NeoMartin's Ten Best Comedy Movies
Jul 31 '01 (Updated Aug 02 '01)
The Bottom Line There have to be other comedies out there I could write about for this list, but since I could't think of them they aren't here. That cannot be a coincidence.
Other lists will have different movies on them, and that's OK. Below is my list.
10. Raising Arizona -- One of the better known movies by the Coen Brothers, Raising Arizona stars Nicolas Cage as the reforemed thief and husband to his arresting officer who are unable to have children so they decide to steal one from the Arizona family who have four babies. John Goodman plays an erudite bank robber who wants Nicolas Cage's Hy character to join him for one more score. Along the way many unexpected things happen. Randall "Tex" Cobb makes a special appearance as a biker from the Apocalypse who tracks missing babies.
9. Scary Movie -- Similar to Airplane!, this movie takes many well-known scenes and lines from many horror movies and twists them before combining them into forming the complete Scary Movie movie. Marlon Wayans steals scenes as "Shorty," and the rest of the cast contributes a few yuks. Carmen Electra the actress gets to make fun of Carmen Electra the actress within the first few minutes of the movie in a takeoff of Drew Barrymore's short role in Scream. Additionally, Scary Movie wated no time in incorporating scenes very similar to the kung fu sequence from The Matrix.
8. Airplane! -- Perhaps the best known of the parody movies, Leslie Nielsen, Robert Hays, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Lloyd Bridges, and Julie Haggerty headline this takeoff on the Airport movies of the 1970s. Along the way we run into many stars making cameo appearances and lose track of sight gags and physical comedy scenes. The Naked Gun movies starring Leslie Neilsen and the Hot Shots! movies with Lloyd Bridges and Charlie Sheen follow the formula established by Airplane!.
7. Coneheads -- Another product from Saturday Night Live, Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin reprise their roles as agents sent to Earth from the planet Remulak on a reconissance mission to determine when Earth can be invaded. Their mission goes very wrong, so they spend many years on Earth as aliens from France living in the United States and assimilating into American culture. Future Saturday Night Live stars Chris Farley and David Spade appear throughout the movie, as do future stars of Seinfeld Jason Alexander and Michael Richards. Many other notable actors appear in this movie.
6. My Cousin Vinny -- Two nitwit college kids from New York City face the death penalty in a Southern municipality which they discover to be a speed trap, and their only hope for being set free is a newly-minted lawyer from correspondence school named Vinny (a relative of one of the defendants). Ralph Macchio is one of the defendants, Joe Pesci is his cousin Vinny, Marisa Tomei is Vinny's neglected girlfriend who wants Vinny to help her start their family, and Fred Gwynne is judge presiding over the case. Fred Gwynne is the perfect opposite to Joe Pesci, Marisa Tomei is discovered to be the defendant's Secret Weapon, and Joe Pesci's Vinny sees the world unlike most people (for which the defendant's are grateful in the end). Marisa Tomei earned a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her role as the impatient girlfriend for Vinny who helps Vinny win his case.
5. Ferris Bueller's Day Off -- Perhaps Matthew Broderick's signature work, he plays Ferris Bueller, a high school student who is as creative as MacGyver when it comes to finding ways to fool everyone who tries to catch him, and he does anything and everything just to spend a nice day at Wrigley Field watching his beloved Chicago Cubs. Ferris Bueller's Day Off is also the best movie to make us of The Beatles song "Twist and Shout."
4. The Blues Brothers -- Based on the musical band fronted by John Belushi (Jake Blues) and Dan Aykroyd (Elwood Blues) during their Staurday Night Live days, this movie has become a cult classic. The brothers are reunited when Jake is released from prison and Elwood picks him up in a "cop car." The brothers visit the Catholic orphanage where they were raised and where Cab Calloway educated then with the greats from Blues music history. The Blues Brothers must bring The Band back together for one more gig in order to raise money for the tax collectors of Cook County, Illinois to pay unpaid taxes owed by the orphanage because ther are "on a mission from God." Special appearances by Cab Calloway, James Brown, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, John Candy, and Carrie Fisher highlight this movie. The Blues Brothers leave much destruction in their wake, and "the use of excessive force is authorized."
3. The Jerk -- One of the best rags-to-riches-to-rags movies ever made. Steve Martin is Navin Johnson, the white son of a black sharecropper family who leaves to see the world and make it big (only to go downhill), and Bernadette Peters is teh woman with character great enough to marry him. Some scenes and situations are hysterical.
2. National Lampoon's Animal House -- This movie about fraternity life in a 1960s college town boasts so many memorable scenes (a horse dying of a heart attack in the dean's office; The Food Fight; Homecoming), lines ("Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through college, son"; Bluto's rousing speech; "May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"), and actors (John Belushi, John Vernon, Nancy Allen, Donald Sutherland, Kevin "Six Degrees" Bacon, Tom Hulce-- Mozart himself in Amadeus, and many more) that it should be considered a minor league system for future actors preparing to hit the big-time.
1. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World -- This is one of the greatest ensemble films made, and it features perhaps the largest collection of comedic actors and entertainers ever assembled. Each thread of the movie can be extracted to make a smaller movie which can stand on its own, and when combined to make the movie the combination of storylines is side-splitting. Many of the improbable stunts seen are unbelievable given their contexts and the characters involved (Buddy Hackett and Mickey Rooney cluelessly flying a small plane, Sid Caesar trying to escape from the basement of a hardware store, Jonathan Winters on a seek-and-destroy mission to find the man who destroyed his business, et cetera). The search for hidden money brings about many incredible journeys, and we see reasonable people become cash-obsessed loons before our very eyes.
Honorable mention has to go to Slapshot, Dr. Strangelove, Hot Shots!, Caddyshack, Back to School, Crocodile Dundee, Spaceballs, The Waterboy, Throw Mamma from the Train, and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.
----------
If the comments about Number 1 look familiar, that is because I took them from the opinion I wrote, 10 Best Movies Ever According to NeoMartin at [http://www.epinions.com/content_1889116292/tk_~CB003.1.2].
While I listed Dr. Strangelove on that list, I did not list it here because I considered it a satire, not a comedy in the way the movies here are comedies.
----------
Once again, I must say that my list features only those movies I have actually seen. I can't say anything about movies which-- while they may be great-- I haven't seen.
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
neomartin
|
|
Location: New York, NY, USA
Reviews written: 117
Trusted by: 9 members
About Me:
Single Native New Yorker, 34, who returned to NYC after several years in NJ.
|
|
|
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.