I want to watch a funny movie but I feel like compared to TV shows, movies rarely make me really laugh. I've cried laughing watching shows like I Think You Should Leave but most movies I can honestly say I've only ever mustered a chortle or snort every now and then. What is the funniest movie(s), to you? For me, just off the cuff, I'd probably have to say Airplane!
The Gods Must Be Crazy is probably really racist and terrible, i haven't seen it in 20 years, but 2 hours of a San guy going on a quest to destroy a horrible artifact that was disrupting the peace of his community and basically just staring in disbelief at how bizarre and insane "civilized" people are was pretty funny.
Basically anything Buster Keaton did. Dude was incredible. It's unbelievable that some of the best comedy movies ever made were made within like 10 years of the wide adoption of cinema.
Marx bros and Chaplin are also stand outs.
This is Spinal Tap is probably pretty tied to it's moment in music history but it was hilarious.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail is pretty well loved by nerds of a certain age
I don't know if there's been anything quite like Airplane! It's like an hour and a half of memorable slapstick gags.
Dr. Strangelove is fucking amazing. Nothing has changed since 1964, we're still ruled by geriatric psychopaths and Nazis
Blazing Saddles is just a masterpiece of comedy.
Three Amigos is another one that's probably super racist but fortunately I forgot all the bad parts in the last two decades.
The Blues Brothers. The movie that, as far as I know, still holds the record for most destroyed cop cars in one movie
Wayne's World. Good shit
Bill and Ted's adventures are also good.
Top Secret. Probably has brain worms but some of the bits were pretty incredible
Harold and Maude was such a fuck you to prevailing norms.
Hot Fuzz. Yeah it's abut cops whatever it's my one exception
Mean Girls. Again, people of a certain age
Old comedies are tricky because you'll be laughing so hard it hurts and then the most disgusting racist or mysogynist or homophobic bit will come up and it'll be like 'Oh shit actually the past was horrible" and ruin the mood.
Oh man I also have this hazy memory of having seen this movie twenty years ago. The premise of a guy from an African tribe assuming that white people are gods is definitely racist, but then again the movie frames tribal culture as obvious and correct and city culture as ridiculous :anprim-pat:
iirc the San people think the coke bottle was dropped by some god or other, rather than white people being gods directly. The idea that San people had never seen a coke bottle is racist, but it does make a good critique of society and I like the idea that something extremely useful, but extremely scarce, might cause more trouble and division than it's worth. I can't think of another story where people get their hands on something extremely useful, but there's only one, and they decide to get rid of it because even though it's useful it's causing too many problems.
Crucially though, the San people thought the premise was hilarious, which is why they agreed to the movie, because of the moral dimension to it. The thing they thought was weird was specific behaviors, like hugging and raising your children up when you get back home (something they did not do).
Lord of the Rings?
Yeah, that was the closest I could think of, too. Right down to a dude having to carry the thing all over the world then huck it off of the edge of a mountain to resolve the plot.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C7%83xau_%C7%82Toma
Only the first one and that bit in the 2nd when they get to STAY-SHUN! air guitar
It held the record for years until it was broken by its own sequel by 1 car