The Best Comedy Movies on Amazon Prime (November 2025)
No streamer is harder to navigate than Amazon Prime Instant Video. It has a huge amount of content—the volume is genuinely ridiculous—and then barely categorizes or organizes them in any coherent way. There’s so much stuff to watch here that finding it can be a nuisance, even through the official Prime Video apps. Much of what you’ll find are TV shows, including several Amazon originals, and thousands of other things you’ve probably never heard of before or since. There’s also a large library of hilarious movies, though, including some of the most beloved and influential comedies ever made. That’s what we’re here to share with you today: the best comedies on Amazon Prime Video.
For a broader list, check out The Best Movies on Amazon Prime or you can peruse The Best Comedy Movies on Netflix
Here are the best comedy movies available to stream on with Amazon Prime, in alphabetical order:
Another Round
Year: 2020
Director: Thomas Vinterberg
Stars: Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Lars Ranthe, Magnus Millang
Rating: NR
In Thomas Vinterberg’s new film Another Round, camaraderie starts out as emotional support before dissolving into male foolishness cleverly disguised as scientific study: A drinking contest where nobody competes and everybody wins until they lose. Martin (Mads Mikkelsen), a teacher in Copenhagen, bobs lazily through his professional and personal lives: When he’s at school he’s indifferent and when he’s at home he’s practically alone. Martin’s closest connections are with his friends and fellow teachers, Tommy (Thomas Bo Larsen), Nikolaj (Magnus Millang) and Peter (Lars Ranthe), who like many dudes of a certain age share his glum sentiments. To cure their malaise, Nikolaj proposes putting Norwegian psychiatrist Finn Skårderud’s blood alcohol content theory to the test: Skårderud maintains that hovering at a cool 0.05% BAC helps people stay relaxed and loose, thus increasing their faculty for living to the fullest. As one of the day’s preeminent screen actors, Mikkelsen finds the sweet spot between regret and rejoicing, where his revelries are honest and true while still serving as covers for deeper misgivings and emotional rifts. Sorrow hangs around the edges of his eyes as surely as bliss spreads across his face with each occasion for drinking. That balancing act culminates in an explosive burst of anger and, ultimately, mourning. Good times are had and good times always end. What Another Round demonstrates right up to its ecstatic final moments, where Mikkelsen’s sudden and dazzling acrobatics remind the audience that before he was an actor he was a dancer and gymnast, is that good times are all part of our life cycle: They come and go, then come back again, and that’s better than living in the good times all the time. Without a pause we lose perspective on all else life has to offer, especially self-reflection. —Andy Crump
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Bad Words
Year: 2013
Director: Jason Bateman
Stars: Jason Bateman, Kathryn Hahn, Rohan Chand, Ben Falcone, Philip Baker Hall, Allison Janney
Rating: R
It’s guaranteed that some people will be offended by Bad Words, Jason Bateman’s feature directorial debut. As the title suggests, the film’s peppered with plenty of blue language—hurled at both children and adults—as it mines territory similar to Terry Zwigoff’s Bad Santa. Both comedies feature misanthropes in lead roles, with Billy Bob Thornton playing Zwigoff’s titular character, and Bateman stepping in front of the camera for double-duty on this project.
On both fronts, Bateman does an admirable job. As Guy Trilby, Bateman’s a 40-year-old on a mission: taking top prize at The Golden Quill national spelling bee (which oddly takes place in L.A. and not in Washington, D.C.). Trilby is ready to vanquish any pre-pubescent challenger that gets in his way. Despite the anger of parents and judges on the local, state and national levels, Trilby is legally eligible to compete. There’s a loophole in the contest that states competitors must not have completed eighth grade; and though he’s clearly a bookish guy, Trilby never finished school. —Christine Ziemba
The Big Sick
Year: 2017
Director: Michael Showalter
Stars: Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, Holly Hunter
Rating: R
The Big Sick can sometimes be awfully conventional, but among its key assets is its radiant view of its characters. Based on the first year in the relationship of married screenwriters Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon, this indie rom-com has a mildly risky structure and some trenchant observations about the culture clashes that go on in immigrant families living in America. But what cuts deepest is just how profoundly lovable these people are. That’s not the same as being cutesy: Rather, The Big Sick is defiantly generous, understanding that people are horribly flawed but also capable of immeasurable graciousness when the situation requires. So even when the film stumbles, these characters hold you up. Nanjiani plays a lightly fictionalized version of his younger self, a struggling Chicago stand-up who is having as much success in his career as he in his dating life. Born into a Pakistani family who moved to the United States when he was a boy, he’s a dutiful son, despite lying about being a practicing Muslim and politely deflecting the attempts of his parents (Anupam Kher, Zenobia Shroff) to set him up in an arranged marriage. That’s when he meets Emily (Zoe Kazan), an American grad student with whom he’s instantly smitten. She swears she doesn’t want a relationship, but soon they fall for one another—even though Kumail knows it can’t work out. What’s most radical about The Big Sick is its optimistic insistence that a little niceness can make all the difference. —Tim Grierson
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Blockers
Year: 2018
Directors: Kay Cannon
Stars: John Cena, Leslie Mann, Ike Barinholtz, Kathryn Newton, Geraldine Viswanathan, Gideon Adlon, Graham Phillips, Miles Robbins, Jimmy Bellinger, Colton Dunn, Sarayu Blue, Gary Cole, Gina Gershon, June Diane Raphael, Hannibal Buress
Rating: R
John Cena, wrestler and employee of the Daddy’s Home franchise, is in the Jingle All the Way era of his career, and, as Buzzfeed columnists would say, We’re here for it. All of us. There’s hardly a more reasonable way to respond to Blockers, in which Cena plays fastidious, incomprehensibly beefy dad Mitchell, who is unable to deal with the revelation that his daughter, high-schooler Kayla (Geraldine Viswanathan), plans to lose her virginity at her senior prom. Blockers is a second-generation teen romp openly owing its lineage to Superbad and American Pie while trying something new: not as consumed by its vulgarity, treating its teens who actually look like teens as the over-jaded post-Millennials they supposedly are, and having most of the film’s nudity provided by men, i.e., Gary Cole going full frontal, unashamed of his nice dick. In other words, no one wants to cheer for the toxic privilege of rich, white, horny, suburban high-school boys anymore, but we do want to cheer for best friendship and young people starting to figure their shit out and parents who learn how to give them the space and respect to do that. And if John Cena is the paternalistic He-Man—the Jim’s Dad of the Dwayne the Rock Johnson Generation, if you will—to guide the youth through their cinematic, sex-positive formative years, then let Blockers test his mettle. If the film’s direction is workmanlike and the writers’ plotting flimsy, then the better to focus on the cast. They’re a joy to watch together, everyone unironically playing unironic characters packed to the gills with backstories that go nowhere, revealing little painful, relatable details amidst all the electrocutions and butt-chugging and occasional car explosion and full close-up violent testicle squeezing. If this is what a popular sex comedy can be in 2018, something forward-thinking and empathetic and crowd-pleasing, then let the box office show it. And may John Cena be with you. —Dom Sinacola
Bodies Bodies Bodies
Year: 2022
Director: Halina Reijn
Stars: Maria Bakalova, Amandla Stenberg, Myha’la Herrold, Chase Sui Wonders, Rachel Sennott, Lee Pace, Pete Davidson
Rating: R
In a way, Halina Reijn’s Bodies Bodies Bodies is a bloodbath long before the first of its characters drops dead. The film opens with new couple Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) and Bee (Maria Bakalova), who are en route to wait out a hurricane at a coked-up house-party courtesy of Sophie’s friend-group. Already in attendance at the gathering are aspiring actress Emma (Chase Sui Wonders), her frenzied, machismo millennial of a boyfriend with self-proclaimed big-dick energy, David (who else but Pete Davidson), fun-loving space-cadet Alice (Rachel Sennott) and her hunky forty-year-old Tinder boytoy, Greg (Lee Pace), and perpetual skeptic Jordan (Myha’la Herrold). From the moment the friends first convene on David’s pool deck, catty drama thrives like bacteria in a petri dish. From piercing words between ex-lovers Sophie and Jordan, to the glaring incompatibilities between David and Emma, the explosive social tensions of Bodies are bound to have its audience bracing for bloodshed within the first 10 minutes. So what do the characters do to lighten the mood? Participate in a party game that requires them to pretend to kill each other, of course. What could possibly go wrong? —Aurora Amidon
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Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
Year: 2020
Director: Jason Woliner
Stars: Sacha Baron Cohen, Maria Bakalova
Rating: R
The gung-ho hilarity and up-for-anything attitude Bulgarian actress Maria Bakalova brings to the Borat sequel (playing Borat’s daughter, Tutar) makes for the closest thing to a can’t-miss-it performance that 2020 has provided. It’s one thing that Bakalova holds her own against Sacha Baron Cohen and his seasoned on-camera bravura. It’s another thing altogether to supplant him as the breakout of the sequel, shepherding the soul of a movie—that nobody expected to be as perversely touching as it is—while keeping in hilarious lockstep with the scuzzy legacy that the Borat name implies.
Since Borat Subsequent Moviefilm dropped on Amazon Prime, Rudy Giuliani has unsurprisingly remained the movie’s most noteworthy conversational export. News headlines about Giuliani and his most unusual way of removing a mic were the topic of the day at whatever the pandemic-era equivalent of the watercooler is. But it’s to the credit of Bakalova, the mockumentary’s other buzzed-about element and secret weapon, that its shocking climax is as effective as it is in targeting Donald Trump’s private attorney. —David Lynch
Burn After Reading
Year: 2008
Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen
Stars: George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich
Rating: R
This Coen Brothers favorite has an unsurprisingly incredible cast, but can we take a moment to give all of the awards and props to Frances McDormand? Her Linda Litzke is one of the strangest, most hilariously bizarre characters to ever appear in a film, and yet there’s something completely familiar about her. She’s pursuing her own version of the American Dream, and the mess she leaves in her wake makes up the crux of this very black, very funny comedy. That she does so while all the other members of this ensemble do the same, and manage to entangle their own personal dramas with hers, makes this movie an entertaining way to spend an evening. Along with McDormand, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton and Richard Jenkins (who plays the tragically adorable Ted) all give fantastic turns—unrecognizable, in many ways, from their typical fare which makes the story all the more enthralling.—Garrett Martin
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Coming 2 America
Year: 2021
Director: Craig Brewer
Stars: Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall, Jermaine Fowler, Leslie Jones, Tracy Morgan, KiKi Layne, Shari Headley, Wesley Snipes, James Earl Jones, John Amos
Rating: PG-13
Coming 2 America effectively uses the legacy of Zamunda to expand the narrative space not only of the classic original, but for Black diasporic affinity at large. At the end of the 1988 romantic comedy, the royal marriage of Akeem Joffer (Eddie Murphy) and Lisa McDowell (Shari Headley) further symbolically enmeshed the interconnected experience between African-Americans and Black Africans. In this sequel, the legacy of that union is explored through the gendered opportunities of Prince Akeem’s lineage and the pressure he faces to determine his royal successor—all while appeasing the tyrannical leader of Zamunda’s neighboring country Nextdoria, General Izzi (Wesley Snipes). Coming 2 America is an exciting follow-up that’s ensemble cast and increasingly complex musings mostly outweigh its shortcomings. In present-day Zamunda, Prince Akeem enjoys the company of his wife, his three badass warrior daughters and his dear albeit mischievous dude-in-waiting Semmi (Arsenio Hall). But when dying, nearly expired King Jaffe Joffer (James Earl Jones) reiterates that Akeem’s eldest daughter, Princess Meeka (KiKi Layne, Beale Street! Beale Street!) will not be eligible to inherit the throne because she is a woman, Akeem and Semmi return to Queens to find Akeem’s long-lost bastard son, Lavelle Junson (Jermaine Fowler). Of course, hijinks ensue along the way. Semmi and Akeem must fumble around a new New York stuffed less with mustard-colored cabs and more with rideshares. They become acquainted with an increasingly gentrified Queens, visit some familiar friends and meet new members of Akeem’s extended family as they court Lavelle. This film’s greater comedic elements come from these familiar moments of cross-cultural tension and new intergenerational differences. Coming 2 America is a deeply fun, goofy, incredibly cast Blackity-Black movie. Viewers be warned of the emotional whiplash they might receive from the returning likes of James Earl Jones and John Amos, as well as the steady stream of Black artists and icons from across the diaspora who make surprise appearances in the film. Coming 2 America achieves exactly what an effective sequel should: It reinforces themes from the original film while offering new, intriguing points of tension, nodding to old gags in a way that rewards fluent fans without alienating newbies. —Adesola Thomas
Easy A
Year: 2010
Director: Will Gluck
Stars: Emma Stone, Penn Badgley, Amanda Bynes, Thomas Haden Church, Patricia Clarkson, Cam Gigandet, Lisa Kudrow, Malcolm McDowell, Aly Michalka, Stanley Tucci
Rating: PG-13
Countless comedies have played up the singularly unique experience called high school. Most have faded into late night obscurity while a few like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Clueless and Mean Girls have offered witty accounts of this near ancient ritual of teen life. Easy A, highlighting teenage promiscuity and social prejudice, actually elevates the genre to a higher level of intelligence. Oh, and it’s funny, too.
Emma Stone (Superbad, Zombieland) plays Olive, an unremarkable schoolgirl who pretends to have sex with a gay student who’s being persecuted. But improving his reputation ruins hers as she is branded the school whore. A villainous, goody-two-shoes leader of the school’s severely misguided Christian youth group, gives Olive the royal Scarlet Letter treatment. In retaliation, Olive embraces her new persona by dressing the part and continuing the charade, partly to help the reps of the school’s less attractive hetero males and partly to get back at the hypocritical attacks. The ruse, however, leads to the unexpected consequences of broken friendships and the discovery of a particularly dysfunctional student-teacher relationship. —Tim Basham
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I Want You Back
Year: 2022
Director: Jason Orley
Stars: Jenny Slate, Charlie Day, Noah Eastwood, Gina Rodriguez, Clark Backo, Manny Jacinto, Luke David Blumm, Isabel May, Pete Davidson
Rating: R
On paper, Charlie Day and Jenny Slate make a rom-com pair of two kinds at once: Unexpected and grating. But the movie making that pairing, Jason Orley’s I Want You Back, proves half of that presumption wrong. Unexpected? Sure. Day doesn’t exactly scream “romantic comedy leading man.” Mostly, he’s just known for screaming. But neither he nor Slate are grating in the least, whether separately or together. Indeed, the movie’s greatest surprise is how well Day and Slate cohere as a duo, which reveals a second surprise, like finding the prize in the cereal and finding another prize stowed away in the box. What happy fortune! Day plays Peter. Slate plays Emma. I Want You Back starts off by cross-cutting between them as they unknowingly compete for gold in synchronized heartbreak: Their significant others—respectively, Anne (Gina Rodriguez) and Noah (Scott Eastwood)–have grown weary of their relationships and decided to move on. Anne dumps Peter at her nephew’s birthday party. Noah dumps Emma over brunch. They don’t take the news well. But by chance, Peter and Emma find each other, bond in the manner of bros, and in a bit yanked out of Strangers on a Train (with 100% less murder), they cook up a harebrained scheme: Peter’s going to help Emma get Noah back, and Emma’s going to help Peter get Anne back. As a narrative, I Want You Back is nothing if not predictable. Screenwriters Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger carve their screenplay out of familiar and easygoing tropes, and do not for a moment appear to have considered taking the rom-com formula in remotely new directions: Lovesick characters devise a plan to cure their lovesickness, they carry the plan out, the plan backfires, everyone has a laugh and maybe sheds a tear, and the movie ends with everything as anticipated. So it goes. But there’s nothing wrong with formula, because formula works when outfitted with the right variables, in this case Day and Slate. They’re a hoot together. More studio comedies should take chances on their principal cast members the way I Want You Back does. Even if little else here worked, at least Day and Slate do. —Andy Crump
The Kentucky Fried Movie
Year: 1977
Director: John Landis
Stars: Evan C. Kim, Master Bong Soo Han, Bill Bixby, George Lazenby, Henry Gibson, Donald Sutherland, Tony Dow, Boni Enten
Rating: R
Sketch comedy is rarely consistent, which makes the reliably hilarious Kentucky Fried Movie even more impressive. It might not entirely hold up today, over 40 years after it was first released, but in its day this anthology contained some of the sharpest and most transgressive parodies of pop culture yet seen, from trailers for fake exploitation films like Cleopatra Schwartz, to the absurd educational strip parody of “Zinc Oxide and You,” to the long-form Bruce Lee satire A Fistful of Yen. It also launched the careers of John Landis, David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker, who would all go on to define comedy over the next decade.–Garrett Martin
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Love & Friendship
Year: 2016
Director: Whit Stillman
Stars: Kate Beckinsale, Chloe Sevigny, Xavier Samuel
Rating: PG
The title of Whit Stillman’s latest comedy may be Love & Friendship, but while both are certainly present in the film, other, more negative qualities also abound: deception, manipulation, even outright hatred. Underneath its elegant period-picture surface—most obviously evident in Benjamin Esdraffo’s Baroque-style orchestral score and Louise Matthew’s ornate art direction—lies a darker vision of humanity that gives the film more of an ironic kick than one might have anticipated from the outset. Still, the humor in Love & Friendship is hardly of the misanthropic sort. As always with Stillman, his view of the foibles of the bourgeois is unsparing yet ultimately empathetic. Which means that, even as Stillman works his way toward a happy ending of sorts, the film leaves a slightly bitter aftertaste—which is probably as it should be. Such honesty has always been a hallmark of Stillman’s cinema, and even if Love & Friendship feels like more of a confection than his other films, that frankness, thankfully, still remains. —Kenji Fujishima
Love Hurts
Year: 2025
Director: Jonathan Eusebio
Stars: Ke Huy Quan, Ariana DeBose, Daniel Wu, Mustafa Shakir, Lio Tipton, Cam Gigandet, Marshawn Lynch, Sean Astin
Rating: R
Something like Love Hurts was probably inevitable for Ke Huy Quan after the actor, fight choreographer and stunt coordinator broke through (again) with Everything Everywhere All At Once. Quan’s work in that film, in which he flexed his emotional muscles as well as his martial arts ones, was more than enough to earn him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and it was only a matter of time before someone decided he should be a leading man in a martial arts comedy of his very own.
So here we are at Love Hurts, a film that casts Quan as a retired hitman pulled back into action by the arrival of an old flame, and the question now is what does Quan, and the filmmaking team around him, do with this moment? How does the child actor turned rising adult star, now in his early 50s, react to this kind of role in this kind of film? The answer: He attacks it with the same blend of earnestness and raw kinetic intrigue that made his Everything Everywhere character so memorable, but in the case of Love Hurts, that’s not always enough. Though Quan and his supporting cast are often a delight, and the film’s fight scenes are worth strapping in for, this is a movie that makes a choppy mess of its brisk runtime, and wastes a lot of its potential with a molasses-slow, often baffling second act. —Matthew Jackson
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Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Year: 1975
Director: Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones
Stars: Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones
Rating: PG
It sucks that some of the shine has been taken off Holy Grail by its own overwhelming ubiquity. Nowadays, when we hear a “flesh wound,” a “ni!” or a “huge tracts of land,” our first thoughts are often of having full scenes repeated to us by clueless, obsessive nerds. Or, in my case, of repeating full scenes to people as a clueless, obsessive nerd. But, if you try and distance yourself from the over-saturation factor, and revisit the film after a few years, you’ll find new jokes that feel as fresh and hysterical as the ones we all know. Holy Grail is, indeed, the most densely packed comedy in the Python canon. There are so many jokes in this movie, and it’s surprising how easily we forget that, considering its reputation. If you’re truly and irreversibly burnt out from this movie, watch it again with commentary, and discover the second level of appreciation that comes from the inventiveness with which it was made. It certainly doesn’t look like a $400,000 movie, and it’s delightful to discover which of the gags (like the coconut halves) were born from a need for low-budget workarounds. The first-time co-direction from onscreen performer Terry Jones (who only sporadically directed after Python broke up) and lone American Terry Gilliam (who prolifically bent Python’s cinematic style into his own unique brand of nightmarish fantasy) moves with a surreal efficiency. —Graham Techler
Novocaine
Year: 2025
Directors: Dan Berk, Robert Olsen
Stars: Jack Quaid, Amber Midthunder, Ray Nicholson, Betty Gabriel, Matt Walsh, Jacob Batalon
Rating: R
Novocaine starts with a premise that is Crank-like in its absurdity, deepens it with feeling, and then rams full speed ahead through a litany of stupidities. A common message-board-level complaint about a movie is that it “doesn’t know what it wants to be.” Here’s a helpful correction: Most movies, even bad ones, know. What Novocaine seems less sure of is why it wants to be. To sell a high-concept screenplay, probably. You can see why someone would buy it. Nathan Cain (Jack Quaid) has a rare genetic condition that doesn’t allow his body to feel any pain, nor sensations of heat, nor cold. This leaves him both resilient and fragile. A fist, knife, or bullet might not faze him, but could still kill him; our bodies have pain receptors for a reason, and Nathan’s body is incapable of receiving crucial warning signs. Once given an approximate life expectancy of 25, he has surpassed it through learned vigilance: He only consumes drinkable foods, because he has been warned that he could accidentally bite off his own tongue, and he must set a three-hour timer reminding him to use the bathroom, lest he strain his bladder without realizing it. —Jesse Hassenger
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Rock ‘n’ Roll High School
Year: 1979
Director: Allan Arkush
Stars: P.J. Soles, Vincent Van Patten, Clint Howard, Mary Woronov, the Ramones
Rating: PG
This might be known as “that Ramones movie,” but it’s P.J. Soles’s show. As Riff Randell, the biggest Ramones fan at Vince Lombardi High, the Carrie and Halloween actress gives us one of the best on-screen depictions of what it means to be a passionate fan of anything, but especially rock ‘n’ roll. Riff’s enthusiasm is infectious and her love for the Ramones updates the archetype of the teenage girl swooning over ’50s and ’60s pop stars for the late ’70s, just as the Ramones revived bubblegum pop through the dirty lens of that rotting decade. You don’t have to like the Ramones to like this movie–you just have to like rebellion and rock ‘n’ roll and the wholesale destruction of confining institutions like the American high school.—Garrett Martin
Saint Ralph
Year: 2005
Director: Michael McGowan
Stars: Adam Butcher, Campbell Scott, Gordon Pinsent
Rating: PG-13
Saint Ralph is the story of Ralph Walker, a precocious Catholic schoolboy living in Canada in the early 1950s. Blessed with an Eddie Haskell eagerness and plagued by a cruel libido, he’s willing, at one point, to receive fellatio from a swimming-pool jet. But, when the 14 year-old’s mom slips into a coma, he decides to win the Boston Marathon, a miracle he hopes will wake her. Ralph falls short as a sports film, but it succeeds as a coming-of-age comedy. To see this boy bring a jar of dog feces to his mother’s hospital bed because “smell is one of the strongest memories,” and to see him blanch from shock at the possibility of actually having a consensual kiss, is much more poignant and charming than the many training montages. First-time writer/director Michael McGowan, the steadfast Campbell Scott as Father Hibbert, and magnetic newcomer Adam Butcher as Ralph create an endearing tale of woe and redemption, redeeming the melodrama.—Kennan Mayo
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Some Like It Hot
Year: 1959
Director: Billy Wilder
Stars: Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, George Raft, Joe E. Brown, Pat O’Brien
Rating: NR
Is Some Like It Hot one of Marilyn Monroe’s best films, or one of her most antithetical? Sugar Kane is, in a nutshell, the kind of character Marilyn struggled so hard to avoid playing for the bulk of her career: a ditzy blonde, a pure sex symbol, someone who exists in the context of the movie just to tickle the male gaze, whether within the story or without. She’s given nothing to work with, as the bulk of the film’s heavy lifting is accorded to Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon instead. Watching the film in 2017, you may wonder why Billy Wilder slacked on investing Sugar with any level of empathy, why he wrote the character as a one-dimensional object, a trophy for Lemmon and Curtis to compete over. You may also not wonder at all. Some Like It Hot works, even if Marilyn has little to work with other than her persona and her co-star; it’s funny, it’s quick on its feet, and it sells its central joke—that nobody, save for the audience, can see that Curtis and Lemmon are obviously dudes in drag—perfectly, layering just enough self-awareness of its own ridiculousness to keep the gag from going sour. —Andy Crump
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
Year: 2023
Director: Jeff Rowe, Kyler Spears (co-director)
Stars: Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Brady Noon, Nicolas Cantu, Jackie Chan, Ice Cube
Rating: PG
A visual tour de force of hybrid 2D and 3D animation, Mutant Mayhem is not only the most authentically New York version of the Turtles yet, it’s arguably the most inventive. Rowe, Spears and production designer Yashar Kassai have rendered the brothers as if they’re hand-drawn, complete with messy sketch lines, doodle flairs and a graffiti aesthetic. This is the ultimate paint-outside-the-lines take on the Turtles and it works on every level. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is swinging for the fences with its story and voice performances to ambitiously, quantifiably shake up the artistic rut that theatrical computer animation has been stuck in for the last two decades. Another plus is that the brothers are voiced by non-adult voice actors Nicolas Cantu (Leo), Brady Noon (Raph), Shamon Brown Jr. (Mikey) and Micah Abbey (Donnie), who recorded together, and were encouraged to excitedly talk over one another like a gaggle of real, tight-knit brothers would do. It translates into rapid-fire, organic quips and seemingly effortless timing that conveys a rapport that is singular to this iteration. It also elevates the script so that it doesn’t sound like it was written by a bunch of 40-year-olds trying to be hip and young. Rowe and Spears have a firm hold on their pacing, especially in how they use comedy to enhance their action beats. They also chart a progression to the brother’s battle prowess that is satisfying and pays off in satisfying full-circle moments. There’s also much to be admired in their choice to frame a lot of sequences with hand-held camera blocking, which leans into the unpredictable youth of the heroes that works so well in the gritty New York environs they’re sparring in. The filmmakers are also delightfully experimental throughout the Mutant Mayhem, using inspired live-action inserts, segueing into different artistic styles (including a homage to Eastman and Laird’s comic art) and embracing the asymmetrical character design that gives the film a fresh and energetic looseness. Rowe and company prove that there’s no strength to the myth of IP fatigue when you have the vision and passion to reinvent with such bold and fun intention.—Tara Bennett
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Tucker & Dale vs. Evil
Year: 2010
Director: Eli Craig
Stars: Tyler Labine, Alan Tudyk, Katrina Bowden, Jesse Moss
Rating: R
Let’s face it, hillbillies and their ilk have been getting the short end of the pitchfork in movies since the strains of banjo music faded in 1972’s Deliverance. And whether due to radiation (The Hills Have Eyes) or just good old determined inbreeding (Wrong Turn and so, so many films you’re better off not knowing about), the yokel-prone in film have really enjoyed slaughtering innocent families on vacation, travelers deficient in basic map usage skills, and, best of all, sexually active college students just looking for a good time. But fear not, members of Hillbillies for Inclusion, Consideration & Kindness in Screenplays (HICKS)—writer/director Eli Craig has your hairy, unloofahed back. His film, Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, answers the simple question: What if those hillbillies are just socially awkward fellows sprucing up a vacation home and the young college kids in question are just prone to repeatedly jumping to incorrect, often fatal, conclusions? Think Final Destination meets the Darwin Awards. —Michael Burgin
UHF
Year: 1989
Director: Jay Levey
Stars: “Weird” Al Yankovic, Michael Richards, Kevin McCarthy
Rating: PG-13
If we ranked these movies based on the quality of their filmmaking, UHF would probably be at the very bottom. This is the definition of a star vehicle, so much so that it was directed by its star’s manager, who has never directed another movie before or since. That star, of course, is “Weird Al” Yankovic, and UHF‘s vignette-like approach to parody makes it a film analogue to Yankovic’s albums. Few movies on this (or any other) list pack this many laughs into its running time. It’s like a Zucker Abrahams Zucker movie with a little bit more room to breath, bolstered by a manic performance from a pre-Seinfeld Michael Richards and some of Yankovic’s best music. —Garrett Martin
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Uncle Buck
Year: 1989
Director: John Hughes
Stars: John Candy, Amy Madigan, Jean Louisa Kelly, Macaulay Culkin, Laurie Metcalf
Rating: PG
In a long lineage of playing good-hearted cinematic oafs, surely Buck Russell stands out as perhaps the great John Candy’s finest hour. An inveterate slacker and slob with a heart of gold, Buck is like writer-director John Hughes’ idea of a certain brand of Midwestern non-exceptionalism, an example of who the likes of Ferris Bueller might turn out to be if he never got around to growing up. Suffice to say, Buck is finally thrust into a position of responsibility when he has to step in any look after his brothers’ rambunctious kids while they’re out of town, an acting assignment that first exposed most Americans to the joys of an adorably precocious Macaulay Culkin, no doubt winning him the role in next year’s Home Alone. Candy, meanwhile, applies his unique brand of gruff, straightforward (but bumbling) sarcasm to ultimately help the family through a difficult period, while salvaging his own dignity in the process. And it doesn’t hurt that the timeless gags (like Buck dressing down a cruel grade school principal) are as funny as ever. —Jim Vorel
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