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Chris C 
"Four words, never backwards."
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 Posted - 07/22/2007 : 11:56:28
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As voted for by readers of the Observer. Here's the list, but for the full list with comments, click here for the top 25 and here for the next 25.
1. Life of Brian
2. Airplane!
3. This Is Spinal Tap
4 Some Like It Hot
5. Withnail and I
6. Blazing Saddles
7. The Big Lebowski
8. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
9. Duck Soup
10. Young Frankenstein
11. The Producers
12. Shaun of the Dead
13. Groundhog Day
14. Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
15. Planes, Trains and Automobiles
16. The Man with Two Brains
17. There's Something About Mary
18. Annie Hall
19. Dumb and Dumber
20. Anchorman: the Legend of Ron Burgundy
21. Mr Hulot's Holiday
22. Shrek
23. Best in Show
24. Kind Hearts and Coronets
25. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
26. The General
27. A Fish Called Wanda
28. Way Out West
29. The Odd Couple
30. The Ladykillers (1955)
31. The Blues Brothers
32. Arsenic and Old Lace
33. Bringing Up Baby
34. A Night at the Opera
35. Kingpin
36. The Naked Gun
37. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
38. Raising Arizona
39. Team America: World Police
40. Trading Places
41. American Pie
42. Hot Fuzz
43. Love and Death
44. Meet the Fockers
45. Sleeper
46. South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut
47. Stir Crazy
48. The Music Box
49. Tootsie
50. Uncle Buck
Philip French (the paper's movie critic) says:
First off, it's an honest list. No one eager to impress you with their sophistication would name Meet the Fockers, Uncle Buck, American Pie and Kingpin as their favourite comedies. There's a lot of post-Animal House in-your-face farce here. Secondly, it largely reflects the tastes of younger readers or those more likely to send emails or post on our blog than dispatch a letter.
It's overwhelmingly an Anglo-American, monoglot list. The only non-English speaking talent is Jacques Tati, Enoch Powell's favourite comedian, and he's represented by Mr Hulot's Holiday, where there's no intelligible dialogue in any language. This was perhaps predictable (indeed I did predict it in the introductory piece to this poll last month). Sad, but not entirely surprising, is the absence of Charlie Chaplin, one of the greatest figures in cinema history, but currently out of fashion. Still, this is a selection of readers' favourite films, not a historical survey of film comedy. Thus the disappointing absence of such classic exponents of screen comedy, makers of milestone movies, as Ren� Clair, Ernst Lubitsch and George Cukor, while Leo McCarey is here for Duck Soup but not for his screwball comedies, and Frank Capra is represented by the atypical Arsenic and Old Lace, not one of his 1930s comedies of populist social comment. As for Britain, the great music-hall comics Will Hay and George Formby no longer seem to make the grade, but then neither do the more recent Norman Wisdom, Rowan Atkinson (in his Mr Bean persona) and the Carry On team.
It's good to see the laidback put-on artists Steve Martin and Bill Murray recognised. But I'm surprised that Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, Martin's brilliant film-noir spoof, hasn't made the cut. Because if there is one outstanding feature of this list it's the post-modernist liking for the jokey pastiche, the allusive, parodic, comically parasitic comedy that links at least a quarter of these pictures - films that depend, for instance, on a knowledge of the genre conventions of horror flicks, biblical epics, westerns, police-procedural movies, disaster flicks and documentaries.
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ChocolateLady 
"500 Chocolate Delights"
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Posted - 07/22/2007 : 13:13:45
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Interesting list, but I'm sure that it would look very different if the poll was from an American paper.
(I also wonder what age group and political bias are the average Observer readers?)
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GHcool 
"Forever a curious character."
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Posted - 07/23/2007 : 03:35:30
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| Its not a bad list. In fact, its actually a pretty good list. I might not have picked Life of Brian as the single greatest comedy of all time. Observer readers tend to be a liberal bunch and so perhaps they were trying to make a statement ... ? |
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Sean
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 07/23/2007 : 04:02:38
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quote:
Originally posted by GHcool
I might not have picked Life of Brian as the single greatest comedy of all time.
I understood the list was a list of popularity, not quality. I.e., it tells you how many people listed it as one of their favourites, rather than what the average 'rating' was by those who'd watched it. It is definitely one of the most popular comedies of all time in terms of numbers of viewers. (That does depend a lot on whether you count comedy-dramas as comedies).
That list seems to be similar in nature to the Empire Magazine Top 200 Movies list, i.e., popularity rather than quality. That's why I like the IMDb lists as they reflect quality rather than popularity. On popularity lists, next to Life of Brian or Airplane!, stuff like Le Placard or Le d�ner de cons doesn't have a hope as far fewer Anglo-Western voters have seen them. |
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Sean
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 07/23/2007 : 04:20:04
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One thing that bugs me a little about genre classification for comedies is the broadness of the category. I.e., comedies that go all out for laughs-per-minute points such as Life of Brian or Duck Soup are lumped into the same category as 'light-hearted dramas' such as Annie Hall or Kind Hearts and Coronets and even satire such as Dr. Strangelove.
Having said that, the IMDb Top 50 comedies list is even broader, it contains stuff like Forrest Gump and bizarrely, Mr Smith Goes to Washington and Stalag 17. 
I'd put La vita � bella on a "best comedies" list, but certainly not on a "funniest comedies" list. La vita � bella is 'better' but Monsturd is funnier, if you get my drift.  |
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thefoxboy 
"Four your eyes only."
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Posted - 07/23/2007 : 05:30:03
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I would have put Dirty Rotten Scoundrels in there somewhere.
Does anyone know the name of the original version of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels? |
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Sean
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 07/23/2007 : 05:39:26
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quote:
Originally posted by thefoxboy
I would have put Dirty Rotten Scoundrels in there somewhere.
Does anyone know the name of the original version of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels?
Bedtime Story (1964) |
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ChocolateLady
"500 Chocolate Delights"
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Posted - 07/23/2007 : 05:40:26
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There is a big difference between "funniest" and "best" comedies, that is very true. And yet, some very funny and good quality films also aren't here. For instance The Princess Bride isn't on this list, which I find hysterical. I loved Death Becomes Her as well as The First Wives Club and thought they were both funny ideas that were well executed. One of my favourite comedies (aside from all the Hepburn-Tracey films) is Private Benjamin (oh... am I showing a bias towards Goldie Hawn?). More recent movies that I think are great are Rumour Has It and Failure to Launch. Give me another hour and I'll think of 10 more comedies I adore.
The question is - did they give the readers a list of comedies from all ages and tell them to pick 50 or did they tell them to send in their 50 favourite. That does make a difference.
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thefoxboy
"Four your eyes only."
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Posted - 07/23/2007 : 06:20:47
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quote:
Originally posted by Se�n
quote:
Originally posted by thefoxboy
I would have put Dirty Rotten Scoundrels in there somewhere.
Does anyone know the name of the original version of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels?
Bedtime Story (1964)
Thank you. |
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GHcool
"Forever a curious character."
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Posted - 07/23/2007 : 07:44:49
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quote:
Originally posted by Se�n
quote:
Originally posted by GHcool
I might not have picked Life of Brian as the single greatest comedy of all time.
That's why I like the IMDb lists as they reflect quality rather than popularity.
I'd have to disagree with you there. The Top 50 Comedies list you provided in your post above is evidence to the contrary. Three out of the top ten were 2007 movies, one of which, The Simpsons Movie, is not yet even theatrically released and has only 1,652 votes to Dr. Strangelove's 99,284. IMDb's Top 250 is better than IMDb's Top 50 Comedies, but it too is skewed to what's popular in our own generation; three of its top ten were released within the last 14 years.
The way I interpret it is that a much higher percentage of The Observer's readership (and IMDb's users) have seen Life of Brian, but have not actually seen the work of Chaplin and Keaton, for if they had seen them, they would have had the ability to rate them, and if they had the ability to rate them, they would naturally rate them at least as highly as Life of Brian. |
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Sean
"Necrosphenisciform anthropophagist."
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Posted - 07/23/2007 : 10:41:58
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quote:
Originally posted by GHcool
quote:
Originally posted by Se�n
quote:
Originally posted by GHcool
I might not have picked Life of Brian as the single greatest comedy of all time.
That's why I like the IMDb lists as they reflect quality rather than popularity.
I'd have to disagree with you there. The Top 50 Comedies list you provided in your post above is evidence to the contrary. Three out of the top ten were 2007 movies, one of which, The Simpsons Movie, is not yet even theatrically released and has only 1,652 votes to Dr. Strangelove's 99,284.
Yep I agree. I use IMDb lists a lot, and instinctively 'downgrade' movies based on how new they are. I completely ignore the scores from movies from the current year, for the reason you hinted at; the movies are rated by the converted. It takes a year or so for impartial voters to 'fix' the score.quote:
IMDb's Top 250 is better than IMDb's Top 50 Comedies, but it too is skewed to what's popular in our own generation; three of its top ten were released within the last 14 years.
A minimum number of votes are required to be considered for the Top 250; many movies in the "Top 50 by genre" lists don't have enough votes to be considered, hence that list is more useful, I agree.
I believe the three movies you're referring to are there on merit. Schindler's List and Pulp Fiction are thoroughly deserving of a place amongst "best movies ever" in my view. I'm not going to comment on the merits of "new versus old" as I don't see any point. Life and technology has changed since then.quote:
The way I interpret it is that a much higher percentage of The Observer's readership (and IMDb's users) have seen Life of Brian, but have not actually seen the work of Chaplin and Keaton, for if they had seen them, they would have had the ability to rate them, and if they had the ability to rate them, they would naturally rate them at least as highly as Life of Brian.
I agree with that, hence I don't see the Observer list (and other popularity lists) as very useful. But... I don't believe they actually 'rated' anything. (I looked at the Observer page and they didn't mention their methodology.) I understood it was a "yes or ignore" approach similar to voting on fwfrs. People either said "yes" or said nothing at all. Hence the list reflects popularity, not opinions of quality (such as scoring on IMDb). For all we know the few people who voted for Chaplin/Keaton movies have a higher opinion of those movies than the many who voted for Life of Brian, but we don't know this as that information was not collected in the voting.
I stand by my belief that qualitative lists (such as those on IMDb) are more useful than popularity lists (with the qualifications that I outlined above and that you pointed out). Popularity-based lists such as the Observer one and the Empire one only record number of hits (I think) rather than the opinion of the people doing the hitting, so in my view those lists are rather pointless.
I know the IMDb Top 250 like the back of my hand now, I'm working my way through watching the whole lot (20 to go). I should point out that the fact that Modern Times and City Lights rank well above Life of Brian only further validates it's usefulness and relevance. The General is only slightly lower. Movies in that list are extremely well spread across the last 90 years or so. |
Edited by - Sean on 07/23/2007 10:43:58 |
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Cheese_Ed
"The Provolone Ranger"
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Posted - 07/23/2007 : 12:48:00
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quote:
Originally posted by thefoxboy
quote:
Originally posted by Se�n
quote:
Originally posted by thefoxboy
I would have put Dirty Rotten Scoundrels in there somewhere.
Does anyone know the name of the original version of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels?
Bedtime Story (1964)
Thank you.
Awwww, look at them being all sweet to each other. |
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thefoxboy
"Four your eyes only."
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Posted - 07/23/2007 : 13:17:17
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quote:
Originally posted by Cheese_Ed
quote:
Originally posted by thefoxboy
quote:
Originally posted by Se�n
quote:
Originally posted by thefoxboy
I would have put Dirty Rotten Scoundrels in there somewhere.
Does anyone know the name of the original version of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels?
Bedtime Story (1964)
Thank you.
Awwww, look at them being all sweet to each other.
Sean's a tosser!
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MisterBadIdea 
"PLZ GET MILK, KTHXBYE"
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Posted - 07/31/2007 : 20:13:34
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quote:
That's why I like the IMDb lists as they reflect quality rather than popularity.
I understand the point you're trying to make, but the IMDb list is as much a popularity listing as anything else. It's just a more accurate popularity listing. In any case, quality is not the right word there.
That's mostly a good list there. I would take Arsenic and Old Lace off the list immediately, and Mr. Hulot's Holiday as well. The former is much too cutesy for my taste, and I just don't get Jacques Tati. He's not funny, he's boring. He doesn't have the energy of a Chaplin. He reminds me of them oldtimey Mickey Mouse cartoons, the old black and white ones that came out before jokes were invented. Team America is funny too, but awfully, awfully stupid; it'd be better without the political stuff, Trey Parker was in way over his head.
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Top 50 Comedy movies...
