Top Ten Comedies of the '90s

OK, it's getting enough chatter in The Royal Tenenbaums thread, how about everybody ponies up lists of their favorite comedies of the 1990s? I'll start it off...



1. Rushmore (1998 - Wes Anderson)
"Also, you'll find a pair of saftey glasses and some earplugs under your seats. Please feel free to use them."

2. L.A. Story (1991 - Mick Jackson)
"I could never be a woman, 'cause I'd just sit at home and play with my breasts all day."

3. Defending Your Life (1991 - Albert Brooks)
"You remind me of my poodle."

4. To Die For (1995 - Gus Van Sant)
"You really aren't anybody in America if you're not on TV."

5. Joe vs. the Volcano (1990 - John Patrick Shanley)
"'Long ago, the delicate tangles of his hair covered the emptiness of my hand'....Would you like to hear it again?"

6. The Big Lebowski (1998 - Joel & Etan Coen)
"You think the carpet-pissers did this?"

7. Waiting for Guffman (1996 - Christopher Guest)
"I'm gonna go home and, and...bite my pillow!"

8. Quick Change (1990 - Howard Franklin & Bill Murray)
"They're ON a Blufftonie!"

9. The Freshman (1990 - Andrew Bergman)
"Carmine said one boy, here are two."

10. Grosse Pointe Blank (1997 - George Armitage)
"That punk's either in love with that guy's daughter or he has a newfound respect for life."


What are yours? Remember, there are no wrong answers.

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1. City Slickers.
If hate were people, I'd be China!

2. Shakespeare in Love
You see -- comedy. Love, and a bit with a dog. That's what they want.

3. Groundhog Day
Rise and shine, campers, and don't forget your booties 'cause it's cooooold out there today.

4. Kingpin
Who's done more research than the good people at the American Tobacco Industry? They say its harmless. Why would they lie? If you're dead, you can't smoke.

5. There's Something About Mary
Listen to this: 7... Minute... Abs.

6. Bowfinger
Oh, gosh, I'm really hoping to get a career running errands. That'd be a major boost for me.

7. Tommy Boy
I can practically hear you getting fatter!

8. The Nutty Professor
Can I get you anything? Juice? Coffee? Rack of lamb?

9. Dumb and Dumber
Yeah I called her up, she gave me a bunch of crap about me not listening to her, or something, I don't know, I wasn't really paying attention.

10. The Cable Guy
I'm the bastard son of Claire Huxtable!

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I'm very sorry for the double post.

This new look site has got a lot of bugs.

There's all kinds of problems with the server, especially evident today.

If you go into "EDIT", you can actually delete your duplicate post if you want. The only time you have to be careful with this is if you delete the first post of a thread: it removes the entire thread.

Are you sure you didn't hit the button twice? That's far and away the top cause of double posts...if it's taking awhile to load, hitting the button again isn't usually the answer. And yes, Holden: our webhost is acting up. The MySQL server has gone to hell a couple times as of late...nothing I can do about it other than complain to them. Just want to make it clear...isn't a bug on my end or anything.

And yes, I'm thinking of disabling the "delete your own post" thing...because of the reason Holden mentioned. Might be better to just have Admins/Mods step in and do it.

I like the feature of deleteing your own post. But whatever you want to do, Bro.

Hmm..

1. Rushmore (no doubt)
2. L. A. Story (no doubt)
3. One Night at McCools (just a fav)
4. Four Rooms (I laughed, and laughed, and laughed)
5. Palmetto (although not many would call it a comedy, I think it is hilarious
6. Bottlerocket (I haven't even seen it, but it's going on my list)
7. Mallrats
8. Chasing Amy
9. Billy Madison (Laugh Out Loud funny)
10. Tommy Boy (Laugh Out Loud funny)

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Putting Bottle Rocket on your list even though you haven't seen it - I've lost all respect for you OG.


Interesting to compare Holden Pike's to my own. It seems you prefer a more passive, intelligent sort of comedy. My picks had laughs coming from the gut, often the movies are crude and dumb, but comedy has always appealed to a baser instinct. Quite simply, our sense of humours differ. I'm not completely anti your choice, though, don't get me wrong. I thought To Die For was an expert black comedy and The Big Lebowski was very close to being on my list. But films like Rushmore, Waiting for Guffman, This is Spinal Tap, and Best in Show (I know the last two weren't on your list but I'm guessing you're a fan), don't do it for me. Those movies are a form of elitist comedy, so smart, so well thought-out that you know the writers had spent ages working on it. I don't know; I prefer a more spontaneous laugh.

Let me ask you if you're a Marx Brothers fan. I've watched a couple of their best movies - A Night at the Opera, At the Circus, etc. - and while I can see where the laughs are coming from, it doesn't get me to laugh out loud. After one of Groucho's double entendres, I'll think about it for a second and smile - good one Groucho. My funniest Marx Brothers moment was in A Night at the Opera, I think, when the Brothers and most of the cast were stuck in a very small cabin and fell out. Physical comedy, that was, at its best. That's why Harpo has always been my favourite.

Of the older comedians, I'm a Laurel and Hardy fan. Slapstick is so much purer, to me, than Marxist word-wrangling.

Big Bob Hope fan. Love the work of Danny Kaye.

Seeing as you're a bit of a film buff, I'd like to know Holden, who are your favourite classic comedians.

I'll post my top ten in a bit...but for now, I must weigh in: if you don't think "Duck Soup" is laugh-out-loud funny, have your head examined! The "mirror scene" is one of the absolute funniest scenes in the history of cinema. Anyway, in that tiny room scene, I thought the funniest parts were the smart-a** one-liners Grouch kept spewing.

Um, you do know that a lot of those movies (Best in Show, Spinal Tap and Waiting for Guffman) are highly improvisational, right? I could be wrong about some of them, but I know "Best in Show" is...and I'm fairly sure the others are.

Everybody's senses of humor are different, and hard to define.

I didn't even crack a smile at any Farrelly Brother or Adam Sandler movie, and I've seen most of them. Yet it's not that I only groove on Albert Brooks and Groucho Marx. I also think for example Airplane!, Young Frankenstein, Caddyshack and Animal House are among of the funniest movies ever made, and they aren't at all full of subdued, intelligent, subtle comedy.

And as was already pointed out, This Is Spinal Tap, Waiting for Guffman and Best in Show are masterpieces of Improvisation. They are barely scripted at all, the dialogue and characters are left to the creation of each individual performer. Fascinating stuff. And yes, I do absolutely LOVE all three of those films.


Favorite classic comedians? Don't know what your cut-off criteria for "classic" is, but I prefer The Marx Brothers to The Three Stooges - and I love all three of the principal Marx Bros., equally too. I like Chaplin a lot, but don't care a lick for W.C. Fields. Laurel & Hardy are OK, but Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd are both geniuses. Abbott & Costello get me every time, while Martin & Lewis usually leave me cold. Hope & Crosby Road Pictures (I love solo Hope too, as in The Paleface) can be hysterical, yet I'd probably take most Cary Grant comedies over their work eight times out of ten. Never really laughed at Uncle Milty, but Sid Caesar can have me rolling on the floor.

I know they're improvisational but you don't think all those jokes are worked out in the first take. Those actors go through labourous rehearsals and numerous takes before they're satisfied. Improvisational comedy is as honed as anything that is scripted; it's just not written down.

No, if you've ever listened to the commentary tracks available on the LD or DVDs of Spinal Tap, Guffman and Best In Show, the Improvisation is done in front of the camera. Multiple takes of scenes are done, sure, but they are riffing off each other in the moment, that's how they work and it's the whole point of the exercise. Whenever possible they aim to use the first takes, those spontaneous creative moments, as if they were working live on-stage. That's what they're aiming for by working this way in the first place.

Sometimes two actors may pair-off together for prep work with their characters or ideas for scenes if they are supposed to have known each other for a long time, to build certain points of common understanding between the characters, as in the obvious couplings for Best In Show. But in general all the work is done with the camera rolling, and more often after those simple understandings of each other are 'set', they really want to try to surprise and flow with the actors they're working with. Guest, as the director (or Rob Reiner in Spinal Tap), can say he liked this or that between takes if something really excites him, but basically all the decisions are made much later, in the editing room, and nothing is really refined or any such thing on the set.

The scenarios and characters are only broadly defined before filming. The other actors then react, in character, to what they're presented with moment to moment. The task of editing these projects is Herculean, and to find basically linear stories from all that wonderful basically spontaneous chaos is amazing.

Whatever you're reacting to negatively in these movies, it is NOT scripting.

Yeah, absolutely. To be honest, I'm not a big fan of Improv...I think that unless it's done REALLY well, it's embarassing and very unfunny. I'll watch the American version of "Who's Line Is It Anyway?" and I dig these Christopher Guest films...but anything less isn't usually worth watching.

BUT, when it's done well...it's amazing. "Best in Show" is one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. I'm sure basic points were decided upon: this character has this reputation, these basic events need to take place in this sort of way...but the details, and the specific dialogue, etc, is highly improv. To be honest, even without that, "Best in Show" is hilarious. What was the guy's name, Bud Adams? The commentator? Oh man, he cracked me up so bad. I'm actually cracking a smile just thinking about it now.

I'm sort of wandering now, so I'll end this post by saying that those movies are, indeed, highly improvisational...they're incredibly UNscripted compared to the majority of movies you see.

Just out of curiosity, is there some site that can give you a list of movies by genre? I've seen so many movies I can't remember the years and stuff like that to list my top ten.

I go with these, and I add:
-Parenthood
-Father of the Bride
-There's Something About Mary

Ron Howard's Parenthood was released in the Summer of 1989.

Damn Holden...couldn't you let it squeek by?*sigh* all right...I pick Election. I laughed pretty hard at certian parts. Oh! I liked Rat Race too.

1. Dogma
2. office space
3. dirty work
4. there's something about mary
5. baseketball
6. clerks
7. rushmore
8. austin powers
9. happy gilmore
10. Liar Liar

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And Sades, Rat Race was just released earlier this year. Surely even you can conceed a 2001 release is not eligible for a discussion about films of the 1990s.

...and Holden, when are you going to catch on...I'm messin' with you buddy.