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CaB's 100 Greatest Comedy Films Of All Time - The Big Vote 2017

Started by Serge, August 25, 2017, 11:02:11 AM

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FredNurke

Up to seven so far:

A Shot in the Dark
Airplane!
Blazing Saddles
Bringing up Baby
Duck Soup
Life of Brian
The Producers

Dr Strangelove and another Marx Bros film (maybe Animal Crackers, maybe Horse Feathers) might get in there, and I want to save space for Laurel and Hardy (I've seen enough of their short films to know that at least one full-length film would get in, but I haven't seen any of them). Naked Gun gets dragged down by the fact that I very much prefer Police Squad!, Bedazzled falls just short... I'll get back to you.

biggytitbo

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on August 26, 2017, 06:15:12 PM
Murder By Death is a film I'd love to see again but unfortunately, I watched it on the worst night of my entire life exactly thirty five years ago to this very week.  Never dared watch it since.

Dat cast tho -

Peter Falk
Alec Guinness
Elsa Lanchester
David Niven
Peter Sellers
Maggie Smith
Eileen Brennan
Truman Capote

biggytitbo

Naked Gun, Airplane! or Top Secret? The agony of choice.

Autopsy Turvey

I'm going to force myself to pick one Carry On, but I'm prepared for my Carry On vote to go to any other Carry On in the event that there is one that's more likely to do well.

I also forced myself to do one Laurel & Hardy, one Marx Bros and one Python. My real top 15 would probably be nothing but.

1. Carry On Cleo
2. Life Of Brian
3. Sons Of The Desert
4. Duck Soup
5. This Is Spinal Tap
6. The Ladykillers
7. Dr Strangelove
8. A Shot In The Dark
9. It's Nice Up North with John Shuttleworth
10. South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
11. Passport To Pimlico
12. Oh Mr Porter!
13. Beavis & Butt-head Do America
14. Annie Hall
15. Derek & Clive Get The Horn

Brundle-Fly

I want to add to my list:


Any Which Way But Loose
Any Which Way You Can
Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines
The Gumball Rally
Kentucky Fried Movie
One Way Pendulum
The Big Bus
Shaun Of The Dead
The Happiest Days Of Our Lives
Carry On Screaming
Laughter In Paradise
Mr Saturday Night
The Independent
Tucker & Dale Vs Evil
Comedy Of Terrors
Braindead

A Piece Of The Action
The Odd Couple
The League Of Gentlemen: Apocalypse


biggytitbo

I'd probably go with Kyber of Screaming, although I've always had a soft spot for Carry on Girls.

Brundle-Fly

Carry On Doctor (1969) purely for these astonishing cinematic moments. It's Charles Hawtrey's reaction that always floors me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rrey1g-Qogg

newbridge

It's top 10 you absolute maniacs. I imagine listing more is only going to make it more cumbersome for Serge to collect the ballots.

Dr Rock

Life of Brian
Love and Death
Top Secret!
The Jerk
Team America: World Police
Evil Dead 2
Raising Arizona
Withnail and I
Some Like It Hot
Splash! (shut up)

This Is Spinal Tap (forgot, should be number 2)

Obviously hard to narrow it down to ten, list is somewhat in order of funniness, and didn't put more than one film by the same team, so Airplane loses out to Top Secret! even though I think Airplane is funnier than a couple on the list. And The Big Lebowski is great, but as a comedy, Raising Arizona wins. Might revise list if I think of some others. Resisted putting This Is The End as part of my ongoing campaign to get the movie recognised as a great comedy - it is, but not better than those on the list.

Hey, is Star Trek The Voyage Home a comedy? It's funnier than ficking Tootsie, for example.

Serge

Quote from: newbridge on August 26, 2017, 08:33:04 PM
It's top 10 you absolute maniacs. I imagine listing more is only going to make it more cumbersome for Serge to collect the ballots.

Well, like I said, I'm going to take the first ten from every list and ignore the rest.

Dr Rock

Quote from: Dr Rock on August 26, 2017, 09:29:43 PM
Life of Brian
Love and Death
Top Secret!
The Jerk
Team America: World Police
Evil Dead 2
Raising Arizona
Withnail and I
Some Like It Hot
Splash! (shut up)

This Is Spinal Tap (forgot, should be number 2)

Wait, I'm going to change some.

Life of Brian
This Is Spinal Tap
Love and Death
Top Secret!
The Jerk
Team America: World Police
Commando
Raising Arizona
Withnail and I
Head


Bubbling under: Showgirls, Harvey, Midnight Run, American Werewolf in London, Some Like It Hot, Animal House, Dirty Work, This Is The End, Beyond The Valley Of the Dolls, Risky Business.

mr. logic

Forgot to mention Jackass, a film that had no right to be as funny as it was.

Quote from: Sin Agog on August 25, 2017, 05:58:22 PM
I am literally incapable of confining myself to ten.  I mean, I just wrote a big post with a long preamble, but I could not do it.  I'd never make it as a character in High Fidelity.

I'd like to hear your rough top ten for now - and everyone else's - with a few thoughts written out. What's the worst that could happen?

I enjoyed weekender's notes about Dr. Strangelove. If you don't want to write about all the films, writing a lot about your favourite is a decent compromise. But I'm not your mum.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Quote from: biggytitbo on August 26, 2017, 12:14:24 AM
Sons of the Desert
Way out West
Oh Mr Porter
Two Way Stretch
The Rebel
Take the Money and Run
Sleeper
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Love and Death
The Pink Panther Strikes Again
Murder by Death
Life of Brian
Stir Crazy
Top Secret
Trading Places
A Fish Called Wanda
Naked Gun

I heartily endorse this list.

PlasticTom

I'm sorry that mine is not especially highbrow, but I'm leaning more towards "most laughs" as opposed to "better film". Like, is Borat a better comedy film than Bringing Up Baby, because it makes me laugh more? Even then, probably not actually, but it's going on the list. Sorry.

Glengarry Glenross

Funnier than most "comedies". Half the fun is in the delivery, or Jack Lemmon's face when Alec Baldwin says it takes brass balls to work in real estate.
"Who told me we had a robbery?! You got a fuckin' sign out front.. Yes! Yes! I confess! I did it."
"Will you get out of here? Will you get out of here? Will you?! I'm trying to run an office here. Now will you go to lunch? Go to lunch. Will you go to lunch?!"
"FUCK YOU! THAT'S MY NAME."
"I find out whose fucking cousin you are, I'm going to go to him and figure out a way to have your ass - fuck you!"
Just very swear-y and fun.

Airplane!
What's Up Doc?
Life Of Brian
Annie Hall
The Naked Gun
Withnail And I
Dr Strangelove
Duck Soup
Borat

hewantstolurkatad

It's actually kind of weird a Carry On hasn't made it to the Criterion Collection. There's a decent number of popular but forgotten comedies from various regions and Carry On would fit that. I'd say they're pretty firmly on the to-be-forgotten pile at the moment.

I assume people under about 20 have never encountered a Carry On film unless they've actively sought one out, and the distillation of past pop culture in general tends to lean so heavily in favour of american culture that, outside of Python, it's gonna be mostly US films they'll be getting directed towards.

They were a fixture of daytime tv when I was growing up but I guess scheduling and viewing of daytime tv has changed a lot since then.

hewantstolurkatad

Quote from: Smeraldina Rima on August 28, 2017, 09:59:13 AM
They were a fixture of daytime tv when I was growing up but I guess scheduling and viewing of daytime tv has changed a lot since then.
I'm 27, I probably saw all of them by the time I was ten, they were on every weekend. They fairly quickly vanished from television listings though, I suspect it had more to do with a changing of the guard among who decided what aired in dead timeslots than fans of the series dying.

Serge

ITV3 have showed a lot of Carry Ons on daytime TV in the last year or two, and they also had a three-part documentary on the series just prior to that. It didn't seem to tie in with an anniversary (the first film was in 1958), so maybe it was just because they'd got the rights to show them?


biggytitbo

Don't ITV1-4 just constantly show the Carry On films all the time like Bond and Back to the Future?

chrispmartha

Do they have to be in order? Mine aren't- too difficult.

The Big Lebowski
A Shot in the Dark
A Fish Called Wanda
Kes (classed as comedy??)
The Three Amigos
Anchorman
This Is Spinal Tap
Airplane
The Burbs
Four Lions

Not high brow, but went for a mix of what made me laugh the most and what is nostalgic to me.

hewantstolurkatad

Quote from: Serge on August 28, 2017, 12:58:00 PM
ITV3 have showed a lot of Carry Ons on daytime TV in the last year or two, and they also had a three-part documentary on the series just prior to that. It didn't seem to tie in with an anniversary (the first film was in 1958), so maybe it was just because they'd got the rights to show them?
Yeah, I'm sure some station or another shows them, but there's so many other options why would anyone settle on that channel when Die Hard is on another? At the very best you'd have picked up from other things that "Carry On" refers to a naff kind of disposable comedy from 50+ years ago like Benny Hill or summat.

Their rotation on major networks at a time when you could be nearly (between boredom and some shit like MotoGP occupying the other channels) be forced to watch all manner of things had already dropped considerably before the internet became a constant pervasive thing.

EOLAN

No particular order

Sherlock Jr.
The General
Bringing Up Baby
His Girl Friday
Way Out West
In The Loop
Some Like It Hot
Monty Python's: The Meaning of Life
The Producers (Original - not musical remake - although I did like it bar Ferrell)
Top Secret!


Dr Rock

My Spanish Lady Friend, who has lived in the UK for ten years, so knows the culture pretty well, saw her first Carry On the other night. It was Carry On Girls. She said it took a while to get the style of humour, but when it clicked she thought it was very funny.

I found myself taking this task far too seriously, although to be honest, it's actually pretty important.

Hats off to biggytitbo and Ballard Berkley's excellent lists. Here's mine. I feel bad for omitting Laurel and Hardy, but I prefer their shorts (trouser joke potential, but can't be arsed as too much red wine).

10) Play it again Sam

9) Bedazzled
"that's very easy for you to say, Lord Dowdy"

8) The Strike
Technically not a film, more a feature length TV prog, but I'm having it anyway

7) The Three Amigos
"In a way, each of us has an El Guapo to face. For some, shyness might be their El Guapo. For others, a lack of education might be their El Guapo. For us, El Guapo is a big, dangerous man who wants to kill us. But as sure as my name is Lucky Day, the people of Santa Poco can conquer their own personal El Guapo, who also happens to be the actual El Guapo."

6)There's Something About Mary
Gloriously juvenile and smart

5) This is Spinal Tap

4) Sleeper
"I believe this is going to be a very difficult croning job.     
That's 'cloning', you idiot!"

3) The Ladykillers
In a film packed with the finest comic actors of their generation, Katie Johnson steals it

2) The Court Jester
Underrated masterpiece - worth a top ten for "vessel in the pestle" scene alone

1) Roxanne
Probably too schmaltzy for some, but for me, feel-good comic perfection


zomgmouse

Picking just ten is very difficult but I suppose it makes it less difficult to count at the end.
I've just gone on my "favourite comedies" list on IMDb and sorted it by my rating. Scrolling up I reached the 8s and thought "this is going to be difficult" then got to the 9s and thought "shit these are already excellent" and then got to my 10s and thought "yeah alright fair enough". Most of them are pretty standard, expected, classic choices but I figured that that's the whole point of picking "greatest comedies" rather than "most obscure comedies to show off your comedy knowledge with", which is an exercise I'd gladly take up elsewhere (or even just in my list of 9s).
Of my thirty-one 10/10-rated films, here are my favourite 10 (in chronological order as the ranking here doesn't matter according to Serge):

- The General (1925)
If we were allowed shorts I'd probably pick Cops or The Goat, but The General is an easy classic for me. The astounding physical bravura and the deadpan pathos of Keaton are at their highest peak here. Favourite moment: the fucking train going in the fucking water.
- Duck Soup (1933)
Gag after gag after gag. The Marx' Brothers three different but co-dependent styles of humour mesh incredibly well in this. It's sensationally silly yet biting and pertinent. Favourite moment: "I abject".
- Modern Times (1936)
For me the film of Chaplin's that manages to balance sentiment with laughs perhaps the most, or at least the most ambitiously. The combination of sound and silent comedy is pure genius. Favourite moment: the nonsense song.
- Singin' in the Rain (1952)
This is one of my earliest favourites, since childhood, and it holds up more and more with each rewatch. The colours, the joy, the choreography, the set-pieces... never mind that none of these are original songs, the way they're implemented and executed are just breathtaking. The script rattles on like a machine and the dancing in this is beyond sublime. Favourite moment: I can't pick. I just can't pick. "Good Morning".
- Mon Oncle (1958)
Pure, simple heartwarming comedy. No one uses sound in comedy like Tati, and few make so much comedy out of such small, everyday things as Tati. For me while Playtime might be bigger and more audacious, Mon Oncle just has such a lovely spirit about it that it wins out. Favourite moment: the sausage pipe.
- Some Like It Hot (1959)
What can I say about this? It's a masterclass in comedy filmmaking. Narrative, visuals, jokes, characters, acting, costumes... flawless. Favourite moment: Jack Lemmon's shit-eating grin.
- Pink Flamingos (1972)
Full pelt trash. This goes to some filthy places and yet takes such pleasure in doing so. It's eminently quotable and the characters are such brilliant grotesques. I don't think Waters has equalled the unadulterated energy of this film. Favourite moment: Divine's shit-eating grin... no, "somebody's sent me a bowel movement!"
- Young Frankenstein (1974)
The grand nature of the visuals and the love for its subject matter complements the farcical shenanigans and great script. Some of the best comic performances I've ever seen. Favourite moment: "put the candle back".
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Transcends the label of "classic" for me. This was the benchmark of comedy and of friendship when I was in high school and even now thinking back on it I am in awe of how well it's put together and yet just so fucking silly. Life of Brian is by far the better film but this is just closer to my heart and, for me, the one with the highest concentration of hilarious moments. Favourite moment: John Cleese tapping his head like a twat.
- Hot Fuzz (2006)
This is without a doubt the film I've seen the most times, comedy or otherwise. It's been many years since the last time I saw it so maybe I've outgrown it but it's just a fantastically strong piece of filmmaking. Methodical and technically accomplished and the level of passion put into it is unparallelled, even by any one of their other films. Favourite moment: the whole final shootout.

And the other twenty-one 10/10s, several of which could easily be in my top 10 list but oh well:
- 42nd Street (1933)
- Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
- An American in Paris (1951)
- The Ladykillers (1955)
- Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
- Daisies (1966)
- Playtime (1967)
- Catch-22 (1970)
- The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)
- Nashville (1975)
- Desperate Living (1977)
- Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979)
- Down By Law (1986)
- The Player (1992)
- Dazed and Confused (1993)
- Ed Wood (1994)
- Conspirators of Pleasure (1996)
- It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012)
- The Lobster (2015)

Here's my list of 9s. There's forty-three of them.

A Day at the Races, A New Leaf, A Night at the Opera, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, A Wedding, After Hours, Army of Darkness, Bedazzled, Bellissima, Charade, City Lights, Clue, Delicatessen, Female Trouble, Four Lions, Galaxy Quest, Harold and Maude, Hobo with a Shotgun, Dark Star, La Vie de Bohème, Leningrad Cowboys Go America, Love and Death, M. Hulot's Holiday, Passport to Pimlico, Rubin and Ed, Rushmore, Safety Last!, Schizopolis, Shaun of the Dead, Slacker, Sleeper, Steak, Stranger Than Paradise, The Canterbury Tales, The Dinner Game, The Man in the White Suit, The Producers, The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer, The Ruling Class, The Shop Around the Corner, This Is Spinal Tap, Withnail & I, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

My full list can be found here: http://www.imdb.com/list/ls073887717/

Bazooka

1. The Jerk
2. Withnail & I
3. Napoleon Dynamite
4. Naked Gun
5. Rushmore
6. Tommy Boy (Chris Farley)
7. Ernest Goes to Camp
8. Ernest Goes to Jail
9. Monty Python & The Holy Grail
10. Stripes

notjosh

Does anyone else broadly agree with the actors/directors chosen but feel like everyone else is picking the 'wrong' choices for them? I always find it strange how people can agree on liking someone but totally disagree on which bits of them to like. I often meet people who love The Kinks as much as I do, but then it turns out we don't agree on a single song. What's that all about?

Anyway, here are my corrections, please pay attention:

Marx Brothers:
Wrong choice: Duck Soup
Correct choice: Monkey Business (funnier and more anarchic)

Harold Lloyd:
Wrong choice: Safety Last
Correct choice: Speedy/The Kid Brother/Why Worry? (less iconic but more interesting and varied set-pieces)

Buster Keaton:
Wrong choice: The General
Correct choice: Steamboat Bill Jr/Seven Chances (funnier, more character-based)

Ealing:
Wrong choice: The Ladykillers/Kind Hearts and Coronets
Correct choice: Passport to Pimlico/The Lavender Hill Mob (this one is more based on heartwarming factor than laughs I'll admit)

Billy Wilder:
Wrong choice: Some Like it Hot
Correct choice: The Seven Year Itch/The Fortune Cookie (never really got SLIH)

Charlie Chaplin:
Modern Times is correct, well done everyone.

Small Man Big Horse

You're right about Billy Wilder but not the rest, sorry!

Dr Trouser

Quote from: David Pielingtonburygrot on August 29, 2017, 01:26:47 AM

1) Roxanne
Probably too schmaltzy for some, but for me, feel-good comic perfection

I have a huge soft spot for that film, never really struck me as schmaltzy , the bit where he buys a newspaper then pays to put it back in never fails to crack me up.