1. The Producers (1967)
2. Hot Fuzz (2007)
3. Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)
4. The Party (1968)
5. The Jerk (1979)
6. The In-Laws (1979)
7. The Big Lebowski (1998)
8. Trading Places (1983)
9. Ghostbusters (1984)
10. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
11. 21 Jump Street (2012)
12. Airplane! (1980)
13. Duck Soup (1933)
14. Good Morning, Vietnam (1987)
15. Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982)
16. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
17. Bringing Up Baby (1938)
18. Andaz Apna Apna (1994)
19. Duplicate (1998)
20. The Graduate (1967)
21. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
22. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
23. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
24. Clifford (1994)
25. American Babylon (1985)

I saw where your Smile got no love.

Is Windy City Heat the one that's basically a big prank on someone?

For me, Young Frankenstein would be the Mel Brooks choice, and maybe either Love and Death or Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex for the pure Woody comedies (my favorite of his, Stardust Memories not being exactly a comedy). 

What's the confusion over American Babylon?  (I'm not familiar with it, does it have anything to do with Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon books?)

I'm glad at your love for The Party, Rock.  You know, considering.  A good example of ethnic caricature that is hardly hateful.

crumbsroom wrote:

Yes, Windy City Heat is the one that's just a big prank. And it's enormously cruel. But it is also possibly the movie I laugh the most at. I find it staggeringly funny. And I feel bad every time. Sort of.

It looked like the target of the prank kinda deserved it.

Jinnistan wrote:

crumbsroom wrote:

Yes, Windy City Heat is the one that's just a big prank. And it's enormously cruel. But it is also possibly the movie I laugh the most at. I find it staggeringly funny. And I feel bad every time. Sort of.

It looked like the target of the prank kinda deserved it.

He's awful. Which is what makes it so funny.

Jinnistan wrote:

For me, Young Frankenstein would be the Mel Brooks choice, and maybe either Love and Death or Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex for the pure Woody comedies (my favorite of his, Stardust Memories not being exactly a comedy). 

What's the confusion over American Babylon?  (I'm not familiar with it, does it have anything to do with Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon books?)

I'm glad at your love for The Party, Rock.  You know, considering.  A good example of ethnic caricature that is hardly hateful.

I voted for The Producers as my Brooks pick as it's the one that makes me laugh the hardest.

And yeah, I think we've discussed our mutual love of The Party. The movie pulls off a tricky dynamic where the character's brownness is part of why they're an outsider, and generates humour from that, without the brownness itself being the joke. Sellers is spot on with his mannerisms. There's a reason why it's as popular as it is in the subcontinent.

I expect discussions of both films to be pretty dicey, unfortunately (assuming they make the list).

American Babylon is a Roger Watkins porno about two total losers. Very depressing, also very funny. It was my one-pointer.

crumbsroom wrote:

And while it should be noted that I love Feldman in this film, as well as just generally, his constant winking at the camera doesn't quite do the film any favors when it comes to what I'm looking for in a comedy.

Well, damn his eyes. 

Jinnistan wrote:

One of my issues lies with Python. Now, I know most of the difficulty comes from those trying to choose between Holy Grail and Life of Brian, but I really have a soft spot for And Now For Something Completely Different, and, feet to the fire, may even prefer it above the others.  I think nearly every sketch is superior to the TV versions, and it works as about as immaculate a Python primer as is available.  Should I allow all three Pythons to eat up slots?  And what about Time Bandits?  Wanda?  Magic Christian?  It's very easy to get in the weeds here.

Python eats up as many slots as it needs. I sometimes like to ration spots on lists, but there are exceptions where you've got no choice. For me, MP is the base root of my interest in language. It made me understand the music of comedy. I remember reading a quote from some member (I believe Michael Palin) who claimed they never wanted their humor to be political, and therefore dated. When they chose  member of Parliament to parody, it was not so much about policy, as about the sound of their name. And it all made sense. I remember being six or seven years old, and constantly laughing at references to people I'd never even heard of. But wondering if I was missing a part of the joke. But the key to so much humor is rhythms and how something sounds. Dropping the name of some drippy little dried-ass British politician in the middle of so much low brow scatology was what made their brand of nonsense work. The point beneath the joke wasn't the point. It was frequently about the love of language, and how it feels as it rolls of your tongue. Others of course worked similarly (there is no doubt the Goon Squad was completely ransacked in Python writing session), but they are ultimately the ones who mattered. They are the ones who forced me to write out all their skits by hand and just look at the words laying there in front of me. How, when used appropriately, words alone could be these weapons that could have devestating effects on the funnybone. On the mind. On the way we look at this whole disaster of a world. Even if none of it made any sense if we started to overthink things.

As for And Now For Something Completely Different....this was my introductory course in Python, so I feel similarly. Before that I had only picked up snippets of Flying Circus on public access television. This outlaw thing I could never track down and follow in any ordinary way. But ANFSCD put it all in one place. And that was where the obsession began. I've had five or six revelatory moments in my pursuit of the arts, and coming into close contact with these guys was definitely one of them. It would be a worthy inclusion on any list. It was in consderation for mine. But, as I haven't seen it for god knows how long, I ended up overlooking it for the ones I am a little more obsessive over (even though, frankly, I've grown somewhat tired of Holy Grail over the years....but, how do I not include that somewhere??_
 

crumbsroom wrote:

Jinnistan wrote:

I saw where your Smile got no love.

Also, can we talk about the run Ritchie was on at the beginning of his career.

Downhill Racer, Prime Cut, The Candidate, Smile, Bad News Bears.

Come on world! Give this guy some credit.

I'll add some credit for some later favorites: Fletch, Golden Child, Diggstown.  Although his work did start to get a little hacky (less personal touch).

One interesting, unfortunate failure - I've always been a little fascinated with how lame The Couch Trip turned out.  The script has a lot of potential, I can't quite gauge if it needed a couple more rewrites or if it had too many.  Not enough jokes though.  But it does have very game performances from Charles Grodin and Walter Matthau.  So I have to blame Aykroyd, who, rather than utilize his shape-shifting SNL genius, looks like he's trying to do a Chevy Chase type of charming scofflaw, which just doesn't work.  I understand that he wanted this to be his own Fletch, but those two just have very different strengths.  The best thing I'll say about the film is that it isn't as awful as Ritchie's later Cops and Robinsons, with an even less interested Chase.  The only good film that Ritchie would make at this time would be one for TV, Positively True Adventures of an Alleged Cheerleader Murdering Mom.

Rampop II wrote:

Wot???
No pudding???


 

I need to get off my ass and finally watch this.