Some of us would rather challenge Dwayne Johnson to a cage match than watch a documentary. Others are butter-soft and can't mess with horror flicks. But there’s one classic film genre that every man, woman, and child can agree upon, and that’s comedy. Who doesn't want to laugh every now and then?
Compiling this list was hard, and not just because it's inevitable that one of you will go off in the comments about the ranking, or complain that we forgot your favorite indie movie from 10 years ago. Just because a movie has the "comedy" tag, however, doesn’t guarantee that it'll actually make you laugh. The last time we checked, some of Tyler Perry's unendurable character flicks fall under this category, as do Pauly Shore's movies and Carrot Top's punishing Chairman of the Board. By the same token, a movie could be marketed as the most hilarious comedy of the year and count some of the best comedic actors among its stars and still fail miserably at delivering solid laughs (we won’t point any fingers this time.)
The truth is, comedy is subjective AF, and a successful funny movie is actually a delicate balance of good jokes and a compelling story. The movie has to have some direction, and surprisingly enough, the best movies tend to walk the line between comedy and another genre. There is much laughter to be had in contradictions, paradoxes, and otherwise generally unfunny situations.
So, yeah, compiling any list of comedy movies entails some discretion, and even more so when trying to make an argument for the greatest comedies of all time. But that's where we come in, fam. Complex has had this list in some iteration on its website so years now, but great comedies are #blessing cinemas every single day, so we have to periodically re-evaluate our picks.
The result: our scrupulously rebuilt countdown of the funniest movies of all time, completed after hours of laughter.
Mean Girls (2004)
What We Do In The Shadows (2014)
Deadpool (2016)
Director: Tim Miller
Stars: Ryan Reynolds, Morena Baccarin, Ed Skrein, T. J. Miller, Gina Carano
Quotable: "Like the kind of stupid who admits he can't do the one thing I'm keeping him alive for?"
Ryan Reynolds' Deadpool is an R-rated, shit-talking, fourth-wall breaking reluctant superhero who was able to finally crack the code for a truly hilarious Marvel movie. Part of Deadpool’s success as a comedy is built right into the storyline: The very last thing Deadpool wants to do is conform to the X-Men, and that reversal from the norm creates a fertile plot for comedy, which is only bolstered by Reynolds' energetic performance. Deadpool is a movie that doesn’t take itself so seriously—even its marketing strategy was out of the box—and Deadpool’s knack for making fun of the “real world” (Marvel, Reynolds himself, even David Beckham) is a highly original and entertaining choice.