It’s a myth that biographical films have to be serious-minded dramas—a lot of historical figures were very funny, and their lives can easily be adapted to fit a light-hearted, slyly ironic narrative. One of the most iconic comedic biopics is Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, which turns 30 this week and is the non-fantasy highlight of the eccentric director’s career. It’s emblematic of the delights of the comedy biopic because it applies a sincere, emotional dramatic framework to what seems on first glance like a pithy, unremarkable person and story. It’s this gulf between what we usually expect from biopics and how silly the film we’re watching is that proves to be the comedy biopic’s greatest weapon. They rarely are making fun of their subject, but rather the tropes and cliches of a genre that takes itself too seriously.
Ed Wood isn’t the only comedy biopic of note this time of year—Saturday Night is about to drop. Jason Reitman’s account of the hectic final hours of a pre-Saturday Night Live world is filled with 30-and-under actors pretending to be 1970s-era comedians, and while it’s unconfirmed if they match the wild comic instincts of Dan Akyroyd, John Belushi, or Rosie Shuster, it’s clear that there’s still a market for films that know how funny history can be. Here’s 10 films that put the laugh in biographical (for the sake of the joke, please pretend that works), in chronological order.
Ed Wood (1994)
The crown jewel of the funny biopic, Tim Burton’s greatest film realized that love letters to cinema don’t have to be slavish, fawning odes to filmmaking, focusing on a historically maligned and marginalized artist whose dedication to the medium constantly conflicted with his reduced talent or resources. Ed Wood (Johnny Depp) is a Z-list director making crummy genre films interspersed with the occasional proto-trans B-movie. The precision and tenacity of Depp’s theatrical performance, not to mention the motley crew of bizarre co-conspirators Wood makes movies with, leaves us with a Hollywood reimagining of Wood’s quite depressing life that’s a little bittersweet, but incredibly funny.
24 Hour Party People (2002)
Easily the best music biopic about British artists, Michael Winterbottom (The Trip series) charts the chaotic boom of Manchester’s music scene from the 1970s through to the 1990s—from punk rock to rave to “Madchester”. Steve Coogan is Tony Wilson, a madcap pioneering producer who crossed paths with nearly every underground and indie British artist from the 70s onwards, all played with gusto by actors you’ll only recognize if you’re super tuned in to British telly. To the detriment of a lot of people’s health but to the apparent benefit of the UK music scene, there was a lot of drug use and poor business decisions, and Party People’s flagrant bending of facts and fourth wall breaks capture the vibe of being told a braggartly, long-winded story at the pub.
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007)
We’re tempted to use this blurb to try and convince clueless readers that Dewey Cox was a real musician and that this film is a faithful account of his life story, but we should instead try to justify a music biopic parody being on this list in the first place. Jake Kasdan and Judd Apatow’s film recognized that the awards-friendly music biopic was effectively a hollow framework that the inevitable ups and downs of various artists’ lives could be plugged into, and by inserting a fake artist, they revealed just how ridiculous these dramatic embellishments were. It’s insanely quotable and features a career-best John C. Reilly in the lead role—and fits snugly into the tetralogy of music film parodies alongside This is Spinal Tap, Weird, and Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping.
The Intouchables (2011)
This sentimental French crowd-pleaser adapts the real-life story paraplegic businessman Philippe Pozzo di Borgo and his French-Algerian caregiver Abdel Sellou, casting the wry, warm François Cluzet as Phillipe and the hysterical Omar Sy as Driss, a Black man from Paris’ banlieues. Sy is an arresting, unstoppable comedian and it feels like his main intention in any given scene is to make his straight faced co-star corpse. It’s a broad, schmaltzy biographical tale, but it is packed with laugh-out-loud gags from some dynamite talents.
Pain & Gain (2013)
Michael Bay doing true crime pastiche may sound like a utter nightmare, but there’s so much outlandish and pointed satire in Bay’s body of work that makes you feel like you are in a warped and malformed version of our world, so seeing him apply his vision to a real life story makes for a fascinating and funny experiment. Loosely based on the crimes of the Sun Gym gang, who kidnapped and extorted wealthy people and sometimes murdered them. It’s a really grim real-life story, so the fact that Bay adapts it with such lurid, in-your-face comedy—with a tremendously well-cast dumb guy ensemble of Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, and Anthony Mackie—is what saves the film from purely exploitative dreck. Weird that this uncomfortable and unlikeable comedy about real, recent American crime premiered before The Wolf of Wall Street.
The Disaster Artist (2017)
A blend of sincere, off-kilter dramedy and on-set chaos, James Franco’s cinematic account of how cult bad movie The Room got made (based on the memoir of the same name by Greg Sestero) is full of comedy icons giving very committed performances as random actors who’ve never acted in anything other than Tommy Wiseau’s masterwork. There’s maybe a weird tension out of a bunch of successful people gathering together to make fun of jobbing actors who would probably rather not be associated with a career-killing film, but Franco’s fairly dramatic approach to the making of The Room allows for some terrific Babylon-esque comedy to come out of what seems like the production from hell.
A Futile and Stupid Gesture (2018)
David Wain’s comedies veer from Apatow-era slacker fare (Role Models) to high-concept genre parodies that are much more comfortable in a delirious absurdist timbre (Wet Hot American Summer, They Came Together). All this to say, true stories are not his area of expertise. But he’s loyal to his comedy roots, and paired with Will Forte (a master of lightly deranged performances) to tell the story of National Lampoon, the comedy magazine sensation that was the brainchild of Harvard Lampoon alumni Douglas Kenny (Forte) and Henry Beard (Domhnall Gleeson). Like other films on this list, A Futile and Stupid Gesture benefits from a mix of irreverence and surprising pathos, and like Weird tried to cast dramatic actors in supporting roles (seriously, what is Gleeson doing here?) to highlight how seriously the biopic genre takes itself.
Dolemite is My Name (2019)
If you need a funny script about larger-than-life celebrity personalities who railed against their outsider status to make very odd but personal art, make sure to hire Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski, the screenwriting duo who brought us Ed Wood and Dolemite is My Name. Eddie Murphy gives his best performance since the early nineties as Rudy Ray Moore, who made blaxploitation offshoots that conformed less to the rules of that genre and more to what he wanted to put in movies: kung fu, a lot of his own stand-up, and occasionally the devil. Watching Murphy play with this frankly insane lead character is pure joy.
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (2022)
We’re counting this as a biopic because, by design, Weird: The Al Yankovic Story hems to the language and style of a rote musician biopic while honoring the irreverent, pure parody songwriting ethos of its main character. Weird is a far more accurate music biopic than, say, Bohemian Rhapsody, because the dedication to pastiching real history encapsulates the essence of Weird Al better than a film where the living members of an iconic band wanted to protect their ego, brand, and legacy. Weird works because Al has no ego, and the idea of his art being remembered as highly as artists like Queen—after all, he is not writing the music of his songs!—is laughable.
BlackBerry (2023)
Matt Johnson’s hilarious account of how Waterloo tech entrepreneurs invented the world’s first smartphone deserves a much bigger legacy than just “Canadian The Big Short.” Even though the eclectically cast and snap-zoom-filled BlackBerry does have a lot in common with Adam McKay’s much more prestigious “man babies in boardrooms” film, its sharp, micro-focus on the invention of the BlackBerry and the inexplicable, short-sighted business decisions that surrounded it makes it the superior financial comedy. Johnson loves giving his actors a space to comedically play in, and Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton lead a comic ensemble like no other (Rich Sommer from Mad Men? Michael Ironside from Scanners?! SungWon Cho aka ProZD?!!) that probably only scratches the surface of how weird and nerdy the Canadian tech sector was in the 2000s.
Rory Doherty is a screenwriter, playwright and culture writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. You can follow his thoughts about all things stories @roryhasopinions.