The Movie Forums Top 100 Comedies Countdown

Out of all the Cary Grant comedies I love, I went with Bringing Up Baby, perhaps for nostalgic reasons, as it was one of those movies on TV all the time back in the 70s/80s, so I grew up with it in the same way my daughter now watches Pixar movies. His Girl Friday, Arsenic and Old Lace, and The Philadelphia Story might all be better, but I find something comforting about the frenetic energy of Bringing Up Baby. Another favorite I considered was Father Goose, another of his I watched probably fifty times growing up and quite a few more as an adult, but I knew it had no chance of making it.

Also love Raising Arizona, naturally, but I put only one Coen movie on my list.

My List:
3. The Jerk (#24)
4. Playtime (#48)
8. Being John Malkovich (#44)
12. The Apartment (#29)
13. Modern Times (#39)
16. Bringing Up Baby (#22)
21. One, Two, Three (#85)
22. Beetlejuice (#78)
24. Sullivan's Travels (#100)

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Thanks. The 1980s are like me - we own this list!

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Another from my list. Bringing Up Baby is madness and I had to include it. I like Raising Arizona but it's always been lower Coens for me. I'm not as big a fan as some others are here.

4. Sherlock, Jr. (1924)
5. Being John Malkovich (1999)
7. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
9. A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
10. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988)
11. Superbad (2007)
13. South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999)
14. Playtime (1967)
15. Dazed and Confused (1993)
17. What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
18. Bringing Up Baby (1938)
19. Trading Places (1983)
23. Animal House (1978)
24. Singin' in the Rain (1952)

Raising Arizona - I've came across this film on telly couple of times through the last two decades. Watched segments somewhere in the middle of it. Somehow, I haven't been attracted to see the entire movie.

Haven't seen Bringing Up Baby. Although, I'm heavily in the black&white era, somehow feel this film as a dated old time comedy.

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"Population don't imitate art, population imitate bad television." W.A.
"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." M.T.

Bringing Up Baby is great. Swingin' Door Susie.

Raising Arizona is probably just as zany, but I haven't seen it in a long time.

Voted for neither. What can I say? My ballot was very last minute.

I present here the rank of the films by the arithmetic average rating according to 19 world wide movie communities + one group of critics. In a few words, That's what the World thinks!




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Rank List (scale made equal to 1-10)
▽
1. 39. Modern Times 8,45
2. 56. Sherlock Jr. 8,45
3. 50. The Great Dictator 8,41
4. 88. The Kid 8,30
5. 86. To Be or Not To Be 8,25
6. 29. The Apartment 8,25
7. 83. The Gold Rush 8,23
8. 49. Singin' in the Rain 8,19
9. 34. Back to the Future 8,18
10. 61. It's Such a Beautiful Day 8,11

11. 35. It Happened One Night 7,97
12. 99. Fargo 7,96
13. 26. The Graduate 7,88
14. 48. Playtime 7,87
15. 40. Amélie 7,84
16. 45. Harold and Maude 7,83
17. 47. Brazil 7,82
18. 73. Snatch 7,80
19. 100. Sullivan’s Travels 7,74
20. 85. One, Two, Three 7,73
21. 21. Bringing up Baby 7,72
22. 28. After Hours 7,65
23. 68. Ed Wood 7,63
24. 27. Arsenic And Old Lace 7,62
25. 25. His Girl Friday 7,60
26. 44. Being John Malkovich 7,57
27. 98. The Lady Eve 7,55
28. 53. Rushmore 7,51

△ELITE△
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▽MIDDLE PACK▽

29. 64. Clerks 7,49
30. 93. Evil Dead II 7,45
31. 30. What We Do In the Shadows 7,42
32. 84. When Harry Met Sally... 7,40
33. 94. Withnail and I 7,38
34. 77. O Brother, Where Art Thou? 7,38
35. 89. House 7,32
36. 55. Ferris Bueller's Day Off 7,32
37. 37. A Fish Called Wanda 7,28
38. 59. What's Up, Doc? 7,25
39. 97. South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut 7,20
40. 78. Beetlejuice 7,19
41. 82. The Producers (1967) 7,18
42. 76. M*A*S*H 7,16
43. 66. Kung Fu Hustle 7,15
44. 75. Dazed and Confused 7,12
45. 51. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels 7,12
46. 32. Planes, Trains and Automobiles 7,09
47. 22. Raising Arizona 7,09
48. 70. The Hangover 7,09
49. 33. Trading Places 7,09
50. 46. Heathers 7,01
51. 52. My Cousin Vinny 7,01

△MIDDLE PACK△
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▽RUBBISH▽

52. 65. Black Dynamite 6,98
53. 69. The Nice Guys 6,95
54. 43. Clue 6,93
55. 96. Home Alone 6,92
56. 38. Superbad 6,87
57. 72. Big Trouble in Little China 6,87
58. 31. Animal House 6,78
59. 62. The In-Laws 6,77
60. 74. Best in Show 6,62
61. 71. Napoleon Dynamite 6,61
62. 41. Borat (2006) 6,61
63. 54. National Lampoon's Vacation 6,60
64. 57. Spaceballs 6,51
65. 79. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation 6,50

66. 42. Dumb and Dumber 6,46
67. 60. Fast Times at Ridgemont High 6,46
68. 81. Wayne's World 6,45
69. 23. The Jerk 6,44
70. 67. Mean Girls 6,44
71. 36. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy 6,42
72. 87. Clueless 6,42
73. 91. Pee Wee's Big Adventure 6,36
74. 58. Tropic Thunder 6,35
75. 63. Happy Gilmore 6,25
76. 24. Caddyshack 6,20
77. 92. The 40 Year Old Virgin 6,19
78. 95. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery 6,18
79. 80. Step Brothers 6,06
80. 90. Stripes 6,04
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Back to this again. I can see how someone could view "Seven Samarai" as a comedy but how is "Network" one? Don't get me wrong, I love this film to death. But see it more as a man losing control and the network covering ass, per se.

Nice.
Two more from my list.
Raising Arizona, considered by most of the people I know to be one of the funniest films ever made and certainly in its time considered to be the comedy for those in the know, I think it remains a high-water mark in the genre and a great piece of craft by the Coens.
It is No.22 on my list.

Bringing Up Baby, arguably the best Screwball Comedy ever made (there are probably 5 or so in contention) also has two of the finest actors and finest comedic actors to ever grace the screen at their absolute best with an hilarious, utterly silly and pointless, script. Which I love. Some of the best dialogue ever with razor-sharp and snappy delivery from two legends, this is what I call Comedy.
It is No.14 on my list.
It is also the second of four "Cary Grant movies" to make my final twenty-five that have appeared on this list.

63/80

1.
2.
3. Caddyshack (1980)
4. Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10. Trading Places (1983)
11.
12.
13.
14. Bringing Up Baby (1938)
15.
16.
17.
18. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
19.
20.
21.
22. Raising Arizona (1987)
23.
24.
25.

Nice clip from Defending Your Life. I was always a huge Rip Torn fan.

Shrek was a snub. Should have made the backend of the list IMO.

Overall it's a good list but there are some shocking omissions.

I've seen 57/80. I think I'll have 4 more I haven't seen, so probably 73/100

That would have surprised me a lot less than a lot of the ones we have.

I haven’t seen Caddyshack or The Jerk.

But I’ve seen both of the newest reveals and like both to various degrees. I’m a big Coens fan, but Raising Arizona isn’t top tier stuff imo. It was decent entertainment the first and only time I’ve watched it so far. But I can’t rule out another watch in the future…

As for Bringing Up Baby I actually found it very funny. Surprisingly so even. Didn’t initially think that such an old talkie could have me laughing like that. But it’s a perfectly capable screwball comedy that does what it should.

- Also, side note, pretty interesting to have both reveals be about raising / bringing up someone

Satire is a form of humor. It’s less blunt than most straightforward comedies, and indeed sometimes it’s aim isn’t to make you “lol” but merely go “haha!”
This isn’t necessarily true of all satires, but for Network, it clearly checks those marks.
I mean, lines like these solidify that:

Howard Beale: Why me?*

Arthur Jensen: Because you're on television, dummy.*

Narrator: This was the story of Howard Beale: The first known instance of a man who was killed because he had lousy ratings

I agree that Raising Arizona is one of the funniest comedies ever made. We howled during it when it first came out, and I've enjoyed it several times since. I think it put N. Cage on the map. Great supporting cast, great writing. Probably my favorite Cohen Bros. I had it at #4 on my list.

And I also agree that Bringing Up Baby is in the top 5 screwball comedies. Grant and Hepburn worked well together-- as they did in several other films. I had it at #24.

Raising Arizona is rated INCREDIBLY high, holy shit. I never would have guessed that that movie hit the top 25.

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I never seen Raising Arizona

Covered ass for five minutes and then leaned into absurdism because it's popular.


I still don't know how someone views Seven Samurai (I had a hard time taking that person's claim that entry was in earnest seriously, but I could have been wrong) as a comedy and you're the first person I've come across that didn't think of Network as being a comedy (successful or not is a different question).


Admittedly, it doesn't come up in conversation a lot.


I'm just wondering if you've seen either The Lobster or The Favourite?
And I've forgotten how you landed on The Graduate and Harold & Maude?


And ftr, Network isn't on my ballot. I just listed it as a guess, because like The Graduate, it's a pretty famous, iconic comedy from the era. I don't have a guess how popular it is here.
Though unlike The Graduate, even as a teen, I knew going in that it was a satire.

I guess one of the famous comedies I'm not expecting to make it is Nashville.

By the way, despite having BUB at No.14, I agree with you, as I said in my post somewhere back, that the star of the film is the writing. They just happened to get two of the best deliverers of dialogue to ever chew a line to get up on the screen and spout it to the audience.