Comedy is the most subjective cinema genre – one person’s punchline is another’s statement of fact. But the joyous suddenness of laughter is perfectly suited to the movies, where like a good joke everything is assembled so that you never see the joins. If you can’t find the funniness in this streaming selection, you may be beyond hope.
Here are the 20 best comedy films on Netflix and Stan.
NETFLIX
Bridesmaids (2011)
Raunchy without being provocative but never afraid to examine the dynamics between female friends, Paul Feig’s breakout hit turned the cast into comic movie stars: co-writer Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, and Rose Byrne all shone in a movie where the preparations for a wedding collapse from one mishap to the next.
Elf (2003)
Will Ferrell has always excelled at playing American idiots, but in this rare instance of a great Christmas film he embraces naivete and child-like faith to play Buddy, a human child raised among Santa’s North Pole elves who returns to his New York family. Escalators perplex him, but nothing tops his reaction to a department store Father Christmas.
Mascots (2016)
Filmmakers migrating to Netflix is common now, but two years ago Christopher Guest (Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show) brought his skewered take on the mockumentary to the streaming service with this study of amateur sporting mascots. Guest favourites such as Jane Lynch and Fred Willard are joined by the likes of Chris O’Dowd, in a film that sends up competition and the very human foibles that fuel it.
Mean Girls (2004)
Lindsay Lohan was a natural teenage comedienne and she never had better material than this anthropological inquisition into high school cliques penned by Tina Fey, who’s also in the supporting cast. The film has spawned numerous memes and catchphrases, but it’s a vibrant whole that uses satirical extremes and deft twists to reinvent the cafeteria comedy.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Arthurian legend is the absurdist starting point for the finest comedy troupe of the 20th century, with the daft segues – a castle is infiltrated using a Trojan rabbit – and postmodern device of a modern day police investigation into a murder suggesting a sensibility fit for current times. Neophyte directors Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones didn’t know how to make a movie, but it matters not the slightest.
Paterson (2017)
Jim Jarmusch’s movies, with their deadpan humour and ironic elegance, are so often about outsiders. But with Paterson he created a terrific and warmly invigorating film about domestic satisfaction and the nurturing encouragement of community. Adam Driver is a quiet New Jersey bus driver and poet, Golshifteh Farahani his very busy wife, and their week unfolds with wry wonder and amusing affirmation.
Pineapple Express (2008)
A stoner comedy – complete with the high life of hatching grand plans, paranoid flip outs, and a bad case of the munchies – that’s effectively spliced into a 1980s action film, David Gordon Green’s movie sets Seth Rogen, James Franco, and Danny McBride adrift in an improbable adventure where the gags have a suitably askew momentum and the chaos is cushioned by unexpectedly genuine bonds.
Private Life (2018)
Comedy-drama is an oft-used but rarely considered term. It shouldn’t just be a film that is witty and serious in turn, but one where the humour is derived from struggle and the worst moments allow for a scathingly witty observation. Tamara Jenkins’ picture, with Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti as a 40-something Manhattan couple desperate to become parents, does just that. It’s laugh out loud funny and intimately real, with humour as consolation.
Wet Hot American Summer (2001)
David Wain’s anarchic summer camp satire, where the counsellors are clearly too old and the misfit humour is somehow offset by a blockbuster sci-fi escalation of a falling space station, has a go with the flow tone that slips with masterful ease (and low-budget means) into surreal moments. Netflix also has both series-length sequels, which reunite the then mainly unknown supporting cast of Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, Elizabeth Banks, and Bradley Cooper.
What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
Modern life isn’t easy for the undead in this New Zealand horror mockumentary about a household of vampires living in Wellington – yes, Wellington – co-written and co-directed by Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement. The fantastical and the everyday nestle together, so that household chores and bloodletting have to be juggled, while every run in with a rival pack of werewolves will leave you howling (with laughter).
STAN
24 Hour Party People (2002)
Karl Marx’s observation about history repeating itself, first as tragedy then as farce, is given a terrific backbeat in Michael Winterbottom’s recreation of Manchester’s vital music scene from the birth of punk through to the rave culture’s rise. Seen through the lens of Steve Coogan’s Tony Wilson, a broadcaster whose mistakes help change the culture, it’s an acerbic delight that breaks the fourth wall and numerous other standards.
Everybody Wants Some (2016)
Richard Linklater documents with detail and delight the initiation of a college freshman (Blake Jenner) onto a Texan university’s baseball team over a long weekend, as the teammates carouse in a process that is equal parts competition and pleasure. The writer/director finds crude period failings and timeless individual humour in the milieu.
A Fish Called Wanda (1988)
With Ealing Studios veteran Charles Crichton (The Lavender Hill Mob) directing, John Cleese wrote and starred in this marvellous London heist comedy where stolen gems take a back seat to the cultural gap between Brits and Americans and the farcical mistakes of an inadvertent pet assassin. Bodies and attitudes collide, with Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Palin and a deliriously gung-ho Kevin Kline in perpetual play.
In the Loop (2009)
Before Veep and The Death of Stalin, Armando Iannucci took the political players from his scathing Whitehall comedy The Thick of It to Washington D.C. as a vastly unorganised coalition prepares for a war in the Middle East that has everything except a reason. Doctoring documents and insulting each other with gusto – led by Peter Capaldi’s scalding adviser Malcolm Tucker – the handlers reveal international policy as a series of office crises.
The Party (1968)
With the frame crammed with comic possibilities and Peter Sellers as the improvisational fuse inadvertently setting them off one after another, Blake Edwards’ complex comedy stars Sellers’ (in then accepted brownface) as Bakshi, a good-natured but bungling Indian actor accidentally invited to a Hollywood mogul’s soiree. Reason, the social order, and eventually the floor are removed as clockwork chaos takes hold.
Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
After Boogie Nights and Magnolia, no-one knew what a Paul Thomas Anderson film starring comic superstar Adam Sandler would entail, but it turned out to be an idiosyncratic valentine to the possibilities of love with Sandler’s put upon Barry Egan going on a journey of self-belief ,when he falls in love with one of his seven abusive sisters’ co-workers (played by Emily Watson). Rich colours and screwball humour make for a true original.
Some Like it Hot (1959)
Masterfully assembled down to the famous final line, Billy Wilder’s classic black and white comedy about the pliability of identity and the truths discovered through deception has a whirring plot, hilarious encounters, and whip crack verbal exchanges. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis played Prohibition-era musicians fleeing gangsters who don drag and fall in with a female band and Marilyn Monroe’s vocalist.
Step Brothers (2008)
Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly play entitled 11-year-olds in adult bodies in Adam McKay’s finely revved comedy about two cosseted grown men forced to share a room by their parents’ relationship. The stars make the concept ludicrously believable, and the irrepressible escalation turns their idiocy into one lunatic moment after another.
The Trip (2011)
Michael Winterbottom and Steve Coogan reunited for this travel comedy, where both the dining and the insults are top of the line. Coogan and fellow comic actor Rob Brydon play versions of themselves on a gastronomic tour of England’s north. Middle-age melancholy sharpens their rivalry, as they compete with Michael Caine impressions and public recognition. Listen for Coogan’s mock eulogy of Brydon: the slights are sublime.
White Reindeer (2013)
The blackest of Christmas comedies, Zach Clark’s independent feature stars Anna Margaret Hollyman as Suzanne, a Washington D.C. real estate agent widowed during the holiday season. The shock and grief free her from expectation, and she ventures into worlds outside her own, going to a suburban sex party hosted by former clients and befriending an exotic dancer who knew her husband. This is dry, devastating humour that resonates.
