Transporting his cult TV show The Thick Of It to the big screen, director and co-writer Armando Iannucci lost none of the bite and profanity that had characterised its small screen incarnation, and in fact raised the stakes by bringing in the characters' brasher, more powerful American counterparts. An object lesson in political satire at its sharpest. A parody of Hollywood excess delivered by a stupidly huge selection of A-list Hollywood stars, Tropic Thunder may be scattershot in its targets but it's often hugely funny along the way.
It also contains Tom Cruise with a comb-over and a fat suit, swearing like a trouper and dancing to disgraceful R'n'B. What more do you want? For the avoidance of doubt: no, it's not OK to use blackface.
But yes, Downey's self-important, self-righteous Oscar-chaser is still freakin' hilarious. You never go full retard. Such was its effect that people of a certain age still have trouble behaving respectably while listening to 'Bohemian Rhapsody' in a vehicle, and still feel aggrieved if stopped from playing 'Stairway To Heaven' in a guitar store "No Stairway? But strip away all the over-familiarity and this is still a really funny film, with great characters muddling through their own little niche world in an endearing and still amusing way.
Incidentally, while the sequel isn't as good, it's almost worth it for Garth's post-coital transformation into Cary Grant. After writing Animal House and Meatballs, it was only natural that Harold Ramis would move into directing. The golfing nonsense of Caddyshack was inspired by his and co-writer Brian Doyle 'Older Brother of Bill' Murray's genuine experiences of country club caddying. It manages to be marginally less chaotic than its ramshackle predecessors, which is impressive given that it was basically hijacked and improvised into submission during production by Chevy Chase and Rodney Dangerfield, who weren't even supposed to be the stars teen-lead Michael O'Keefe was apparently not best pleased.
Predictably though, it's Bill Murray as the gopher-cidal groundsman Carl Spackler, who steals the show. It might not have landed quite as high on the list as Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker's other, more famous comedy, but Top Secret!
It's not tough to see why: an assured parody of World War II spy movies, Elvis Presley musicals and a welter of other topics, it sees American rocker Nick Rivers Val Kilmer, showing serious deadpan comic chops becoming involved in the French German? Paul Flammond Michael Gough.
It's inventive, non-stop and loaded with so many tiny jokes and references that it's easy to see why this stands up to endless re-watching. After all, how many films can claim a scene that works both forwards and backwards on the Swedish bookstore and lasts for exactly 88 seconds? Only this one. Despite how '80s it is, Ferris Bueller's Day Off remains a timeless slacker classic.
A love letter to both Chicago and skiving, John Hughes' coming-of-age comedy introduced us to one of cinema's most righteous dudes while demonstrating how phoning in sick should, ideally, be done. It should, in other words, involve elaborate fake-outs that convince a town to rally around you while you enjoy fine meals, tourist sights, baseball games and parades in the big city. Whatever else Matthew Broderick ever does — and he achieved the kind of cinematic immortality that only an Elton John-accompanied Circle Of Life can grant you in The Lion King — this is the signature role he'll always be remembered for.
Insert your own gag about life imitating art here. BEST JOKE: Not so much a joke as an oft-quoted example of how amusing a droning monotone can be when repeated, the attendance call for Ferris is the sort of line fellow movie geeks will slip in to any roll call given the opporchancity. Here's a film that starts off as pure comedy, Colin Farrell's sullen, put-upon hitman acting like a schoolboy next to Brendan Gleeson's tolerant but exasperated older partner. What sets this apart, however, is the turn for the dark it takes halfway through, turning into something closer to a tragedy.
Ralph Fiennes' gangster with a code "I want a normal gun for a normal person" provides the sinister contrast to the guilt-ridden Farrell and sympathetic Gleeson. He perfectly portrays a basically goodhearted dimwit dealing with issues way out of his emotional range. And making endless insulting cracks about the people he meets along the way. Back off, short arse!
Few knew what to expect from comic provocateur extraordinaire Chris Morris when he graduated from shorts to his first full-length film.
Well, except that everyone guessed that it would be both memorable and offensive to some, which is his usual MO. And so it proved. But while demonstrating that there is almost no subject Morris won't tweak for incisive laughs, Four Lions is a genuine delight, a scathing, twisted, and very funny look at the world's least effective terrorist unit.
With a script by Morris and some of Team Thick Of It Simon Blackwell, Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong , it's a topical comedy with real edge and committed performances from its leads, even as the director never strays from harsh truths about terror and those who practice it.
And the ending is blindingly audacious. The result? The plot is largely unimportant and exists merely as a loose clothesline for Carrey to hang his manic bag of tricks on; the gurning facial contortions, the loose-limbed goofing, the madcap impressions and so on. Certainly, those not enamoured with JC's antics need not apply, but there's plenty of Carrey charm on display as he goes all Doctor Dolittle on our asses, aided by some crazy Hawaiian shirts and a massive quiff.
The Marx Brothers' final film for Paramount is the apex of their career, a perfectly formed masterpiece before their move to the forced-romantic subplots and overblown musical interludes of the MGM years.
Predictably, it was considered a disappointment on release in It sees Groucho as Rufus T. Firefly, installed by his frequent nemesis Margaret Dumont as leader of the bankrupt Freedonia, an arrangement that obviously takes the country into anarchic war with neighbouring Sylvania.
A surprisingly excoriating war satire as well as a thoroughly ridiculous knockabout, Duck Soup is probably most famous for with the "mirror sketch" between Groucho and Harpo, but there's SO much more to it than that. But he's at his best when he's being Groucho at the expense of Margaret Dumont. Whether you come for the jokes and stay for the music or vice versa, this offers the best of both worlds.
John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd are the titular musical siblings adoptive , on a mission from God to save an orphanage. The pair had an easy chemistry that drives the film, neither wasting a word, but still able to raise a laugh with nothing but a twitch of the eyebrow. Never before or since in human history has the quest to pay a tax bill resulted in so much vehicular carnage, so much damage to the Illinois Nazi cause, and so much great music.
Steven Spielberg? Henry Gibson? We're going to go for Kathleen Freeman's Mother Superior, however, as the only person onscreen capable of even briefly cowing the central pair. They say the best stories come from writing about what you know. In this case, 'they' are right. Filming at night in the Quick Stop Shop where he used to work, first-time filmmaker Kevin Smith took his experiences of store work drudgery and infused them with pithy dialogue, pop culture hat-tips and enough dick-related profanity to make Malcolm Tucker blush.
Shot in grainy black-and-white with a shoestring budget Smith sold many of his comic books and maxed out some credit cards to finance the project , it's a raw, low-fi affair, but one which the bearded, hockey shirt-wearing writer-director has yet to better. Even though he wasn't supposed to be there that day. Of course, each fan will have their own, but it's hard to argue against Randal's dissection of Return Of The Jedi's climax. With the Python collaborations in the past, John Cleese moved on to solo efforts, kicking off with 's Clockwise.
But A Fish Called Wanda, which he also wrote, proves his masterpiece. Mixing an Ealing Comedy sensibility and British stuffiness with freewheeling American spirit especially in Jamie Lee Curtis' sexy Wanda , it's a transatlantic triumph. Ostensibly a crime story involving the hunt for the ill-gotten and then misplaced gains from a heist, it is in fact a mean-spirited caper in a way that still lets you care for many of the characters, particularly poor, stuttering Ken Michael Palin.
Rarely has food been funnier. Just don't call him stupid. That's not to say there aren't still abundant laughs, but there was now also wistful romance in the relationship between Diane Keaton's Annie and Allen's Alvie, and the beginnings of the love affair with New York that Allen would expand into Manhattan.
Allen's preferred title was Anhedonia, which is the inability to experience pleasure from things usually considered enjoyable.
A runaway hit that spawned hundreds of lesser imitators, this sneakily hides huge amounts of sweetness and heart behind a thick bush of knob gags and pie-fucking, making it a film that you can fall in love with even as you grimace in horror at what's happening.
The chemistry between the largely untested cast gave it a feeling of reality, and let's face it: a guy shagging a giant bakewell is always going to be outrageously amusing. Just the right mix of awful, awkward and affectionate, there's a reason he was the one they called back for every subsequent instalment. A penis in a zipper, a violent dog attack, a serial killer and a cluster of obsessive stalkers all chasing the same woman: this sounds more like the stuff of scary movies rather than beloved comic hits.
And yet here, thanks to the addition of, er, foreign substances to hair dos, comedy braces and occasional background troubadours, it all seems charming and rather sweet. Another film that captured lightning in a bottle that none of its imitators could replicate. Excruciating in every sense. The Frat Pack generation of comedians owe their name, and much of their early ability to get a green light, to this tale of disgraceful college shenanigans among grown men who should know better.
Luke Wilson's the guy reluctantly forced to find a new home by a college campus; Vince Vaughn and Will Ferrell are the reprobates along for the ride, reliving the most reprehensible bits of their youth with abandon. Based extremely loosely on Fight Club, this turned into a fair-sized hit and launched all its stars into leading men territory.
Well, leading men in the comic sphere at least. The sight of him doing a gymnastics floor routine with a ribbon is not one we'll soon forget. Kids: don't try this at home. Holding the record for the most obscenities in an animated feature at a whopping !
Incredibly, they also find a host of new ways to be offensive, grafting their usual ingredients toilet humour, thinly-veiled satirical jabs, deliberately-crude animation onto a plot which involves a war between Canada and America, a love affair between Satan and Saddam Hussein and — seriously — a shitload of musical numbers.
As always, just as many viewers will love it as hate it, yet there are moments of comic brilliance here see the ER send-up featuring George Clooney's voice in amongst the digs at cinematic censorship, sweary movies and Jar Jar Binks. Just like Cartman, this movie will warp your fragile little mind.
And he swears a lot. BEST JOKE: There's nary a scene where the profanity isn't bursting out from the screen, but the classroom exchange really captures the 'essence' of the movie. John Hughes' keen eye for character comedy was rarely on better form than in this cross-country transport nightmare, shoving together Steve Martin's uptight, nervy Neal Page and John Candy's endlessly upbeat Del Griffith, a man who singularly fails to grasp the concept of personal space.
Martin has since commented that it's his favourite film and performance, and you can see why: it's perfectly pitched, ratcheting up the frustration to ever-increasing levels as Page struggles to get home, and endlessly relatable although most people are better at identifying the difference between a pillow and, well, Steve Martin.
It's a miracle that it turned out so well. The hellish shoot was made worse by a grumpy director beset by personal travails and the need to create the film's transport companies from scratch thanks to Amtrak, Greyhound and co refusing to be associated with travel chaos.
As each use of the F-word spills from his mouth, you can almost see the steam shooting from his ears. It's one of those films that's so good, it's almost an albatross around the necks of its cast and crew. Grant will be forever associated with demanding to have some booze, going on holiday by mistake, and wanting to fork things. Still, how better to be remembered than as part of one of the most intelligent, literate, and fundamentally funny British comedies of all time?
Eat it? The fucker's alive! Even though audiences largely ignored his TV shows, Undeclared and Freaks And Geeks, the runaway success of The 40 Year-Old Virgin saw screenwriter-turned-showrunner-turned-director Judd Apatow suddenly crowned as Hollywood's new king of comedy. Indeed, ever since Steve Carell's virginal toy collector sought to pop his cherry with Catherine Keener's GILF while trying to cram pimpage, it's hard to think of a mainstream bromance not influenced in one way or another by Apatowian sensibilities.
Stoner humour, dick jokes, the notion that schlubby nerds can land hot women who are accepting of geek culture: Apatow's dominance of modern comedy started here. It's possible that poking fun at the world of modelling — and its tiny sub-section, male modelling — is like shooting fish in a barrel. But it would take a very small barrel and a very big gun for most people to make as good a job of it as Ben Stiller and co.
The incidental gags — Derek and Hansel transforming themselves into janitors, Mugatu's "so hot right now" tic — are legion, and we're never not going to laugh at Derek's pronunciation of the word "eulogy", or the models' "freak gasoline fight accident". Sublimely silly. Or at least, not smart enough to care. Before its release, Dodgeball was almost written off as a lesser offering from the Frat Pack of Stiller, Vaughn and the rest.
But for all its silly slapstick, OTT character work from Stiller and sweet-natured story of triumph over smug adversity, Dodgeball works on every levels. The pratfalls are rewind-rewatchable, the dialogue sparkles even at its dumbest and the quote-ability factor is high.
Vaughn makes an earnest hero worth cheering for and the supporting cast is premier league across the board, including Justin Long, Joel David Moore, Alan Tudyk and the always-reliable Stephen Root. Once seen, you'll never forget the five 'D's of Dodgeball: dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge. He even boasts a hilariously emotional back-story courtesy of Hank Azaria's younger Patches.
One of the most purposefully offensive movies of the modern age, South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone simultaneously lampoon US foreign policy, Michael Bay action movies and liberal Hollywood stars in one combustible satire. Though it's hard to credit the movie with any form of subtlety, there are brilliant moments such as the hammer suicide gag or the utter destruction of Paris and the decision to use marionette puppets is a masterstroke which allows the filmmakers to get away with any amount of ludicrousness.
From Alec Baldwin to Kim Jong Il to Michael Moore, nobody is safe from Parker and Stone's wrath, while all your cherished Thunderbird memories will be soiled forever after seeing these puppets swear, puke and — yes, they went there — having sex. Despite not having any genitalia. It's funny because it's not true. You'll never watch the time-passing segment of your favourite '80s movie in the same way again.
Slap bang in the middle of Mel Brooks' s run of movie parodies, this is arguably the best, with only Blazing Saddles pipping it to the post.
Physical humour brings the wordplay to life, and there's even a legendary dance number in 'Puttin' On The Ritz'. Brooks and co had so much fun shooting that the writer-director even added scenes near the end of production just so they could keep on going, resulting in a disastrously long first cut that required a marathon editing session to bring down to the swift, minute final running time.
But having seen the greatest effects comedy ever made, it's impossible to imagine anyone else doing such a good job as this cast — in particular Murray's free-wheeling Venkman.
And there are genuine scares in here to make the laughs all the louder by comparison don't know about you, but we still jump a little at the Library Ghost. The lead trio expertly mine every facet of the supernatural for every possible laugh, from crooked researchers to gross-out slime ghosts to enormous inter-dimensional invasions.
They even turned Sigourney Weaver into a terrifying ridged black beast, something even the Alien franchise never quite managed. Offering the sardonic, wiseguy contrast to Ray's sweet enthusiasm and Egon's nerdishness, he drives everything forward. And no one can follow that up like Bill.
Stanley Kubrick's jet black comedy famously stars Peter Sellers playing three separate roles and wildly improvising in all of them. Devastatingly deadpan, this has the darkest of all imaginable endings, which is all the more impressive given that it originally climaxed with a pie fight. Kubrick, wisely, thunk again. Scott, who reluctantly allowed himself to be egged on by Kubrick to heights of lunacy he'd never previously dared reach. Eugene Mirman Self as Self ….
Pete Holmes Self as Self …. Ari Shaffir Self as Self. James Davis Self as Self. Cameron Esposito Self as Self. Miller Self - Comedian as Self - Comedian. More like this. Watch options. Storyline Edit. Veering from the mainstream, Funny as Hell introduces audiences to some of the funniest and most fearless comics working today. Each show features an impressive line-up of edgy, politically incorrect, alternative and musical comedy acts. In addition to the live show, each episode features an original digital sketch created especially for the series featuring Jon Dore and various performers from the series.
Shot in an intimate space with a modern speakeasy vibe, each episode of the series recreates the feeling of being at a unique and self contained live event.
Add content advisory. User reviews 1 Review. Top review. Details Edit. Release date March 11, Canada. Technical specs Edit. Runtime 30 minutes. Related news.
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