Make 'Em Laugh

 

I'm tapped. I'm out of ideas. The well feels dry.

I texted that to Susan and, bang, she had an idea.

"What's the funniest movie you've ever seen?" she asked.

I wanted to say, "Surely you can't be serious," but her name is Susan, not Shirley.

So like I've done in other situations, I'm simply going to spitball a few titles out and you can add more in the comments. My answer is not the ultimate nor are there any wrong answers. They're just opinions but we could probably all use some laughter.

In no particular order, I'm starting with Mel Brooks. Now, if Susan is writing, she's absolutely going with Young Frankenstein, and my God she is most certainly not wrong. It is a brilliant movie.

But I'm going to respectfully give that a harrumph. Then again, we don't have to pick just one Brooks film as I love Young Frankenstein and Spaceballs and so on. I revere Brooks. But if you know me then you know that Blazing Saddles will leave me gasping for breath.

Before you come at it with how it's racist, just hold on. I can laugh at basically anything but let's move past that. It's a movie in which the racists lose, thank you very much. It's also a movie in which no less than Richard Pryor helped write the screenplay.

Yes, I cringe at a few lines, especially as Sherriff Bart rides into Rock Ridge but I'm howling again seconds later as he "whips out" his proclamation from the governor to certify that he is, indeed, the new law in town.

There are so many funny moments. Too many to name. Simply the anachronistic appearance of Count Basie and his orchestra in the middle of the desert in the beginning of the film is a perfect gag. 

And Mongo. Never forget that he is simply a pawn in the game of life.

While there are some funny sports movies (Major League, Slap Shot, and Bull Durham come to mind) nothing tops Caddyshack for me for sheer laughs. Maybe it's that we all know the filming was one big debauched mess or that the casting was so incredibly stellar. Or that it's among the most quotable movies ever. It's probably all of the above.

But you're going to play golf and you're going to like it!

How 'bout a Fresca?

With Jim Thompson's passing last week, I was reminded how our former WGCH news director and morning anchor was reminiscent of the 70s-bound Ron Burgundy in Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. Really, the reason for the comparison was that Jim was on WGCH in the late 1970s. Beyond that, he's really nothing like Ron but I still laugh at the thought.

And I laugh a lot at the movie. Again, it's super quotable, being in "a glass case of emotion" and how "60 percent of the time it works every time."

I mean, they've done studies, you know.

Since I quoted it indirectly in the opening of the post I have to acknowledge Airplane which sort of fires into a genre of itself with parody films. Certainly, The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad has to be in that conversation as well, among others. Yet Airplane once again gives us quotable lines and, I suppose, as an 11-year-old when it came out, it was rather eye-opening. 

I never could speak jive but the movie changed the career of Leslie Nielsen.

I have to note Ferris Bueller's Day Off just because, well, I can recite the movie so well. My 18-year-old brain took to it and I've seen it perhaps more than I've ever seen any other movie. Why? Well, I suppose because life moves pretty fast...

I recall one night going to the movies with my mother and niece. Invited out of the blue, it seemed like fun to grab dinner and a movie. Robin Williams makes good movies and oh my God my cheeks hurt after seeing The Birdcage. Maybe it was seeing Gene Hackman in drag. Or maybe it was just that Nathan Lane literally stole the film. And, yet, it still came back to Williams, simply with his instructions on "an eclectic celebration of a dance."

And then we're off to Fosse! Fosse! Fosse! And Martha Graham and Twyla and Madonna and so on.

I watched that scene just now and snorted. Yup. It still works.

I realize I'm literally just picking a few titles. My goal is to not rank or say one is better than the other. I'm also specifically leaving titles out in the hope of inspiring all of you.

I can namedrop older films like The Philadelphia Story and His Girl Friday and Some Like it Hot and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb and Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera. Each is hysterical in its own right. All of them are classics.

Later movies like Monty Python and the Holy Grail and The Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters and Back to the Future and the Autin Powers series (especially the first two for me) and Fargo and There's Something About Mary also hit the mark. Cult classics like So I Married an Axe Murderer are spot on.

There's no proper formula here. It's simply what strikes the funny bone. I'm sure there are those who wish to highlight Fast Times at Ridgemont High or any of the Kevin Smith films (Clerks, etc). And there will be some kind of "harrumph" over movies I haven't mentioned. It's not an exact science.

But there are also those films that are funny and, yet, get pretty serious like Good Morning, Vietnam. I mean, sure, Robin Williams has me crying in his earliest ramblings on the air as Adrian Cronauer but it also takes a very dark turn later on. I mean, they're in the middle of the Vietnam War, of course. So I struggle to call it a comedy even if it is defined as such.

Others just don't work with me and I'll leave that to you to highlight those films that leave you gasping.

Anything for a laugh. It's what we so desperately need.