The best comedy movies of all time: from This is Spinal Tap to Mean Girls

From classic to contemporary, these are the funniest films ever made
Harry Fletcher8 February 2018

Comedy is, by its very nature, the most subjective film genre there is.

What one person finds hilarious might be painfully unfunny to someone else, so judging the ‘best comedy movies ever’ can be a pretty divisive task.

However, some films that are so iconic and so universally acclaimed that they’re well-loved by a huge cross-section of film fans the world over.

So, from This Is Spinal Tap to Dumb and Dumber, these are our picks for the 10 best comedy movies of all time.

The best comedy films of all time

1/10

This Is Spinal Tap

Rob Reiner, Christopher Guest and Harry Shearer team up for the incredibly quotable comedy This Is Spinal Tap. Anyone who’s ever played in bands, even at the most casual level, will recognise some of the scenarios that play out here - from getting lost on the way to the stage door to backstage divas and cringeworthy attempts at radical new music directions. The performances and the writing are absolutely flawless and Stonehenge might be one of the funniest songs ever put to film.

Monty Python’s The Life of Brian

Talking of quotable films… Monty Python’s The Life of Brian is widely regarded as one of the greatest comedies of all time. With fantastic performances from Pythons Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones and Michael Palin, it’s an all-time classic: take out the incongruous alien UFO scene and you’ve probably got the perfect comedy. It’s pretty strange then that one of the funniest films ever made was also one of the most controversial with the film being accused of blasphemy and banned from release in Ireland and Norway. Whatever you make of it, he might not be the messiah, but this is a comedy of biblical proportions.

Airplane!

The late, great Leslie Nielsen stars in this brilliant disaster movie parody, which is as inspired as it is daft. A troubled pilot must battle his demons land a plane on the brink of catastrophe, assisted only by his stewardess former girlfriend and a pair of blow-up autopilots. The laughs-per-minute ratio is incredibly high but make sure you’re paying attention: there are gags going on in every corner of the screen, which rewards repeat viewing.

Superbad

Jonah Hill made his Hollywood debut in th incredibly funny and often obscene comedy Superbad. A bunch of misfits attempt to buy alcohol underage to impress girls in the hit film, which was written by star Seth Rogen. Superbad featured some of the best comedic actors working in Hollywood today too, with Hill, Rogen, Emma Stone, Michael Cera, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Joe Lo Truglio and Bill Hader all appearing.

Duck Soup

The Marx brothers jet off to Freedonia in the hugely influential 1933 movie Duck Soup, which along with A Night Of The Opera is the best thing the comic geniuses ever produced. Groucho, Harpo and Chico show great range of physical comedy and unmatchable wit, and the movie features some of Hollywood’s most recognisable comedy sequences, including the unforgettable mirror scene.

Dumb and Dumber

Forget the woeful sequels, Dumb and Dumber is - hands down - one of the best comedies ever made. Two loveable idiots travel across the US to return a briefcase to a wealthy heiress in this hilarious road movie. The easy chemistry between leads Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels helps make this one of the most enjoyable watches of the 1990s, which also features one of the best film soundtracks of the decade.

Groundhog Day

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, and again, and again… not only is Groundhog Day one of the best romcoms of all time, it’s one of the best comedies, too. Bill Murray is at the peak of his comedy powers in the film, which features one of the most copied and parodied central constructs ever: a grumpy weather reporter wakes up to find that the same day is repeating itself over and over again, and he must learn to change his ways if he is to break the cycle.

Mean Girls

Tina Fey’s sublime teen film Mean Girls inspired a whole new generation of comedy fans and more than deserves its place on the list. In what must be one of the most widely quoted films of the last 15 years, Mean Girls featured some of the sparkiest comedy writing of the 2000s and parodied the brutal hierarchies of high-schools with unerring accuracy. Even though the film was set in the US, everyone went to school with a Regina George and we’d all have given our right arm to hang out with the Plastics back in the day.

The Producers

When a fraudulent theatre producer and his accountant realise they can make more money from a flop than a hit, they put on the worst play of all time. Zero Mostel puts in a performance for the ages as the deeply charismatic Max Bialystock in classic Gene Wilder comedy The Producers and Gene Wilder is note-perfect as the neurotic accountant Leopold Bloom.

Young Frankenstein

The second part of a Brooks and Wilder double bill, Young Frankenstein (pronounced Frankensteen), stars Wilder as the maverick surgeon who brings a monster to life, with absolutely hilarious results. It’s a great example of comedy horror, which has to be one of the hardest film genres to pull off, and Frankenstein and his monster (Peter Boyle) performing a rendition of Putting On The Ritz is pure comedy gold.

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