The Movie Forums Top 100 Comedies Countdown

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Are you sure you don't wanna throw Strangelove in there too? Cover all the bases not just 2/3 of them?
Better be on the safe side. I predict it will be either Dr. Strangelove, Airplane, The Big Lebowski, Paul Blart Mall Cop, Shrek, Baby's Day Out, Baby Geniuses, Lolita, Child Bride, Pretty Baby, Norbit, Grown Ups, Diary of a Wimpy Kid or Freddy Got Fingered.



Are you sure you don't wanna throw Strangelove in there too? Cover all the bases not just 2/3 of them?

I was going to come in this morning with the joke, "Keeping with my pattern of at best being able to narrow the next film down to three guesses."



Victim of The Night
Great review! I was happy to see Young Frankenstein get so high up at #4. I had it as my #2.

Here is some commentary of mine from a few years ago:

Young Frankenstein



The screenplay by Brooks and Gene Wilder was of course based upon the classic Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935).
For what it's worth, Doc, Young Frankenstein is actually based on 1939's Son Of Frankenstein, right down to Gene Wilder's Basil Rathbone-mustache and Kenneth Mars' Kemp mimicking Lionel Atwill's Krogh.
It's not quite as close as Airplane! is to Zero Hour, but it's not much further off.



It wasn't Willy Wonka, and it wasn't one of his comedies with Richard Pryor. It was the lesser known and underrated The Frisco Kid (1979).
That film was actually #5 on my Westerns ballot*, but I didn't vote for it this time around. It may have been on my ~75 film short list, but if it was, I cut it really early.

I do kind of want to rewatch it now though.

*-which is not worth much because I generally dislike westerns haha



I wondered what my list may have looked like had I gone the Best Comedy Film route instead of funniest and this is what I came up with. If my math is correct and there's no guarantee that it is, 8 movies are on both the list I submitted and this one.
 



I had both Groundhog Day and Ghostbusters on my list at #15 and #7 respectively. TBH, I was more surprised to see Ghostbusters in the top 10 than Groundhog Day, which I just assumed would be.

I liked Monty Python for about 6 months when I was 17 and during that time Holy Grail was the only film of theirs I didn't see. I didn't really like any of the others (even then) and so have never felt the desire to check this out. I'm sure I'd hate it.

Tried to watch Young Frankenstein once but didn't get far. Might try again one day but as I don't like any of the other Mel Brooks films I've seen, I'm reluctant to even try.
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5-time MoFo Award winner.





482 points, 32 lists
Airplane!
Director

David Zucker, 1980

Starring

Robert Hays, Julie Hagerty, Leslie Nielsen, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar


#3






Victim of The Night
People forget that Young Frankenstein also parodies Son of Frankenstein, especially with the crowd not wanting Frankenstein's kin back in their village, and best of all, Inspector Kemp (the hilarious Kenneth Mars), having fun with Lionel Atwill's original Inspector, with his mangled Transylvanian accent (I especially like the emphasis on the "damn!") :



Young Frankenstein was #3 on my list. An all-time favorite.
Sorry, didn't see this post until an hour or so after I posted my response to Doc saying basically the same thing.
As a really big Frankenstein fan who has seen almost every significant Frank movie ever made and many of them half a dozen times or more, I feel that Young Frankenstein is a direct parody of Son of Frankenstein. YMMV.





Airplane! was #43 on the MoFo Top 100 of the 1980s and #10 on the AFI’s 100 Years, 100 Laughs.
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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



Victim of The Night
While Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles weren't on my list, I did have another Gene Wilder movie on my list, (in addition to The Producers (1967), which placed at #83 on the countdown).

It wasn't Willy Wonka, and it wasn't one of his comedies with Richard Pryor. It was the lesser known and underrated The Frisco Kid (1979). Gene Wilder and Harrison Ford star in this western comedy about a rabbi from Poland, (Wilder), who travels to San Francisco with some help from a bank robber, (Ford). It was #13 on my list.

I actually really like The Frisco Kid but, amusingly, just a few days ago I watched Siskel and Ebert absolutely eviscerate it.


I like to think you and I are right.



Woo-Hoo!

I don't care about Airplane!, but I am thrilled to see it show up today. I'm hoping my one remaining movie will top the list, but knowing you MoFos and your love for all things Kubrick it won't.



A system of cells interlinked
I didn't want to populate my ballot with multiple Leslie Nielson films, so Airplane! did not appear on my ballot. Perhaps it is my wife's constant ragging on the film that not-so-subtly pushed it off the final list for me, but it was in the running for a while. It's a fun flick, and clearly the OG of films of this vein, but sorry folks, I ended up going for The Naked Gun in the end.
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“It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance.” ― Thomas Sowell



Airplane! was my #12. Take your plot and a lot of your dialogue from an earlier non-comedy, tweak it a little to make it even stupider, and boom! you've got a classic. This will be, I'm sure, the last pure gut-buster to appear on the list. We coulda done worse.



Airplane! would certainly have been flying high on my ballot if I'd managed to secure a take-off slot.
Guess I can change my avatar now.





Airplane! may in fact be the world record holder for most gags-per-second of screentime as well as the record holder for the highest percentage of those gags landing (without landing gear or Otto the autopilot). I am serious, and don't call me Shirley. It is rightly where it should be near the tippy-top of the collective list. I slotted it near the bottom of my ballot at #21 for only five points as I knew it didn't need my help to finish as high as Steve McCroskey sniffing glue.

Which means my top choice is either first or second.

Holden’s Ballot
2. Young Frankenstein (#4)
3. After Hours (#29)
4. His Girl Friday (#26)
5. Monty Python’s Life of Brian (#20)
6. Singin’ in the Rain (#50)
7. Rushmore (#54)
8. Duck Soup (#8)
9. Bringing Up Baby (#22)
10. The Graduate (#27)
11. Harvey (DNP)
12. Raising Arizona (#23)
13. The Palm Beach Story (DNP)
14. Ghostbusters (#6)
15. One Two Three (#86)
16. The Blues Brothers (#21)
17. Defending Your Life (DNP)
18. Fletch (DNP)
19. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (DNP)
20. Joe versus the Volcano (DNP)
21. Airplane! (#3)
22. This is Spın̈al Tap (#13)
23. L.A. Story (DNP)
24. OSS-117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (DNP)
25. Let It Ride (DNP)




Read 'em and weep!


Airplane! (1980)

If you're a fan of this movie be prepared for a rough landing with this review. Airplane! is a spoof of the Airport movies (which I did recently watch and review) and it's a spoof of an old black & white movie Zero Hour! (1957), which is oddly, real good.

Airplane! mainly consist of sight gags. It's not clever comedy or situation comedy but a throw back to the vaudeville days with comic shtick. Such as the 'auto pilot' which is a blow up doll.



The movie is full of such gags, one after another. Occasional they get a laugh but mostly they seemed dull. I wish I could say this was one of those, 'it's so stupid it's funny movies', but I found little funny in this famous comedy.

For all of its claim of lampooning the original four Airport movies, there's scant little actual lampooning going on. We do get the infamous nun scene singing to the sick little girl which is a nod to the original movie.

I can't recommend Airplane!, and I sure wish it didn't have an exclamation point after the title. Surely you'd be better off watching an Adam Sandler movie. Or better yet watch a really odd and hipster cool movie like, Zero Hero!



Young Frankenstein is my second favorite of Brooks, and was #18 on my list. Igor is a total riot. My favorite, History of the World: Part 1 came shortly after at #16. If I watched both again maybe my ranking would switch. Regardless he's one of my favorite directors, and I'm thrilled to see YF so high

Airplane I haven't seen in a long time, but remember enough of. Chaotic fun.

Only three films from my top ten missed the cut, the highest of which is The Acid House. I'll add my review from a decade back

Rooting for Strangelove to top the list

My List:
1. Duck Soup (1933)
2. The Acid House
3. Annie Hall (1977)
4. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988)
5. The Graduate (1967)
6. The Great Dictator (1940)
9. Sherlock, Jr. (1924)
10. Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
13. Being John Malkovich (1999)
14. Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
16. History of the World: Part I (1981)
17. The Kid (1921)
18. Young Frankenstein (1974)
22. Monkey Business (1931)
24. Office Space (1999)
25. Scary Movie 4 (2006) (1 PTer)

The Acid House (McGuigan)

The Acid House is a vulgar and perverted literary adaption, of three short stories, in the Scottish slums. It is loaded with profanity, and makes the viewer feel like trash, just by watching. Coming into the viewing I heard nothing of it, but judging it's negative critical reception, and lack of publicity, it's one of the most underrated films I ever encountered. It was hysterical black humor, and probably the best film I've seen from the nineties.

The first story follows Boab, a lazy lump of dirt, who looses everything in a matter of a few hours. After a bar man philosophical meeting with God, he is turned into a fly. The meeting was surprisingly deep, and asks the true question of "why don't we use our powers". As a fly he gets revenge, and sees with the audience a scene of incredible disturbance.

Then there's the most emotionally dwelling story "The Soft Touch". A truly caring but naive man, marries and impregnates a whore. Obviously enough she openly cheats on him, and everything goes down, for the man with no escape. The setting was tense, and while the ending was anti-climatic, it was the most well made of the shorts.

Finally there's the story that the film invests the most effort into, The Acid House. This was absolutely, the best midnight humor I've ever came across. Dirty, crazy, and makes Trainspotting, look like it copped out. A dope head switches bodies with a newly born baby, and while switch of bodies has become a comedy cliche, this one actually made it work. I laughed eccentrically and it really completed the film, if there's any reason to finish it, here you go.

In conclusion I can't explain my love for this film enough. The score and white trash setting put a mood. The small things like the graffiti and the bigger aspects such as the characters all had there contribution. I laughed and could still take the next scene with seriousness. The Acid House is not acclaimed nearly enough. I highly recommended to anyone who's willing to vitiate there brain, for two hours. I hope all will love it as much as myself, though that's unlikely

I'll bundle in all my other watches the next set
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Yeah, there's no body mutilation in it

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