Laughter is the best medicine, they say, and with so many hilarious movies out there, it’s easy to get a healthy dose. But where do you even begin? Fear not, for I have compiled a list of some of the most iconic and side-splittingly funny comedies ever made, guaranteed to leave you rolling on the floor (or at least snorting with laughter). So here is the list of the Must Watch Funny Comedy Movies.
Le Havre – The Finnish Version of Jim Jarmusch
The film Le Havre, featured in the Cannes selection in 2011, is directed by the Finn Aki Kaurismaki, stylistically akin to the American Jim Jarmusch and a successor to the traditions of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati, and Robert Bresson. Le Havre is a blend that might seem otherwise impossible: dry humor, fairy tale, lucidity, nostalgia, sensitivity, and realism. In comparison to Intouchables, which aimed to be a demonstration of humanism without sentimentality and thrilled much of the audience, Kaurismaki’s performance in Le Havre went unnoticed, likely due to the delicacy of the demonstration, remaining a pleasure for a few.
The story is simple: Marcel from the town of Le Havre, making a living shining the shoes of passersby, tries to reunite an immigrant child from Africa with his mother. Meanwhile, Marcel’s wife is very ill and struggling for survival. Beyond the story, what matters is how it’s told, with humor and finesse.
The world of Le Havre is sad and modest, but it lives without resentments (class or otherwise). It lives by older societal rules, where emotions and feelings are seldom discussed because people know their place and guide their choices based on the principles of duty and sacrifice. There’s no room for psychoanalysis and bourgeois sophistication.
Booksmart – Must Watch Funny Comedy Movies
It’s not a dramedy, it’s not a comedy with dramatic touches. It has no drama in its DNA. It’s a pure-blooded comedy, exhaling humor from one end to the other.
The film Booksmart, not very well-known here, caught our attention while searching for inspiration for good films to watch in lists from abroad. And there are many such lists where it appears as one of the most successful of 2019. (Wikipedia even counted 68 top 10 film lists for 2019 in which this production was included). Certainly, we haven’t regretted a single moment we gave it a chance. Moreover, we laughed heartily at many scenes and lines.
It’s a smart coming-of-age comedy, centered around two nerds. Throughout high school, they were occupied with studying to secure a place in a prestigious college. But they find out that all their seemingly idiotic and solely fun-seeking classmates got into super universities. So, they decide to make up for lost time spent studying by going to the party of parties. What follows is a comedy that The Wall Street Journal says is the funniest, smartest, most dynamic on the big screen in a long time. And we totally agree with this characterization.
Höstsonaten/Autumn Sonata (1978)
Is the daughter’s misfortune the mother’s triumph? Is my grief your secret pleasure? With a hard-to-digest but impossible-to-ignore sincerity, director Ingmar Bergman captures the portrait of the central characters in Autumn Sonata, a mother and her daughter meeting for the first time in seven years. Eva (Liv Ullmann) and Charlotte (Ingrid Bergman) revolve in completely separate worlds, and the gap between them is felt especially when they are together.
We get to know them separately and then together, in a painful effort of communication and understanding. Charlotte, a celebrated pianist and accomplished actress in her personal life, has spent her life avoiding her children, two of whom have speech disabilities. On the other side is Eva, an apparently reconciled woman who hides a bitter, vivid, and deeply disturbed core since childhood.
I cannot convey in a short description all the nuances of the toxic relationship these two women share, but I can say that Bergman reaches psychological and emotional depths that far exceed the terms of neglect, hatred, or abandonment. The opening line is addressed to the mother, but in the film, we see the reverse reflection, the relationship reaching a point where only shared suffering can sustain it.
The Favourite (2018) – Must Watch Funny Comedy Movies
It’s one of our favorites. We couldn’t miss including it in the list of good films from 2018. The Favourite falls into the category of period films and social criticism but can easily fit into the dark comedy genre. The film is one of the best released in the last five years, both in terms of screenplay, direction, cinematography, and the originality of the subject.
We still see few women leading the main story in the films they appear in. In The Favourite, we have three ladies in a love triangle inspired by real events. The Queen Anne of England, in the 18th century, in precarious health, is manipulated by two women. The two aspire to rule the state by controlling the queen. The sparkling dialogue and the fresh performance of the three actresses, Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz, and Olivia Colman, recommend it for a careful viewing, to fully enjoy the experience. You can watch it on HBO.
Biutiful
Before venturing into the realm of comedy with Birdman, Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu was tempted by the story of Uxbal (Javier Bardem), a man who knows he will die soon. Diagnosed with cancer, Uxbal tries to put his life in order and build a home for his two children. Life puts obstacles in his path at every turn; his former wife Marambra, a drug addict, disappoints him at the end of an almost perfect day, his small businesses with the Chinese mafia fail miserably, and death finds him alone. However, the film is called Biutiful, and that’s because, despite being defeated by illness, Uxbal still gains small moments of happiness and hope.”
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