Wedding Crashers…
probably falls into the top ten comedies I’ve seen in the past few years. Say, since 2000.
It’s a tough category, but the genre has been kind of lacking good screwball comedies for a while. Just how tough? Go to IMDB’s power search and limit to: Comedies, 2000-2010, exclude TV movies, straight to video releases, and TV series, AND set the minimum vote number to 1500. I got around 460 movies. And not all of them were goofball comedies. “Big Fish”? “Chocolat”?
Groan. I’m setting myself up for failure here, but I’ll write this afternoon on the top ten goofball comedies.
What makes a goofball comedy? There need to be belly-laughs, and plenty of them. It needs to be billed as a comedy with one subgenre, i.e. comedy is the central word. No tragi-comedies. No (sorry, Bad Boys 2), action-thriller comedies. In general, these films will be panned by critics for being too silly.
What comedies I loved from the past few years won’t make the cut? About Schmidt (tragi-comedy), Adaptation (not enough belly-laughs), The Royal Tennenbaums, The Life Aquatic.
Oh, and I need to have seen it.
So, that should leave about 10 films…. and they are:
Honorable Mention: A Mighty Wind. Ok, So there are really Eleven Films that have made me laugh and giggle. A Mighty Wind is one of them. If you haven’t heard of it (Promise, this is the most obscure on the list…) it’s a “documentary piece” on a folk music reunion/rememberance show. If that sounds like the folk version of This Is Spinal Tap, it’s because it’s the same guys: Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer. And it’s fantastic. The music is catchy, and there’s plenty of screwball moments. And what’s more, is it’s mostly done improv. Crazy. So good.
Bruce Almighty – Steve Carrell as the wacky speaking-in-tounges anchor. Which, now that I think about it, is the best part of the movie by far. Yeah, that’s why it’s number 10.
EuroTrip – It’s trashy, it’s slightly twisted, and it’s funny as hell. If I had to come up with one of those flash-really-quick-on-the-screen quotes for EuroTrip, that would probably be it. (No, I don’t mean that. But I liked some scenes in the movie. Eh. Kinda. This should really be number 10, but I’ve moved it down from 7 to 9, and that’s too much of a slide. That’s like Jose Canseco slide worthy. Seriously, the man’s playing ball for the A’s, then the Devil Rays, and now his sole occupation in life is to bash Raffy Palmerio and others on 60 Minutes? There are some things you just don’t do. Yes, steroids has screwed up baseball. But what good can Mike Wallace do? [As a side note, at least he got Wallace to interview him. Because the Pete Rose/Charlie Gibson interview made me physically ill. Ugh. I could spend a whole other story on the craptastic world of off-field baseball.]
Kung Pow! Enter the Fist. – Another one you might not have seen: panned nearly universally. But, as I’ll say again, seeing a comedy is all about the people you see it with. And Kung Pow! is really the only comedy I’ve been able to connect with my younger brother Maxwell on. He was (is? i’m not sure….) a big fan of Godzilla/Gamera/ Rodan/Ghidorah/MechaGodzilla movies. Which, I’m sure you can figure out, were horribly dubbed. If the “worst dubbed scene ever” was the only thing this movie had going for it, that would be enough. But I love this movie because so many people DON’T GET IT. The whole point of the movie is to be bad. It really is terrible, god-awful stuff. But it’s self-aware. It doesn’t say it’s a good movie. People were complaining to the theater manager the night Max and I saw this. We couldn’t stop laughing. It’s SUPPOSED to be out of sync.
Sigh. People should see poorly dubbed Japanese films as a requirement in high school. If we have to kick something out, I vote for American Government. It’s not like 97% of the population will really understand it anyways. But this is a comedy post, so let’s move on….
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story – Yes, it’s crappy. Yes, it’s Ben Stiller essentially reprising his role from Heavyweights more than a decade earlier. But what makes this movie great? The number of times I’ve milked the ESPN 8: The Ocho reference. We’ll be playing pool, or basketball, and I can throw out “Tonight on the Ocho” and people will still chuckle. That, my friend, is the sign of a movie with goodness masked in crappiness. And, of course, Jason Bateman (a la TV’s Arrested Development… the only non-animated show I can watch on Fox now) as the coked-up drugged-out crazy announcer. And Chuck Norris.
Meet the Parents – The first time I watched Meet the Parents, I thought it was OK. But this is the kind of movie that keeps sneaking back up on you. On an airplane. In a hotel. At a friends house. And so on. And I gotta say, it’s kinda grown on me a little. I was talking with Allen Downey about it, and he agrees. You start noticing little things: the lyrics from the song playing in the convenience mart are what Ben Stiller uses as his grace. The “I think you call it a chuppppah?” line. It’s funny stuff. But Meet the Fockers has kinda this blehhh feel to it. Barbra Streisand is good, but the rest of the characters are just going through the motions. De Niro and Stiller do the “I’m nervous and awkward” scene one too many times, the ending is pretty trite, and the toddler is overused. Ugh.
Wedding Crashers – I told you it would crack the top ten. Maybe it’s because it’s fresh in my mind. But Vince Vaughn and Will Ferrell are geniuses. (Amazing that they’re in, what, 3 movies in my top five?) Why does it work? In Wedding Crashers, I think it’s Vaughn’s mix of gross-out bodily humor and crackling dialogue. It’s a good mix. I have to think about one and can mindlessly enjoy the other.
Old School – I’ll be honest, I was pretty set on my top three before I made this list. But I had completely forgotten about Old School. “Harold and Kumar go to White Castle” got replaced by this (though, obviously, not in this spot.) This movie almost cracked the top three. Again: Vaughn’s hilarious. Will Ferrell’s “We’re going streaking!”, getting shot by a tranq dart, and doing ribbon dancing. A comedic trifecta. But this movie’s got a really excellent supporting cast: “You’re my man, Blue!” just… works.
Rat Race: Another extremely re-watchable movie. Ignore the huge A-list cast members goofing around in the desert. What Rat Race is about is paying homage to the granddaddy of cameo movies: It’s a mad mad mad mad world. And I can dig that. Why? Take every comedic actor in show business during the early 1960s. Chances are, the’re in It’s a mad mad mad mad world. Excellent. And Rat Race is just a smaller, slightly different version. I think the thing that seals Rat Race is the hilarious scene with Jon Lovitz’s family on the road. Going to the Klaus Barbie museum. “I’m prarie-doggin!” Drugging his family so he can get to the money faster. Ah, so good. Ignore the scenes with Amy Smart and Breckin Meyer. They’re so-so at best. But Whoppi Goldberg and the squirrel’s? Ah, so good.
Team America: World Police!: I know. Obscene as all hell. I run a family blog here. I can’t use one easily-rememberable quote from the movie without offending someone. But it’s….puppets….saying hilarious things that reflect the state of the world. Again, you have to know your references. Once you’ve seen Thunderbirds, et. al. you just find Team America more hilarious.
Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy: Someone once said Austin Powers would be my generation’s Blazing Saddles. Or my generation’s Airplane!. But I think, when we look back a few decades from now, I’d like Anchorman to be that movie. As Bill Simmons over at ESPN says: nearly every line from this movie is quotable. “If you were a man, I’d punch you in the mouth.” “I LIKE LAMP! I like lamp.” “I stabbed a guy in the heart.” It’s just…. good. It is the closest thing we’ve got to Airplane!, the wacky combination of messed-up love, outrageous non-sequiturs and hilarious scenes.
So, that’s that. The 11 greatest goofball comedies of the past five years. Go rent them. They’re good. Well, most of them.