The Best Comedies of the 21st Century

News has really slowed down the last week or so, not to mention that I’m currently sick at home with COVID. Fun times. It seems as though everyone is getting sick again, although I doubt a mass freakout and lockdown will occur this time around (or at least I hope).

Here’s another IndieWire list published this weekend. They’ve decided to rank the 75 Best Comedies of the 21st Century. The goal of this particular list is to no doubt stir up some debate, but I have added my take on it below, movies that had me laughing to no ends. What the world needs most right now is to laugh, but everything, including the movies, feel so self-serious. Don’t get me wrong, my church will always be serious hard-nosed cinema, but there’s something great and freeing about actually … laughing your ass off.

The 21st Century Comedy HALL OF FAME

"Borat,” "The 40 Year Old Virgin,” "Anchorman,” "Superbad,” "Bad Santa,” "Old School,” "Bridesmaids,” “Team America: World Police,” Game Night,” “MacGruber,” “Meet the Parents,” “Triangle of Sadness,” "21 Jump Street,” "Wedding Crashers,” "Step Brothers,” "Shaun of the Dead,” "Pineapple Express,” “Sideways,” “Bad Trip,” “Toni Erdmann,” “Four Lions” “Neighbours,” “The Hangover,” ”Elf” and “Burn After Reading”

The Aughts had a lot of Will Ferrell. He basically changed the game, brought a lot of meta to comedy. "Borat" was the king though, that was the most political and satirical a comedy could get and it came at a time when almost everyone was on-board its political leanings. It was about us, every laugh came with a sting. We knew there was racial intolerance out there, but Sacha Baron Cohen laid it bare for our eyes to witness it all.

Starting in 2003, with the release of “Old School” and then “Anchorman,” a comedy renaissance started with the boom of the Will Ferrell/Judd Apatow/Seth Rogen era (“The 40 Year Old Virgin,” “Superbad,” “Step Brothers” and “Walk Hard”). Then, the immense success of 2009’s “The Hangover” and 2011’s “Bridesmaids,” which turned out to be the last gasp for those type of comedies.

Despite a few great chucklers having been released in the Trump era, most of the recent comedies have been safe “star-based” movies (think Kevin Hart or Melissa McCarthy). Alas, the mainstream studio comedy has suffered quite a bit these last few years. Nobody has really cracked the code since the Apatow/Hangover era. Did Hollywood lose its sense of humor?

It’s incredibly telling that “Game Night” is considered one of the bigger hit comedies of the last ten years, and yet, it could only scrape $69 million domestically. If anything, the 2010s have been characterized by alternative, sometimes self-referential, comedies becoming more mainstream. I’m thinking Taika Waititi, Wes Anderson, Armando Iannucci, Edgar Wright for example.