GRAPHIC CONTENT
What we’ve been talking about With Glasgow hosting international festivals in both film and comedy over the next two months, it seems almost silly not to ask people what their favourite comedy film is. From the evidence below, it seems that the Americans have always known their way round a good mirthful movie.
Groundhog Day is a film I can watch over and over again. A perfect script, great direction from the late Harold
Ramis, and Bill Murray’s finest performance. Not even Andie MacDowell
can ruin it.
I’ve got to say Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove for blending
the absurd with reality and for lines like ‘Gentlemen,
you can’t fight in here! This
is the War Room!’
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead with fresh- faced Gary Oldman and Tim Roth doing
Tom Stoppard’s play amazingly well (they should have done more comedy). It’s way
funnier than merely the clever literary
chuckles.
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective has comedy genius Jim Carrey who
most of us hadn’t seen before this,
and it’s utterly unforgettable.
My shortlist was almost all comedies
from the 80s, but none made me
laugh and cry more than Planes, Trains
and Automobiles. Also, John Candy really was the
greatest.
Hot Fuzz is spoofy,
silly, British goodness. Want anything from
the shop?
His Girl Friday by Howard Hawks,
starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell is a martial arts movie with dialogue
instead of combat. When Russell decided
that Grant had more good lines, she hired a guy to write more for her, and
since Hawks thought she was ad-libbing he was fine with it. Grant, for his part, was delighted and took it as a challenge.
This Is Spinal Tap has so many great lines, almost too many to quote. If you haven’t seen it, then ‘It’s one louder isn’t it? . . . these go to 11’ will mean nothing.
Trust me, it’s a work of genius.
The Big Lebowski. For Donny. For Walter. For introducing me to White Russians as a student. For Jesus. For making me laugh so loudly in the cinema that I
completely embarrassed the girl
who I was with on a first date. For the rug. Most of all for Jeff
Bridges. Am I wrong? Am I wrong
here?
The Princess Bride is a fun and brilliant (thanks to writer William Goldman) fairytale that can
make adults feel like
kids again.
The Wicker Man. That
was a comedy,
right?
¡Three Amigos! has a plethora of great jokes.
I’m a sucker for Ghostbusters and
always will be. There
are the amazing performances via the ‘pest control’ ghost-hunter team
of Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd and Ernie Hudson, the Stay Puft Marshmallow
Man being blown up, endlessly quotable
dialogue and of course, all the slimy
special effects!
2 THE LIST 1 Feb–31 Mar 2019
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