My favorite comedy movies [#15 to #11]

My friend Kirk and I were chatting the other day, and we got to talking about our favorite comedy movies. Both of us struggled to come up with just one, given the wide variety of comedy out there, and one's taste for the various comedic styles (dark, slapstick, etc.) may change as the years go by. Then there's the matter of era—comedies have been in production for nearly 100 years, so there's a huge body of work. How can one compare a film from the 1920s or 1930s with something made in the last five years?

After our chat, I got to thinking about my favorite comedies, and I thought I'd put together a list of my 10 favorites. To make things a bit easier on myself, I picked the somewhat arbitrary year of 1980 as the starting point, even though there are lots of comedies that I would include from prior to that date—The Blues Brothers, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Blazing Saddles, anything by Charlie Chaplin, etc. But I didn't think I could do a credible job of choosing from movies in many different eras, so I used 1980 as the cutoff mainly because it was a nice round number.

As I started working on the list, I found that I couldn't trim it to just 10 without leaving off what I felt were some of my personal favorites, so I expanded it to 15 movies. Even at that, there are quite a few that fell just below the cut line—Airplane, Meet the Parents, LA Story, Austin Powers—that I still consider great comedies and are in my DVD collection. Still, the line had to be drawn somewhere.

So at the risk of losing the last few readers I still have (by revealing my poor taste in filmmaking), here are the 'bottom five' of my 15 favorite comedies, arranged from "just barely made the cut" (#15) to "absolute favorite" (#1). (I was going to run the list all at once, but the post was simply too long; look for parts two and three in the near future.)

15. The Royal Tenenbaums: [IMDB.com link] This is probably the movie that's least like a "traditional comedy" on my list—you won't spend two hours in gut-cracking laughter. In fact, you may hate this film, as it's very non-traditional. The Royal Tenenbaums is a look at a very dysfunctional family, and it's a very dark comedy.

    Royal Tenenbaum is the patriarch, long since divorced from his wife, who has raised the children pretty much on her own. The children are brilliant, but they're not completely "right" in many ways. Chas (Ben Stiller), for instance, is a hyper-paranoid single father of two kids; Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a brilliant playwright who's depressed and hasn't written for years. I know, sounds like a real laugh-a-minute, doesn't it? The humor is there, but it's below the surface. The story and the actors, though, are the real winners here—the cast does a great job with the material, and it's a most interesting story.

    This movie marks the first appearance of two actors (Ben Stiller, Bill Murray) whose names you'll see again on my list.

14. Real Genius: [IMDB.com link] In the first of two appearances on my list, a very-young Val Kilmer plays Chris Knight, a young, wacky scientific genius who's finishing up his last year in college. His dorm roommate is the new young genius Mitch Taylor, a nerdy kid who looks like he still belongs in junior high school (and he was accepted into college at a very young age).

    The movie follows these two through a series of adventures, including the very non-plausible main plot line about a space-based laser weapon system. But the real fun here is all the stories ancillary to the main plot line. The suspicious man who lives in the closet of their dorm room. The day the dorm is turned into an ice-filled winter wonderland. A mysterious and beautiful woman on a particular quest. The ultra-talkative, ultra-brilliant nerdy girl and her relationship with Mitch. A very funny recurring bit regarding a professor's lectures and tape recorders. There's also a pretty good 1980s soundtrack, and a ton of very funny dialog, one-liners, and practical jokes.

13. Top Secret: [IMDB.com link] Here's the second of Val Kilmer's two appearances on the list. Sadly, after showing a great sense of comedic timing in both of these films, he moved on to a series of roles that (to me, at least) weren't nearly as enjoyable to watch. But I digress.

    Top Secret was written by Abrahams, Zucker, and Zucker, the same group that brought us Airplane. If you enjoyed Airplane, you'll enjoy Top Secret, as the humor's basically of the same type: lots of one-liners, puns, and numerous visual gags. The premise, if you need one, revolves around American rock and roll star Nick Rivers (Kilmer) doing a tour of Germany during the war. He becomes entangled in the resistance movement (due to his interest in Hillary, a beautiful member of the resistance) against the Nazis, who are kidnapping scientists to help them, somehow, rule the world.

    But the plot is secondary; the movie is a constant parody of everything from rock and roll to spy movies to war movies to western movies to cars (a very short but funny bit involving a Fort Pinto)—even Elvis gets zinged. Amazingly stupid, yet amazingly funny, even 20 years later. I actually enjoyed this movie more than Airplane, which is why it made the cut and Airplane did not. (For added fun, Google around a bit to see what Hillary told Nick her first name meant in German!)

12. Wayne's World: [IMDB.com link] Who'd have thought a two-minute Saturday Night Live sketch would make a pretty decent 90 minute movie? Though this film has moments where it's somewhat painful to watch, it also marked the emergence of one of my favorite comedic actors, Mike Myers (you'll see his name once more on the list). It also put some words and expressions into regular usage, at least for a while. Remember "...not!" and "schwing!"?

    Wayne (Myers) and Garth (Dana Carvey, in perhaps his only decent film role) are two teenagers running a community access station from their basement. Their show draws the attention of a big-shot producer (Rob Lowe), and they go mainstream and host a rock concert. There are many memorable scenes, including the one where Wayne, Garth, and a couple buddies are rocking out to Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody in Wayne's Ford Pinto AMC Pacer. As I recall, the movie was so popular that Bohemian Rhapsody actually re-entered the Billboard charts, all thanks to that one scene in Wayne's World. The backstage scene with Alice Cooper was also quite funny, with Alice Cooper portraying an amazingly knowledgeable history buff. Party on, Wayne!

11. There's Something About Mary: [IMDB.com link] Ben Stiller, making his second appearance on my list, plays Ted Stroehmann, who has a very painful experience on his prom night date with Mary Jensen (Cameron Diaz), his dream girl. Humiliated, years go by until he once again has a chance with Mary. The sophomoric, occasionally really gross, humor revolves around the events that conspire to keep Ted away from Mary. Directed by the Farrelly brothers, there are some great visual gags, recurring jokes, and slams directed at nearly everyone, including professional athletes (Brett Favre doesn't seem to have a future in acting). There are times when the humor gets a bit too gross for my taste, but overall, it's a very funny movie.

So there's the first (last?) five; look for parts two and three to follow shortly.