The Movie Forums Top 100 Comedies Countdown

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Also, Fargo has some very funny scenes I think it's just how the film ends that we might leave it thinking otherwise.
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This film remains my first of the charming Veronica Lake outside of a noir film
This Gun for Hire? I guess there is some ambiguity where you might be referring to multiple noir films.

She's also in So I Married a Witch. I found her charming in that as well. I'm not big on blondes as a rule, but I think I might have a bit of a thing for Veronica Lake. Not enough to make the song, dance, and magic routine in This Gun for Hire entertaining, but still, a bit of a thing.

And yeah, I think I just listed the only three movies I think I've seen her in.



With Sullivan's Travels at #100, and especially Fargo at #98 --to paraphrase a comment I used in a previous countdown-- I can't wait to see the other 97 films ranked higher... I had Fargo at #12, with another Coen's picture even further up the list.



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This Gun for Hire? I guess there is some ambiguity where you might be referring to multiple noir films.

She's also in So I Married a Witch. I found her charming in that as well. I'm not big on blondes as a rule, but I think I might have a bit of a thing for Veronica Lake. Not enough to make the song, dance, and magic routine in This Gun for Hire entertaining, but still, a bit of a thing.

And yeah, I think I just listed the only three movies I think I've seen her in.
So I Married a Witch is one I need to see and as yet, haven't. And like you, my Lake viewings are VERY limited, I only know her from her pairings with Aland Ladd with Blue Dahlia, The Glass Key, and This Gun For Hire. Something I hope to remedy in time.
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When people came in saying they weren't casting a ballot because they didn't like comedies anymore, I kind of wanted to reply, "well, maybe just submit a ranking of the Coen brother's movies, excluding No Country for Old Men, probably Blood Simple, and also probably Inside Llewyn Davis; and you'd be halfway there." But I didn't want to hint what may or maybe not be on my ballot (I was going to say Coen brothers, plus one other person, who shall currently go unnamed).

I said when casting my ballot, while I was going to be ranking them on how I think of them as comedies, I wasn't going to be voting many straight comedies (which I meant, as in, movies that you think of as vacuous, pure joke and laugh machines. though some of those are on my list).

Which ironically means that Coen-ranking line I suppressed wouldn't be accurate for describing my ballot.

I think one thing that causes the movies I chose to stick out to me, is that the comedies are interacting with something. It often gives them more bite or makes them stick to the bone more. Whatever sense I get from the jokes get amplified by the other emotions they're interacting with in the material.

Also because punchlines often become less funny to me after enough repetitions. Not jokes that rely on the rake effect though. Those only get better.

I think one other thing that also applies, and this happens in spades with Fargo, since there's also the non-comedic plot going on, I'm less dependent upon the jokes to enjoy the movie. Which sounds counter-intuitive for why this might be relevant for how I said I was making my ballot. But, let's say I'm in a non-laughing mood but I kind of want to get myself into a better mood, that non-laughing mood might kill my ability to laugh at the jokes or quips in a straight comedy. Then I'm not enjoying myself at all, and I get into a non-laughing death spiral, because I'm feeling nothing. I watch a blend of genres, and even if I'm not initially laughing, my mind gets to relax and start to enjoy the other genre, and then my brain might kind of hit that spot where it can laugh again, while a comedic scene is happening, and then I can start shifting back into that comedic mindset. I think also in this case, because the style of the comedy of Fargo isn't dependent upon quips or gags, but rather the drawn-out (dark) absurdism of a situation, I think the movie puts less pressure on itself in making you want to laugh, which in some situations really works. Also, it's just really damn funny. Or maybe this is all rationalizing, and I'm just a cheap comedy-whore who thinks the accents are funny sounding, ya know.

For the record, the above "not in a laughing mood" situation above may have happened as I was reviewing some films before casting my ballot. One, "is this actually funny as I remember," got pretty far up on my ballot, and two others got kicked off of my ballot possibly just because I just wasn't in a laughing mood when I rewatched them. One of them I strongly suspect is ending up on this list. I'll save it for if it is, so I can get people's spit-takes when I go, "I re-watched it and I just did not laugh." I did take it as my cue to stop rewatching movies for this though.
Totally understandable. Heck, I wouldn't even exclude No Country for Old Men. Despite it being perhaps one of the Coens most darker and serious films, there are still a good bunch of hilarious moments in it.
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So I Married a Witch is one I need to see and as yet, haven't. And like you, my Lake viewings are VERY limited, I only know her from her pairings with Aland Ladd with Blue Dahlia, The Glass Key, and This Gun For Hire. Something I hope to remedy in time.
I liked So I Married a Witch and Veronica is quite naughty-good in that one! She was also in one of my past HoF noms...So Proudly We Hail (1943) which was in the WWII HoF...she played a very hateful racist woman and did it very well.

With all this Veronica Lake talk I think I need to watch all of her filmography. Well one of these days



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I liked So I Married a Witch and Veronica is quite naughty-good in that one! She was also in one of my past HoF noms...So Proudly We Hail (1943) which was in the WWII HoF...she played a very hateful racist woman and did it very well.

With all this Veronica Lake talk I think I need to watch all of her filmography. Well one of these days
i know what you mean. Definitely someone I would like to see more of.



I switched it to mobile view because I do actually normally use desktop but it does still show for me, FYI.
Seems like this shouldn't be possible. Can you send me a screenshot via PM?



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I considered Sullivan's Travels for my list, but it was ultimately cut because there were more movies that were funnier, but it's a great movie, and I'm glad to see it made the countdown. While I still don't expect many of the movies on my list to make the countdown, this gives me hope that the countdown might be better than I expect it to be.


I watched a lot of movies while preparing to make my list for this countdown, but I never even considered watching Fargo for two reasons.

The first reason is that I had no idea that it was even considered to be a comedy. I thought it was a murder mystery.

The second reason is that I heard something about a gory wood chipper scene that made it sound like it probably wasn't my type of movie.
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"_______ is a comedy?!" is going to be a common sentiment throughout this countdown if people are already questioning the eligibility of Fargo. It's almost as if -- gasp! -- movies can be multiple genres at once. Who knew? I've enjoyed Fargo more with each viewing, and found its humor more amusing each time, but would still only rank it somewhere in the middle of the Coen Bros. filmography. I prefer the TV show, personally -- or at least the first three seasons, as I still haven't gotten around to the Chris Rock season. The Coens have a strong chance to be the most represented directors on the countdown.
I didn't get the sense anyone was questioning its "eligibility", more that people, myself included, expressed some surprise. And really what I, personally, was saying is that one shouldn't be surprised that it was as "low" as it was when many may simply not think of it as a comedy or at least enough of a comedy to bump something like It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World or such, what I would call a "pure comedy", when you've only got 25 slots to work with. I agree with you (I think I basically said as much a page or two ago), for what it's worth, that movies cross over all the time and that Fargo does to be sure. In my personal feelings it's a brilliant, clever, and fun film with great wit, probably a "black comedy", but I cannot let it bump one of the 25 greatest comedies ever made, especially when it could qualify for multiple other lists. I hold no one else to this opinion.

Me personally, a couple-few things were true for my ballot.
1. I wanted to be completely honest with myself (and, transitively, the rest of you). No including anything for any other motivation than if I could only watch 25 comedies before I die, and I didn't have to please anyone else and nobody was watching and nobody was judging, what would they be.
2. (And this speaks to this conversation) If I felt like it was more reflective of another genre than it was of comedy, it was out. There are simply too many great "pure comedies" to exclude them in favor of movies that are great but are only really partially comedies. That automatically excluded most Horror-Comedies, for example, even though they are one of my favorite (sub-)genres.
3. It had to be funny, on purpose, for most of the film. If the focus of the film drifted into other areas like melancholy or melodrama or thrills or such, they got bumped to the back of the line and would have to be so funny in their moments that they could overcome the "pure comedies" That also included movies that make you grin or chuckle or get a wry smile pretty often versus just straight-up make you laugh throughout. This exlcluded a lot of Rom-Coms, for another example, because a lot of them spend far more time on the Romance than they do on the Comedy. The ones that did that were out. The ones that focused on the comedy, like His Girl Friday, for another example, could be in.
4. No games. That meant that I couldn't allow myself to include anything just to make my list cute or clever. This harkens back to No.1, really. It is for this reason I couldn't bring myself to play the One-pointer game. I felt, to adhere to No.1, which was the most important to me, that using a slot to play a side-game, was no good. This does not mean I have any issue with the One-pointer game, it just means it wasn't for me.

I think that's pretty much the rules I set for myself. No "only one movie per filmmaker" or any of that crap. If my top 5 had all been Monty Python movies in my head, if Mel Brooks had 3 of the top 5 in my mind, if my favorites, deep down, were all really Screwballs from the 30s and 40s, then that's what would be on my list.
But again, I hold no one else to any of this.



The only criteria I set for my list was "Does it feature Rob Schneider?"
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Oh wow, I didn't realize we had special "countdown posts" now, that's cool.

I don't think any of my picks are gonna place very high, but I didn't see any on the one-pointers list either.
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The second reason is that I heard something about a gory wood chipper scene that made it sound like it probably wasn't my type of movie.
I'd say that scene is more disturbing than gory (the actual violence in the scene also lasts less than a minute long). The rest of the violence in the film is pretty standard for the genre.
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Seems like this shouldn't be possible. Can you send me a screenshot via PM?


Just got a new phone so it's difficult to navigate for me, but this was in mobile view. Maybe it depends on type of phone? No idea



I forgot the opening line.
Sullivan's Travels I'm unfamiliar with, but looks very interesting - I'll add it to my watchlist.

Fargo is a classic that truly never gets old. It sits within a category of films that I can watch any number of times, and not get tired of. Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare are superb - but it's the casting itself that really nailed what the film is going for. The Coen Bros wrote one hell of a screenplay, and it all comes together in a folky kind of crime story that emphasizes the location it takes place in, and the eccentric kind of characters to be found within. Very funny, and definitely fits into the category of comedy, although Fargo is much more than that. It's the merging of two worlds with McDormand's policewoman 'Marge' at the central point - a role she won her first Oscar for. The fantastic screenplay also won an Academy Award - beating out Jerry Maguire, Shine, Secrets & Lies and Lone Star - a good bunch. I love Fargo, but it wasn't on my list (which could have been half Coen Bros movies really) - instead I chose a different film of theirs.

Seen 1/2
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I liked Fargo well enough. I didn't quite consider it a comedy (more of a mystery/drama with comedic elements), but I do get why some would.

Haven't seen Sullivan's Travels.





Just got a new phone so it's difficult to navigate for me, but this was in mobile view. Maybe it depends on type of phone? No idea
Is that safari on an iPhone?

@Yoda, in case it's relevant, the following site says my resolution is 393x808
I'm thinking that's not going to be relevant now since it doesn't show up in either landscape or portrait mode, but including it anyways/just in case.
Android 12.

https://www.designrush.com/agency/we...een-resolution



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No votes. I've seen Sullivan's Travels once and it was a long time ago, but I remember liking it - no idea how I'd feel about it now. I didn't like Fargo at first because I felt that its status as a comedy (read: being broadcast on cable's literal "comedy channel") has been more than a little oversold, but it's grown on me and I'd definitely put it at the top end of a Coen ranking.
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Is that safari on an iPhone?

@Yoda, in case it's relevant, the following site says my resolution is 393x808
I'm thinking that's not going to be relevant now since it doesn't show up in either landscape or portrait mode, but including it anyways/just in case.
Android 12.

https://www.designrush.com/agency/we...een-resolution
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