Top Tens #4: My Top 10 All-Time Favourite Comedies

The irreplaceable screen legend Charlie Chaplin once said that “Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.” It is a fitting quote to introduce my newest list of my 10 favourite comedies.

Of all of the film genres, comedy is undoubtedly the most subjective one. Since a viewer’s sense of humour has a remarkable range, there are very few comedies with a universal appeal. Some audiences prefer slapstick, and some enjoy crude sight gags, while others chuckle at clever verbal wordplay. And since comedy ca have such a range, it would be impossible to cover all sorts of funny on this top 10 list – if you are expecting Will Ferrell, Mel Brooks and Monty Python to show up, you may be disappointed.

While laughter is the best medicine, it is hard to find a dose of comedy in modern times (hint) that entirely satisfies. Only two of the films on this list were released in my lifetime. Then again, there are two Best Picture winners and four films in black-and-white below. The films that make up this aren’t all straightforward laugh attacks from the very first frame. The criteria I used for this list was a balance of the film's quality with the laughs' quantity. Some films may earn big laughs at the first viewing and never again, while others still bear a potent sting decades later: expect more of the latter to appear on this list.

Here are My Top 10 All-Time Favourite Comedies:

10. The 40-Year-Old Virgin (dir. Judd Apatow, 2005)

Judd Apatow isn’t so much a comedy pioneer as one who knows how to massage two elements – gross-out raunch and sweet sentimentality – together in a wonderful balance. And while I do McLove Superbad (which he produced) and Knocked Up (which he directed), I still believe his 2005 comedy – the one where he lost his director’s chair virginity – is his most consistently funny and most tender. With Steve Carell at his awkwardly endearing best as Andy, the titular no-timer, and a fantastic supporting cast featuring Catherine Keener, Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen and Jane Lynch, Virgin is a hilarious look at relationships and much deeper than its one-joke premise would implicate. Oh, and it has one of the two funniest (and most unexpected) closing scenes in recent memory (see #7 for the other).

Funny fact!: The “You know how I know you’re gay?” scene between Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen was entirely improvised.

9. Duck Soup (dir. Leo McCarey, 1933)

The Marx Brothers left an impression on virtually every type of comedy known to moviegoers – whip-snap dialogue, slapstick gags, tricky wordplay and political satire, to name but a few. But their 1933 farce remains their fastest, leanest and most nutty concoction. The story: Motormouth Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho) is the new president of Freedonia, a place that is anything but stable, and mayhem eventually ensues due to the new leader’s inexperience with matters of war and finance. Groucho, Chico and Harpo are all at their zaniest, and even the much-ignored Zeppo manages to get a few lines in. But between the top-banana attempts at banana-peel humour, there is that mightily impressive mirror scene (above) that still ranks as one of cinema’s most outrageously funny situational jokes.

Funny fact!: Benito Mussolini banned the film from Italy, believing it targeted his government. The Marx Brothers were reportedly ecstatic when they heard this.

8. Tootsie (dir. Sydney Pollack, 1982)

Since its release nearly 30 years ago, not a single gender-switching comedy has come close to being as sharply funny or as touching as Tootsie. Dustin Hoffman is Michael Dorsey, a struggling Manhattan thespian who lands a pivotal role on a successful soap opera. The thing is, he dressed up as elderly Southern dame Dorothy Michaels for his audition, and now he must keep the cover if he wants to ensure his career stays afloat. Oh, and he is currently falling for his co-star, Julie (Jessica Lange, in an Oscar-winning turn). Director Sydney Pollack treats his characters’ affairs with compassion – and a debonair comedy cast, including Dabney Coleman and Bill Murray, doesn’t hurt – ensuring that the classic sexual identity crisis is not just a gimmick but a source for real conflict and character development. Oh, and it features the line, “I was a better man with you as a woman that I ever was with a woman as a man” – and that’s not even Tootsie’s best quote!

Funny fact!: Bill Murray agreed to leaving his name out of the opening credits, in fear that its presence would mislead audiences to expect a “Bill Murray” show a la Caddyshack or Meatballs.

7. Little Miss Sunshine (dirs. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, 2006)

Simultaneously morose and saccharine – a rare combination for first-time screenwriter Michael Arndt (who deservedly won the Oscar) and directors Dayton and Faris to pull off so easily – Little Miss Sunshine is a story about a family of distanced losers coming together, driving to California to ensure their young sweetheart (Abigail Breslin) gets the tiara at a beauty pageant. It appeals to those who love feel-good endings and those who like to squirm at the crass, dark uneasiness of the journey getting there. Since dysfunctional families are rapt for cliché and a road trip is hardly the freshest set-up for family reconciliation, where does this film go right? Well, for one, the impeccable performances, including Steve Carell as a suicidal Proust scholar and Greg Kinnear as a rather pessimistic self-help expert, ensuring that these characters are grounded regardless of the bizarre decisions they make. Also, the final 20 minutes, featuring a beauty pageant both cringe-worthy and howlingly funny at once, is satire at its most sublime. Who knew that a film about losers could be so winning?

Funny Fact!: Just to make the final scenes even funnier (or creepier), all of the young beauty pageant contestants featured in the “Little Miss Sunshine” pageant are – wait for it – actual participants of beauty pageants.

6. Annie Hall (dir. Woody Allen, 1977)

No comedy writer for any medium has had quite as prolific a career as Woody Allen, and the Best Picture-winning Annie Hall is considered by many to be his most quintessential work. There’s a reason for that: it’s a delightfully inventive, bitterly funny and compassionate dissection of a relationship between neurotic comedian Alvy Singer (Allen) and the one girl who got away (the title character, played by Diane Keaton). Between the spontaneous flashbacks, animated inserts and cameo appearances – including a terrific one by Marshall McLuhan – it’s the endearing chemistry between Allen and Keaton in one of their many incandescent pairings that makes this the writer/director’s funniest film (although I do like Manhattan a smidgen more, this gets the spot because of its heightened comedy ingenuity).

Funny Fact: Diane Keaton’s real name is Diane Hall, and to make matters more interesting, one of her nicknames is Annie.

5. Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (dir. Stanley Kubrick, 1964)

If an average moviegoer would walk into a showing of Dr. Strangelove today, without any prior knowledge of the film, the odds are better they would classify the movie as a thriller rather than a comedy. That’s not to discredit its stature as a first-rate satire of nuclear war, but it goes to show how perfectly the absurd comic pieces are merged with other aspects of terror, paranoia and mutually assured destruction – balanced perfectly under a firm grip by director Stanley Kubrick. They also likely wouldn’t recognize Peter Sellers in three entirely separate performances, all nuanced and excellent, and which highlight different aspects of his comedic brilliance. Released just a month after Kennedy’s assassination and during a tense Cold War period, Dr. Strangelove challenges its audience to laugh; thankfully, it’s a challenge that’s easy to partake in. It’s a film that mines comedy from the most nightmarish of scenarios. Disagree with this classic’s comedic merits? Well, we can fight about it – just not in the War Room, of course.

Funny fact!: The film was originally supposed to end with a giant pie fight in the War Room, but Kubrick thought this slapstick wouldn’t fit in with the rest of the film and had it cut.

4. Network (dir. Sidney Lumet, 1976)

Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove may have been the finest screen satire during the Cold War years, but in today’s troubling media-dominated atmosphere, no comedy strikes such a fiercely topical note than Network, from late great Sidney Lumet. The film centers on a struggling television network that injects some oxygen into its ratings through the riotous, nihilistic ranting of its depressed news anchor, selling off his anarchical notions as news, and as a result, turning its news into entertainment. The anchor is a brilliant Peter Finch and the producer who sets him for success is a blisteringly sharp Faye Dunaway in her finest role – thank Lumet, one of the finest actor’s directors to have ever gone through Hollywood, helping them earn Oscars. Network also feels, moves and acts like the most scathing and acerbic sermon ever given, thanks to a limitless screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky. In other words, it’s a comedy so funny, it’s scary.

Funny fact!: Beatrice Straight won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for the film, but is only on screen for five minutes and 40 seconds – the briefest performance to ever win an Oscar.

3. Airplane! (dirs. Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, 1980)

I know what you’re thinking: how can such an iconic spoof, which packs such a loony barrage of laughs within a scant 87 minutes, miss out on the top spot? Well, to be fair, it does pack more literal double entendres, pop culture references and inspired routines than any comedy ever has or likely ever will. But not every joke works, and despite the many punches of gut-bustingly zany humour, some of the jokes feel scattershot in their placement – the film doesn’t really jump from scene to scene as it does from joke to joke. But I am being too harsh on this comedy classic, which satirizes the Airport disaster films of the 1970s (as well as B-movie Zero Hour!) with wit, vulgarity, a jive-talkin’ grandma, a kinky automatic pilot, a guitar-playing nun, Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, and best of all, a remarkably effective deadpan tone, led by Leslie Nielsen in his star-making turn. It’s Shirley the best parody ever made… and, despite minor reservations, I’m serious about that.

Funny fact!: Pete Rose was originally cast in Kareem Abdul-Jabaar’s role as co-pilot Roger Murdock, but he was playing baseball at the time of shooting, and so the Lakers star took his place.

2. The Apartment (dir. Billy Wilder, 1960)

Billy Wilder’s romantic comedy classic hasn’t aged a day since it won the Oscar 50 years ago. Tightly plotted, bruisingly funny and blissfully romantic, The Apartment tells the story of a hard-working accountant, C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon), who lends out his apartment for his senior employees' personal trysts, in exchange for a good word to promote him. Along the way, he falls in love with a charming elevator operator, Fran Kubelick (Shirley MacLaine), who happens to be canoodling in Baxter’s apartment with his boss (Fred MacMurray). The film barely misses out on the top spot because it is also the most dramatic film on the list (there are some rather dark turns amidst the humour, such as a botched suicide). Wilder was one of the best American directors of his generation, and The Apartment is his masterpiece. Line for line and scene for scene, no screen couple manages to swell up as many sweet-natured smiles as Lemmon and MacLaine.

Funny fact!: The film was the inspiration for the Neil Simon-penned musical “Promises, Promises,” which debuted on Broadway in 1968 and was recently revived in a production starring Kristen Chenoweth and Sean Hayes.

1. Modern Times (dir. Charlie Chaplin, 1936)

There will never be a screen legend with such a definitive stronghold on comedy as Charlie Chaplin. Not only was he one of the freshest and most versatile comic talents onscreen, but a dedicated and ingenious craftsman behind-the-scenes. But it wasn’t just the laughter he nailed, but how he used humour as a way to comment on American life. Nobody’s films deserve the top spot more than his, and while it’s a chore to choose just one of his titles – The Great Dictator, City Lights and The Kid all could have easily taken this position – no Chaplin film had me in stitches quite like Modern Times, his last silent venture in his signature Tramp persona. Chaplin plays a factory worker trying to adjust to life in a modern, industrialized America during the Great Depression. He lampoons the assembly line monotony and pokes fun at a capitalist society, where man will soon be complacent to machine – not a common theme for a comedy from the 1930s. But with a manic energy, unpredictable plot development, terrific physical comedy, and a superb romance developing between the Tramp and an orphan girl (Paulette Goddard) that never feels inorganic, it’s also Chaplin’s biggest crowd-pleaser.

Funny fact!: A full dialogue script had been written for the film since Chaplin had originally intended to do a talkie, and he even filmed an entire scene with sound before deciding to be more careful with sound placement.