Pat Wick's Top Ten Comedies

Here is my list in Alphabetical order (the only fair way I could think of to list them):

• Bringing Up Baby
  Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant - Screwball romantic comedy that involves a prim and proper scientist (him) a kook of an heiress (her), dinosaur bones and a leopard named Baby.

• A Fish Called Wanda
  John Cleese, Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline (who won an Oscar for this role) and Michael Palin. A heist, double crossing crooks, infidelity, and Kline in one of the funniest roles I have ever seen

• A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
  Zero Mostel, Phil Silvers - This one is a great commedia del arte film. You have the senile old man, he muscle bound dork, the pretty yet dim lovers, the overbearing mother, the henpecked father, the servant that does his best, the servant/slave that runs the whole thing... It is also filled with 60's kitsch. Zero Mostel was a great comic actor - mostly on Broadway. He single handedly made this play the success it was. People kept coming back to see him, he changed so much of what he did every show (some of the other actors did not like that much - others did their best to keep up). It is dated and sexist, so what.

• Noises Off
  Christopher Reeve, Marilou Henner, John Ritter, Carol Burnet (who is a comic god) and many others... This movie is very funny and basically plotless. I have seen the stage show and it is funnier because live it is so complicated. But the movie is different enough that I feel it is like many of the other things that get moved from one medium to another. You can have good translations (like this) and bad (like A Chorus Line).

• The Philadelphia Story
  Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart and Cary Grant - This is one of those classics that you have seen and know or you have not as of yet seen and should.

• Real Genius
  Val Kilmer in this eighties kitche campus comedy. This one is about geeks in college. About the kind of fun you always thought the geeks should do - like dismantling and reassembling a car in a dorm room on a bed rising and falling gently as if breathing while a soundtrack of snoring plays. Like the tag line says "When he gets mad, he doesn't get even... he gets creative".

• The Ref
  Denis Leary, Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey - I think the tag line says it all "He's Taken Them Hostage. They're Driving Him Nuts!" - Yes, he accidentally kidnaps my family (and most of the ones I know of). The lament is best said by Gus: "I highjacked my f*cking parents"

• Support Your Local Sheriff!
  James Garner as the sheriff and many familiar western actors in minor roles. This is better than the movie made 2 years later with most of the same cast in the same kind of roles in Support Your Local Gunfighter. It is funny, just not as good as Sheriff.

• Undercover Blues
  Dennis Quaid, Kathleen Turner and Stanley Tucci in a movie most people didn't see. Tucci steals the show as a revenge seeking petty thief. Turner and Quaid are agents on maternity leave who get embroiled in international affairs anyway. See it because of Tucci!!

• Warning: This is my cheat: The 3 movies made by Rock Hudson and Doris Day: Don't Send Me Flowers, Pillow Talk and Lover Come Back.
  They are all great romantic comedies. The last 2 people are most familiar with. Rock Hudson plays a conniving man to Day's intelligent yet prim lady who have wacky hijinks before falling in love. In Don't Send Me Flowers they are married, he is a hypochondriac who thinks he is dying and attempts to make sure Day will be well taken care of after he is gone. Stylized? Dated? Funny? Absolutely (especially the funny)!