The Movie Forums Top 100 Comedies Countdown

Mean Girls (2004) was #3 on my ballot.

I still need to see Ed Wood.


I didn't vote for Mean Girls, but after having assumed it was bad for so many years (I don't do well with 2000s comedies), I watched it last year and was surprised it was well made, well acted and very funny. Best paired with the Freaky Friday remake. Oh Lindsay, what could have been.

"Why should Caesar just get to stomp around like a giant while the rest of us try not to get smushed under his big feet? Brutus is just as cute as Caesar, right? Brutus is just as smart as Caesar, people totally like Brutus just as much as they like Caesar, and when did it become okay for one person to be the boss of everybody because that's not what Rome is about! We should totally just stab Caesar!"

It’s been a while, but I liked Ed Wood well enough when I saw it. I don’t really remember it that much in the comedic sense, only think that stays in mind is the Orion Welles scene.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen Mean Girls, but if I have I’ll consider it so distant it’s an “Unwatched” for me

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ED WOOD: Probably should have made my list, but I didn't think about it. Martin Landau's performance is one of the best I've seen, both dramatically and comedically. Also, normally Burton who drowns everything he does in his gaudy gothic hell, and which as a result lets his movies become so soggy with his affectations they barely have the energy to emit a human emotion, somehow finds it in him to make a beautifully observed piece about the creative process and the love of film. This movie deeply understands the kind of affection people find in low budget cinema. It not only basks in the romance of being an outsider in the art world, but is also knowing enough to even feel like a b-movie itself, even though you can tell every detail here has been lovingly poured over and rendered with near perfection. Likely one of the best bio-pics of all time. And likely Depp's best ever performance.


MEAN GIRLS: It's good. Not the kind of thing there is much to say about beyond the fact that it is a smart comedy filled with all sorts of good performances. I'm not in love with it or anything though.

Ed Wood was a very late cut from my list. I actually think it might be Tim Burton's best film, and those opening credits are just fantastic.

As for the 9 other films that have been revealed since my last check-in, I haven't seen MASH or Best in Show, but I've seen the rest of them. Snatch and Big Trouble in Little China are the ones I like the most from that lot, but neither were in contention for a spot on my ballot.

I should really rewatch Nice Guys. I didn't really care for it when it came out, but I just have this feeling that I should enjoy it more than I did, if that makes sense.

Seen: 23/34

My List: 1
04. Evil Dead II (1987) - #93

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No votes. Ed Wood is probably my favourite Tim Burton film (for whatever that's worth) and even made my top 100 back in 2013, but I haven't rewatched it in years and never feel any real need to do so. Mean Girls will always come across as diet Heathers to me, but it still proves a reasonably solid piece of work on its own terms.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

When I had watched Withnail & I after it appeared on this countdown , I hadn't even realized it was a repeat viewing. It's crazy how much nine years can change the experience of a film (amplified by the fact that I didn't even have a license on my first viewing). Really shows how much I should take my opinions of the majority of movies I've watched with a grain of salt

2013:

2022:

Damn I don't think my rating would ever jump up or down that much.

Ed Wood is excellent, as I mentioned I think it's Tim Burton's best film and his peak as a director. I just checked his imdb to see if there were any bumps and sure there are some okay films since but I also saw this - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2049403/ - Keaton (Michael not Buster) seems to be on board too. Hm.

Mean Girls is pretty good. I'm not a big fan or anything but I remember liking it well enough and I think it has its rightful spot among this century's movie pop culture.

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"Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Ed Wood is very good, aging marvelously, and would easily be in my Top 15 comedies of the 1990s. But I never seriously considered it for an all-time Top 25 ballot.

Mean Girls is a more-than-decent movie, but in the subgenre of High School comedies with female leads I'd put a lot of other titles ahead of it. Heathers is certainly more surreal and dark and coming much higher on this list. Of the movies made around the same time I prefer Election over all of them (certainly hope it makes the cut) but also Ghost World, Easy A, and even the oft-overlooked Saved!. Since that era Booksmart is much, much funnier, Juno more layered and unique, Lady Bird more interesting, and if I had to pick one other than Election I'd go with The Edge of Seventeen.

But...I know people love Mean Girls and Clueless, including here at MoFo.

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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra

This is great. It's very true that ten years can change an opinion like that, or even the other way, something you might have loved just doesn't work anymore. I've experienced this often enough. And it's because we change, grow older, blah blah, more experience, blah blah, we've seen more films, etc. Blah blah. But it's all fair.

I've been meaning to watch Ed Wood since forever, and I just haven't gotten to. I think that at one point in the late 90s/early 2000s, I felt that I wanted to see actual Ed Wood films before watching, umm, Ed Wood, and to this day I just haven't seen anything. I should probably get on that.

Mean Girls is a lot of fun. I think it was one of my last cuts. I've seen it a couple of times and I really like how it straddles that line between goofy teen comedy and something a bit more "serious", in how it deals with high school interactions and whatnot. It could've been on my list, but I think I pushed it out to make space for a couple more obscure choices.


Seen: 24/34

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Have seen so far: 19 - Mean Girls - All I gotta say is that I enjoyed this movie like I enjoy other high school movies as well
Have not seen so far: 15

I have not seed Ed Wood yet


My Ballot so far

#8 - The Hangover (2009)
#11 - Step Brothers (2008)
#17 - Mean Girls (2004)

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Moviefan1988's Favorite Movies
https://www.movieforums.com/communit...?t=67103<br />

Welcome to the Dance: My Favorite 20 High School Movies
https://www.movieforums.com/communit...02#post2413502

Ed Wood is lovely, I haven’t seen it in forever though, I should rewatch.

Mean Girls is great. It showcased Tina Fey’s talents outside of SNL for the first time. “You can’t just ask people why they’re white.”

Ed Wood is excellent. Seen it a couple times. I never really considered it but probably should have.

Haven’t seen Mean Girls since the theater. I thought it was pretty good at the time. Didn’t expect it here but I approve.

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Letterboxd

Yahoo! Again another movie from my ballot makes the countdown!

Ed Wood was in the 4th HoF where it didn't make the semi-finals and it was in the 2nd Chance HoF where it finished 3 out of 8 nominations.

Previously I wrote this about Ed Wood:

Ed Wood...the movie is great fun and that's enough for me! Johnny Depp who I always liked as an actor is in great form here as Ed Wood Jr. I just love the light hearted and enthusiastic way Ed Wood goes about life, that's my life philosophy too...only without the angora sweater And of course Ed Wood admires Orson Welles and so that's another fun connection too.

You know the real Ed Wood Jr (pictured above) reminds me of Orson Welles in that both went for their dreams and made films their own way! Ed Wood might have been voted worst director but the guy had a lot of unique film ideas that were way ahead of there time.

Back when I first seen Ed Wood (1994) I then watched the DVD box set of Wood's movies, The Ed Wood Collection - A Salute to Incompetence, I hate that title but it was a great set with Ed Wood's most inspired films. The DVD box set has a total of 6 movies and a really cool documentary: The Ed Wood Story...Anyway this movie originally got me interested in Ed Wood's movies so that's another reason I love it.

Back to the film...Tim Burton does a wonderful job and I read this was the first time he didn't use Danny Elfman for the music score. Elfman is of course well respected but I loved the music score choice for Ed Wood and the use of the theremin to create some really cool sounds! And I loved that Tim Burton believed in his vision so much that he refused to shoot this in color, but instead switched studios so that he could do it his way and shoot in glorious B&W. In watching the documentary about Ed Wood Jr, I learned that all of these people depicted in the film were real. So the film is pretty close to the actual events of Ed's life.

I did feel like Bill Murray was showing off a bit and playing it like he was doing a comedy skit on Saturday Night Live. Criswell the psychic (Jeffery Jones) was one of my favorite secondary roles. He has one of the best lines in the movie when he lets Ed in on the secret of ballyhoo. Sarah Jessica Parker as the 'horse faced actress' Dolores Fuller was real good. Gawd, they actually called the real Dolores Fuller that too, who embarrassing for her. Martin Landau as the aged Bela Lugosi won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and it's easy to see why. Martin Landau's Lugosi really helps make Ed Wood special with his depth of humanity given to an actor who otherwise would mostly be known as a vampire. And of course my favorite scene is in the bar when Ed meets Orson.

I don't think Murray's performance as John "Bunny" Breckinridge was over the top. Even just going by the performance as The Ruler in Plan 9 from Outer Space, the real Bunny was an over-the-top kinda fella. No exaggeration needed.

I had read the biography of Edward D. Wood Jr., The Nightmare of Ecstasy, a couple of years before Burton's film. As a child of the '70s and '80s, I discovered Ed Wood through the feature film It Came from Hollywood (1982)...


I have two Ed Wood collections on Laser Disc that includes Plan 9 from Outer Space, Jail Bait, Night of the Ghouls, Glen or Glenda, and Bride of the Monster. I was into him before Johnny Depp made him cool. Pre-Ed Wood (1994) I don't think many who dealt with him in real life would have described Wood as a wide-eyed idealist, but the fictionalized cipher of a sort of funhouse mirror version of Orson Welles created by Depp and Burton is a wonderful fantasy and a fun if sanitized trek through the seedier underbelly of Hollywood. A grittier, more realistic, and historically accurate portrayal could have been made by somebody like John Waters, but the fantasy version here is pretty damn fun.

Ed Wood is just about perfection. I seriously thought hard about voting for it. All the actors are so dead-on in their performances and appearances. The look of the film is perfect too even if it's too perfect for Ed Wood the director. What's really great about it is that it's such a heartfelt tribute to the man without feeling overly sentimental. It's got lotsa of laughs. Back in 1994, this is the way I called the Oscars: I said that Samuel L. Jackson should win Best Actor for Pulp Fiction, but since he was nominated Best Supporting Actor for his role as Jules, and John Travolta was nomed Best Actor for Vincent Vega in the same film, I said, well, that's pretty tough, Samuel L. because there's no way you're going to beat Martin Landau ("Let's shoot this fu(ka") for Best Supporting Actor. At that point, it even made sense that Hanks would win Best Actor for Forrest Gump.

Mean Girls is certainly funny enough and Lindsay Lohan's best film. It just never occurred to me to vote for it.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

• Ed Wood - I saw it twice in the theatre in one week time when it came out. That because I was so impressed by the Martin Landau's monologue in one of the scenes, I needed to see him again.
After these many years, I re-watched the movie a couple of years ago and somehow this time I felt a little bit bored. Anyway, no matter of some funny moments here and there, I take this film mostly as a drama because of the Landau's character.


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Never heard Mean Girls.

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my stats
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Top 100 seen 13/34.
(seen one pointers 4/42 • )
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My list:
1. The Gold Rush (1925) [#83.]
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5. The Kid (1921) [#88.]
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7. One, Two, Three (1961) [#85.]
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25.

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