The top 50 comedies of the 21st century, ranked

USA Today

6 days ago

It's hard out there to be a studio comedy, stuck in a world where audiences primarily get their chuckles from blips on TikTok and memes on Reddit.
However, a new Naked Gun movie gives us good reason to appreciate the medium, even as the format struggles to find mass footing in the grander zeitgeist. A new Naked Gun installment and a new Happy Gilmore movie makes us want to look back on the best comedies of the century so far, the movies we've returned to time and time again for those timeless laughs we're never tire from.
Sure, the studio comedy isn't in great shape right now, but we've gotten so many great ones over the last 25 years. Why not celebrate them while the medium is squarely in the spotlight right now?
We've gone through and ranked our favorite comedies in the last 25 years, but our requirements limit some very funny movies from consideration. At least for this exercise, we've decided to eliminate straight-up dramedies (Little Miss Sunshine, Funny People, the films of Alexander Payne and Wes Anderson), genre tweeners (O, Brother, Where Art Thou?, In Bruges), dramas with amazing comedic moments (The Wolf of Wall Street) and funny Pixar movies. That process took out some all-timers, and it's absolutely imperfect as to what does and doesn't make the list.
However, we want, as much as possible, to honor the movies that went straight for our funny bones without much else in mind. The comedy feels like an endangered species, so we want to reserve a special place for them to get their proper due. We've (well, me, I'm just one person) worked very hard to see as many films as possible, but we haven't seen every single comedy with good reviews in the last 25 years (I swear I will watch In the Loop very soon).
We also, well, didn't rank Step Brothers. Yeah... sorry about it. We love it, but it's just not supposed to be here.
Before you break out the torches and pitchforks (particularly over that last point), please understand that making lists is a supremely flawed process based on immediate whims, so don't take any of this too seriously. After all, it's a list about comedies. Taking any of this that seriously kind of defeats the purpose of laughing, don't you think?
So, join us in this exhaustive exercise of ranking the top 50 comedies of the 21st century. We hope you enjoy.
Some NSFW content to follow.
50. Anger Management
It's no secret that Adam Sandler's cinematic glories in the comedic space exist largely in the 1990s, as his 2000s vehicles started pedaling downhill as his best films (Punch-Drunk Love, Funny People, Uncut Gems) skewed toward dramedy. However, his collaboration with Jack freakin' Nicholson deserves a spot on this list. Anger Management is his great comedic achievement of the 2000s, as Sandler's temper-tantrum rage paired so well with Nicholson's Cheshire Cat penchant for mischief. It's the most grounded concept of Sandler's 2000s output, and it's got some of his biggest laughs post-Wedding Singer. Sure, we love 50 First Dates, Eight Crazy Nights and Mr. Deeds, but Anger Management represents the best of what Sandler did at his comedic peaks. What followed wasn't to this level.
49. Game Night
Rachel McAdams battling with instantaneously conflicting emotions over watching a dangerous henchman get sucked into a jet engine is just one of the many pleasures of Game Night. All she can muster is, "Oh, no, he died!" The line reading is textbook comedic delivery, and it cemented McAdams as a comedy breakout for her timing and ability to lean into the mood and material. Highlighted by McAdams and a delightfully droll Jesse Plemons, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein's madcap game night from Hell took an original concept and turned it into one of the better studio comedies of the 2010s. We're still unsure about how the three-for-one bags of chips can that be profitable for Frito-Lay, but we are sure of Game Night's savvy approach to winning, high-concept laughs.
48. Everybody Wants Some!!
Richard Linklater's spiritual sequel to Dazed and Confused found inspiration in the director's college baseball days, taking us all back to that precious time in life when all that mattered was hanging with the guys, pounding a few brewskis and talking about the stupidest stuff imaginable. Everybody Wants Some!! is a gut-busting hang with friends you never knew you had as well as a bittersweet trip in a time capsule to the days you can't get back. Linklater wisely takes a softer approach compared to the college comedies that came before, as this is a much easier chill session than the frenzy-raucous days of Animal House. Whether it's the galaxy-warming radiance of Glen Powell's true breakout or the stoner-wisdom guffaws of a wooly Wyatt Russell, Everybody Wants Some!! has already etched itself as a cherished tribute to the "for the boys" dog days of single twenty-something summers.
47. The Nice Guys
Shane Black always had a penchant for ringing laughter out of genre fare, but The Nice Guys ramped his slapdash instincts to a new level. Pairing a wisecracking Russell Crowe with a fumble-cuss Ryan Gosling to mine comedic gold, The Nice Guys is already a landmark for meshing two disparate worlds -- the studio comedy and the sun-drenched L.A. noir -- without sacrificing what makes the individual genre great. The Nice Guys is a comedy at its heart, but it's got the mind of a whip-smart, bloodhound gumshoe on the case. That we can include it on this list without feeling like we're cheating speaks to how pound-for-pound funny the ensemble and Black's script are.
46. The World's End
Edgar Wright is one of the great comedic directors of the century, a joy machine fueled by pop culture's past who refracts his influences into kaleidoscopic visions of what we love and what we've not quite experienced. The World's End capped his Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy with an apocalyptic barnburner, anchored by a doomed pub crawl and unearthed tensions among a group of lifelong friends. While, sure, trying to reach the ludicrous heights of Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead was always going to be a tough task for Wright, he still manages to ring so much great comedy and genuine pathos out of Gary King's quest for adolescent immortality. You try getting that spine-chilling chorus from the Sisters of Mercy's "This Corrosion" out of your head the second you hear it in the movie.
45. I Love You, Man
As this summer's alt-comedy candy store Friendship outlines, adult male friendships are hard to find and even harder to maintain. John Hamburg's bracing bro-hug of a movie I Love You, Man delivers a big-hearted, infectiously funny ode to the dorky-awkward, richly freeing bonds formed by men over a certain age. Paul Rudd and Jason Segel operate in their thirty-something archetypes uncomfortably well, which heightens the comedic potential for the material. The "Slappin' the bass" scene captures cringe lightning in a bottle, as the best moments in adult male friendships often do. Their future kids may watch this movie through their fingers, but it's not for them, dude.
44. Bad Santa
Bad Santa rode into town on a flaming sleigh from the bad side of the North Pole, shocking the senses to what audiences expected from a mainstream Christmas movie. Billy Bob Thornton's Not-So-Jolly, Not-So-Saint Degenerate mall Santa swears at children and drinks to the point of vomit, but his Grinch-would-blush heart grows just enough in the presence of an innocence that not even his Bizarro Kris Kringle could ignore. Of Christmas comedies released in 2003, Elf will always be the most beloved. However, Bad Santa does a much better job of capturing the simmering nastiness of the holiday season as it does highlighting why it disarms even the naughtiest. The film could have unwrapped itself as a cheap gimmick, but the spirt of the season still shines through the fog.
43. Super Troopers
The fellas from Broken Lizard never quite reached the unreal peaks of Super Troopers again, even as their future output remained funny enough. Their brash Vermont State Troopers might not be model officers of the law, but the comedic troupe's ferociously funny tendencies never found a more natural home than on the wild highways of Super Troopers. It's endlessly quotable (The snozzberries taste like snozzberries! A liter of cola!), and it launched various members of Broken Lizard into the comedy stratosphere. Kevin Heffernan walked so Danny McBride could run.
42. Zombieland
Zombieland made it possible to where we got two outstanding zombie comedies in the 2000s. This clever riff on the undead apocalypse carved itself into the comedy annals with the way it meshes a smart-aleck approach to horror rules with the fractured formation an endearing found family. It's also just funny as heck, highlighted by a shotgun-blast cameo by Bill Murray whose untimely demise is one of the great shock laughs of the century. Murray might regret his time making Garfield, but there will never be any regretting the experience of taking in Zombieland.
41. Hail, Caesar!
With all due respect to the hysteric pointlessness of Burn After Reading, Hail, Caesar! is the great Coen Brothers comedy of the century. The Coens cook up a laugh riot of a Golden Age Hollywood spoof, complete with Channing Tatum's second-funniest century moment (his scream-funny "No Dames" musical number) and Alden Ehrenreich's should'a-been-star-making turn as affable Western lead Hobie Doyle. The film ultimately finds a sweet note to end on, but the journey there gave us the wittiest Coens full-send comedy script since The Big Lebowski. It's the great show business sendup the Coens were destined to make, and it remains incredibly sharp nearly a decade later.
40. The LEGO Movie
The first Phil Lord-Chris Miller collaboration on our list takes place in a world built completely of LEGOs. What could have played as shameless branding winds up delivering some of the funniest conglomerate satire of the century. The LEGO Movie is smarter and way funnier than it has any right to be, proving that Lord and Miller have the ability to raise the floor of basically any intellectual property they touch. The way it lampoons mass entertainment for profit (Where's My Pants!) and champions unbridled creativity through the lens of LEGO still boggles the mind. The "Spaceship!" LEGO guy alone having his spaceship epiphany is funny enough to rival any other scene on this list.
39. The Simpsons Movie
It's hard to understate what a big deal The Simpsons Movie was at the time of its release, and what a big deal it was that the long-running animated sitcom landed the big-screen leap with such success. If you're wondering why we still haven't gotten a sequel nearly 20 years later, it's because Springfield's first foray into the movies worked so absurdly well. The movie blasts the Simpsons back to their early 1990s heydays, renewing the sheer zeal and comedic prowess the show started to lose a bit as it stretched past its glory days. The bar for any future Simpsons projects was set impossibly high by the first movie, which really is one of the great animated comedies of all time.
38. This is the End
Seth Rogen and Jay Barushel expanded their 2007 short film Jay and Seth Versus the Apocalypse with This is the End, an unholy celebrity satire where the stars play overwrought caricatures of themselves as the world crumbles around them. The film felt like a grand finale for the Apatow era, roping in so many of its breakout stars and pitting them against violent ends and spiritual awakenings. These A-list comedy stars being so willing to zap the seriousness out of their auras gave This is the End a rocksteady foundation for its laughs. Michael Cera's salacious parody of his meek nature stands out, but it's Danny McBride who takes over the film with his legendary entrance. If comedy actors deserve Academy Awards, McBride should have been at least nominated for Best Supporting Actor.
37. Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
The Lonely Island gave us some of the funniest movies of the last 25 years, and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping is a pretty great encapsulation of why the comedic trio's work stands the test of time. The film is a blistering parody of the Justin Bieber-pop star era, made even funnier by the fact that Bieber once appeared in a SNL Digital Short and probably loves this movie. Conner4Real might be fictional, but even his over-exaggerated airhead sensibilities felt uncomfortably real to the pop sphere it sought to spoof. The film doesn't hit quite as hard as it does without the Lonely Island actually making the music good, too. We'll be Donkey Roll-ing for life after this.
36. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
Before Taika Waititi went mainstream with Marvel and won an Oscar, his wacky vibes reached their fever pitch with Hunt for the Wilderpeople. While horror fans may prefer his vampire comedy What We Do in the Shadows, the best comedic beats from Waititi's career came from this sweet, searingly funny coming-of-age tale about the enfant terrible of the New Zealand foster care system. Julian Dennison's breakout performance gave us one of the funniest young men of his generation, as his rule-hating, birthday-loving Ricky Baker is a perfect conduit for Waititi's cooky-calming worldviews and anarchic comedic sensibilities. Waititi's and Rhys Darby's small roles are icing on the cake.
35. Vacation
There is no world where a Vacation sequel in the year of our comedic lord 2015 should have made our sides hurt from laughing that hard. However, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein's unrelenting legacy sequel took Rusty Griswold's family on a somehow even more chaotic and disaster-laden vacation than the one his dad took him on all those years ago. Vacation got largely horrible reviews when it came out, but the film highlights why comedies get skewed on a strange platform through critical lens. If the point of Vacation is to make your eyes watery by how hard you're laughing at the amplified misfortunes of the Griswold family, then this film hits multiple bullseyes. Perhaps the very notion of a legacy sequel turned people off, but the film stands on its own hysterical merits.
34. Mean Girls
Tina Fey used her newfound SNL clout to bring one of the great high school comedies to life with Mean Girls, both an uproariously funny spoof of cliques and a vital text into understanding high school social dynamics. McAdams first showcased how funny she could be as mean girl Regina George, but Amanda Seyfried's goofy sidekick got some of the film's best laughs. It's hard to believe we've already gotten a musical and a movie adaptation of said musical out of Mean Girls, but Fey's adolescent social study aged so well to make them both possible. You don't even have to go here to appreciate how funny Mean Girls remains after all these years. You go, Glen Coco!
33. Best in Show
Christopher Guest helped pioneer the mockumentary format, rarely better than in his 2000 comedy Best in Show. His regular collaborators all fit in seamlessly to the various denizens of the dog show community, cleverly all matched to the personalities of the pooches they put into competition. Fred Willard's show commentator is somehow only the second-funniest character in a Guest film this decade, a testament to how funny he was. You can watch a Guest film like Best in Show over and over again and find something new to laugh at on each visit.
32. The Other Guys
The Other Guys was director Adam McKay's last major studio comedy before his pivot into message-driven dramedies, and it was a glorious send-off to his run as one of the most accomplished comedy auteurs of the century to that point. This pinpoint perfect buddy-cop movie gave Will Ferrell one of his best roles and one of his best co-stars in Mark Wahlberg, who fit in unexpectedly well to the absurdism that coats the McKay-Ferrell fun house experience. You could see hints of McKay wanting to make bigger jabs at the corrupt powers that be through the story, but the laughter never takes a back seat. We'd recommend you watch this movie with your best pal... maybe after a matinee of Jersey Boys... and that you avoid aiming for the bushes at all costs. Just trust us on that.
31. Pineapple Express
Pineapple Express announced itself to the world with one of the all-time great trailers, a promise for pot-fueled mayhem and hysterically bloody crime capers set to the tune of M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes." With Rogen fresh off an unbelievable run under Judd Apatow's watch and James Franco coming off the Spider-Man movies to play aggressively against type, the potential for this proper Freaks and Geeks reunion seemed endless. Sure, the end result doesn't quite live up to that, but it gets largely close. It's a masterclass in putting comedy to the forefront but not forgetting the sound backbone to make the laughs stick. Once McBride shows up, the film elevates itself into the highest stratosphere possible. Even if the trailer set an unreal expectation, the film itself is still phenomenal.
30. The 40-Year-Old Virgin
The Judd Apatow era started a year earlier with Anchorman, but it exploded onto the scene with his directorial debut in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. At this point, Steve Carell was just a standout corespondent on The Daily Show, the blabbering newsman from Bruce Almighty and a green Michael Scott on the American remake of The Office. The 40-Year-Old Virgin cemented Carell as one of comedy's true dynamite figures and Apatow as one of its brightest talents behind the camera. The film paired with Wedding Crashers in 2005 to give the R-rated comedy a soaring comeback for the ages, but it's this film that's stood the crucial test of time. It's just such a good-hearted comedy for what could have been a deliriously judgmental premise. To be honest, it was always going to be funnier that way.
29. Shaun of the Dead
Edgar Wright's grand debut to the theatrical experience had red on it. Shaun of the Dead hopped over from across the pond to become a domestic sensation, announcing Wright as a major filmmaking force and its stars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as one of the most irresistible comedic duos in ages. This British zombie survival comedy pokes proper fun at the genre while still adhering to its best tenants. Wright's virtuoso ability to pair humor with flash-bang craft behind the camera was on full display, as was his knack for pairing moments with music. Outside of Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola and the Coens, no director has been quite as adept with needle drops as Wright. His landmark debut still remains as broadly hilarious and surprisingly poignant as ever.
28. Napoleon Dynamite
Some say it takes three times to really "get" Napoleon Dynamite, one of the biggest Sundance sensations of its generation. The deadpan Idaho coming-of-age comedy followed the most recognizable dork of the 2000s and his high-school exploits, introducing the world to pocket tots, ligers, overly-shaded eyebrows, Pedro's presidential campaign, an internet-bought time machine and an uncle who could throw a football over those mountains. The genius of Napoleon Dynamite doesn't need multiple viewings to appreciate. Jared Hess never lets his admiration for the community Napoleon builds fall to the wayside. He finds value in the intrinsic oddities of the main characters. They're weird, and they're funny. However, they also feel real. Hess finds beautiful, grounded surrealism in Preston.
27. Not Another Teen Movie
Parody movies were a dime a dozen in the 2000s, many of them shamelessly aiming for hot topics and easy targets that wouldn't be funny a year removed. Not Another Teen Movie went well, well past that to send up an entire generation of teenage movies with a timeless whimsy and brutal left hook. This is one of the smartest outright parodies of all time, far closer to Airplane! than Epic Movie. The film doubles as being just a good-old-fashioned version of what it seeks to lampoon, which only heightens its general mission. This one stands out among its peers.
26. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Dodgeball hit like a meteor back in 2024, a true-blue sports comedy that seized the zeitgeist as tightly as a Globo Gym Purple Cobra grips a dodgeball. The lovable schlubs versus uptight jocks template has given plenty of sports comedies zest over the years, but Dodgeball succeeds by, to be blunt, just how far it stretches the specific comedic potential out of a well-worn foundation. Prime Affable Vince Vaughn (TM) and Ben Stiller in Heavyweights mode combine with a murderer's row of supporting character actors to buffet a deliriously funny vehicle that never gets old. You'll never look at big casino signs the same way again, that's for sure... or Chuck Norris, for that matter.
25. Zoolander
Ben Stiller is one of the Mount Rushmore figures of 2000s comedy, and Derek Zoolander is one of its cherished morons. As much as you'd like to forget the abysmal 2016 sequel, the original Zoolander is a pop culture touchstone and a relentlessly funny send-up of the modeling industry and the gaudy early 2000s pop aesthetics that backed it. Stiller and Owen Wilson have always had impressive chemistry with each other, perfectly paired as two bozo models forced to get along in the face of evil. As great as they are, Zoolander is quietly one of Will Ferrell's triumphs as Mugatu, a rapacious villain capable of dastardly hubris and genuine confusion as to how stupid those around him really are. The "house of ants" scene with Zoolander even flashes a brief glimmer of Mugatu sympathy for just how dumb-as-a-rock the former really is, a strong credit to the range Ferrell has when he's fully attuned to his character.
24. School of Rock
Richard Linklater's greatest comedy of the century remains School of Rock. Jack Black confirmed his titanic movie stardom by covertly teaching a group of prep school kids the ins and outs of rock music. Linklater's lighter touch keeps the film's funniest moments from ever leaving the stratosphere, as he's wise to let Black's volcanic energy do a lot of the heavy lifting. Honestly, Mike White's script should have gotten an Oscar nomination. It's an incredibly good-natured homily for how the kids are alright when we give them the proper tools and a mad-hatter mentor to guide them in the best directions. By film's end, only the most soulless aren't cheering this rock band on to victory.
23. Josie and the Pussycats
Josie and the Pussycats has been gathering moss over the years as fresh eyes see it for what it's always been, a scathing critique of consumerism amid the boy band craze of the 1990s and early 2000s. This level of satire typically gets enshrined in far higher halls than a best comedies list, so here's hoping more and more people find out what this movie is about and how brilliant it is in executing its most piercing satires. Tara Reid and Parker Posey both deliver awards-worthy performances that underscore just the high difficulty of making comedy look effortless. If there is any justice, DuJour would mean far, far more than friendship, teamwork, crash positions and seatbelts.
22. The Hangover
The Hangover is an enigma at this point. Arguably the most popular comedy of the last 25 years, The Hangover set an impossible bar for future comedies to reach. It set off the beginning of the end to the blockbuster studio comedy, as studios tried and failed to capture the next Hangover-sized phenomenon. The sequels couldn't come close to reaching the alchemy of what came before them. Some of the film has aged poorly, too. However, despite all of that, it's still a vital entry on this list. The movie cemented Bradley Cooper as a movie star, made alt-comedy darling Zach Galifianakis a household name, turned Ed Helms into Steve Carell's Office heir and had people guffawing about babies in sunglasses, sedated tigers, satchel with damaged Skittles and the most uproarious end-credit slideshow of revelatory photos in the history of cinema. Practically everyone you knew saw The Hangover, and most people you know still quote it with regularity to this day. The way we consume humor is primarily to blame for the death of the studio comedy, but The Hangover rode in like four hungover horsemen of the hilarity apocalypse. The bar got set impossibly high, and the sequels couldn't deliver the same consistency. We'll always have Vegas, at least.
21. Bottoms
There is one film from the 2020s on this list, and that's Emma Seligman's sublime high school comedy Bottoms. Seligman established herself as a comedic talent to watch with Shiva Baby, and blessed be the comedy gods that she leveled up in budget and absurdism with Bottoms. The film feels like the heir apparent to Not Another Teen Movie in all the best ways, and it gave us Marshawn Lynch: Comedy Icon to go along with career-best turns for Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri. Bottoms is the only Gen Z-coded film on this list, and it's inarguably one of the most important comedies of the last decade. Seligman showed studios a path forward for making comedies for a new generation. There is a way to meet evolving social norms without sacrificing laugh-a-minute comedy. The world needs more movies like Bottoms in it, original comedic concepts with funny people doing stupid things for kicks.
20. Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
Adam McKay and Will Ferrell took the success of Anchorman and parlayed it into this blistering Bush-era satire of big, booming America with Talladega Nights. Ferrell's Ricky Bobby is beyond iconic by now, as this film brought people to the theater in droves to take in the insanity of NASCAR against the backdrop of engine-revving American values. It's sharp as a tack in the way it weaves in grander themes about the country at that time into a nearly flawless comedic saga, making the most of its unreal ensemble and jam-packed-with-jokes script. The Bobby family dinner table prayer scene remains an otherworldly comedic achievement in writing and performance. Sure, it's not quite Anchorman, but it didn't have to be. Talladega Nights is still a towering work for superstars in their prime.
19. Shrek
Shrek is one of the few animated films on our list, but it's wholly deserving of a very high spot. The film revolutionized what animated movies could be, breaking free from the tidy hilarity of Disney for something grungier, more adept for irreverence and body humor to get its funny points across. Shrek is a perfect send-up of the Disney fairy-tale industrial complex as it is just an absolute banger of a fairy-tale comedy. An ogre farts in a pond and kills fish, a donkey wants to make waffles, a princess burps and beats the everlasting heck out of Robin Hood, a sniveling lord stands about four feet high on a good day. Shrek is deeply unserious, but it's also an Oscar winner. Animation wasn't the same after Shrek, as the format opened itself up to more straightforward comedies for kids.
18. Borat
Sacha Baron Cohen took his Kazakhstan-loving television personality Borat to America at the peak of the Bush years, and the world of comedy was never the same. Cohen's gleeful disguise revealed a stark underbelly to the country his Borat traversed, and we didn't always get such a great snapshot of our fellow citizens as a result. However, what we did get is a film so painfully funny that it hurt to laugh as much as it hurt to watch. You can debate the ethics of Cohen's methods to get footage if you wish, but you can't deny his results. Borat is an all-timer.
17. Meet the Parents & Meet the Fockers
Greg Focker meeting his future in-laws gave the world one of the most relatable comedies of all time, and a few years later, meeting Focker's parents kept the laughs going at an unreal clip. Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers are perfect examples of how you can find generational hilarity in the most simple of concepts, like meeting an ornery father in Robert De Niro who is very suspicious if you're good enough for his daughter. The dynamics are prickly, and the laughs are plentiful. We've all been there in one way or another, which makes it all even funnier.
16. The Foot Fist Way
Concord, North Carolina, gave us one of the funniest films of the last 25 years in The Foot Fist Way and a bona fide comedy legend in the process in Danny McBride. The Foot Fist Way is a spectacular example of how having just enough of a budget is more than enough for a masterpiece if you have trillions of megawatts in hilarity on hand, too. McBride's Fred Simmons, the King of the Demo, strikes an uncanny balance between demented weirdo and endearing underdog. McBride's alpha-dog energy combines with Southern sass and just a tinge of rapscallionism to make Simmons play like a happy medium between Peter LaFleur and Travis Bickle. McBride and regular directing collaborator Jody Hill set that balance against a film that's impressively immensely lovable and a little dangerous.
15. Tropic Thunder
Ben Stiller's showbiz spoof Tropic Thunder took a sucker-punch inwardly to the ego of actors, the hubris of directors and the shamelessness of the corporate class. The concept is so rich, putting a bunch of pampered actors into the "jungle of war" only to have them actually face violence and combat that unmoors their collective sense of being into total chaos. There is so much to love, from the fake trailers that kick the film off to the way it hops and skips between Hollywood and the hellacious conditions of the Golden Triangle. However, the film lives and dies on Robert Downey Jr., and his Kirk Lazarus remains one of the all-time comedic performances. He literally got nominated for an Oscar in a movie with a fake trailer for The Fatties: Fart 2. Now that's what you call acting.
14. Hot Rod
The Lonely Island created Hot Rod in the dead-heat of a summer between SNL seasons, only to see it unceremoniously dumped on the film calendar between The Simpsons Movie, The Bourne Ultimatum, Stardust, Rush Hour 3 and Superbad. It never even stood a chance against the comedies it went up against. However, the five of us who saw it in theaters knew what a special movie it really was. All these years later, Andy Samberg is no longer just the "Lazy Sunday" guy, and Hot Rod is a real-deal cult classic boasting some of the most promising comedic talents of that era in front of and behind the camera. It's one of the great stupid-smart comedies of its time and a mission statement for The Lonely Island's comedy, which is pretty... cool beans to us. Cool, cool, cool, cool beans.
13. Bridesmaids
Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo changed the game with their Bridesmaids script, guided by Paul Feig's capable direction and one of the funniest performances of all time from Melissa McCarthy. Like Downey Jr., she earned Oscar attention in Best Supporting Actress for her scene-stealing turn, replacing Gilmore Girls as the primary project McCarthy will be known for throughout the rest of her career. Bridesmaids is vital for how it reshuffled the deck for what the Apatow-era comedy could be, moving it past the bros and showing that women could obviously also lean into physical and bodily humor that underscored a deeper story about tested friendships. The bridal dress try-on scene will live eternal. You can't talk about the best comedies of the century without Bridesmaids listed high.
12. Idiocracy
Mike Judge remains one of cinema's most unassuming prophets, as his scorching satire Idiocracy feels closer and closer to reality as any of us would like to admit. Its future depicts a confederacy of dunces that devolved into watering plants with energy drinks, going to the movies in record number to laugh at an image of a man's buttocks and electing a professional wrestler to be president. As you can see, we're not that far off from Judge's vision of a tomorrow full of yesterdays. The menace of the now mirroring the lunacy of the fictional isn't Judge's fault, as his pristine trilogy of this, Office Space and Beavis and Butt-Head Do America create a deliriously funny triptych for the world as it was (Beavis), the world as it always is (Office) and the world as it may one day be (Idiocracy). It's the comedic equivalent of a hat trick, as Idiocracy is the arm-fart Ghost of Christmas Future warning us to wise up.
11. The Jackass series
Johnny Knoxville and his merry band of painful pranksters have spent the last 25 years or so torturing themselves for our entertainment, and we can't thank them enough for it. The Jackass quadrilogy stands as some of our finest examples of physical comedy by default because nobody puts themselves on the line for laughs like these guys. In the Jackass world, a gator can bite your nipple, and you'd call it light work. A bull can ram you into the next zip code, and you're hopping right back in the pin for more. You can get shot out of a canon and plastered with paintball bullets as a rite of passage for all the Jackasses before you. As lightheaded as you get watching these films for how incredibly funny they are, you're also heartened by their brazen stupidity. If you're going to be dumb, you've got to be tough, after all. This gang's stiff upper lip when the pain sets in keeps us all believing in the lunatic human spirit.
10. Shaun the Sheep Movie
Every now and again, you have to go with your gut. My gut tells me time after time that Shaun the Sheep Movie is the closest we've gotten to a modern Buster Keaton silent comedy. Shaun and his bleating pals making a run for the city with Bitzer the sheep dog on their tail finds pockets of comedy unheard of in modern entertainment. The way it can send you into another dimension from laughing so hard without any words is transformative. Watching a group of sheep dressed in people clothes try to navigate a meal at a restaurant gives you some of the finest silent comedy we've ever gotten. Like, c'mon, you try not cackling at the sight of a sheep eating a menu because they're confused how people food works. Shaun the Sheep Movie really is Aardman's cinematic masterpiece, and there is no world where you don't laugh at least a couple of times for where this film takes you. It's real comedy in its purest form.
9. Freddy Got Fingered
Tom Green burned millions of dollars of studio money to destroy and rebuild the comedy template with Freddy Got Fingered, crafting a head rush of offensiveness refracted from Green's view of "what the people wanted" from their funny trips to the movies. Watching Green act in a traditional studio comedy like Road Trip makes Freddy Got Fingered even funnier, if only because Green knew what was expected of him and completely flipped it on its head into a Godardian nightmare of unforgiving subversion and hands-flailing, hair on fire anarchy. The alt-comedy we love now isn't possible without Green's groundbreaking innovations, as he broke the boundaries with a sledgehammer of what comedy even means in a movie to unsettle us to a new level of laughter. You have to accept Freddy Got Fingered on its own terms, and you have to suspend your disbelief a bit for just how far Green is willing to push the parameters of taste into the grotesque and deplorable. The legendary Roger Ebert wrote in his infamous zero-star review that "the day may come when Freddy Got Fingered is seen as a milestone of neo-surrealism. The day may never come when it is seen as funny." Ebert was right about the first part, as Freddy Got Fingered recently popped up on the Criterion streaming service. He was wrong about the latter because this movie was and always will be a hoot. It's a comedic milestone in bad taste and reconfigured norms. You will rush to your nearest shower after you're done watching it, but you will also appreciate that the revolution arguably started with Freddy.
8. Knocked Up
Knocked Up works out of a pretty simple premise: what if a promising young woman's one-night stand with a man-child left them as parents-to-be? Judd Apatow followed The 40-Year-Old Virgin with a suffocatingly funny and staggeringly human look into what it really means to commit to a cause grander than yourself in parenthood. We watched Seth Rogen learn to put his toys away and learn to embrace fatherhood came just a couple of months before the script he co-wrote with his best friend when they were teenagers, Superbad, blew up the zeitgeist. Rogen's 2007 turned him into a star, and his and Katherine Heigl's prickly-but-caring chemistry anchors the film in a sense of refreshing unease. You really don't know for most of the movie how this is all going to go, and that only heightens the film's best comedic beats. You can't help but root for them, and you're left laughing heartily waiting for answers. This will always be Apatow's best film as a director, a modern masterpiece about growing up.
7. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
Walk Hard didn't kill the music biopic, but it did make it downright impossible to run from its shadow. John C. Reilly led this breathtaking spoof of the music biopic a couple of years after Walk the Line and Ray, even if Walk Hard took its time to build an audience in the time after its tepid release. At the time, only a handful showed up for the life and times of fictional musician Dewey Cox. Those who latched on found some of the sharpest satire of the century so far, as the tiresome mechanics of how music biopics function got playfully pantsed under the bright lights. A world with Walk Hard challenges any music biopic to push past the well-worn tropes that Cox stomped into fine dust. As far as parodies go, Walk Hard is a Mount Rushmore achievement. All these years later, Cox walks harder than ever.
6. A Mighty Wind
Fred Willard gets a couple of minutes in Christopher Guest's A Mighty Wind to rattle off the kind of impromptu routine that most comedic actors can only dream of crafting. Willard's spiky-haired doofus manager of a theme park-playing folk group gleefully talks about his career to whoever will listen and throws out his catchphrase, "Hey wha'happened?" at the drop of a hat. It's hard to catch every word of Willard's monologue because the laughter it invokes leaves you downright dizzy and too wheezy-laughed to catch everything. It is the pinnacle of what comedy can give its audience, and it's only one part of Guest's masterful mockumentary about a gaggle of folk groups reuniting for a memorial concert. Willard represents the film's militant silliness, while Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara, two of Guest's regular players, represent the sweeter side, where a kiss at the end of the rainbow is more precious than a part of gold. Their climactic duo stops the entire movie in quiet awe. It's a showstopper from the heart that only underscores how impressive it is the movie that surrounds it is just so, so outrageously funny.
5. 21 Jump Street & 22 Jump Street
The greatest comedic sight gag in cinema history revolves around Channing Tatum and a gong. After accidentally getting zonked on an illegal drug, Tatum and Jonah Hill go on the trip of a lifetime while working undercover as high school students in 21 Jump Street. Tatum's magical mystery tour culminates in him crashing a high school band practice and jumping headfirst into a gong. It's the funniest thing any human has ever done, as scientists have proven after extensive research (don't Google that). Tatum's emergence as a generational comedic talent is best exemplified by his fearless leap into the center of the gong, as Phil Lord and Chris Miller knew exactly how to tap into the radiant funny bone he'd largely hidden up to 21 Jump Street. Lord and Miller's astonishing Jump Street films are the best one-two punches of the century so far in comedy, the original showing how the duo could make magic out of quite literally any material and the sequel a supremely impressive send-up of the comedy sequels in general. These films are comedic tidal waves, crashing with the sheer force of genre masters at the height of their powers.
4. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
What else is there to say about Anchorman? Adam McKay and Will Ferrell's masterpiece is one of the objective all-time great comedies, one that so many of us have seen so many times that we can quote it in its entirety whenever we're asked. It's Ferrell's finest hour as a comedic performer, as Ron Burgundy is the perfect encapsulation of why he's so funny and why he's so particularly dangerous with the right material. The film finds compelling through lines about gender politics and how they interact with each other in circles of achievement, and it also features a man saying he loves a lamp and ate a big, red candle. Anchorman is basically why we love comedic movies.
3. Hot Fuzz
Edgar Wright may never make another movie as good as Hot Fuzz, nor should he have to. Hot Fuzz is a perfect movie, so in love with its action-comedy influences and yet so compelled to usurp them with flawless examples of both intertwined as poetry in motion. We get Simon Pegg and Nick Frost in shoot-em-up mode in a suspicious village where murder pops up as surprisingly as a cloud on a sunny day, and Wright finds an unprecedented balance between the laugh-until-you-hurt humor and the wince-because-that-hurt action-gore. Sometimes, it's really hard to explain fully why a film is perfect in writing, but when you know, you know. Hot Fuzz floors it with genuine joy. It's one of my favorite movies... ever, as are the top two films you're about to see. We're almost there, folks.
2. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Jason Segel getting dumped by Kristen Bell and then revealing his unclothed body to the entire world through the movie camera is true, cringe-worthy bravery. Of course, Segel isn't actually getting dumped, but you'd almost believe he was with how painfully funny it is to watch him grieve the romance that was in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. The greatest romantic comedy of the century so far, Forgetting Sarah Marshall never hits a false note. Every joke lands, every actor finds their place in the material, every story beat feels earned and real. Segel anchors the entire film in his sad-sack empathy, delivering career-best work that blends his impressive comedic timing with his character's mopey messiness. Breakups suck, but Forgetting Sarah Marshall still finds incredible catharsis in the act of finally letting go, even if it requires you to go all the way to Hawaii to run into your ex and their new squeeze. Now, if we could only get a Broadway run of Segel's Dracula puppet musical, our lives really would be complete... maybe.
1. Superbad
Superbad is a right-of-passage movie for teens of a certain age. If you were, say, about to turn 15 in 2007, and your uncle bought your ticket to one of an opening-weekend showing, your life was about to change forever. In case you couldn't guess... that kid was me. Superbad was formative for my understanding of what comedies could be, as it hit at the exact right time for somebody my age to appreciate its sophomoric humor and its profound revelations about friendship and puppy-love romance. You're supposed to be a little too young for this movie when you watch it for the first time, as Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg started writing this movie when they were teenagers. For all the characters' harrowing side quests and buffoonish missteps, Seth and Evan's mission to score booze for a house party to impress their crushes is universally understood by its target audience. We've all been there in one way or another. It's the best comedy of the century because, quite literally, we've all been stupid high schoolers on the cusp of massive changes in our life, just trying to have a good time without our parents knowing what we're doing. It's one of the most relatable comedies ever, and it's undoubtedly the funniest movie on this list, too. Rogen and Goldberg took the coming-of-age comedy and spun it on its head, and we're all the better for it. Long live McLovin!