COMEDY · 8 MIN READ
Best Comedy Movies That Are Actually Funny
Comedy is the hardest genre to get right and the easiest to get wrong. These are the films that actually deliver. Films that will make you laugh out loud, alone, in the dark, with no warning.
Most comedies are watchable. That's a low bar. Watchable means you don't turn it off. Actually funny means you pause it to recover. It means you quote lines for weeks. It means you put it on again six months later and it still works.
The films on this list are all actually funny. Not charming. Not pleasant. Not mildly amusing. Funny. Some are absurdist. Some are razor sharp. Some are so stupid they circle back to genius. All of them will make you laugh in a way that catches you off guard.
01
Superbad
Two best friends spend one chaotic night trying to buy alcohol for a party before they go to separate colleges. Superbad is peak Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and it remains one of the funniest films ever made about the specific anxiety of teenage friendship. The jokes hit hard. The friendship at the centre of it hits harder. It's riotous and then, somehow, genuinely moving.
02
This Is Spinal Tap
A documentary crew follows a fictional British rock band on a disastrous American tour. This Is Spinal Tap invented the mockumentary as a film genre and it has never been topped. Every single joke lands. The Stonehenge scene. The amp that goes to eleven. The black album. The bread and cucumber dressing room demands. It's funnier every time you watch it and you catch something new every time.
03
Four Weddings and a Funeral
A commitment-phobic man keeps running into the same woman at social events across a year. Four Weddings is the film that made Richard Curtis and Hugh Grant, and it earns that status completely. The opening sequence alone is one of the funniest scenes ever committed to film. It's also genuinely romantic and, when the funeral arrives, genuinely heartbreaking. A masterclass in tonal control.
04
The Grand Budapest Hotel
A legendary concierge and his lobby boy protege get caught up in murder, heist, and a stolen painting across a fictional European country between the wars. Anderson's most purely entertaining film runs at a pace that barely pauses for breath. Every frame contains something. Ralph Fiennes delivers one of cinema's great comic performances. Funny, beautiful, and tinged throughout with real melancholy.
05
Game Night
A group of friends hosting a murder mystery game night find themselves in the middle of an actual kidnapping. Game Night is the most consistently funny mainstream studio comedy of the last decade. It has no right to be as good as it is. The jokes land. The cinematography is genuinely inventive. And Jesse Plemons as the neighbour who wasn't invited is one of the decade's great comic supporting turns.
06
Knives Out
A famous crime novelist dies mysteriously and a detective investigates the family that stands to inherit. Knives Out is a comedy of manners disguised as a whodunnit. Rian Johnson is operating at full speed in every scene, and the ensemble cast is having an extraordinary amount of fun. It's also cleverer than it initially appears. The structure alone is worth studying.
07
Shaun of the Dead
A directionless man tries to sort his life out on the same day a zombie apocalypse begins. Edgar Wright's genre-blending masterpiece works as a comedy, as a horror film, and as a genuinely touching portrait of male friendship and the refusal to grow up. Every single joke is set up earlier in the film and paid off perfectly. It's constructed with a precision rarely seen in British comedy.
08
Bridesmaids
A woman struggling with failure in her own life agrees to be maid of honour for her best friend's wedding. Bridesmaids is the film that proved women-led studio comedies could be as raw, as filthy, and as funny as anything else. Melissa McCarthy's performance is a force of nature. Kristen Wiig's slow-motion collapse is simultaneously hilarious and painful. The plane scene is simply one of the funniest scenes of the century so far.
09
What We Do in the Shadows
A documentary crew follows a flat-share of vampires living in Wellington, New Zealand. Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement made something genuinely new here. The jokes are deadpan. The mythology is taken completely seriously. The flatmate dynamics are achingly relatable. If you haven't seen it, stop reading this and watch it immediately. It's one of the funniest films of the twenty-first century.
10
The Nice Guys
A bumbling private eye and a hired enforcer team up to find a missing girl in 1970s Los Angeles. Shane Black is incapable of writing a bad screenplay, and The Nice Guys might be his best. Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling have the kind of chemistry that shouldn't work on paper but is genuinely electric on screen. Gosling in particular delivers a physical comedy performance that deserves far more recognition than it received.
Comedy ages badly when it relies on shock. It ages beautifully when it relies on character, timing, and truth. Every film on this list does the latter. They'll still be funny in twenty years. That's the real test.