For those of you want to make an online meme out of this, the idea is to put the list on your own blog/journal, bold the ones you've seen and blue color the ones you own on DVD/video. You can/should also add your own comments on the list and what you think of the films chosen, which I have done immediately below.
Make sure to attribute the Canon correctly (to Bob McCabe and The Rough Guide to Comedy Movies).
The "canon", in alphabetical order:
Airplane!
All About Eve
Amelie
Annie Hall
The Apartment
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (I couldn't finish watching the dvd)
Blazing Saddles
Bringing Up Baby
Broadcast News (Why is this mediocre movie here?)
Caddyshack
Le diner de con
Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (I walked out of theatre after about 30 minutes not having laughed once.)
Duck Soup
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Four Weddings and a Funeral
The General
Ghostbusters
The Gold Rush
Good Morning Vietnam
The Graduate
Groundhog Day
A Hard Day's Night
His Girl Friday
Kind Hearts and Coronets
The Lady Killers
Local Hero
Manhattan
M*A*S*H
Monty Python's Life of Brian
National Lampoon's Animal House
The Odd Couple
The Producers
Raising Arizona
Roxanne
Rushmore (I watched about 5 minutes of this on cable tv. Dreadful.)
Shaun of the Dead
A Shot in the Dark
Some Like it Hot
Strictly Ballroom
Sullivan's Travels
There's Something About Mary (Walked out after 20 minutes. May have been the longest 20 minutes of my life.)
This is Spinal Tap
To Be or Not to Be (the Jack Benny version, not the Mel Brooks one)
Tootsie
Toy Story
Les vacances de M. Hulot (Not my glass of pastis)
When Harry Met Sally...
Withnail and I
My comments:
Films Whose Presence in the Canon I'm Particularly Gratified to See (pick up to five):
Dr. Strangelove, Duck Soup, Local Hero, Animal House, The Producers
Films in the Canon Whose Presence Should Not Be (pick up to five):
Austin Powers, Dodgeball, Life of Brian, Rushmore, There's Something About Mary
Films I'd Pick to Replace Them (pick up to five):
The Court Jester, A Fish Called Wanda, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, any compilation of Looney Tunes written by Michael Maltese and directed by Chuck Jones, Young Frankenstein
How any list of the 10 best let alone 50 best comedy films could not include Young Frankenstein is beyond me. It is a brilliantly funny movie, full of verbal wit and wonderful sight gags. And it remains as fresh as the day it was made.
And Life of Brian over MP and the Holy Grail? Someone's not paying attention. LoB is the weakest of the Python's films and I'm including ...And Now For Something Completely Different in that evaluation.
And finally, what's with the bunch of the 'ooh, I said potty' films? Austin Powers, Dodgeball, There's Something About Mary are all one joke abominations totally lacking in wit or nuance. The same foul joke repeatedly offered as evidence of humor. Feh.
1 comment:
As for Shaun of the Dead - I suppose it depends on whether you like zombie pictures. It's both a pretty good zombie picture, and a fairly decent slacker comedy. Not a great one, mind you, and it's not quite as great at being a zombie movie as the first Dawn of the Dead or 28 Days Later, but it's mildly impressive that it manages to be both a good horror picture, and a good comedy without slacking on either point.
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