City Lights
Among the greatest comedies of all time, this one has a special place. It’s not just a movie with a lot of humor that doesn’t get old. This movie is noble, beautiful, melodramatic, satirical, even political in some ways. It is no coincidence that in all serious ratings professionals still put it not in first place.
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
Pet Hunting is a job that requires special qualities. Ace Ventura has them all. He loves animals more than he loves people, and animals almost always return the favor. And people just get a kick out of the cheeky joker in the colored shirt wide open.
Dumb & Dumber
One of Jim Carrey’s best roles, although many of the jokes here are on the verge of foul play. For example, his character killed a parrot and screwed his head to the body with duct tape, so that the owner of the parrot, a blind boy, did not understand anything. Such humor sometimes makes you uncomfortable, but it’s impossible to tear yourself away from this comedy.
Oscar
Among the other roles of Louis de Funes, this stands alone. The thing is that “Oscar” is more like a TV show, and this format gives a great comedian the opportunity to break away in full. The result does not make you wait long: the whole movie you’ll be laughing nonstop. Fortunately, the Soviet dubbing is done so brilliantly that it even enhances the experience.
Forrest Gump
Robert Zemeckis’ best film, Tom Hanks’ best role. The subtle humor of this publicistic and pacifist work is appreciated all over the world. Perhaps there is still no one who watches a movie and does not know about Forrest Gump. Few will be able to remember exactly what happened to him, but the individual scenes are so witty that they stick in the memory forever, like the innocent phrase “I have to take a leak.”
There’s Only Girls in Jazz
We know this Billy Wilder comedy better than anyone else, and some are even surprised to learn later, for example, that he is the author of the dark “Sunset Boulevard” and “Lost Weekend”. But you have to admit, this picture, also known as “Some Like it Hot” is very funny indeed, and as for illiteracy, “we all have our faults.
Pulp Fiction
is not watched but memorized by heart, to paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche. “Pulp Fiction” changed the cinema, changed people’s consciousness, became their replacement for a board book and a favorite quotation book. And we still catch ourselves from time to time muttering under our breath something like, “Zed’s dead, baby. Zed’s dead.”
Roman Holiday
Man’s memory is unfair. It’s doubtful that the great classic of American cinema, William Wyler, imagined that of all his pictures in the next century, audiences would be reviewing not even the lavish peplum “Ben Hur”, but the humble comedy with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck. And the song Moon River will be almost more famous than the film itself. So make a movie after that.
Home Alone
The burglars decide to burglarize the house on Christmas Day, but they don’t take into account that Kevin happens to be staying home and that he’s the first prankster in the neighborhood. What the little boy is up to with the two brutal men is beyond description, but it’s so funny that no epigone movie could surpass the original.
Annie Hall
Woody Allen has made so many great comedies that it’s hard to single out even a few anymore. I don’t want to offend the others. But “Annie Hall” is a special case; after this film, it’s as if Woody Allen has grown into a new level director, and although there is less humor and more drama in his films, he still maintains their perfect combination. Especially in Annie Hall.
Bananas
Woody Allen’s early comedy is a stream of witty jokes and mockery of anything from Latin American revolutions (and revolutions in general) to quarrels between lovers who are tired of being in love. Woody Allen himself readily portrays both Fidel Castro and the average rejected young man in the film.
The Fifth Element
Truth be told, any movie starring Bruce Willis can be considered a comedy: it is enough for the actor to appear on the screen – and as if from his own lips come out laconic witticisms. But Willis never had such a luxurious entourage, which was invented by the great storyteller Luc Besson. Who, by the way, still has the best film of his career. And the funniest.
Il signor Robinson.
For the Soviet viewer, this average Italian comedy became a cult if only because Friday here is not a young man, but a pretty girl who most of the time is half-naked in the frame. And the “Robinson” here is a chubby Italian man who looks nothing like his enterprising prototype. But he, too, does not want to be lonely.
Groundhog Day
The movie’s title has long been a household name, though it is by no means the first story about the same day in the life of a character repeating over and over again, driving one crazy with its predictability and foreshortenedness. Had it not been for Bill Murray, maybe this time the film would have gone unnoticed, but Murray made the story of a city snob in the outback a philosophical and ironic reflection on life, choice and love.