Best comedies of all time

Monty Python and the Holy Grail▲ Rising

Knights who say 'Ni,' a killer rabbit, and a limbless Black Knight insisting it's 'just a flesh wound' — this is the movie that proved you could build a feature-length comedy out of pure, gleeful anti-logic. Every quotable bit became a cultural password, and it basically invented the absurdist-sketch-comedy-as-cinema genre that everyone from Airplane! to Wet Hot American Summer has been riffing on since.

Year: 1975Director: Gilliam & JonesIMDb: 8.2/10Oscars: 0

added by IJRin 4 rankings

Back to the Future▲ Rising

Marty McFly accidentally seduces his own mother and has to fix the space-time continuum before he erases himself from existence — a premise so absurd it should collapse under its own weight, yet it never stops being funny while also being a flawless piece of screenwriting. It's the rare comedy that's also a perfect movie, which is why it belongs near the top of any list, not just the funny ones.

Year: 1985Director: Robert ZemeckisIMDb: 8.5/10Oscars: 1

added by IJRin 9 rankings

Fargo▲ Rising

Marge Gunderson, seven months pregnant and unfailingly polite, dismantles a wood-chipper murder plot while eating gas station food, and the joke is that Minnesota nice is both a punchline and a superpower. The Coens proved you could make something this deadpan, this violent, and this hilarious all at once, redefining what 'comedy' could even mean.

Year: 1996Director: Coen BrothersIMDb: 8.1/10Oscars: 2

added by IJRin 12 rankings

Groundhog Day▲ Rising

Bill Murray's smug weatherman relives February 2nd in Punxsutawney over and over until repetition becomes purgatory, then therapy, then grace — the high concept birthed a whole subgenre of time-loop stories, but none matched its balance of cynicism and warmth. It's the comedy that snuck existentialism in through the back door and still made you laugh at Ned Ryerson.

Year: 1993Director: Harold RamisIMDb: 8/10Oscars: 0

added by IJRin 7 rankings

The Big Lebowski▲ Rising

The Dude's rug gets peed on, and from that single indignity spirals a shaggy-dog noir about bowling, nihilists, and a millionaire's severed toe — a movie that was a box-office shrug in 1998 and is now a full-blown religion (literally, there's a church). Its greatness is that it doesn't even try to make sense; it just abides, and audiences have spent 25+ years abiding right along with it.

Year: 1998Director: Coen BrothersIMDb: 8.1/10Oscars: 0

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Airplane!

'Surely you can't be serious.' 'I am serious — and don't call me Shirley.' The ZAZ team fired jokes at a machine-gun pace, stacking puns, visual gags, and deadpan disaster-movie parody on top of each other until the genre itself was rubble, inventing the template every spoof comedy since has chased and rarely caught.

Year: 1980Director: Zucker-Abrahams-ZuckerIMDb: 7.7/10Oscars: 0

added by IJRin 5 rankings

When Harry Met Sally▼ Falling

'I'll have what she's having' turned a deli into a punchline for the ages and cemented the fake-orgasm scene as rom-com legend, but the real trick is how the film argues, with Nora Ephron's razor wit, that friendship and love are the same conversation stretched over years. It didn't just define the genre — it set the terms every rom-com since has had to negotiate with.

Year: 1989Director: Rob ReinerIMDb: 7.7/10Oscars: 0

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Everything Everywhere All at Once▼ Falling

A laundromat owner fights across the multiverse with hot-dog fingers and googly eyes glued to her forehead, and somehow it's also the most devastating movie about mother-daughter love in years — the sheer tonal whiplash, from raccoon-chef gags to a father's quiet acceptance, is the whole point. It swept the Oscars and proved audiences will follow absurdity anywhere if the heart underneath is real.

Year: 2022Director: DanielsIMDb: 7.8/10Oscars: 7

added by IJRin 4 rankings

My Cousin Vinny▼ Falling

A Brooklyn lawyer who's never won a case cross-examines a witness about grits-cooking times and cracks a murder trial wide open — Joe Pesci's fish-out-of-water fury and Marisa Tomei's Oscar-winning motor-mouth testimony turned a courtroom comedy into something genuinely airtight. It's the sleeper that proves broad comedy and real craft aren't opposites.

Year: 1992Director: Jonathan LynnIMDb: 7.6/10Oscars: 1

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Once Upon a Time in Hollywood▼ Falling

Rick Dalton flamethrowers a Nazi in a movie-within-a-movie while Cliff Booth casually beats up Bruce Lee, and Tarantino turns 1969 Hollywood into a wistful hangout comedy that rewrites the Manson murders into a happy ending. It's funnier and shaggier than people give it credit for, a comedy of male vanity and fading stardom disguised as a period epic.

Year: 2019Director: Quentin TarantinoIMDb: 7.6/10Oscars: 2

added by IJRin 4 rankings

Superbad▼ Falling

Seth and Evan trying to buy alcohol for a party becomes an odyssey through fake IDs named 'McLovin,' period-blood jokes, and cop-car joyrides, but under the raunch is one of the most honest movies about teenage friendship ending as adulthood begins. It relaunched the raunchy-teen-comedy and made McLovin a Halloween costume forever.

Year: 2007Director: Greg MottolaIMDb: 7.6/10Oscars: 0

added by IJRin 4 rankings

Anchorman▼ Falling

Ron Burgundy stumbles into a bear pit, plays jazz flute, and unleashes 'I love scotch, scotchy scotch scotch' — Will Ferrell and Adam McKay built a movie almost entirely out of quotable non-sequiturs and somehow it became the defining comedy voice of the 2000s. Its anarchic, improv-heavy style rewired what studio comedies were allowed to sound like.

Year: 2004Director: Adam McKayIMDb: 7.1/10Oscars: 0

added by IJRin 2 rankings