Along that line, any Merchant/Ivory, but especially A Room with a View.
It starts with 3 roommates: Cowboy (a cowboy), Indian (an Indian) and Horse (a horse). Cowboy and Indian order bricks to build a BBQ grill for Horse’s birthday, but they order a few too many. Like, 50 million instead of 50.
Thus begins the adventure that is A Town Called Panic (Panique au village) is a delightfully quirky and surreal stop-motion animated film made with toys and other props, as if someone in Belgium saw Robot Chicken and said to themselves “Pourquoi personne n’a-t-il fait un film entier comme ça? Je vais le faire!” (“Why hasn’t anyone made a whole movie like that? I’ll do it!”)
Available on both Netflix and Amazon Prime.
Why not Kelly’s Heroes itself? And you can get it in widescreen / anamorphic now, which you couldn’t the first couple of dozen times I saw it.
How about The Weavers: Wasn’t That a Time! It’s a documentary on the singing group The Weavers and their reunion concert.
The Beatles: Eight Days a Week - The Touring Years. Documentary directed by Ron Howard. Interesting previously unreleased footage, and I thought a lot of work was put into polishing up the audio.
Here’s a few more I like:
The Borrowers movie from 1997, starring Jim Broadbent and Celia Imrie.
Aladdin from last year. A lot better than I anticipated.
The Jungle Book, also the recent Disney remake, which is quite amazing.
Jumanji, Zathura, Jumanji Welcome To The Jungle, and Jumanji The Next Level. All great fun.
Ladyhawke. One of my favourite movies. Matthew Broderick is a stand-out.
Paddington and its sequel. Rightly lauded.
Peter Rabbit. Better than it ought to be.
Christopher Robin. Not as good as it might have been but still sweet-natured.
Mortal Engines. Deserved better, but I can see why it wasn’t a hit.
Mary Poppins Returns. A doggone delight.
The Kid Who Would Be King. Fun for all the family.
Tintin. I wish they’d make more like they said they were going to, but I think that ship has sailed.
The BFG. Quite delightful.
Klaus. It’s not Christmas but it’s still great.
The Peanuts Movie. Faithful, even in 3D.
Here are some under-rated movies. Some aren’t really “light-hearted”, but none has “heavy drama” nor depressing themes. Most of these are very “sentimental.”
Good Thief. A “heist” film, but much more. “The role Nick Nolte was born to play.”
Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Animated comedy.
Whale Rider. Brilliant tribute to another culture and its traditions, and to the courage of a young girl.
The Late Show. A film noir detective film; but with the brilliant comedienne Lily Tomlin, it’s almost a parody of that style.
Third Miracle. Interesting story with interesting themes. (After watching, come back and tell us what you think the “third miracle” was!)
The Score. Brilliant heist film. Ed Norton and Robt de Niro are superb.
Across the Universe. Would be a good story even without music. But it’s filled with Beatles songs sung by brilliant fresh voices.
Flower Drum Song. Other Rodgers-Hammerstein musicals are more famous, but this one is light-hearted … and I like it best!
Bye Bye Birdie. Perhaps too juvenile, but a fun and light-hearted musical.
***Plan 9 from Outer Space
They Saved Hitler’s Brain
Dr Black and Mr Hyde
Billy the Kid vs Dracula
Terror at Party Beach
Robot Monster
Monster Zero
The Giant Spider Invasion
Flesh Gordon
De Dove (The Dove)***
This is a really good movie- I always forget about it for awhile then stumble across it and re-watch again.
For newer movies, Amazon Prime has “Britney Runs a Marathon” which I really liked- it’s a fat girl re-boot kind of movie but I liked how she had to work on her inner issues and not just the body work. The romance was fun and quirky as well. It was funny without being obnoxious.
Here’s one out of left field: Heavy Trip. It’s a Finnish movie about an amateur heavy metal band who get a chance for their big break; hilarity ensues when they go for it. It’s quirky and very funny. You DO NOT have to be a fan of that music (I’m certainly not) to enjoy it. If I’m remembering correctly, it’s subtitled, so that’s not ideal. It’s worth it though. Included with Amazon Prime.
Aside from the nationality and genre, it sounds a lot like The Commitments, a wonderful, wonderful movie!
A somewhat older classic is ***It Happened One Night***, with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. Gable is said to have inspired Bugs Bunny's trademark carrot chomping in this film. (He also single-handedly brought the American undershirt industry to the brink of ruin by not wearing one.)One, Two, Three. Cold War comedy starring James Cagney.
The Prisoner of Zenda. There is the black-and-white version with Ronald Coleman and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and the Technicolor version with Stewart Granger and James Mason, and several other versions that I haven’t seen.
The Man in the White Suit with Alec Guinness.
Kind Hearts and Coronets.
The Thief of Bagdad.
1924 Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.
1940 Sabu and Conrad Veidt.
1978 TV version with Kabir Bedi and Roddy McDowall.
Son of Sinbad with Dale Robertson and Vincent Price.
The Raven. Made by Roger Corman, back in the days when he tried to make good movies. Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre doing comedy. A very young Jack Nicholson.
Young Sherlock Holmes.
Without a Clue.
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.
The Odyssey, with Kirk Douglas as Ulysses.
The original Jason and the Argonauts, with lots of Harryhousen stop-action animation.
The original Clash of the Titans, with Laurence Olivier, Ursula Andress, and even more Harryhausen animation.
This isn’t exact;y what the OP was looking for but since there are obviously a lot of movie fans posting here and presumably reading thru the thread, I thought y’all would like to know that South By Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival is coming to Amazon in a few weeks.
(bolding mine)
A few we watched recently:
Michael - John Travolta, Andie Macdowell, funny and lighthearted.
The Cutting Edge - Miora Kelly, DB Sweeney, about a hockey player who learns to figure skate.
I recommend The Rocketeer, a light-hearted pulp adventure set in the 1930s.
Also in the same vein, but not quite as perfect, Flash Gordon.
Also, you could do worse than to check out the Big Four Giant Bug movies: Them!, The Deadly Mantis, Tarantula, and The Black Scorpion.
And the great Fifties sci-fi movies: Forbidden Planet, This Island Earth, The Thing, Destination Moon, and Rocketship X-M.
Not mentioned yet:* Best In Show* and A Mighty Wind.
On the one hand: That Thing You Do! fits the bill.
OTOH, the title song was written by Adam Schlesinger who just died of CV. And since the play the song a time or two in the movie ;), you gotta be able to get past that.
If you do watch it, get the extended edition. More Tina* and Marguerite plus a scene that tells you a bit more about Tom Hanks’ character.
- A very early role for Charlize Theron. Her first real role was in 2 Days in the Valley. Which fits the OP pretty good, if you ignore all the gore, violence, etc.
I don’t know where you’d find it, but there’s an old movie I used to love called Real Men, starring John Ritter and Jim Belushi. It was one of HBO’s favorites in the early 90s; I swear there was a point where this movie was playing *somewhere *on cable pretty much 24/7.
In many ways it’s completely stupid, but what’s brilliant about it is, it completely embraces the stupidity. Throughout absolutely ludicrous scenes that come one after another, Jim Belushi plays it completely straight the entire film, and to steal from somebody’s perfect comment on a review of the movie, this is the major reason it took me so long to realize Jim Belushi is terrible. He’s legitimately brilliant in this movie, as is Ritter, and I think this is one of the most underrated movies ever made. And as many times as I watched this movie, I don’t think that’s just fondness through endless repetition talking.