Sarah Millican
After winning the best newcomer award at the Edinburgh festival in 2008 with Sarah Millican’s Not Nice, a show inspired by her divorce, the South Shields-born comedian has toured four successful standup shows, had two Bafta nominations for her BBC2 series The Sarah Millican Television Programme and was voted queen of comedy at the 2011 British comedy awards. Her most recent show, Sarah Millican: Outsider, is out now on DVD.
1 Raising Arizona
Joel and Ethan Coen, 1987
I love the Coen brothers generally, but this is one of my favourites. So beautifully shot, so lean, so wonderfully acted by Nicolas Cage – before he had to save the world in everything – and ace Holly Hunter. Its farcical, it’s slapsticky, it’s daft, it’s brilliant. Former criminal Cage falls in love with cop Hunter. They want a baby. The local furniture magnate and his wife have just had quintuplets. Surely they wouldn’t miss one?
2 The Nutty Professor
Jerry Lewis, 1963
Not the multi-Eddie Murphy fart-tastic spectacular. Rather the far superior 1963 version with the genius of Jerry Lewis. The story is much the same but Jerry Lewis plays an uber-nerd who becomes suave sophisticate Buddy Love once he’s knocked back his concoction. Much preferred to the fat shaming of the later version. The scene with the pocket watch gets me every time. I almost forgive Jerry Lewis’s views on female comedians. Almost, but not quite.
3 Bridesmaids
Paul Feig, 2011
Every now and again, a brilliant film chock full of excellent women threatens to change things for actresses in Hollywood. Look, we can be loads of things, not just wives and victims and strippers and dead bodies! Look, women of all ages and faces have value! Of course it never takes off but we are still left with these excellent milestones of awesome. I love Bridesmaids. And everyone in it – Wiig, Rudolph, Byrne, McCarthy, Kimmy Schmidt! It’s rude, it’s very funny and has the best diarrhoea scene.
4 When Harry Met Sally…
Rob Reiner, 1989
I was a naive 15-year-old when it came out at the cinema and had no interest in a film about relationships. We only went – me, my sister and parents – because Turner & Hooch (a dog that has witnessed a murder, yes please!) had sold out. But I loved it. I don’t think I’d trust anyone who didn’t love this classic romcom. Most romcoms don’t have enough “com” but Nora Ephron was a wonderful comedy writer. My sister and I used to go to a film class where we studied films and dissected them. When the lecturer announced next week’s film was When Harry Met Sally… my sister and I stopped going.
Leave it alone.
Also picked by David Baddiel, who says:
Nora Ephron’s masterpiece, I’ve noticed, just gets better with every viewing. It’s the best ever romantic comedy, because it recognises that relationships are also about friendship. Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal have the finest chemistry ever seen on screen, and the dialogue is fantastic, particularly in the (now impossible to imagine, a producer would insist on it being cut) – long opening driving scene: “So you’re saying a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive?” “Naah, you pretty much wanna nail them too.”
David Baddiel
Born in New York and raised in London, David Baddiel first came to fame on BBC2’s The Mary Whitehouse Experience, in partnership with Rob Newman, before collaborating with Frank Skinner on projects including the hit ITV show Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned. Since then, he has written screenplays, sitcoms and stage shows, including 2016’s one-man show My Family: Not the Sitcom. A prolific novelist and children’s author, his latest book for kids, AniMalcolm, is out now (HarperCollins, £12.99).
5 Pitch Perfect
Jason Moore, 2012
I’m going to begin with a curveball. I don’t think this will be on that many other lists: those who have not seen it will assume it’s a musical (which it is), and a teenage girl’s film (which it is – I went to see it, not expecting that much, with my teenage daughter). But none of these things stop it from being brilliantly funny. Zinger for zinger, it’s up there with the best, Rebel Wilson is hilarious and the singing is accamazing. Just don’t bother with the sequel.
6 Play It Again, Sam
Herbert Ross, 1972
The perfect point of Woody Allen, just when he was stopping being a total slapstick clown but before he became too serious. The scene where he meets his blind date near the start may be the funniest in all cinema. And the final scene, where he does a speech you half-recognise, and Diane Keaton says: “That’s beautiful” and Woody says: “It’s from Casablanca – I waited my whole life to say it,” always makes me cry and laugh at the same time, a place I like to live in, comically, these days.
7 Team America: World Police
Trey Parker, 2004
When the dust has settled, we may discover that Trey Parker and Matt Stone, with The Book of Mormon, South Park and this ultra-funny potty-mouthed puppet adventure, have won comedy for all time. I started watching this with my son the other day and just wanted to keep watching it with him, but following the Aids musical sequence, his mum insisted it wasn’t appropriate. She was right, of course, but at some level I think a film this funny will always be an appropriate education for my children.
8 Borat
Larry Charles, 2006
This is No 1 for me because I can remember more laughs watching this than any other movie. And I’m not even thinking of the naked wrestling scene, which, to be honest, makes me feel a bit dizzy and sick. Sacha Baron Cohen finds in Borat a classical, eternal clown – like Homer Simpson, no matter how wrong he is, you can’t help rooting for him – but also something unbelievably modern about globalisation and ethnicity and outsider culture and America. Plus it makes antisemitism hilarious, both in the scene when Borat thinks the Jewish B&B owners have turned into cockroaches and, in the (imaginary) Kazakhstan-set opening, the extraordinary Borat-commentated Running of the Jew ceremony: “Wait, here comes Mrs Jew!!!”
Also picked by Sarah Millican, who says:
Yes, Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat is hilarious. But the day I saw it at the cinema, it wasn’t the only funny thing happening. Before the film started, my friend placed his massive tub of chocolate Ben & Jerry’s on the seat while he took off his jacket. He forgot he’d done that then threw himself fully down on to the ice-cream. I was crying with laughter before the film even started. He scraped the bulk of it off his jeans and we watched the film, knowing full well that at the end, as we left the cinema, he would look like he’d shat hisself. The film was still funnier.
Stewart Lee
Observer columnist and a stalwart of the standup circuit, Stewart Lee also had a Bafta-winning solo show that ran for four series on BBC2: Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle. Born in Shropshire, he began performing standup aged 20 and in the 90s formed a comedy duo with Richard Herring. In 2001 he co-wrote Jerry Springer: The Opera, which went on to win four Olivier awards. His current show, Stewart Lee: Content Provider, is at Leicester Square theatre until 28 January and touring throughout 2017. See stewartlee.co.uk for details.
9 Carry On Screaming!
Gerald Thomas, 1966
The League of Gentlemen all cite the same 70s TV screening of Carry On Screaming! as an influence. Because it was parodying a cinematic milieu – British 50s and 60s horror – of which I as a little boy knew nothing, it seemed utterly unanchored, occurring in an incomprehensibly surreal world of saturated-colour Frankensteins, Wolfmans and Draculas. Kenneth Williams, Fenella Fielding, Charles Hawtrey and Harry H Corbett are all superb. And, while remaining tonally accurate, the script bubbles with great stupid jokes. The banquet scene in Carry On Up the Khyber is the series’ highlight, but this is the funniest Carry On film and its Victorian gothic milieu protects it from the ravages of squeamish social revisionism, which have rightly rendered many Carry Ons unwatchable.
10 Festen
Thomas Vinterberg, 1998
The first time I saw Festen’s family reunion gone wrong I found it unremittingly bleak. Then, years later, I watched it again and laughed my head off. It’s possible to view Festen as the blackest black comedy ever made. If you thought your family parties were bad, try this one. Violent beatings, abuse revelations, racist songs and suicides are all relayed via the puritanical dictates of the Dogme 95’s manifesto in a lucid, watery, midnight sunlight. It’s the cinematic equivalent of the standup who refuses to crack a smile but gets you in the end.
11 Get Santa
Christopher Smith, 2014
A family film that pleases everyone on the sofa without being remotely patronising is a joyful thing and a relief for parents. Jim Broadbent, in a career-defining performance, is Santa, who crashes his sleigh into a shed, leaving estranged ex-con father Rafe Spall and his son to save Christmas and round up the reindeer. The scene where Santa, now in jail, talks to the prisoners about their childhoods deftly avoids sugary sentiment. Santa’s delight at meeting jailbird Warwick Davis, whom he naively mistakes for an elf, is brilliantly handled. It’s the funniest film no one has seen, except parents with young families, desperate for a moment’s respite at Christmas.
12 Who Dares Wins
Ian Sharp, 1982
Why not watch this reactionary anti‑CND action thriller while imagining it is actually a Comic Strip parody and pretending it stars Keith Allen instead of Lewis Collins? In one of the nastiest films ever made, coming off like Richard Littlejohn writing The Professionals, married SAS man Collins goes undercover with peaceniks to gallantly probe their firebrand leader (an admirably committed and oddly out of place) Judy Davis, only to murder her in cold blood later. Fairport Convention appear as some kind of beardo commie new wave band, playing a weird boingy protest music that never existed anywhere except in the imagination of the makers of this hilarious atrocity. Wine’s Oz Clarke has a small role as a man looking suspiciously through a window, but refused my requests to appear on stage when I screened Who Dares Wins in the Barbican’s Bad Film Club season.
13 The Unbelievable Truth
Hal Hartley, 1989
When I was twentysomething, Hal Hartley seemed to speak directly to me. I was a fan of his in the way I’d been a Smiths fan in my teens, eager for his next release. The Unbelievable Truth is his first and funniest film and stars the luminous, now late, Adrienne Shelly. Few of Hartley’s subsequent movies are really comedies and I really like his mid-period stuff where he experiments with movement and dance, but his sense of the absurd persists into his current, crowd-funded and criminally neglected work. In The Unbelievable Truth, small-town American parent-child conflict is realised with a kind of Chekhovian minimalism. Deadpan characters spew out lengthy standup soliloquies in crimped cul-de-sacs. Nobody works the jokes. They just lie there, asking for your consideration, indifferent to your approval.
14 Thundercrack!
Curt McDowell, 1975
McDowell took porn money to fund George Kuchar’s weird comedy noir script. Today, I don’t know if I’d stomach the hairy 70s hardcore scenes he was obliged to include, but Thundercrack! remains a work of deranged genius. Harsh lighting and ponderous piano frame six storm-tossed travellers pursued by an amorous ape, sheltering in the home of a crazy lady whose sexually deformed son is locked in the cellar. In 1994 I turned away from Kuchar’s San Francisco door, having failed to pluck up the courage to congratulate him on his ludicrous vision.
Stephen Merchant
Best known for co-creating the award-winning sitcoms The Office and Extras with Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant began his comedy career doing stand-up in his home town of Bristol. In 2010 he and Gervais co-wrote and co-directed the film Cemetery Junction and he has since worked extensively, both writing and performing, in TV and film. He has won four British comedy awards, three Baftas and an Emmy.
15 Monkey Business
Norman Z McLeod, 1931
There’s a punk-like anarchy to the Marx Brothers that I really admire and find very funny. This is my favourite of their films. It’s essentially plotless – it’s just them as stowaways on a cruise liner running amok, briefly hitting the land, then running amok again at the end. Most comedy acts try to live within the parameters of society, but the Marx Brothers are like crazy animated characters walking over furniture and over conventions. Everything is fair game for them to mock and they have no respect for anything: authority, people, danger or each other.
16 MacGruber
Jorma Taccone, 2010
I almost never laugh out loud when I’m on my own but while channel-surfing in a hotel room I happened to find this film and was in hysterics. It stars Will Forte, who’s a Saturday Night Live alumnus. He had this character on the show called MacGruber, who was essentially a pastiche of action movie hero characters, like Bruce Willis in Die Hard. The sketches were quite popular and then they made a film, which was essentially considered a flop at the time. But as time’s gone on it’s got a cult following. I’m not even a big fan of spoof movies – I always think it’s a bit easy to spoof something – but this is just giddily funny in the way that I remember Airplane! was for me as a teenager. It never seems to go for the obvious joke.
17 Meet the Parents
Jay Roach, 2000
I love a film built on a very real-life anxiety like meeting your partner’s parents. Here, the father is a former CIA agent and the young man’s got to impress him. They squeeze every drop of funny out of it; you never feel shortchanged. When we were making The Office, around the same time this film came out, we also played a lot on discomfort and awkwardness, and I think they did that really well in this film. Being given a polygraph test by your prospective father-in-law is just such a great idea for comedy.
18 The Wolf of Wall Street
Martin Scorsese, 2013
Martin Scorsese for me is one of the great underrated comedy directors. When he goes for laughs, he’s really good. I really like After Hours, and The King of Comedy makes me laugh harder every time I watch it. But The Wolf of Wall Street, though not a comedy, has one of the funniest sequences in recent history: the bit where the Jordan Belfort character, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, has taken drugs and they’ve zombified him, but he has to get home in his Lamborghini. The scene where he is trying to get down some stairs to his car is one of the best pieces of comedy I’ve ever seen. And because the stakes are raised – the FBI are on to him, he desperately has to get back – it’s just twice as funny. Then there’s that great gag where he thinks he drove back seamlessly and you discover he totalled his Lamborghini.
19 The Road to Utopia
Hal Walker, 1945
I grew up watching Bob Hope films with my dad. The rapport that he had with Bing Crosby in this film is just delicious. He’s lambasted now, seen as a sort of dinosaur of comedy, but when he first came along there was something effortless, cool and contemporary about him. He wasn’t just slapstick, he was joking about sex and modern life. He was subversive. There’s lots of looking at the camera, breaking the fourth wall and talking to the audience; all the things that we associate with postmodern comedy that came later, like Monty Python. You can see he influenced Woody Allen and I’m sure Chevy Chase and Tom Hanks, too.
20 Swingers
Doug Liman, 1996
I first saw Swingers when I was reviewing films for a magazine in Bristol. I didn’t know who any of the actors were, no one knew them at the time, it was this small, independent film. Within five or 10 minutes, I was completely enamoured of the actors and their world. It captured something about the way that men speak to each other in their early 20s, the attempts at machismo and the vulnerability behind that. I watched it again recently. It absolutely nails everything about those times when you were trying to be cooler than you were or sexier or wittier or smarter. It has so many great lines, such as when they’re in a club and it’s really going off, it’s totally wild, and someone says: “Let’s get out of here” and the other says: “Yeah, this place is dead anyway, man.”
Bridget Christie
In 2013, after years on the comedy circuit, Bridget Christie won the Edinburgh comedy award for best show with her feminist-themed A Bic for Her. Christie, now 45, studied at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts in Wandsworth and later fell into standup. Her debut book, A Book for Her, was published last year and her live show, Because You Demanded It, is at Leicester Square theatre 31 January to 11 February then touring until June. Details at bridgetchristie.co.uk.
21 Best in Show
Christopher Guest, 2000
I love this mockumentary comedy film so much I can watch it again and again. It’s laugh-out-loud funny but also profound and moving. And it has dogs in it. It follows five entrants (four couples and one man) as they travel to, and compete in, a dog show with their beloved pets. Knowing that much of the dialogue was improvised makes it all the more impressive. Eugene Levy and Jane Lynch are especially sublime, but all the performances are glorious.
22 The King of Comedy
Martin Scorsese, 1982
This black comedy stars Robert De Niro as Rupert Pupkin, an aspiring, unsuccessful standup comedian and fantasist. Pupkin, a stage-door autograph hunter, briefly meets the famous comedian and talkshow host Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis) when he is mobbed by fans. Pupkin sees this chance meeting as his “big break”. He turns up at Langford’s offices with a tape of his standup begging for a slot on the show. After constant rejections from Langford, Pupkin becomes increasingly psychopathic and eventually kidnaps him. It’s equal parts hilarious and horrifying and Sandra Bernhard is outstanding.
Also picked by Tim Key, who says:
Scorsese and De Niro have a crack at comedy here and it turns out pretty well, actually. The lengths our hero goes to to make his dreams come true are hilarious and underneath it all there’s a grim prescience of the celebrity-worshipping times we are stuck with now. One of their greatest collaborations.
23 This Is Spinal Tap
Rob Reiner, 1984
A satire on the behaviour of heavy metal bands and a parody of rock documentaries of the time, this classic follows a fictional British heavy metal band, Spinal Tap, on tour. Mainly improvised, and directed by Rob Reiner, it is a comedic masterpiece from start to finish. My family and I were obsessed with it in the 1980s. My brother, who I rarely see because he lives in Sweden, will send a text now and then just saying: “Who’s in here? No one” or: “These go to 11” or: “Do you wear black?” I’ll probably quote Spinal Tap on my deathbed.
24 The Aristocrats
Paul Provenza, 2005
The Aristocrats is a documentary comedy in which 100 comedians tell variations on the same joke that’s been told by comedians since the vaudeville era. The set-up (a family pitching an idea for an act to a talent agency) and the punchline – “We call the act The Aristocrats” – leaves the middle section free for the comedian to think of the worst, most obscene, offensive and taboo act they can imagine. I laughed so much watching this film I was exhausted and covered in sweat by the end; Gilbert Gottfried’s decision to tell the joke at the 2001 roasting of Hugh Hefner is one of the most awe-inspiring pieces of standup I’ve ever seen.
25 Men in Black
Barry Sonnenfeld, 1997
While Men in Black certainly isn’t the most hilarious film ever made, Vincent D’Onofrio as Edgar the Bug, an alien bug who crashes on to Earth and steals a farmer’s skin, is the funniest piece of physical comedy I’ve ever seen. It is astounding how in control of his body D’Onofrio is and how he manages realistically to convey a bug alien trying to get to grips with the human form. While I’m in awe of how superb and hilarious his performance is, I am also jealous I wasn’t asked to do the part.
Romesh Ranganathan
Raised in Crawley, Ranganathan was a maths teacher before becoming a comedian in 2010. He was nominated for best newcomer award for his 2013 Edinburgh show Rom Com and in 2015 presented BBC3’s Asian Provocateur, in which he explored his Sri Lankan roots. His standup show Irrational is out now on DVD and digital download.
26 Planes, Trains and Automobiles
John Hughes, 1987
Steve Martin and John Candy play two terribly matched travelling companions trying to get home for Thanksgiving. This film is the perfect odd couple road movie. It has two stunning performances from the leads and manages to transform a familiar comic set-up into something that feels completely new and exciting. The film would be brilliant even without the emotional gut punch of the finale.
27 Ghostbusters
Ivan Reitman, 1984
Three scientists and a regular fella form a team of paranormal investigators and save the world. I haven’t been able to watch the remake, less because of my misogyny and more because I cannot bear to see it tampered with. The acting is superb – Bill Murray manages to make someone bordering on predatory feel charming and hilarious and Dan Aykroyd manages the near impossible task of making puppy-dog enthusiasm funny. Harold Ramis is note perfect as Egon and Annie Potts is great as Janine. I will even forgive the one-dimensional and racially dodgy nature of Winston’s character as he has the best line in the film: “Ray, when someone asks you if you’re a god, you say yes!”
28 Bad Santa
Terry Zwigoff, 2003
Billy Bob Thornton plays a horrible, horrible conman using a job as a department store Santa to rob the stores. What I love about this film is that Thornton is so completely unlikable and horrid, yet you still root for him and the inevitable turnaround of attitude doesn’t feel too saccharine. The bickering between him and his elf (Tony Cox) is achingly funny and the relationship with the child he befriends is beautifully and hilariously played out. I wasn’t too keen on the bizarre scene involving an Indian man struggling with his sexuality who starts shouting at Santa in a car park, but that aside, it’s pretty much perfect.
29 Coming to America
John Landis, 1988
This film is Eddie Murphy at his very best, playing a range of characters, and not in a rubbish way like in The Nutty Professor. Arsenio Hall is excellent as his right-hand man and James Earl Jones nails comedy with gravitas. The film is littered with catchphrases – “The royal penis is clean, your Highness”, “Freeze, you diseased rhinoceros pizzle” – and there is a call-back to Trading Places that blew my mind. It has some issues with stereotyping, of course, but if you can forgive that, it really is testament to Murphy’s comic talents and almost made me forgive him for making Norbit.
30 Dumb and Dumber
Peter and Bobby Farrelly, 1994
Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels play two idiots. On paper, I should hate this film, a story of a quest undertaken by two nuclear-level morons, but it is brilliant. The Farrellys say that the script sat on their shelf for years, when they would occasionally bring it out and read it to friends. They knew bits weren’t funny enough when they would rush through them to get to good bits, so they went back to those bits and reworked them. This development process was obviously effective, as the gag rate on the film is astonishing. When Harry had to deal with a failing toilet at the beginning of a date I had to pause the film because I was laughing so much. It is lowbrow for sure, but excellent. Shame the sequel was so breathtakingly dire.
Tim Key
Brought up in Cambridgeshire, actor and poet Tim Key won the 2009 Edinburgh comedy award for The Slutcracker and has since toured several acclaimed standup shows. He also works in theatre, TV, radio and film, including as poet-in-residence on Newswipe and as Sidekick Simon to Alan Partridge in Alpha Papa. He is currently starring in Art at the Old Vic, London SE1, until 18 February.
31 Safety Last!
Fred C Newmeyer and Sam Taylor, 1923
I used to have that iconic image on my wall of Harold Lloyd dangling off that clock. I never really considered what the feature film it came from might be like until a couple of years ago. Well, the feature is called Safety Last! and it’s phenomenal. A sweet, sweet tale about a young man trying to earn money in the big city to send back to his fiance. Working hard. Being sneaky. And ultimately hanging off a clock in the type of death-defying stunt that was Lloyd’s trademark. Wonderful film. Even better than the poster.
32 The Apartment
Billy Wilder, 1960
The little guy, getting hosed down by the alpha males at the office, as they borrow the keys to his apartment and romance their mistresses in there. Poor old Jack Lemmon. He plays the underdog to a T, bumbling, put upon, kicking his heels in the streets as these fiends enjoy his central heating. And, ultimately, Lemmon winning. It’s inch-perfect stuff – laughter through tears.
33 Nuts in May
Mike Leigh, 1976
I love Nuts in May. A simple tale about a couple of well-meaning campers, determined to have a nice time in the country but thwarted by that classic fly in the ointment: “other people”. Alison Steadman and Roger Sloman are breathtaking as the self-righteous holidayers. You watch grinning as they plod around Corfe Castle and sing their songs and Steadman says: “It’s not fair, Keith”, then, whoops, your smile evaporates as it all goes a bit pear‑shaped.
Also picked by Aisling Bea, who says:
I came late to Nuts in May. I saw it on the BBC as an adult already working in comedy and it just felt so ahead of its time in terms of its underplayed comedy performances, which we would later see in The Office. It’s such a glorious exploration of character and British manners, especially by Alison Steadman, who I love. I think Mike Leigh left with some actors who have nothing to do but put up with each other is Mike Leigh at his best.
34 Man Bites Dog
Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel and Benoît Poelvoorde, 1992
This is that classic comedy staple, the Belgian serial killer mockumentary. A mockumentary before mockumentaries had been done to death, this is a jet-black comedy about a skeleton crew of Belgian students following a murderer as he kills people and disposes of bodies. It’s diabolical stuff and gets more appalling and funnier the more blood is spilled and the more our killer, Benoît Poelvoorde, spews his philosophies and opinions about the world and about the weight necessary to keep a corpse on the bed of a canal.
35 Carry On at Your Convenience
Gerald Thomas, 1971
There has to be a Carry On in my list. In terms of laughter coaxed out of me these films win hands down. Largely because I was a little boy and I couldn’t believe what was going on on our telly, but also because I remember the whole family laughing. Also, this scoops up some of the great comedians of the day, Williams, James, Jacques and my favourite, Bernard Bresslaw, plodding about with his high-pitched voice.
Aisling Bea
Born in County Kildare, Ireland, Aisling Bea is an actor, comedian and writer. After training at Lamda she moved into comedy and in 2012, won the So You Think You’re Funny? award for new standups at the Edinburgh festival, only the second female winner in its 25-year history. The following year, she was nominated as best newcomer in the Edinburgh comedy awards for her debut solo show. She has appeared in the sitcoms Dead Boss and Trollied and this year joined the cast of BBC2 drama The Fall (series 3 out now on DVD).
36 Happy Gilmore
Dennis Dugan, 1996
There are people who will crucify me for putting an Adam Sandler movie in my list, but the pure silliness of Happy Gilmore gave a teenage me such joy. It is one of the few movies that I have re-watched. There is a sense with all the actors, particularly Christopher McDonald playing baddy character Shooter McGavin, that he is playing his performance to make the crew laugh and that he himself is on the cusp of laughing and not getting through the take.
37 Sisters
Jason Moore, 2015
I went to watch this Tina Fey and Amy Poehler funstravaganza last Christmas with my mother and sister to get us out of the house. Its premise isn’t very complicated – they throw a party – but what I love about simple plots is that they give the actors time to play and explore the characters; even all the side characters are hilarious. My favourite is Greta Lee, who plays Hae-Won, who owns what could have been an “Asian stereotype character”.
38 Big Business
Jim Abrahams, 1988
This is from Bette Midler’s comedy heyday. I’m a big fan of her acting. It is an 80s movie that myself and my sister would have gotten out on VHS in the 90s. The premise is as old as time: a mixed-up pair of twins swapped at birth, town mouse and country mouse. Midler and Lily Tomlin each get to play very different sets of twins and you can practically feel their enjoyment and delight about getting two different parts in one movie buzzing through the screen.
39 SuperBob
Jon Drever, 2015
One of my best friends, Brett Goldstein, is the writer and star of this movie, yet I still managed to be just an audience member and got lost watching it, which is often hard to do with friends’ work. It is so bloody funny and warm! It is a romcom superhero movie and even though the ideas have not reinvented the wheel, it feels original. It is one of my favourite films that I’ve seen this decade.
40 Mrs Doubtfire
Chris Columbus, 1993
Robin Williams was such a huge influence on me. This is a family movie, but if you rewatch the film as an adult, his performance has layers that are revealed the more life stages you go through. It seems particularly pertinent now, seeing the masks Williams uses to amuse and hide behind in the movie, and knowing the sadness he experienced while making so many people laugh.
Alan Davies
In 1991, aged 25, Alan Davies was named best young comic by Time Out magazine. Now 50, the Essex-born comedian, actor and writer is best known for his role as BBC1’s amateur sleuth Jonathan Creek and as a panellist on the quiz show QI. His latest standup show, Alan Davies – Little Victories, is out now on DVD and download.
41 Monty Python’s Life of Brian
Terry Jones, 1979
Graham Chapman was probably my favourite Python but at different moments they were all hilarious – that was the great thing about them. I think this is out on its own as the funniest, cleverest and most interesting film. It came out when I was about 13 and a lot of us were quoting from it. It’s such a good idea, so brilliantly executed, and still holds up completely as quite an important piece of work as well as being a laugh-out-loud funny film. When Brian addresses a huge crowd and says: “You are all individuals” and one person shouts: “I’m not!”, I still think that’s the best joke that’s been written.
42 Animal House
John Landis, 1978
This is a kind of superior frat house comedy made by the National Lampoon magazine people, so there’s some quite sophisticated comic minds behind it. At one point, they decide to have a toga party. They’re in real trouble, the dean of the university is going to shut them down, they’ve got terrible grades, they’re having unruly, drunken parties and one of them says: “Well there’s only one thing to do at a time like this” and someone else says: “Toga party!” When I was 16, my parents went away and my friends and I had a toga party – we propped up a portable record player in the corner and danced around in the garage wearing sheets! I absolutely loved that film.
43 Jackass: The Movie
Jeff Tremaine, 2002
This is the film I’ve laughed most loudly at. I like Jackass, Johnny Knoxville and all the original gang. There’s a scene in it where they go to a posh golf course and hide in the bushes with an air horn and every time this guy goes to hit a shot they let the air horn off. There was a sort of raucous atmosphere in the cinema in a way that you never get – it was joyous. There’s something that goes past your analytical mind, past your brain almost; something primeval about the laughter, howling with laughter at the stupidity of these people.
44 Broadway Danny Rose
Woody Allen, 1984
It’s so difficult to choose one Woody Allen film, but I think this is my favourite. It’s about a theatrical agent, shot in black and white, and all of his acts are terrible. As soon as any one of them gets good they leave him for a bigger agent, but he’s incredibly loyal to them and he believes in them. It’s got Mia Farrow in it and there’s a scene where she’s telling him about someone who got shot in the eyes and he says: “He’s blind?” and she says: “Dead.” I’ve been saying that for years. He’s the greatest to me in terms of comic films, he’s incomparable.
45 Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid
Carl Reiner, 1982
It’s very hard to have a list of my favourite funny films that doesn’t have a Steve Martin film. This is a black-and-white spoof of a 50s, private detective film. Steve Martin’s funny all the way through it. He’s not doing the wild and crazy, wacky nutcase, he’s doing this kind of Bogart, gumshoe thing. He makes a fool of himself but tries to style it out all the time and it’s really funny. It’s something I watched over and over with my friends when I was young.
Andi Osho
After a career in TV production, east Londoner Andi Osho turned to acting and comedy in the mid 00s. She made her solo Edinburgh festival debut in 2010 with her show Afroblighty and regularly appears on Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow and Live at the Apollo. Her latest film role is Emma in the supernatural horror Lights Out, which is out now on DVD.
46 Back to the Future
Robert Zemeckis, 1985
I was infatuated with Michael J Fox for a solid two years, so that’s probably partly why this is on the list. But it’s also brilliantly structured, the characters are so well drawn and it’s full of well-written gags. One of the best is when, quite near the beginning, they set up that Marty’s Uncle Joey is in prison and then when Marty goes back in time, he meets his Uncle Joey as a baby in a crib on the floor and whispers to him: “Better get used to these bars, kid.” But there’s so much good slapstick too, like when Marty plays guitar and gets catapulted across the room.
47 Trading Places
John Landis, 1983
I’ve watched this film so many times. It’s from a bygone era when Eddie Murphy was still making funny films, so I hold it very dear to my heart. Dan Aykroyd is an amazing comic actor as well. He plays this snooty, entitled rich guy who unwittingly swaps lives with Eddie Murphy’s homeless conman. Dan Aykroyd does what some people find hard in comedy: he totally commits to the absurdity of the role, so he makes it funnier and more ridiculous. When he gets arrested, it’s the worse thing that could happen to somebody like him, but when Frank Oz, the police officer, is going through the stuff in his wallet and he mispronounces La bohème, he corrects him. It’s like, he’s just found drugs on you and you’re worrying about the fact that he’s mispronounced the name of an opera!
48 Shaun of the Dead
Edgar Wright, 2004
Shaun of the Dead combines my two favourite things: comedy and zombies; I’m a huge fan of The Walking Dead. What I like about those sorts of films is what such extreme situations make people become; they’re not really about the zombies, they’re about people forced to act purely on instinct rather than making decisions. Then to put a comic spin on that is just perfect for me. Simon Pegg is great as the everyman; he’s completely relatable as this person who is going nowhere in his job, he’s on autopilot in his life, so when the zombie apocalypse starts he doesn’t even notice. Nick Frost and Simon Pegg are such a great combination, they’re always fun to watch together. But I didn’t like the follow-ups as much.
49 The Truman Show
Peter Weir, 1998
This film holds up a really good mirror to the highly individualised world we now live in, with our relationship to social media and how we interact with the world. It’s central theme is “This world isn’t what you think it is” and I love that the lead is a great comic actor, Jim Carrey, in a kind of serious role but with comic moments. One of my favourite scenes is when Truman goes into a building and they haven’t yet put the facade up so he sees the backstage area and they quickly cover it up. The comedy comes out of the truth of the situation that he’s in.
50 Jerry Maguire
Cameron Crowe, 1996
This was such a different role for Tom Cruise – a successful sports agent who falls from the top – and we didn’t really know who Renée Zellweger was at that time. I just love how quotable this film is. There are probably about 20 I could recite for you: “You complete me”; “Show me the money”; and “I love black people!” But that line from Cuba Gooding Jr as Rod Tidwell about Jerry having sex with a single mother – “a real man wouldn’t shoplift the pootie from a single mom” – is just brilliant.
Comments (…)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion