Our Mr. Brooks Tops the Hit Parade: The 10 Best Comedies
May 15 '07
The Bottom Line Don't care for these ten? Feel free to leave a comment.
There are comedies and then there are black comedies ("Dr. Strangelove," "M*A*S*H"). I've not included those, as that's a separate and distinct sub-category. Also, no Mel Brooks. Funny guy, but "Blazing Saddles," "Young Frankenstein," "High Anxiety," they're strictly spoofs. I realize too that Albert Brooks is well represented here. What can I say? He cracks me up. Plus he's underrated, so I'd be remiss not to call your attention to him.
Ten comedies I'm fond of...
10. The Long, Long Trailer (1954)
Desi and Lucy, in a film which encompasses two of my biggest fears: marriage and hauling an enormous trailer. Both are difficult propositions, as newlywed Arnaz isn't up to the task. Lucy's the star comic, but it's Desi (the straight man) who gets the biggest laughs.
9. Sleeper (1973)
The owner of a Greenwich Village health store (Woody Allen) is put on deep freeze following an unsuccessful ulcer operation and revived 200 years in the future. The future, he soon discovers, is similar to the police state that George Orwell envisioned in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Unlike Orwell's dystopia, however, "Sleeper" is funny from start to finish (the late film critic Pauline Kael called it "a modern slapstick-comedy classic"). Favorite bits include Woody battling a Blob-like pudding, "The Orgasmatron," a confrontation with a huge banana peel, and Allen, a newly recruited revolutionary, holding what's left of The Leader (a nose) hostage. Co-starring Diane Keaton, Allen's favorite leading lady.
8. Bringing Up Baby (1938).
Classic screwball comedy from Howard Hawks, pairing Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. He's an absent-minded paleontologist and she's a ditsy socialite. He's engaged; she's got a crush on him. Throw a pet leopard named Baby into the mix and you get something that's archetypal and often imitated (e.g., Bogdanovich's What's Up, Doc?, Madonna's Who's That Girl?), typically with disappointing results.
7. Modern Romance (1981)
A Los Angeles film editor (Albert Brooks) can't stand being separated from his girlfriend (Kathryn Harrold). So why then did he initiate the break-up? Brooks is eager to latch onto anything that will make him feel better, be it Quaaludes, vitamins, or jogging. The funniest of these scenes involves a sporting-goods salesman (played by Brooks's brother Bob Einstein). Is Brooks a "serious" runner? No, but he'll drop a bundle in a misguided effort to look like one. Features cameos by James L. Brooks (no relation), George Kennedy and Meadowlark Lemon.
6. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)
There's a large amount of cash buried under a "big W," which involves an ever-widening cast of characters (most of whom are played by comics). The principals include an edible seaweed manufacturer (Milton Berle) and his bossy mother-in-law (Ethel Merman), a dentist (Sid Caesar) and his wife (Edie Adams), two buddies traveling in a convertible (Mickey Rooney, Buddy Hackett), and a truck driver hauling furniture (Jonathan Winters). This group can't decide on how to split the loot (a complicated discussion of "shares" ensues), so the race is on and it's "every man for himself." Others who later join in the fun: Dick Shawn as a mama's-boy beach bum; a greedy, conniving Phil Silvers; and Peter Falk as a suspicious cabbie. In one scene Shawn's so self-involved he can't be bothered to pick up a ringing telephone ("Do you hear bells baby?"). It's long (unbearably so, for some), but there's numerous amusing moments, and plenty of memorable quotes.
5. Real Life (1979)
A director (Albert Brooks, playing himself) attempts to film a typical American family as they go about their daily lives. The problem, as Brooks the real director well understands, is the intrusive nature of filming. How do you capture "real life" when the act of filming alters that reality? Aside from "Candid Camera," you can't. People act differently when they know they're being filmed. But it's a funny idea (failure is always good for a laugh), and Brooks is not blind to the many comic possibilities.
4. The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1943)
How did they slip this one past the Hays Office? A small-town girl (Betty Hutton) gets pregnant, accidentally, by a soldier whose name she can't recall and a 4-H boob (Eddie Bracken) feels obliged to help her out. There's some tiptoeing around the backstory (what the director, Preston Sturges, labelled "Subject A"), but we know what all the hullabaloo's about.
3. The Big Lebowski (1998)
Released around the time of the Monica Lewinsky scandal (Lewinsky, Lebowski?), this may be the funniest movie yet from the preeminent Coen brothers. Jeffrey Lebowski (Jeff Bridges), or "the Dude" as he prefers to be called, is a laid-back pothead from Los Angeles, willfully unemployed, fond of bowling and White Russians. A soiled rug and talk of "drawing a line in the sand" (note the gulf war vernacular) set the plot in motion. It's a complex plot, similar in some ways to Howard Hawks's The Big Sleep, only funnier. Indeed it's "stupefying," to quote the grizzled cowboy narrator (Sam Elliott).
2. Annie Hall (1977)
Perhaps Woody Allen's best. A bittersweet movie about relationships and how they need to constantly move forward. Otherwise they die, like sharks. The principal characters are charmingly insecure and the film's chock full of wonderful Allenisms (like the shark metaphor). Diane Keaton is kooky and endearing and, for a time, a fashion trendsetter. There's real chemistry between the two. I love the scene with the lobsters loose in the kitchen ("We should have gotten steaks, 'cause they don't have legs"). Or the scene where Keaton calls him at three o'clock in the morning to kill a spider in the bathroom ("Hey, don't squish it, and after it's dead, flush it down the toilet, okay? And flush it a couple o' times.") Marshall Brickman (The Manhattan Project) co-wrote this one, and it's all very funny in a whiny Seinfeld sort of way.
1. Lost in America (1985).
Albert Brooks again. An L.A. executive (Brooks) quits his job and convinces his wife (Julie Hagerty) to do the same when an anticipated promotion doesn't materialize. The couple liquidate everything, buy a Winnebago, and "drop out" of society. America, look out. In that they have a substantial amount of cash and traveler's checks to finance the adventure, things look bright...at least initially. Optimistic once they hit the highway, Brooks gives the thumbs-up sign to a biker who promptly flips him off. Yep, this is the world they're up against. Then, too, they make a major mistake when they choose Las Vegas as their first stop. Turns out the wife has a serious gambling addiction (unknown to either of them), and promptly loses most of their cash on the roulette tables. Ouch. Brooks, a former ad guy, makes a pitch to try to get the money back, but that, as you might expect, goes nowhere (Gary Marshall plays the casino manager). Indeed the landscape looks bleak: shots of the barren desert outside of Vegas as the weight of recent events sink in. Brooks favors large symbols and Hoover Dam deftly captures the bottled-up feelings within his character. Soon, however, the internal dam bursts and we get the hilarious "nest egg" lecture: "You know what I'd like to do? I'd like to give you a small punishment before lunch and I'd like to have you write a thousand times on the pavement, I lost the nest egg. Come on, say it first. Say it five hundred times, I lost the nest egg, I lost the nest egg, I lost the nest egg..." Co-written with Monica Johnson, this is a very funny film, perhaps the director's best (although he rarely misses), and one that earns its place on a list of great comedies.
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Member: William Jones
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Tarantino's strategy: "...have the characters speak at right angles to the action..." - Roger Ebert
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