Readers know how much I love a good comedy, and how I’m hoping for a theatrical renaissance of the genre — especially after this year’s great slate of laughers: “Friendship,” “Splitsville,” the upcoming “Nirvana The Band The Show The Movie,” and “Naked Gun.”
But with so few worthy comedies hitting theaters this decade, Variety is trying to remind us just how great the genre can be, unveiling its ranking of the top 100 comedies — films the publication believes have stood the test of time — and I went through the list.
I actually expected “Some Like It Hot” to top the list, which would have been the predictable choice, but consider me surprised, and delighted, by “The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!” being named the greatest comedy of all time. Yes! There isn’t an ounce of fat in this comedy classic, which hasn’t aged one bit. Leslie Nielsen was sheer perfection; if you can believe it, this total spoof of the detective genre was one of the films that influenced Paul Thomas Anderson’s cinema.
What’s made ‘The Naked Gun’ endure is its unapologetic devotion to the gag-a-second style — a lost art in contemporary studio comedy. Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker understood that the key to great parody wasn’t cynicism but sincerity: play everything straight and let the absurdity speak for itself. Rewatching it today, you’re reminded of how precise the timing is, how every background detail hides a joke, and how Nielsen’s deadpan delivery elevates even the most ludicrous setups into something approaching slapstick poetry.
Some of the more unpopular choices: “Blazing Saddles” (#77) is way too low. Ditto “Airplane” (#62). Why is “Poor Things” (#65) on the list? Is it funnier than “The Big Lebowski” (#72)? Did they pick the right Jim Carrey movie? “Ace Ventura” (#69) made it. “Dumb and Dumber” didn’t.
Putting everything else aside, it’s a little absurd to compile a list that’s largely pure comedies while still padding it with a hefty number of titles that are, if we’re being honest, more like comedic dramas. This has resulted in, for example, “Being John Malkovich” (#51) ranked a notch below “The Waterboy” (#50). “Fargo” (#8) is better than 90% of the titles listed, but it’s more of a film that relies on suspense and atmosphere, rather than laughs.
Notably absent: “The General,” “Being There,” “Raising Arizona,” “Modern Times,” “The Apartment,” “Beverly Hills Cop.” Oh, and none of Woody Allen’s early classics (“Bananas,” “Sleeper,” “Love and Death”).
I’m guessing Variety leaned on some internal scorecard — laughs per minute, overall craft, cultural footprint, maybe even box office numbers. And, as always with lists like this, there’s the inevitable attempt to include every decade of film, deciding who deserves multiple slots, and figuring out how to balance taste with representation.
Here are the top 20, as chosen by Variety:
“The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!”
“Some Like It Hot”
“Annie Hall”
“The Great Dictator”
“Waiting for Guffman”
“Monty Python and the Holy Grail”
“Duck Soup”
“Fargo”
“Young Frankenstein”
“Groundhog Day”
“Sherlock Jr.”
“Tootsie”
“Dr. Strangelove”
“Sideways”
“Playtime”
“His Girl Friday”
“The Heartbreak Kid”
“This is Spinal Tap”
“It Happened One Night”
“Superbad”
To see the complete list, click here.