyle

Mel Brooks’s finest genre parody succeeds as a hilarious send-up because it’s also a love letter to the classic 1930s Frankenstein movies. As the old Baron’s grandson (co-writer Gene Wilder) brings the family business back to life, Brooks milks the familiar material to the point of absurdity – notably when Wilder performs a tuxedo-ed song-and-dance duo to prove his monster (Peter Boyle) is a civilised creation. The knockabout is great fun, but knowing the originals only increases one’s appreciation. 

‘I have a name. It’s Dorothy. Not Tootsie or Toots or Sweetie or Honey or Doll.’ ‘Oh, Christ!’ ‘No, just Dorothy.’

Director: Sidney Pollack

Cast: Dustin Hoffman, Jessica Lange, Bill Murray

Sure, this is Dustin Hoffman’s show – he’s the gut in a dress, after all. But it’s Bill Murray who sticks in the memory: the source of most of the film’s big laughs and a goodly portion of its soul. Looking back, the concept of a guy dressing up as a woman to get a better job is a vaguely uncomfortable one, and its approach to feminism is badly out-dated. But the performances still shine, the script still sparkles and director Sydney Pollack’s smooth ’80s style still charms. Now hang on while I fix my lippy.

'No, my parents never got divorced. Although I begged them to.’

Director: Herbert Ross

Cast: Woody Allen, Diane Keaton, Tony Roberts

Woody Allen establishes his on-screen persona as a haplessly neurotic would-be lover in this sparkling adaptation of his 1969 Broadway play, where he’s a movie critic so obsessed by Casablanca that he’s conjured up an imaginary Humphrey Bogart to dispense hard-boiled wisdom. Bogey’s kiss-or-kill strategies couldn’t be less appropriate, which is where the fun starts, and Diane Keaton makes a most appealing romantic foil as events head to a wittily achieved airport finale with deliciously misappropriated classic movie dialogue.

‘Compulsorily acquired? You know what this means, don’t you… They’re acquiring it. Compulsorily.’

Director: Rob Sitch

Cast: Michael Caton, Anne Tenney, Stephen Curry

Voted Australia’s favourite homegrown film, this modest fable about ordinary folk battling the vested interests who have issued a compulsory purchase order on their property manages the rare trick of laughing with its characters while getting significant comic mileage from their deficiencies of taste, common sense and general knowledge. The Kerrigan household aren’t the sharpest tools in the box, but their affectionate family bond creates a sense of home as something you just can’t put a price on. An irresistible feelgood charmer.

‘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!’

Director: Frank Oz

Cast: Steve Martin, Michael Caine, Glenne Headly

Scoundrels is the perfect description of Steve Martin and Michael Caine’s characters in this remake of 1964’s Bedtime Story. The duo play a pair of conmen who’ve been tricking the rich women of the French Riviera out of their fortunes before realising they share the same turf. Thus begins an increasingly ridiculous duel, with Caine’s buttoned-up Lawrence making the perfect foil for Martin’s goofball Freddy. Their behaviour could easily come off as mean, but by the end of the film they’ve conned you into thinking they’re loveable rogues.

‘Hey Stan, tell them about the part where Terrence calls Phillip a testicle-shitting rectal wart.’

Director: Trey Parker

Cast: Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Isaac Hayes

What’s the greatest musical of all time? Singin’ in the Rain? Too cute. West Side Story? Too butch. Meet Me in St Louis? If Judy Garland had called Margaret O’Brien a donkey-raping shit eater, it might have stood a chance. Surely, the finest example of the musical form in cinema has to be this rites-of-passage tale of life in a quiet Colorado mountain town, where all the folks need to worry about is parking provision, bad language, gay dogs, an impending land war with Canada, Satan’s fuck-buddy Saddam, whether it really was Cartman’s mother in that German scheisse video and, of course, those goddamned Baldwins. Aw, shucks. 

‘Would you say that I had a plethora of piñatas?’

Director: John Landis

Cast: Steve Martin, Chevy Chase, Martin Short

Pitched somewhere between Seven Samurai and The Artist (only with much bigger hats), this goofy Hollywood comedy sees three fading silent-era stars travelling to Mexico to appear at a warlord’s birthday party only to wind up leading a peasant’s revolt. It’s all deeply silly – most of the jokes come at the expense of wacky accents, donkeys and Martin Short falling over – but Alfonso Arau’s thunderous performance as the villainous El Guapo is a major treat, as is Randy Newman’s whacked-out cameo as a singing bush.

‘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.’

Director: Sam Wood

Cast: Groucho Marx, Chico Marx and Harpo Marx

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 is the movie for you. 

‘Christ. Seven years of college down the drain. Might as well join the fucking Peace Corps.’

Director: John Landis

Cast: John Belushi, Karen Allen, Tom Hulce

National Lampoon’s 1978 effort follows a wild fraternity of party lads, playboys and misfits put at danger of being shutdown by the dean of their straight-laced university. If that plotline sounds familiar it’s probably because it’s been aped by a whole host of college movies since, from the American Pie sequels to the recent Zac Efron film Bad Neighbours. But none of them have the same gutsy energy brought by Animal House cast members like John Belushi.

There were two loves in his life: his engine and…’

Directors: Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton

Cast: Buster Keaton, Marion Mack

Viewed today, the natural reaction to Buster Keaton’s civil-war masterpiece isn’t so much laughter as sheer, jaw-on-the-floor astonishment. In a world long before health and safety, here is a man literally risking life and limb to present some of the most astonishing sight gags ever performed, from ducking cannon balls to flipping railroad ties to chucking an entire, full-size locomotive off a bridge. It’s hilarious too, of course: the birth of the chase movie, and the template for everything from the Looney Tunes cartoons to Mad Max: Fury Road. 

‘“I want to see the zoo,” she said. “I want to see the zoo.”’

Director: Mike Leigh

Cast: Roger Sloman, Alison Steadman, Anthony O’Donnell

Of all the films Mike Leigh made for TV in the 1970s, this comedy about two ‘green’ middle-class Londoners who pitch up at a Dorset campsite and make fools of themselves is almost as enduring as the better known Abigail’s Party. Arriving in the countryside, priggish Keith (Roger Sloman) turns up his nose at non-free-range eggs (this was 40 years ago), while his wife Candice Marie (Alison Steadman) might not be as floaty and submissive as she first appears. Squirm, and squirm some more.

‘The royal penis is clean, your highness.’

Director: John Landis

Cast: Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall, James Earl Jones

Just a few years after he became the biggest box-office draw in America, Eddie Murphy’s golden period was already drawing to a close. But this tale of African princes and fast-food heiresses is a scrappily suitable swansong for the Eddie we loved in the ’80s, offering his signature blend of crudity, sweetness, wit, style and vague politicking, all wrapped up in a high-concept romcom package. The highlight, though, has to be ER star Eriq LaSalle in full Jheri curl nightmare as hair product salesman Daryl. Just let your Soul Glo... 

‘Simone, where is my Surété Scotland Yard-type mackintosh?’

Director: Blake Edwards

Cast: David Niven, Peter Sellers, Robert Wagner

The first in a series of five films featuring the clumsy antics of Peter Sellers’s bungling pseudo-French detective Chief Inspector Clouseau, The Pink Panther is also the most measured, languorous and subtle of the lot. While often very funny, Sellers’s incompetent character only came to the fore from the second film, A Shot in the Dark, onwards. Consequently, anyone seeing this expecting wall-to-wall Sellers may be a mite disappointed. But hey, it knocks spots off the awful 2006 remake.

‘Never mind the Chinese earthquake, take Hitler and stick him on the funny page. No, no, leave the rooster story alone – that’s human interest!’

Director: Howard Hawks

Cast: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy

Where would screen comedy be without His Girl Friday? The double-edged cynicism of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s oft-adapted Broadway play The Front Page couldn’t be more modern. But director Howard Hawks had the inspired brainwave of turning the male Hildy into a female firebrand played by Rosalind Russell – detonating one of the most incendiary, yet affectionate, sex-war duels in cinema history.

‘Boys, you got to learn not to talk to nuns that way.’

Director: John Landis

Cast: John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd

The controversy around The Blues Brothers has been raging since its release. Is this a case of two white comedians exploiting the heroes of soul music to make themselves look cool? Or is the film actually a loving tribute to a great American art form? The truth is, a bit of both. But luckily, there’s a brilliantly paced plot, a punchy script and a riot of car chases to keep you distracted every time Belushi and Aykroyd’s mugging gets a bit much. Of course, the heart of the movie is in its musical performances: Cab Calloway, Ray Charles and James Brown all hit hard, but it’s Aretha Franklin’s ‘Respect’ that’ll have you jiving in your seat.

‘If you take my advice I think you’ll become one of the great balloon-folding acts of all time!’

Director: Woody Allen

Cast: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Nick Apollo Forte

Woody comes to both bury and praise his hero Danny Rose in this lyrical note to the dimmer lights of the Great White Way. A cock-eyed optimist and full-time dreamer, guileless theatrical agent Danny dotes over his woeful stable of one-shot novelty acts – blind xylophonists, uniped tap dancers, ice-skating penguins dressed, naturally, as Hassidic rabbis – but it’s clear to everyone else that an age is swiftly passing. It would be an easy world to mock, but Allen gives it a generous, mournful, affectionate send-off that pays far richer, far funnier dividends.

‘I was born in Dusseldorf and that is why they call me Rolf.’

Director: Mel Brooks

Cast: Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Dick Shawn

The beginning of the Brooks empire, and still his funniest film, The Producers combines old-school kvetch comedy, Broadway backstage hi-jinks and outright headline-grabbing bad taste to intoxicating effect. Wilder steals the show as the accountant to Mostel’s portly, conniving stage producer. The con itself – an elaborate plan to run with the takings of a show so dreadful it closes overnight – keeps things ticking along at a brisk pace, but it’s that Busby Berkeley ‘Springtime for Hitler’ scene that remains most vividly in the memory.

‘I never forget a pussy... cat.’

Director: Jay Roach

Cast: Mike Myers, Elizabeth Hurley, Michael York

Take Sean Connery’s suave James Bond out of his ’60s-martini-bar comfort zone and you’re left with Austin Powers. He’s a flouncy-collared, womanising secret agent who was cryogenically frozen in the 1960s, then awoken in 1997 to battle cat-stroking villain Dr Evil. Written and starring Mike Myers in both the lead roles, the film’s storyline is as silly as it sounds but that’s what makes it so much fun. Shame about the sequels. 

‘Better to be king for a night than schmuck for a lifetime!’

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Robert De Niro, Jerry Lewis, Sandra Bernhard

Martin Scorsese isn’t exactly known for his comedy, although his 2013 hit The Wolf of Wall Street was perhaps the most out-and-out funny film he’s made so far. This 1982 film, which followed Raging Bull, thrives on awkward laughs as Robert De Niro’s sociopathic and deluded Rupert Pupkin is so desperate to become a successful stand-up comic (despite an apparent total lack of talent) that he hatches a crazy kidnap plot involving a chat-show host played by Jerry Lewis. It’s watch-through-the-fingers stuff – amusing, yes, but also seriously uncomfortable.

‘I don’t want to have to read you the riot act, but I am going to have to read you some extracts from the riot act.’

Director: Armando Iannucci

Cast: Tom Hollander, Peter Capaldi, James Gandolfini

Scabrous and smart, Armando Iannucci’s political satire is the sort of film that rewards repeated viewing, if only to catch the jokes you laughed through last time round. It opens out the action from original sitcom The Thick of It by sending mad-eyed spin doctor Malcolm Tucker, hapless government minister Simon Foster and their cohorts to the States, where they flip and flop for our entertainment, groping towards a coherent policy. The vulgarity is tumultuous, the wit pointed and the performances impeccably judged. Proof that transferring a great sitcom to the big screen need not be difficult, difficult, lemon difficult.

‘Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me into.’

Director: William A Seiter

Cast: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy

Eccentric man-child Stan Laurel and roly-poly fall-guy Oliver Hardy make the screen’s most revered comedy double-act and this is reckoned to be their finest 68 minutes, as the boys plot to evade their domineering wives and slope off to their fraternal lodge convention. It all goes horribly wrong, of course, setting off a whole series of inventive, exquisitely timed sight-gags as the hapless twosome wind up hiding out in their own attic. Short, sharp and delightful. 

‘He's too nervous to kill himself. He wears his seat belt in a drive-in movie.’

Director: Gene Saks

Cast: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau

Unrepentant slob Oscar (Walter Matthau) and cleaning-obsessive neurotic Felix (Jack Lemmon) make a perfect match as two old pals driven by marriage troubles to sharing a Manhattan apartment. This film version plonks Neil Simon’s Broadway smash on screen without rethinking it for celluloid. Still, the obvious theatricality allows the performers to play to their contrasting strengths, whipping up a frenzy of love-hate exasperation underpinned by life-long friendship. It’s so funny because it’s so believable – everyone knows an Oscar and a Felix.

I, Stanley Moon, hereinafter and in the hereafter to be known as “the damned”… The damned?’

Director: Stanley Donen

Cast: Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Eleanor Bron

Forget the underwhelming remake with Brendan Fraser and Liz Hurley. The original Bedazzled is a vintage piece of swinging London comedy and probably Pete and Dud’s finest big-screen outing. Dudley Moore is a sad-sack cook mooning after a waitress (Eleanor Bron) and Peter Cook plays the devil, who procures his soul in exchange for seven wishes. What follows is a Faustian series of set-pieces – some witty, some garish, some a tad aged – that offer plenty of opportunities for the duo’s distinctive power play. 

‘Into the mud, scum queen!’

Director: Carl Reiner

Cast: Steve Martin, Kathleen Turner, David Warner

The early Steve Martin movies catch comedy at a crossroads: on the surface they’re old-school slapstick romps complete with dubious innuendo, pratfalls and happy-ever-after endings, a short step from Abbott and Costello. But they also manage to incorporate the best of everything new that was happening in comedy at the time: the sight-gag overload of Airplane!, the romance of Woody Allen, the confrontational attitude of the new stand-ups and perfect surrealism of Martin’s own live act.

‘I don't know very much about him, except that I love him.’

Director: Frank Capra

Cast: Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert


Ask a film historian: what was the first ever romcom? Chances are they’ll tell you that it’s this this deliciously fizzy 1934 screwball comedy. Clark Gable is the newspaper hack who stumbles across a spoilt heiress (Claudette Colbert) on the bus to New York – she’s running away from her rich daddy to marry a fortune hunter. Pay attention and you’ll see elements that romcom scriptwriters have been ‘paying homage’ to ever since: a couple who can’t stand each other at first sight, quick-fire bickering and the realisation that they’re head-over-heels. Irresistible.

‘Nothing personal, but fuck off.’

Director: Martin Brest

Cast: Robert De Niro, Charles Grodin

A film whose reputation seems to grow with each passing year (it’s shot up by 34 places since the last time we put together this list), Midnight Run comes on like just another buddies-on-the-road comedy thriller. That is, until you notice just how flawlessly written and ferociously performed it is. Robert De Niro wisely plays it straight as the bail bondsman tracking down mob informant Charles Grodin, who proceeds to whinge and whine all the way from New York to LA. The pace is relentless, the supporting players are brilliantly sketched and the script cuts like a scalpel.

‘You’re the vulgarian, you fuck!’

Director: Charles Crichton

Cast: John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, Michael Palin

Perhaps the best British comedy since the heyday of Python, since John Cleese deliberately attempted to move away from satirical silliness and back to a more inclusive, plot-driven, unmistakably British brand of comic caper. (He even went so far as to hire 78-year-old Ealing stalwart Charles Crichton to direct.) The result is a film which, like its slippery American heroine, is madly in love with language, from tongue-teasingly delicious sarcasm to some truly outrageous swearing. Add to this four iconic performances (five if you count the inimitable Tom Georgeson as cockernee gangster George ‘Unbe-fackin’-lieveable!’ Thomason), and the result speaks for itself.

‘I once stole a pornographic book that was printed in braille. I used to rub the dirty parts.’

Director: Woody Allen

Cast: Woody Allen, Louise Lasser, Carlos Montalbán

The plot of Woody Allen’s second feature movie sounds like a Seth Rogen stoner comedy: lazy guy stumbles into job as leader of a South American revolution. Except this is a Woody Allen film, so amidst daft slapstick, cutting one-liners and guerrilla warfare you’ll find commentary on the corruption of power and the role of the media. It’s a bit mad – there’s one scene where someone orders 1,000 grilled cheese sandwiches – but it’s one of Allen’s best.

'It’s a father's function to save his son from the mistakes he made.’

Director: Ernst Lubitsch

Cast: Gene Tierney, Don Ameche, Charles Coburn

A satirical portrait of a womaniser who messes up the great romance right in front of him, this Technicolor delight from the legendary Ernst Lubitsch features the screen’s most elegant visualisation of hell: all marble columns and shiny floors, presided over by Laird Cregar’s suave Satan, who decides whether new arrival Don Ameche is to go ‘down below’ or ‘up above’. This is a sophisticated watch – if a little forgiving of male foibles, and more likely to give you an attack of wry smiles than out-and-out guffaws.

'There's a lotta things about me you don't know anything about, Dottie.’

Director: Tim Burton

Cast: Paul Reubens, Elizabeth Daily, Mark Holton

Tim Burton’s first feature might just be proof that the blockbuster visionary is better off with lower budgets, so long as he has a solid collaborator. Kicking off with an iconic score from Danny Elfman (then simply known as ‘that guy from Oingo Boingo’) and culminating with an ultra-meta spy spoof, Pee-Wee is pure joy: A classic road film in which a hyperactive manchild becomes a nigh-mystical roadside prophet brightening the lives of drifters and wayward souls as he searches for a lost bike. Burton’s signature style is everywhere, from the menacing roadside dinosaurs to the nightmarish dream sequences and the generation-scarring Large Marge. But it’s Paul Reubens’ finely calibrated mania that makes the film as essential now as it was when it launched its creators’ careers: the comedian captures the essence of childhood joy one obnoxious giggle at a time.

'Nobody wears beige to a bank robbery!’

Director: Woody Allen

Cast: Woody Allen, Janet Margolin, Marcel Hillaire

If you try to rob a bank, it helps if you can convince the bank you’re a robber. And if you play the cello, it’s maybe best not to join a marching brass band. Such is the life of Virgil Starkwell, the remarkably committed and useless criminal who, as a kid. Take the Money and Run, Woody Allen’s directorial debut, is a messy, at times romantic, often baggy film, full of sight gags, overlaid with some of Allen's most trusted nightclub material. If this lacks the emotional dexterity of Allen’s mid-career film, it remains a remarkable early calling card for one of the twentieth-century’s defining comic actor/directors.

‘I know a little German. He’s sitting over there.’

Directors: Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker

Cast: Val Kilmer, Omar Sharif, Billy J Mitchell

Eager to parody the WWII spy flick but keenly aware that, despite what Mel Brooks might think, the Nazis really weren’t all that funny, the Airplane! team of Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker hit upon the notion of a dimwit American rock star sent into East Berlin to infiltrate the Russkies. The result isn’t quite as rampantly gag-stuffed as either Airplane! or The Naked Gun, but the jokes there are land hard: Peter Cushing’s amazing giant eye, Kilmer’s pitch-perfect Beach Boys parody and some timeless wordplay (see above).

‘Free cable is the ultimate aphrodisiac.’

Director: Ben Stiller

Cast: Jim Carrey, Matthew Broderick, Leslie Mann

Produced by Judd Apatow, directed by Ben Stiller and starring Jim Carrey, Jack Black and Matthew Broderick, The Cable Guy has all the building blocks of a legendary lad comedy. The film is no bromance though – Carrey plays a manic cable guy who drags newly single Broderick into his twisted fantasy world. Featuring a weird scene where a trip to a Medieval-themed restaurant leads to the two pals jousting viciously, this dark comedy’s strengths lie in revealing the nasty side of Carrey’s acting persona.

'Mr. Hulot is off for a week by the sea. Take a seat behind his camera, and you can spend it with him.'

Director: Jacques Tati

Cast: Jacques Tati, Nathalie Pascaud, Micheline Rolla

A sleepy French seaside resort becomes the playground for director-star Jacques Tati’s lanky, kindly middle-aged bachelor Monsieur Hulot, whose efforts at enjoying himself invariably end in disaster. Former mime Tati essentially dispenses with dialogue, but while his approach certainly draws on silent comedy, he's less interested in quick-fire slapstick than slowly escalating complications whose intricate choreography often proves more whimsical, or beautiful even, than out-and-out hilarious. Filled with sunny nostalgia and bittersweet longing, its funny-sad demeanour is quintessential Tati.

‘Any bird can build a nest, but it’s not everyone that can lay an egg.’

Director: James W Horne

Cast: Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy

Laurel and Hardy’s frontier tale is their most varied featurette, and ranks with their very best. Having witlessly contrived to hand over a valuable property deed to a scheming saloon owner, their attempts to make amends involve an airborne mule, an ill-fated piano and much tickling. All this plus several utterly charming old-timey musical numbers (including 1970s novelty number one ‘Trail of the Lonesome Pine’) and the convincingly surreal sight of Ollie using his thumb as a lighter. Solid gold. 

'Bratwurst and shillelaghs... Paging Dr. Freud!’

Director: Christopher Guest

Cast: Jane Lynch, Catherine O'Hara, Parker Posey

The best of Christopher Guest’s post-Spinal Tap mockumentaries (see also Waiting for Guffman, A Mighty Wind and… actually, don’t see For Your Consideration), this chronicle of a dog show overflows with hilarious caricatures, from yuppies and A-gays to laconic backwoodsmen and addled commentators. The largely improvised material is generally geared around character rather than out-and-out gags but the simmering neuroses and blithely inane foot-in-mouth outbursts build to a fist-biting tsunami of excruciation. 

‘You’re on a gravy train with biscuit wheels.’

Directors: Peter Farrelly, Bobby Farrelly

Cast: Woody Harrelson, Randy Quaid, Bill Murray

The oft-overlooked oddity squeezed between the giant blockbuster tentpoles (oo-er) of Dumb and Dumber and There’s Something About Mary, Kingpin sees the Farrelly Brothers drawing on some mysterious inner pool of inexplicable comedy genius and coming up with the ludicrous tale of a thatch-headed Amish bowling prodigy (Quaid) and his bitter, one-handed mentor (Harrelson) as they head cross-country to the national championships. Lin Shaye’s turn as Harrelson’s grotesque, sexually rapacious landlady is unforgettably despicable.

‘Heil Hynkel!’

Director: Charlie Chaplin

Cast: Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard

Charlie Chaplin’s courageous 1940 satire sees him sending up Adolf Hitler as the fictional despot Adenoid Hynckel. The famous scene where he dances with a giant globe offers a comic pisstake on vaunting megalomania, though there’s also a murderous reality to Hynkel’s behaviour – and prescient talk of ‘concentration camps’. Overall, it’s more a movie about the power of comedy than a chuckle-fest in itself, since the subplot with Chaplin also playing a plucky barber rather struggles to raise a smile.

‘People say, “You must have been the class clown.” And I say, “No, I wasn’t. But I sat next to the class clown and I studied him.”’

Director: Christopher Guest

Cast: Christopher Guest, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara

As axeman Nigel Tufnel, Christopher Guest was part of the timeless success of This Is Spinal Tap. But he also picked up the filmmaking baton, going on to direct masterworks of situational improv such as Best in Show, For Your Consideration and this movie. The superb cast play members of a small-town, amateur-dramatic society pinning their hopes on a visit from a big-shot critic, though what he’ll make of the pageant ‘Red, White and Blaine’ is regrettably clear to everyone else. Often painful, sometimes moving, frequently hilarious, it’s an oddball delight and a tribute to self-deluding ambition everywhere. 

‘Harold, everyone has the right to make an ass out of themselves.’

Director: Hal Ashby

Cast: Bud Cort, Ruth Gordon

Genre-non-specific movies like Harold and Maude have suffered on this list: is it really a comedy? Isn’t there a bit too much death and holocaust talk for that? But if it’s not a comedy, what is Harold and Maude? Therein, of course, lies its genius: it’s not anything, except real. Controversial on first release, forgotten for decades and then happily rediscovered (at least in part thanks to Cameron Diaz in There’s Something About Mary), Harold and Maude is now firmly established as one of the all-time romantic classics. The central relationship may be unconventional – teenage boy falls for 79-year-old concentration camp survivor – but the themes of self-discovery and universal love speak to all of us.