My guy and I just watched Death at a Funeral and laughed our heads off. I need some recommendations for some more movies this funny. (The 2010 version, apparently there was another one.)
I have googled “movies like…” and gotten some interesting results, like, “if you liked Death at a Funeral you might like… Mandela: The Long Walk to Freedom.” WTF? I mean yeah we might like it but I’m looking for a comedy.
Other results listed funny movies I’ve already seen, but some of them are worth revisiting. So far I’ve only come up with one that I haven’t already seen.
What I’m hoping to unearth is more movies that appeal to both men and women and result in belly laughs. It can be dark but not too violent (example: he found In Bruges too violent, but I think he didn’t understand a lot of the dialogue or he would have found it funnier and that might have mitigated his opinion).
Not that I don’t appreciate the recommendation but I am going to say, just for the record, we saw the trailer for this while seeing another movie and thought, “Yeah, that looks good.” When we actually saw the movie it turned out that all the funny parts were, yeah, in the trailer, so we’d already seen them. This one did not quite hit the bar for us.
I really liked Living in Oblivion, a nineties (?) indie film about making a nineties indie film. The scene. Steve Buscemi and Catherine Keener–and then there’s Peter Dinklage going the fuck off on Steve Buscemi, which is one of my all-time favorite movie scenes.
Hot Fuzz is great, as are the other movies by those guys.
Get Out is great. And then there’s Sorry to Bother You, which is something else, totally bonkers and brilliant.
Speaking of totally bonkers, there’s Being John Malkovich.
If you dare try a subtitled one, the second time The Bestest Boyfriend fell off the armchair while watching Belle Epoque he accepted my advice to just stay there, it makes rolling about so much easier. I had to stop the movie several times while he did exactly that It’s one of those stories where some details will be understood only by someone who has specific background information, but you don’t need to understand all seven levels of a joke in order to enjoy that joke. Absurdist, ridiculous, over the top and still one of my contenders for “favorite movie”.
I rewatched the original (1942) To Be or Not to Be last night.
The scenes in which Jack Benny impersonates first Colonel Erhardt of the Gestapo and second, the Nazi spy Professor Siletsky, start off damn funny and then escalate into total hilarity. By the time they get to the beard-pulling you’ll be gasping for breath. Sig Ruman topped himself in this one.
I’m gonna recommend funny movies that are old but not classic. As off the beaten path as this old Gen Xer gets.
Idiocary.Ten years ago my daughter did not find it funny. She thought it prophetic and sad. But me? Hilarious!
Return Of The Living Dead, a zombie movie but amusing. Especially if you think The Pathmark Man giving his most heartrending performance is juuuust a little funny.
Good Burger is a classic Nickelodeon (late 1990s), pre-teen, Kenan and Kell stupidity. It still makes me laugh like an idiot. Don’t tell nobody.
Needless to say, none of these will ever become classics. Or even well regarded. O.K., I’ll admit it. I love cheese.
I laughed at Death at a Funeral. Another comedy I liked was State and Main. It’s about a movie company filming in a small town, and the interaction between film cast/crew and the locals. Smart but not dry or cerebral. Alec Baldwin. Seymour Hoffman. William Macy. Sarah Jessica Parker.
My kids watched this a hundred times when it first came out. And I bust a gut with them every time. But you’ve got to be in the mood for so-stupid-it’s-funny.“You look sad. Were you bitten by a sheep?”
Oh, another movie we watched 100+ times… Rat Race.
John Cleese, Whoopi, Cuba Gooding, John Lovitz, great cast with great lines … and Rowan Atkinson as an Italian narcoleptic.
Oh, there are clips! Get ready for more so-stupid-it’s-funny:
If you’re willing to try an older film, I always thought that The Freshman was unfairly overlooked.
While I’ll grant that I haven’t seen this since it came out, I’m pretty sure that if it’s comedic at all, the other 90% is artsy/drama.
Again, I haven’t seen this since it came out, but I went to see it expecting a comedy and it ended up being a pretty serious story of a man coming to grips with his own sexuality.
Nah, too overt. And Anne Bancroft was a shameless cougar. Carole Lombard was simply perfect in every way. There was a great line, though, that they couldn’t get away with in 1942:
“We Nazis are not so bad…we only want to purge the legitimate theater of Jews and homosexuals.”
“Without Jews and homosexuals there IS no theater!!!”
It’s one of those stories where some details will be understood only by someone who has specific background information, but you don’t need to understand all seven levels of a joke in order to enjoy that joke. Absurdist, ridiculous, over the top and still one of my contenders for “favorite movie”.