The Movie Forums Top 100 Comedies Countdown

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I've seen Annie Hall a couple years ago and, while I enjoyed the visual humor and the 4th wall breaks, the story left me kind of cold. I'm due for a rewatch though. Haven't seen Office Space.
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Annie Hall was my #2. Terrific, intelligent comedy.
Office Space was just missed off my list. It is a very funny film.

This countdown is bananas. Are we really going to get Ghostbusters about 20 places ahead of films like 'The Apartment' ? Is it that much better / funnier?



*sigh* I know I'm in a very, very small minority, but I just didn't care for Annie Hall.

"my main complaint is that I just didn't care for Alvy and Annie's relationship. From the get-go, I just didn't care about this characters. Not sure why, but I just couldn't get into their relationship which I didn't see a future in from the beginning (not a surprise, since Alvy reveals in the opening that they weren't together anymore). As accurate and deep as his ruminations about love and relationships might be, I just didn't care. So when they get together, and then break up, and then get together again, and break up again, I felt just like Annie, going through the motions of something that I wasn't totally invested in."
As for Office Space, I think it's hilarious. I think it's a film that resonates with anybody that has worked in an office environment. The first half of the film is hilarious in that aspect as you get to see tons of things like "yeah, been there". I do think that it kinda runs out of gas in the last act, and the conclusion feels a bit contrived or forced, but I was sold already. It was my #23.


Seen: 61/84

My ballot:  
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Not seen either Annie Hall or Office Space. Bad, bad Mofo!

Seen: 43/84



I respect Annie Hall a lot more than I like it. I did not include any Woody Allen on my list, though if I had I would personally slot the likes of Love & Death and Bullets Over Broadway much, much higher on a comedy list. Office Space is wonderful and holds up to the thousands of viewings our cable providers have subjected us to all of these years, but I am slightly surprised to see it so high on the collective list. I figured once it didn’t show by the mid-30s on the countdown it simply wasn’t coming. Very worthy of the list no matter where it falls, though I didn't even really have it on my shortlist of fifty.

I am back from vacation (which was amazeballs), so I can catch up on my list. Four more of my choices have been revealed in the past couple days.


While the fast-talking wit of His Girl Friday is my all-time favorite comedy of that era - and nearly of all time - one of the other Howard Hawks and Cary Grant pairings is not far behind it. Screwball comedies got no screwier than Bringing Up Baby. Delightfully so. Grant's befuddled, fudd-duddy paleontologist targeted by Kate Hepburn's bored socialite mixed with the chaos of mistaken identities, a dog, two leopards, and a brontosaurus intercostal clavicle is silly, romantic mayhem at its blissfully ridiculous height. It was number nine on my ballot and like most things in my top ten could be higher on a different day.


I was beginning to fear Raising Arizona was going to miss the collective cut. Lebowski will surely be Top 10 but I prefer H.I. & Ed’s cartoon misadventure in kidnapping. I saw and liked Blood Simple on VHS after it was released but it was seeing Raising Arizona in the theater that made me a lifelong fan of the Coen Brothers. I had not seen or read much about it before we walked into that darkened space and got the immediate energy and editing and banjo and yodeling and cinematography and insanity hitting us like a tidal wave of cinema. I was seventeen and hooked. For me it remains one of their best and I am happily amazed it made it to number twenty-two. I had it at twelve on my ballot.


I have loved The Blues Brothers since first seeing it as a ten-year-old. It wasn’t just funny, it was cool! Comedy is often the playground of the goofball. But Jake and Elwood were cool. And fronting a kick-ass band! I wound up being in bands in my forties and fifties, which was an unexpected journey. I have always said that I didn’t yearn to be a rock star performing on stage all those years my singing talents were restricted to the car and shower, and that is true. But I DID always want to be a Blues Brother. As I got older and more seriously into music I realized what a gateway their records and personas had been. Donald “Duck” Dunn and Steve Cropper alone have played on dozens and dozens of truly classic tracks in the ‘60s and ‘70s and the whole band was made up of supertalents. Later in my life I would see Ray Charles and James Brown multiple times live in concert, and to think in my white bread home where my father’s musical “taste” tended toward so-called Easy Listening like Captain & Tennille that I was introduced to such legends by an epic comedy full of car chases. Besides the cool factor and being chock full of legends the flick really holds up for me. And nary a gig goes by where I am not quoting it at some point (“We have both kinds: Country and Western”). It was number sixteen on my ballot.


Like most of my generation who were too young to have seen them as they initially aired, in High School I “discovered” the comedic genius that is ”Monty Python’s Flying Circus”. My buddies and I obsessively poured over them all (thank you, PBS and my local library's video department), peppered our language with references to the troupe. And of course gobbled up their films as well. As far as quotability among sixteen-year-olds Monty Python and the Holy Grail absolutely cannot be beat. Especially since my core group of friends and I were all heavily into Dungeons & Dragons. Obsessed with movies and D&D? There must have been lots of hot babes around, huh? There were not. That energy went into memorizing movie lines and rolling twenty-sided dice. But while Holy Grail will always be that special touchstone to my geeky teenage wasteland and I presume Top Ten fodder for this list, as I grew older and (hopefully) smarter the Python piece that resonates the most and is their sharpest satire is surely Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Hysterical and heretical! What more could a comedy nerd heathen ask for? It was fifth on my ballot.


That makes ten of mine with another expected six in the Top Sixteen. I'll take a sweet sixteen of laughter (but not Sixteen Candles).

Holden’s Ballot
3. After Hours (#28)
4. His Girl Friday (#25)
5. Monty Python’s Life of Brian (#19)
6. Singin’ in the Rain (#49)
7. Rushmore (#53)
9. Bringing Up Baby (#21)
10. The Graduate (#26)
12 Raising Arizona (#22)
15. One, Two, Three (#85)
16. The Blues Brothers (#20)
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Annie Hall was my #2. Terrific, intelligent comedy.
Office Space was just missed off my list. It is a very funny film.

This countdown is bananas. Are we really going to get Ghostbusters about 20 places ahead of films like 'The Apartment' ? Is it that much better / funnier?
As has been said before, the "ambiguity" of the comedy definition lends itself to it seeming all over the place. The way I see it, I'm not paying much attention to the ranking, but rather to what's making the list when writing down recommendations.



Annie Hall: The better comedy of Allen's is Love and Death and the better movies are Manhattan and Stardust Memories. All of them could have appeared on my ballot but alas only this made it. This is the nexus of both his comedy and his developing talents as a legit brilliant fillmaker, as well as my gateway drug into Woody Allen. There are lots of funny bits but what really shapes the film for me is how it understands what love is and how it can move both towards and away from you, almost arbitrarily. Both an exhilarating and destroying reality of life. And while I love both of these characters, I'd have to add that worrying about how likeable they are, or how suites they are for eachother is really beside the point. It's his analysis of the shape of love which is what we get from the film, what we relate to, what we feel.


Office Space has never impressed me. I like the stuff about wearing the flair and the obnoxious boss at the restaurant and very little else. But this is a case where there are people whose tastes I really respect (surprise surprise, not too many of those around) frequently seem to love this one. It baffles me, I just find it a tolerable and middling comedy, but I've been wrong before.



This is a tough list to predict for sure, but I am very pleased Office Space still showed. It was my #8. There are something about comedies and how often you think about them because if real world situations, and how often you quite them that make them feel personal and special. Office Space is probably only next to Seinfeld and The Office when it cones to those two aspects for me. I think it is fantastic. Haven’t watched it in a few years, but just it showing up makes me want to immediately.

Annie Hall is one if two or three movies that looking back I probably broke my own broad comedy limitation. Annie Hall has a ton of jokes though and I think Allen deserved a movie on the list. There is a moment when he is in bed with Shelly Duvall, and they are having pillow talk but he is just rubbing his jaw the whole scene. He never says why, it just continues. I still laugh when I just think about that scene, and it’s a great example of why I ultimately thought Annie Hall was broad enough to include at #3. One of the greatest movies ever made.
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Annie Hall was my #2. Terrific, intelligent comedy.
Office Space was just missed off my list. It is a very funny film.

This countdown is bananas. Are we really going to get Ghostbusters about 20 places ahead of films like 'The Apartment' ? Is it that much better / funnier?

Oh man, then don't go back and look at some of the movies in slots 100-97 and reflect how much further some other movies were up on the list.



Have seen so far: 44 - Annie Hall - It was somewhat boring and not a fan of Woody Allen really, I find him unfunny. Thank god this wasn't on the top 10 lol
Have not seen so far: 39

I have not seen Office Space but this brings hope for more surprises

Update on ballot percentages

1. 50% - Don’t think it’s happening, still holding on, a curveball for me if it makes it
2. 50% - Don’t think it’s happening, still holding on, a curveball for me if it makes it
3. No chance now
4. 75% - Still Just maybe
5. 75% - Just maybe but it should make it
6. No chance now
7. No chance now
8. The Hangover (2009)
9. Fast Times At Ridgemont High (1982)
10. Dumb and Dumber (1994)
11. Step Brothers (2008)
12. Tropic Thunder (2008)
13. No chance now
14. Super Bad (2007)
15. 100% - This movie should make it
16. No chance now
17. Mean Girls (2004)
18. No chance now
19. No chance now
20. No chance now
21. Happy Gilmore (1996)
22. No chance now
23. 50% - Don’t think it’s happening, still holding on though
24. No chance now
25. 75% - Just maybe, still think this has a chance
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Oh man, then don't go back and look at some of the movies in slots 100-97 and reflect how much further some other movies were up on the list.
A list is a list. Nobody is right and nobody is wrong. And people have worked hard to put this together. It's interesting reading. But it just goes to show that comedy, in my opinion is the 'genre' that is the most wide in terms of interpretation.



Office Space was kind of a staple back in... I can't remember if it was my late teens or early 20s. It has its moments, but for me was kind of in that, "middling to above middling," category of comedy.
I'm not surprised it showed up on the list but since it never even crossed my mind when it came to naming/guessing what other people would choose, I guess my biggest response is surprise seeing it show up this late in the countdown.


Annie Hall, other people love Woody Allen a lot more than me. I feel nothing towards Manhattan (Allen-associations with the subject material aside). Annie Hall is one I mostly enjoy. When I did my guesses for the top 20, I just plum forgot it, though it seemed just below, "likely lock." When I was a little kid, I first knew Woody Allen for the slapstick comedy movies (Sleeper, Bananas, Casino Royale), for some reason, other than Casino Royale, they don't really live on in my brain (and CR lives on because the Bond franchise will never stop existing).



A list is a list. Nobody is right and nobody is wrong. And people have worked hard to put this together. It's interesting reading. But it just goes to show that comedy, in my opinion is the 'genre' that is the most wide in terms of interpretation.

Yeah, I sometimes try to refer to these kind of things as "polls" instead of "lists" (including the sight & sound list), because it helps remind oneself, you know, it's not inherently authoritative or final. And describing it as the process helps give a good framing of the outcome (we asked a group of people what they felt and this is the aggregate of their responses).



Ask A Policeman probably needs to show soon or it'll have missed out, can't really see it making Top 10. For the other one I'll go with The Return Of The Living Dead.

I appreciate your support for Return of the Living Dead, but if Evil Dead 2 showed up so far down on the list, it's hard to imagine the deeper cut shows up now, unless there's a known cult following on the forums (e.g. maybe it showed up in multiple HoF's and it did really well there).


Though seeing Office Space show up means one can't yet rule out Cabin in the Woods.



Annie Hall is...ok. There’s plenty of other Allens that I prefer to it.

Office Space was somewhere in the bottom half of my list. I almost forgot about it until last minute but I do love it. I think it nails office culture and work culture in general right down to the infuriating Bill Lumbergh as the mid level boss. My mom, who doesn’t like violence in movies said of Lumbergh, “I hope somebody stabs him.”



I appreciate your support for Return of the Living Dead, but if Evil Dead 2 showed up so far down on the list, it's hard to imagine the deeper cut shows up now, unless there's a known cult following on the forums (e.g. maybe it showed up in multiple HoF's and it did really well there).


Though seeing Office Space show up means one can't yet rule out Cabin in the Woods.
Yeah, it's unlikely but this has been one of the least predictable lists thus far so who knows. Almost certainly stands more chance than Ask A Policeman



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No votes. Annie Hall is very much one of those films where I acknowledge its influence on the form rather than actually enjoy or appreciate it in any capacity (though Christopher Walken is a real scene-stealer in it). Office Space is much more my speed, though I haven't watched it in ages.
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I saw what is arguably Woody’s two most popular films, Manhattan and Annie Hall, leading up to this countdown…

And out of the two it was also Annie Hall, which I enjoyed the most. Still, while I thought it was quite good, it was never in the running for my list and there are Woody Allen movies I like more than those two. Granted, I haven’t seen a ton of his massive filmography.

Wasn’t a huge fan of Office Space. It was okay, but it didn’t quite work for me.



The trick is not minding
Annie Hall was high on my list, which I’ll reveal once the countdown is finished.
I always go back and forth between this and Stardust Memories as his best. Sadly, with Annie Hall this high, I can expect none of his other films to appear which is a shame. Love and Death, The Purple Rose of Cairo,, and Stardust Memories deserve mention as well.



"Office Space" is a very funny watch. Having worked in an office setting, this hits the nail on the head in certain scenarios. Very quotable film.

As for " Annie Hall", how do I put this. I can't stand Woody Allen.