The Movie Forums Top 100 Comedies Countdown

Spinal Tap was my one-pointer. I don’t usually like Christopher Guest movies but this is the exception. It perfectly encapsulates the pretension yet incoherence of musicians and rock docs in general. The songs are right on point too with sexual references that aren’t even innuendos I.e. “Lick my love pump.”

I saw the episode of The Simpsons where Bart goes to a Spinal Tap concert and didn’t get they weren’t a real band until I saw this movie much later lol.

Honestly, vis a vis Revenge Of The Nerds, I used to love that movie, but with age and times changing, I really struggle with the winking glorification of what is, without question, an outright rape by one of the heroes. I just can't deal with it. When you combine it with the Revenge Porn that also occurs, man, I hate to use the word "troubling" but I just have really distanced myself from the movie. And believe me, I was there back then and it really wasn't that far off from what was really happening, and maybe if it weren't for the rapiest scene in a comedy ever I could shrug off the other stuff, but it's there and I just can't.
Now Arthur, on the other hand, is a movie I really love and have since I was about 11 years old. I can quote it almost endlessly and I do a fantastic impression of Dudley Moore as Arthur, whether it's "Are you a hooker?! Jesus, I just thought I was doing great with you", or "Where the hell's my hat? I hate it when that happens", or "Hobson? Do you want to run my bath for me?"
I always thought Dudley Moore was truly funny.

This is Spın̈al Tap is a Rob Reiner movie, his feature directorial debut, that became the template for the subsequent films directed by Chris Guest. That gives Reiner three films on the countdown joining The Princess Bride (#16) and When Harry Met Sally... (#85).

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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

To this day, I still say "That was a helluva thing" about 4 times per week.

Reiner's best though is The Bucket List

A lot of my placements were heavily influenced by how many times myself, my friends, or my family still quote it, often to the point where it barely feels like a quote any more. For comedies, quotability is a significant factor for me.

It was obvious This Is Spinal Tap would be right up near the top. One of the biggest no-brainers on the list.
As Phoenix has already said, what is there to say, really? As obvious a choice as there could be.

My No.20.

I mean, they kind of are. Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer have released music and toured together as Spinal Tap. They've even done it as a "double bill" with The Folksmen.

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Oh great, I hit the back key and lost my post. Drats!

Well all I was going to say is that during the watch period for the Comedy Countdown I tried different ideas to support & promote it. First I made the Comedy Countdown POOL which didn't really take off...So then I made Spam my Comedy Countdown ballot! where people gave me comedy suggestions with the hopes of making my ballot. That thread was a success as I received a lot of neat comedy suggestions and watched a ton of them...one of them was this:

North.

Spinal Tap definitely has its moments, but it's not one of my favorite mockumentaries.

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A Few Good Men

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Letterboxd

One can't divorce all the rapey baggage from Nerds, that's true. And it should be called out. As all of the horrible lessons that these 80's comedies sent down to younger generations. There are very few truly classic comedies from that period that aren't grotesquely misogynistic or blatantly racist. At times, in the case of Nerds, it goes even beyond that into actually endorsing an act by the main character that would rightfully get him put in jail today. And it's so so blatant, it's definitely hard to overlook. This, after all, isn't subtextually endorsing rape. It's flat out showing us a man should be able to get whatever he wants from a woman, by any means necessary. It's bad. It's really bad (as is 16 Candles)


But, personally, I don't split these hairs as I see those problems everywhere. How do we endorse a Humphrey Bogart film when he so casually endorses slapping women when they get 'hysterical'? Or any of the Hollywood feel good classics that passively endorse a woman giving up her own interests for that of her husband? Or, as was mentioned above, a film that treats a genuine disease and mental disorder (alcoholism) as a charming little character flaw (Arthur).



Basically, I'm more that fine discarding these elements when it comes to my own viewing habits. While Lewis is unquestionably a rapist when it comes to the actual details of what happens in the film, I can distance myself from what this should mean for the character, and continue to focus on all of the positive things that character otherwise embodies (being yourself no matter what, pushing back against bullying). When the film is over, I call that element out, but can still leave with what the intended message of the film was.



But, yes, it's extremely unfortunate that scene ever existed in the first place. And that it was so passively accepted by myself and many children of my generation as a victory for the Nerd, and not what it actually was (sexual assault). But this is also one of the virtues of art, and why it is so important that we don't discard or avoid that which actively encourages poisonous ideas and beliefs. Revenge of the Nerds needs to be used to inform us as to how insidious these kind of things can be, when they are inserted in otherwise feel good entertainment, unanalyzed, allowed to fester in the minds of those who watch. I think I've learned more about the garbage way women are treated through recognizing these problematic moments in movies than reading about them in university classrooms. These moments pointedly illustrate how bad things were (and, frankly, still are) and show us pointedly how we can all play a part in perpetuating these ideas, sometimes without even knowing it. Sometimes while thinking what we are watching is entirely innocent or even virtuous.

I'd say "Stand By Me".

Yeah, you guys missed the point in this comedy countdown. We were sarcastically naming North and The Bucket List, two of Rob Reiner's objectively and unquestionably worst films, as his "best".

But as you were.

I was watching Meatballs again recently, and there is a pretty cringe-worthy scene during which Bill Murray is sort of forcing himself on a girl in a cabin. Perhaps they were going for playful back then, but it just doesn't come across that way, no matter how you try to look at it. Times sure have changed...

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I like Spinal Tap quite a bit, but I haven't seen it in a while. It's weird that my introduction to them was via The Simpsons, so I saw the parody of the parody first when I was a kid, and then went on to watch the film about 10 or 15 years ago when I was an adult. Seen it twice, and had it somewhere on my short list, but didn't include it.


Seen: 66/88

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Well, I'll clarify, and I probably should have said this in the previous post, that this is the one movie that simply goes too far for me. And there is no slippery slope. I definitely find Sixteen Candles troubling and there's challenging moments in a lot of films that are otherwise strong, even classics. But this is the one that simply goes too far. The revenge porn was an actual joke, and honestly, in 1984, I laughed at it ("That's MY Pi"). And if that was the most egregious thing in the movie, aside from putting cameras in the rooms of all the sorority girls and watching them shower and change clothes, it would probably fall in line with all the other movies I let slide. But that rape. Wow.

And I think especially in a time when young men get away with raping women, when they are guilty, because the judges think they are otherwise fine young men and the judges don't wanna ruin "all of the positive things he otherwise embodies" so they give absurdly light sentences while the victim is simply left to live with it forever, it's just a really, really bad mis-step by the filmmakers and something that I just can't overlook. Letting Lewis be the hero when he has raped someone, and then portraying his victim falling in love with him and leaving her boyfriend for him instead of pressing charges... man, that's just f*cked up.

And, in that spirit, I think your last paragraph is just spot-on.

Yeah I’m aware but Guest did write and star in it so I still lump it in with his others.

Edit: It’s kinda the same thing with Holy Grail for me. I don’t think of it as a Gilliam movie despite him directing it. I think of it as a Monty Python movie.