Top 10 Funniest Movies of All Time

So, because lists are fun, this is my latest, totally subjective list of the funniest movies of all time. This is a tough list to pull together for several reasons. To begin with, I pretty much feel like I have to limit one movie per filmmaker, otherwise half the top 10 would be occupied by Mel Brooks and Monty Python movies. The second challenge is that comedy does not age well. This is, in part a function of topical humor being less relevant over time, and just what we think of as funny changing. There are plenty of movies from the 70s and 80s that I thought of as hilarious at the time but not so much now. To give two examples— Silver Streak, with Gene Wilder and Richard Prior not only doesn’t hold up as a comedy, but is actually fairly offensive. Similarly, try watching Stripes, (with Bill Murray) and count the number of times you actually laugh. You laughed a lot in the 80s, but if you are like me, you will be wondering why today. The third challenge is that there are many funny movies that as movies might be superior to anything on the below list, but are not necessarily funnier. The best example I can think of is Dr. Strangelove. That movie surely is funny, and it possesses many other qualities that elevate it as a quality motion picture, but much of the humor is conceptual and doesn’t yield as many actual laughs as the movies on this list. Fourth problem is what to do with Woody Allen. Fifth problem is— there are a lot of really funny movies out there. If you ask me tomorrow, I’m pretty sure that most of these movies would remain on the list, but in no way can I guarantee that none would be replaced.

Final note— this is a Bowie blog and yes, there is a Bowie connection.

1. Young Frankenstein (1974). This movie defies gravity. The oldest movie on the list, and probably the one I have seen the most number of times, I cannot not laugh at the same jokes and gags over and over again. Mel Brooks has made some of the funniest movies ever, including Blazing Saddles and The Producers, but in terms of sheer hilarity, not to mention number of jokes I’ve integrated into daily conversation, this tops the list. A parody, you don’t need to be familiar with the Frankenstein movies this is making fun of. I recently saw an old Frankenstein sequel (Son of Frankenstein), which I had never seen before and was stunned to learn that Brooks lifted scenes almost directly from this movie, not just its better known predecessors. It doesn’t matter. Young Frankenstein stands on its own. Its alive!
2. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975). Almost everything I just wrote about Young Frankenstein I could have written about Grail. It’s a toss-up for which movie is the funniest. Tomorrow I might put this one on top. What makes Monty Python uniquely funny is their combination of intellectual humor that requires historical and literary knowledge to even understand, with the lowest, crassest brand of slapstick and silliness they could imagine. I think I could probably recite the entire script of Grail from memory. Close behind this from Python is The Life of Brian, but only one can make the list.
3. Airplane (1980). This is the movie that made Leslie Nielsen a comedic actor, but that’s not why it makes the list. The movie doesn’t take a break. Every word uttered is part of a corny joke. Every visual image, many of which are fleeting, are funny. If you don’t find one thing funny, you’ll be hit with something else seconds later (if that). Airplane began a whole series of movies that embraced their corniness (and usually, but not always starred Nielsen) including its sequel, the Naked Gun movies and Hot Shots Part Deux.
4. Anchor Man (2004). That the most recent movie on this list is nearly 20 years old says something about the era of humor I find to be funny. The idea that dumb people can be funny is not new, however seldom before has there been a movie where every character is an abject idiot. And it turns out, that idea can work. Again, even after seeing this movie multiple times, there are scenes where I can’t hold it together, even now. Also, though not really billed this way, Anchor Man has an ensemble cast— usually a formula for failure, but here several very funny comedians play off each other at their absolute peak.
5. This Is Spinal Tap (1984). “This one goes to 11” has become such a part of everyday expression that I’m fairly sure most people who say it have no idea where it came from. The original “mockumentary,” Spinal Tap started a trend, but also set a standard that hasn’t been surpassed since. The funniest thing is that every aspect of the movie seems like it might just be real (well, maybe not the exploding drummer at the end).
6. Austin Powers (1997)How did it take this long for us to get a truly funny James Bond parody? Actually, Michael Myers succeeded in part because this movie is more than that— in addition to poking fun of a variety of 60s movies (that you don’t need to have seen to think this was funny), the character of Austin Powers was, and still seems, fresh. This is another movie that has given us a plethora of expressions that have become part of everyday life and unlike many comedies never seems to get old.
7. Intolerable Cruelty (2003). As with Mel Brooks and Monty Python, it’s hard to choose one Cohen Brothers movie for this list. The better regarded movies are The Big Lebowski and Fargo, and both are masterpieces. But for sheer laughs, I think this, one of their lesser known movies, actually comes out on top. In a way it reminds me of After Hours, another great comedy, directed by Martin Scorsese. That movie brings with it expectations associated with its director that aren’t entirely fulfilled, but if you forget who made it, it’s tremendous. The same is true only more so with Intolerable Cruelty. If you don’t expect The Big Lebowski, you can accept that this movie is actually funnier.
8. Caddyshack (1980). If you don’t like Chevy Chase, this movie will give you Bill Murray. If you don’t like him, it will give you Rodney Dangerfield. If he gets none of your respect, you’re served up Ted Knight. If you think about it, their styles of humor are very different and shouldn’t automatically blend together— but they do here in a way that makes it impossible not to laugh— a lot.
9. The Blues Brothers (1980). Of all the movie on this list, the Blues Brothers probably has the most about it that hasn’t aged entirely well. The movie is a comedy, a musical and an action movie, and while the first two aspects do hold up, all the car chases and whatnot don’t do much for me forty years on. That said, there are other parts of the movie that stand out more today than when I was younger (for instance, John Candy ordering orange whips for the table). Probably the best of the many movies that came out of a Saturday Night Live skit (apologies to Waynes World). And the music is great.
10.Zoolander (2001). Any number of movies could have filled the #10 spot, but hey, this is a Bowie blog so I selected a genuinely funny movie that he appears in. Zoolander is more than that. It surely is not the first movie by a long shot in which we are laughing at the main characters, but Zoolander did usher in a period where many of the same actors played similar characters in a variety of movies. Gone was the era of Eddy Murphy, Bill Murray, and Chevy Chase where the joke was that they were smarter than everyone else. Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson are funny because they are dumber than everyone else, though only Will Ferrell’s character (“I feel like I’m taking crazy pills”) sees it. Yes, Dumb and Dumber came before, but, while that movie could plausibly make this list, Jim Carey and Jeff Daniels moved on whereas Stiller, Wilson and Ferrell kept the joke alive with movies like Dodgeball and basically everything else Will Ferrell made. Zoolander had the misfortune of hitting the theaters the same week as the September 11th terrorist attacks and was overshadowed by those events, but it remains hilarious.

More honorable mentions than can be mentioned, but Blazing Saddles, The Producers, The Life of Brian, The Big Lebowski and Fargo (and, I’d add another Cohen Brothers movie, Raising Arizona) are not on the list because of my self-imposed rule about one movie per filmmaker, but they all could easily have landed here. The Woody Allen problem has little to do with his personal life and more to do with the fact that he made a lot of movies, many of which are very funny— Love and Death, Banannas, Annie Hall, Take the Money and Run, Sleeper, Zelig and many others. In terms of pure comedy, his prime was from 1969 to 1983. After seeing a lesser known movie, New York Stories, my father said that Woody Allen should have to make a movie every year. Actually, he’s come pretty close to doing that, but in so doing he might have spread himself too thin and it’s hard to really select a representative sample.

Eddie Murphy had a string of successful movies that seemed very funny in the 80s, the standout for me being Trading Places. Sadly, they don’t hold up as well today, at least for me. There is enough funny material between all the Pink Panther movies to stand up to any one movie, however the higher quality earlier movies are more subtle, and the later movies with some of the most memorable gags (“Does your dog bite?”) really aren’t very good beyond the cheap laughs. Steve Martin, who made two Pink Panther movies himself, is almost always funny in whatever movie he’s in, but I have difficulty nailing one that stands above the rest. There are several movies like, as I mentioned, Dr. Strangelove, that are superior movies but not necessarily top ten in terms of laughs per se. Some examples that come to mind are Bull Durham, The Princess Bride and I’ll add When Harry Met Sally. I’ll also add an obscure Canadian movie called One Week, which you likely have never heard of.

I don’t have any movie on this list from before 1974 or after 2004. There are many, many funny older movies (Its a Mad, Mad, Mad World comes to mind, as do images of the Three Stooges, Abbot and Costello, the Marx Brothers, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby and Carey Grant). While many of these older movies retain humor value, sadly, some of the humor just doesn’t translate. This is even more the case with silent movies, which I can still appreciate as historic artifacts. For whatever reason, very recent movies haven’t seemed as funny to me. Many of them seem to equate humor with watching someone else suffer. The prime example of what I mean is the Hangover series. Funny, yes, but also mean, which for me is both necessary for the movies to work but also limit their overall humor potential.

There are a number of movies that I thought were as funny as could be when I was younger, but I haven’t seen for a while and doubt would hold up. The prime example of this is a little-remembered horror movie parody called Student Bodies. Another is The Cannonball Run. Of course, there are also flat-out children’s movies, that I don’t so much known how to evaluate today.

Finally, a few more movies that I had a hard time leaving off the list include the aforementioned After Hours, Dodgeball, Nakend Gun, Hot Shots Part Duex, as well as Borat, Arthur, Tropic Thunder and Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.