Popular Culture, Social Commentary

What Movie?

28 Comments

…makes you laugh the hardest?

I don’t know how to answer that question, because I think it’s a time-dependent variable. I know what movies made me laugh hard in the past, though I couldn’t quantify it, but I’m not sure I’d find them as funny today, either because they would have lost something in rewatching, or because I’ve grown, or at least changed, over time, and have a different sense of humor. Obviously, something you might have found hilarious as a child might leave you cold today. On the other hand, you might have seen something as a child that your parents laughed at uproariously, but that you didn’t get. I think that a lot of young people miss a lot of humor in The Simpsons because they aren’t familiar with the cultural referents.

But just off the top of my head, I recall Blazing Saddles, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Dr. Strangelove, The Wrong Box and other Peter Sellers movies as side splitters at the time. Also Woody Allen and Steve Martin.

28 thoughts on “What Movie?”

  1. 1- A Funny Thing Happened on the Way To The Forum.
    2- Snatch.
    3- Young Frankenstein.
    4- The Producers (the original, not that abomination with the gay guy and the other gay guy).
    5- Pretty much anything by the Marx Brothers.

  2. Kentucky Fried Movie is uneven and dated in parts, but the “Catholic High School Girls in Trouble” trailer is classic and “A Fistful of Yen” has gags that hold up well today, like this one:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g09GtnWdBjc

    Enter the Dragon wasn’t intended to be a comedy but is side-splittingly funny if watched immediately after “A Fistful of Yen”.

  3. “Roxanne”, where Steve Martin was a latter-day Cyrano de Bergerac had me in stiches with the antics of the rag-tag volunteer fire department that Steve Martin was trying to whip into shape. Something about Steve Martin having a scene where he is getting his unrequited love interest Darryl Hannah to acknowledge that he exists and the goings on of the firefighters in the background on the other side of the window.

  4. Heh. I recall a painful date in college, where we went to see Dr Strangelove and I was the *only* person in the theater who realized that the movie was a comedy. She must have thought I was a psychotic freak.

  5. “Blazing Saddles” and most of the Marx Brothers’ movies.

    “Young Frankenstein” was a scream, too. I thought we’d get ejected from the theater because we laughed so hard at “He’d have to have an enormous schwanz stuecke.” I’m thinking the other people didn’t understand the German, though I thought you could get the gist of it no matter your language knowledge. ;-p

  6. “A Night at the Opera” – the Marx Brothers
    “Raising Arizona” – the Coen brothers
    “The Pink Panther Strikes Again” – Peter Sellers dismounting the parallel bars into the stairwell (that one clip, which can be found on Youtube) was enough laughter for five movies
    “The Jerk” – Steve Martin
    “Hot Fuzz” — Simon Pegg, Nick Frost

  7. 3 of the 4 he had on his list were ridiculous. Superbad was mildly funny.

    After Blazing Saddles I have to go with The Pink Panther. The Jerk ranks up there too.

  8. Up in smoke and American Grafitti and Animal House are ones that had me gasping for breath and nearly falling off my seat in the theatre. Spinal Tap also comes pretty close, but I think you have to have been a working musician to really get it.

  9. Most anything directed by Mel Brooks…..Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, the 12 chairs, high anxiety, etc

  11. Young Frankenstein and Roxanne are both on my list. As far as more recent films go, I’d say Anchorman takes the cake. I hated it the first time I saw it, but once I realized even its flimsy plot was a parody of comedies with “serious romantic subplots,” I grew to love it.

  12. I busted a gut with…

    Home Alone I
    Oh Brother Where Art Thou
    Dumb & Dumber
    All the old Pink Panther movies

  16. Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles… the absolutely adolescent bathroom humor campfire scene in Blazing Saddles had me laughing so hard in the theater that my sides hurt. I was an adolescent at the time, so what can I say?
    The Mr. Creosote scene in Meaning of LIfe was also one of the best scenes ever.

  18. ‘Animal House’. ‘Trading Places’. ‘Meaning of Life’. Any Pink Panther with Peter Sellers. Funny nobody seemed to mention ‘Ghostbusters’. I thought the scene with the Land Rover stuck in the tree in ‘The Gods Must Be Crazy’ was a scream.

    I recently caught ‘Something about Mary’ late night. Pretty funny. In fact, Ben Stiller is always good for some laughs. If you never say ‘Envy’, you should check it out.

  21. I remember Roxanne bringing me to tears from laughter, but that was so long ago. But recently, I have to go with bbbeard on “Tropic Thunder”, particularly the “player” scene with Tom Cruise.

  22. Blazing Saddles, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Some Like it Hot, The Great Dictator, Dr. Strangelove.

  23. “The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming” was really funny, too.
    And I agree about “The Produxcers” (original) and “Pink Panther” (original) and “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” as well…

  24. Several good movies are already listed above. I’d like to add “Airplane” to the list. I’ve seldom laughed so hard watching anything. I also laughed a lot the first time I watched “Shrek.”

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