Every single person has a favorite comedy movie. It could be Anchorman, Blazing Saddles, Friday, Bridesmaids, maybe even Ingmar Bergman's Winter Light in a sick, twisted way.
But there are dozens of other comedies people hardly mention, but they're just as funny as the classics. Here are 10 underrated films that should be part of the all-time comedy canon.
'What's Up, Doc?' (1972)
Coming third in Peter Bogdanovich's red-hot four movie run (Targets, Last Picture Show, Paper Moon), What's Up, Doc? is one of the 70s' most criminally forgotten comedies. The movie is a densely-packed screwball send-up starring Barbra Streisand as a real-life incarnation of Bugs Bunny.
Too much happens to recap this film in a few words, but in short: four matching luggage pieces, a desperate conversation under a table, a 20-minute car chase that could've been even longer, and so much more. What's Up, Doc? isn't just overlooked. It's one of the great American comedies of all time.
'To Be or Not to Be' (1942)
"So they call me Concentration Camp Ehrhardt, ay?" It's undeniable: some comedies from the 1930s and 40s don't age well. (Frankly, some comedies from the 2010s don't either.) That's certainly not the case with Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 comic masterpiece: To Be or Not to Be.
During the Nazi occupation, two Polish actors played by Carole Lombard and Jack Benny (in a rare on-screen appearance), become unwittingly involved in the underground resistance. This film is a miracle, particularly because Lubitsch, a German expatriate, chose to make it at the height of the Nazi fervor. In 1940s, To Be or Not to Be was a prescient rebuke of the Nazi regime. Today, it's a timeless work of comedic art.
'Down With Love' (2003)
Down With Love feels like a relic of two different eras of Hollywood -- the Golden Age and a time when movie stars were movie stars. Ewan McGregor and Renée Zellweger take center frame in this 2003 comedy about feminist author who tries to teach a lesson to the hot-shot play boy reporter...and vice versa.
Like any comedy, it's darn near impossible to convey how funny and unlikely this movie feels during the first watch. It's a comedy tightrope, and McGregor, Zellweger, and David Hyde Pierce (especially) walk it like trained acrobats. Down With Love should be considered one of the great comedies of the 21st Century.
'The Ladykillers' (1955)
In The Ladykillers, five bank robbers rent rooms at an old woman's house while they plan their next scheme. Most people who have heard of that plot likely recall the Coen brothers' 2004 remake -- widely considered their worst film. This movie is not that movie. This movie is a masterpiece.
Led by a legendary Alec Guinness performance and the hilarious Katie Johnson as the old widow, The Ladykillers is one of the great forgotten comedies of the 50s. That status is thanks in large part to Johnson's effervescent portrayal of an oblivious old woman unwittingly thwarting Guinness's best-laid plans.
'Official Competition' (2021)
For the next overlooked entry, look no further than 2021. This Spanish film centers on a visionary director (Penélope Cruz), a Hollywood superstar actor (Antonio Banderas), and a legendary theater actor (Oscar Martinez) as they enter rehearsals on a big budget adaptation of a bestselling novel. And to be frank, things do not go as planned.
Cruz's director puts her actors through every ludicrous exercise imaginable: destroying their awards in a wood chipper, making out with a co-star in front of her father, sitting under an enormous rock, and so on. The moments between rehearsals are just as memorable, most notably when Martinez practices rejecting his Oscar in front of the mirror. Official Competition may be the best comedy of the 2020s thus far (not that there's a lot of...competition.)
'The Great Race' (1965)
Is The Great Race overlooked because it's two hours and forty minutes long? Maybe. Should it be though? Still, maybe. Nevertheless, The Great Race is one of the funniest movies ever made and maybe even better than the more-discussed comedy epic of two years prior: It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
The Great Leslie (Tony Curtis -- an American daredevil hero who only wears white) races across the world against Professor Fate (Jack Lemmon -- Leslie's diabolical archrival who only wears black). It's about a (great) race, yes, but it's so much more. Curtis, Lemmon, Natalie Wood, and Peter Falk deliver career-best performances, and that's saying something. There's a saloon bar brawl, mistaken identities, an oddly timed sing along, and the largest pie fight ever shot on film. The Great Race is the comedy classic you never heard of.
'OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies' (2006)
The United States has Austin Powers. France has OSS 117. The 2006 spy comedy is deeply loyal to the source material it parodies, right down to the costuming, film lens, and camera placement.
Like the Sean Connery Bond films, OSS 117 follows a snappily-dressed, smooth-talking misogynistic spy, and the joke is always on him. Five years later, star Jean Dujardin and director Michel Hazanavicius would gain fame and Oscars for The Artist. But in 2006, they released one of the funniest French films ever made and one of the best parodies of all time.
'The Palm Beach Story' (1942)
Many movie fans will know Preston Sturges's agreed-upon classics: Sullivan's Travels and The Lady Eve. Just as hilarious are his lesser-known works, including Hail the Conquering Hero, The Great McGinty, and his entry on this list: The Palm Beach Story.
All of Sturges's films bend genre, but none does so more audaciously than Palm Beach. On the one hand, it's a story of a divorcee looking for a new life as a rich wife. On the other hand, it's a complete subversion of the screwball genre...in 1942. They didn't have a name for the genre yet, and Preston Sturges already flipped it upside down.
'Four Lions' (2010)
Four aspiring British Muslim men aspire to join Al-Qaeda and bomb their city. It might not sound like a comedy layup, but director Chris Morris's 2010 dark satire turned out funnier than anyone could have guessed
In the spirit of Dr. Strangelove, Four Lions plunges into the depths of dread and discomfort, but it stays funny the whole time, in part because Morris knows not to valorize his characters but to turn them into clowns. By the end of the film though, he's turned them human again -- as much tragic characters as cautionary tales against the danger of radicalism.
'Silent Movie' (1976)
Mel Brooks is the master of the comedy film. Think Young Frankenstein, Blazing Saddles, The Producers, Spaceballs,...on and on it goes. But less appreciated is the 1976 gem he made right after Frankenstein and Saddles: Silent Movie.
Brooks, Marty Feldman, and Dom DeLuise play lightly-fictionalized versions of themselves as they attempt to recruit movie stars to be in their new silent movie (within a silent movie). The film is a loose construction of comedic encounters with Burt Reynolds, James Caan, Liza Minnelli, Brooks' wife Anne Bancroft, Paul Newman, and even world-famous mime Marcel Marceau. Today, Silent Movie is a hidden masterpiece and an essential inclusion on this list.