Movies That Are Actually Funny
Comedy is the genre most likely to let you down, because a film can be pleasant, clever or charming and still never make you laugh. Everything here clears the one bar that matters: it gets real laughs, out loud, from a room, more than once.
The useful split is how the jokes are built. Airplane!, Monty Python and the Holy Grail and the 2025 Naked Gun are joke machines: a gag every few seconds and barely a story. Game Night, Hot Fuzz and The Nice Guys hang their comedy on a genre plot, so there's something to follow between laughs. Friendship and Popstar run on cringe, which some people love and others physically can't watch. Know which kind your room wants before you press play.
About half of these are R-rated, mostly for language, and Bridesmaids, Booksmart and Superbad are frank about sex. With kids in the room, Paddington 2 works from about six, and The Mitchells vs. the Machines and Hoppers from about seven or eight. For laughs with a love story, see Romantic Comedies That Actually Work; for laughs with blood, Horror Comedies; for television, Best Comedy Series.
Game Night
Movie · 2018The best studio comedy of recent years, and the easiest pick for a group. Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams play a fiercely competitive couple whose murder-mystery party turns into a real kidnapping, and everyone assumes it's all part of the game. Jesse Plemons as the unsettling cop next door gets the biggest laughs. Tight, clever, and it never lets up.
Airplane!
Movie · 1980The joke-per-minute champion. A parody of airline disaster movies played with total sincerity by straight actors, especially Leslie Nielsen, whose deadpan made him a comedy star. Under ninety minutes, and if one gag misses, another arrives seconds later. Rated PG in 1980; a few jokes and a flash of nudity would earn more today.
Bridesmaids
Movie · 2011Kristen Wiig co-wrote and stars as a maid of honor whose life falls apart while her best friend's wedding plans escalate. Big set pieces, including the dress fitting nobody forgets, but the deepest laughs come from how specifically awkward it all is. Melissa McCarthy steals every scene. R-rated, and it earns it.
The Nice Guys
Movie · 2016Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe as a hopeless private eye and a hired enforcer, hunting for a missing girl in 1977 Los Angeles. Gosling's physical comedy is a revelation, his shriek alone is worth it, and Shane Black's banter never lets up. Violent and seedy, but genuinely hilarious.
Hot Fuzz
Movie · 2007Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg send a London super-cop to a sleepy English village where the crime rate is suspiciously perfect. Nearly every line sets up a later payoff, so it improves with each rewatch, and the final act is a full-blown action-movie parody. A few sudden gory moments.
Booksmart
Movie · 2019Two overachievers realize the night before graduation that they skipped every party, and try to make up for it in one night. Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever are a perfect double act, and the writing is quick and generous to every character, even the ones who seem like targets. Sex talk and drugs throughout.
Groundhog Day
Movie · 1993A grumpy TV weatherman, Bill Murray, wakes up on the same day again and again in a small Pennsylvania town. Every time-loop comedy since owes it something. Murray's slow turn from sarcasm to decency is among the best work he ever did, and the film never gets preachy about it.
Barbie
Movie · 2023Greta Gerwig's smartest trick was making a toy-brand movie that is first and foremost a comedy. Margot Robbie's Barbie leaves Barbieland for the real world, and Ryan Gosling's Ken nearly walks off with the film. Packed with sight gags and one big musical number; best for tweens and up, though plenty of younger kids love it.
Paddington 2
Movie · 2017Comedy as precision engineering. Paddington lands in prison, wins over the inmates with marmalade, and Hugh Grant gives the funniest performance of his career as a vain actor with a trunk of disguises. Almost every early gag returns later in a new form, and adults laugh as hard as the kids.
The Naked Gun (2025)
Movie · 2025A legacy sequel with no business being this funny. Liam Neeson plays Frank Drebin Jr. with absolute straight-faced commitment, Pamela Anderson matches him, and the gags arrive at the old Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker pace. Short, silly and hard to resist, from Akiva Schaffer of The Lonely Island.
Hunt for the Wilderpeople
Movie · 2016A defiant foster kid and his grumpy foster uncle, Sam Neill, become the target of a national manhunt in the New Zealand bush, chased by an increasingly unhinged child-welfare officer. Taika Waititi's comedy is warm, oddball and endlessly quotable, with a sad turn early on. Good for families once kids are 11 or 12.
One of Them Days
Movie · 2025Keke Palmer and SZA as best friends who have one day to replace the rent money after SZA's deadbeat boyfriend sinks it into his T-shirt business. A classic buddy comedy built on a chain of escalating disasters across Los Angeles, and the two leads have real chemistry. Loose, profane and very funny.
The Death of Stalin
Movie · 2017Armando Iannucci, the creator of Veep, turns the scramble for power after Stalin's death into a farce. Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale and Jason Isaacs play Soviet power brokers with no attempt at Russian accents, which is half the joke. Very funny and genuinely chilling: the executions never stop in the background.
Friendship
Movie · 2024Tim Robinson, from I Think You Should Leave, plays a suburban dad who becomes obsessed with befriending his cool new neighbor, Paul Rudd. Excruciating, surreal and wildly funny, it's a comedy of social humiliation that some people will watch through their fingers. If cringe isn't your thing, skip it.
Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping
Movie · 2016The Lonely Island's mockumentary about a pop star whose second album is a disaster. It flopped in theaters and has been winning converts ever since: the songs are genuinely catchy and gloriously stupid, and the celebrity cameos play it completely straight. The best music parody since This Is Spinal Tap.
Hoppers
Movie · 2026A 2026 Pixar film that critics hailed as one of the studio's funniest. A college student borrows the body of a robotic beaver to talk to animals and save their glade from a highway, and the result is wonderfully weird. Fast, anarchic and still sweet: the comedy for a room that spans every age from about eight up.
The Mitchells vs. the Machines
Movie · 2021A family road trip collides with a robot uprising, seen through the eyes of a teenage film geek. Fast, chaotic and stuffed with visual jokes, it's the rare animated comedy that may be funniest for the parents. The family pug is a running gag that lands every time. From the producers of Spider-Verse.
Theater Camp
Movie · 2023A mockumentary about a scrappy upstate New York theater camp whose founder is in a coma, leaving her clueless, would-be influencer son in charge. Ben Platt and Molly Gordon, who co-wrote it, are devastatingly accurate about drama kids, and it's affectionate under the jokes. Short and a little ramshackle.
Spy
Movie · 2015Melissa McCarthy as a CIA desk analyst sent into the field, surrounded by agents who underestimate her. Jason Statham parodying his own tough-guy image is the surprise, and Rose Byrne's haughty villain is a delight. Paul Feig makes the action work too. Very crude, and often violent.
Superbad
Movie · 2007The great teen comedy of its generation: two best friends try to buy alcohol for a party, and the night falls apart around them. Jonah Hill and Michael Cera are perfect, and McLovin's night out with two cops is practically its own film. Constant crude talk; maybe not one to watch with your parents.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Movie · 1975King Arthur's quest, with coconuts instead of horses and a budget that couldn't stretch to anything else. The Black Knight, the killer rabbit and the French taunter are all here, and the film gleefully refuses to end like a normal movie. Some people quote every line; join them.
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