What kind of a show you guys putting.
On here today?
You're not interested in armed now? No, look, we're going to do this thing.
We're going to have a conversation.
Hey, film spotters Adam and Josh here. You know, we were looking at the calendar and I noticed Josh that the forty year Old Virgin is turning twenty this year, a movie that Sam and I reviewed that first year of Film Spotting episode thirty one. We both raved about the film turning twenty. A big Blu ray release is happening on August twelfth, and it's actually going to be back in theaters on August twenty seconds. So we thought, well, maybe we could revisit the review, but we never like
going that far back into the archive. Baby. Instead, we'd take a look at a recent top five where the forty year Old Virgin was mentioned.
Yeah, I mean Sam seemed a little hesitant. I don't know.
I'm sure you guys had smart things to say about the forty year old Virgin.
Can't believe that's twenty.
That was, you know, the start of the Appatow era, really, or at least at the very beginning, these big studio raunchy comedies that had a little bit of heart to them as well. So, yeah, twenty years ago and now we get to reconsider it with this Blu ray release.
We are going to share with you now our top five twenty first century comedies from episode six two. Forty year old Vision ranking pretty high on my list. And if you're a Film Spotting Family member and you want to hear whether or not Sam and I had smart things to say about the forty year old Virgin, I
make no promises. Of course, you can find episode thirty one in your Film Spotting Archive feed, and if you would like access to that Film Spotting Archive feed, you can become a Film Spotting Family member where that archive access is just one of the benefits that you get, along with a weekly newsletter, access to the Film Spotting Family discord, an incredible community there, early access to events,
possibly special seeding, and other discounts that are happening. I say possibly because there's some coming up, but you definitely get it early access and discounts for things like Film Spotting Fest, which you know those may be coming in the future too, Josh, and you get bonus content. We recently recorded an episode and dropped an episode of us taking a look at burn after reading revisiting that con Brothers film to see if maybe I had a change of heart about it again. All available to you as
a Film Spotting Family member. You can learn more at Filmspottingfamily dot com. And here are those top five twenty first century comedies.
Hey, Adam and Josh.
This is Nate Goss, a longtime listener calling out of the Verbs of Chicago, also co host of the Can We Still Be Friends?
Podcast?
And my pick my favorite pick of twenty first century comedy. So it's got to be Idiocracy, you might judge two thousand and six movie that is as When on Twitter, slowly becoming a documentary, and I remember seeing it for the first time when I just heard it with a new Mike Judge film, hadn't heard anything else about it, and I remember just laughing phil hard and not understanding why no one else is in the theater and also
why no one else was talking about it. But here we are, and it is becoming more and more relevant and in a lot of ways, more and more funny.
So that's my vote.
For top five, and my vote this year for president is going to have to be Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew, Herbert Camacho. Love the show, guys, keep it up.
Thanks, Thank you, Nate. A great way to kick off officially here this top five our favorite comedies of the twenty first century. His pick Idiocracy Mike Judge film reviewed favorably here on the show back in the early days of film spotting. There are some hilarious moments in that film alas not quite make the cut for me, Josh.
Not for me, very prescient, absolutely hysterical. I honor it with one of my top five picks, I think, so.
Okay, So we have set up throughout the show already. The BBC list that inspired this top five, they were not focusing on comedies. They just surveyed critics. They said, what are your ten favorite movies of this millennium so far? They ended up with one hundred and three movies there in that top one hundred and What actually really provoked this list was an article I saw probably on Twitter.
Jesse David Fox was the writer writing for Vulture dot com and the headline basically was comedy shut out of BBC's Greatest Films of the twenty first Century list, and he made the case, basically, Josh that yes, there were some comedies on there, like Michael Phillips had on his list Ratituy and The Grand Budapest Hotel. Those are funny movies, but maybe not in the same way Step Brothers is
right a comedy. So he set out to try to make that write a little bit, and he settled on a couple movies that he thought probably could have made the list that if you just focused on those broad comedies pure comedies, and then threw in I don't know eight or nine other dealer's choice options.
At the end.
I'm not going to read those here because our listeners can read them if they want. They can go to filmspotting dot net and they can find the link in our show notes. But also we're going to get to a few of these. I think, as we decided to take up the challenge that Jesse David Fox threw.
Down, well, I now understand why I wasn't asked to be part of this BBC voting, because I certainly would have put a broad comedy on my top ten list, and clearly they didn't want anyone who would be silly enough to do that. So this was a lot of fun because these are films that in all honesty, have appeared on my top ten lists over the years, yes, including some of the honorable mentions I will get to.
There's a very simple reason why I love comedy and value it highly broad comedy in general, it tells the truth, right, That's all the best comedy does. It gets to the heart of the matter. There's no obfuscation going on, there's no contentiousness involved. It just takes one great joke or a gag that hits home and bang, you know where things stand. So that's what I love about comedies. Not everyone does that, of course, but the great ones do, and those are the ones that I've chosen here.
So this is just one of the many reasons why you're a far more interesting critic than me, because, of course I went usually or I do, tend to go with the conventional wisdom. If I was picking my top ten of this century so far for the BBC list, very doubtful any of these comedies I'm about to mention would have made the cut or really probably been in
the top fifteen or twenty, I don't know. But some of these that are going to get mentioned and are going to get mentioned in the honorable mentions are films that have made top tens over the years. So it's not like I disregard comedy completely when I put together
those end of year lists. Now, before we actually jump in, because we are focusing on those pure comedies, and also because we don't want really to give love to movies that have already been given love on the BBC list, we have decided to rule out a few different filmmakers.
Yeah, we're not going to have the Cohen's on here, We're not going to have Wes Anderson on here.
No Pixar right as well, and even Paul Thomas Anderson.
Ye, I mean, I think Hilarious.
Is probably his purest comedy, if you want to look at it that way. But it's not only that those filmmakers are often lauded, and are in fact lauded on this list. But yeah, it's not the sort of going for the comic jugular films that we considered for this list.
Right, And if you were going to create sort of a mount rushmore of current filmmakers who make really funny movies, but the types of movies that you wouldn't necessarily label as broad comedies, you'd be hard pressed to find four better filmmakers than Wes Anderson, the Coen Brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Pixar. So that got me thinking, and also going back to our review of Young Frankenstein earlier, mel Brooks made Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein in the same year.
They were both released in nineteen seventy four. The producers had come seven years earlier. But just take those three movies in a seven year span, that clearly cemented him as the comedic director or one of the comedic directors of the nineteen seventies. Someone else you'd put in there, Woody Allen, who's still making films, but who's not going to come anywhere close to making either of our list.
But what I want to throw out to you before we really jump in, Josh, is if mel Brooks and Woody Allen, let's say we're at the top of the list, the top tier of filmmakers making comedies in the nineteen seventies, and we could probably go through different decades and identify other filmmakers as well, Woody maybe in the eighties too. Who would those directors be. Right now, let's not talk about films specifically, and this will maybe reveal a little bit of our thinking as we get into our picks.
But if you had to right now, think of three or four names that you think are synonymous with comedic films, the best comedic films right now? Who comes to mind?
Yeah, this may be a giveaway for some of our lists, but I've got to consider Appatoo. I think Edgar Wright may come up for one or both of us. And what's interesting is I look at the films that I have listed. That doesn't necessarily mean I've got their films on here, but I think they've been consistent and maybe that's somewhat what you're talking about. They're consistently hitting a high level of comedic work. But Apataw, certainly, I think
the Fairly Brothers. I mean, this was going to come up in my honorable mentions, but I was maybe well, no, I was with them.
Through I don't know.
I think you could say stuck on you I still like really quite a bit. Yeah, so that's you know, a long string that went myself. I yeah, funny thing, Oh yes, yes, with Jim Carrey, Wow, very good and in Shallow Howe. There's three there since two thousand that I would hold up as still strong comedic work. Now they're not in my top five, but I think they were still doing good stuff. Maybe there are other filmmakers I'm missing that you're thinking of.
Well, yeah, you named the first two, and you could go in whatever order of preference you want. But I think if you're talking about comedies, unless you just hate these films in these filmmakers, to overlook Judd Apatow and Edgar Wright would be a little bit ridiculous, and I would throw in there. I think you have to include in that conversation. Adam McKay and some of his films may come up here, but I think those three are
kind of the obvious top tier. I think then depending on your taste, in that second tier, and maybe they could even be bumped up into the first tier. Noah Boundback has to be considered when you look at the fact that he's made five or six movies in the two thousands that maybe are not all broad comedies, wearing stuff, very very funny movies, and he's made a lot of them. Christopher Guest, he really only has Best in Show and a Mighty Wind that were good anyway, right here in
the two thousand strong. I think with Stillman belongs in the dialogue David Wayne, and then you could go to the third tier. And I think these are the up and comers who maybe right now have done enough to be part of the conversation, but ten years from now will really be talking about them in grander terms. Lord and Miller, who gave us the Lego movie in twenty one, Jump Street and the Lonely Island Guys. Yeah, for pop Star and some other work. For sure they may come
up as well. So with that long winded preface, we actually get into our picks. Josh, what's your number five?
Let's start with Adam McKay and I struggled over which option to go with until I remembered just the experience of watching this film, and it has to be Talladagonites the Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Really, this is the one. I mean, ask me which of my top five films I would rewatch right now, and it's this collaboration with Will Ferrell. It's at the top of their collaborations for me. It's just an improvisational cornucopia. Farrell and co stars John
c Riley, Leslie Bibb, Gary Cole, Sasha Baron Cohen. They take the scenes here swerving in all sorts of directions, and that's appropriate as faroh play is a NASCAR star and they almost always find their way to comic gold along the way and then definitely at the end of the scenes.
It's a good thing.
I believe God has a sense of humor, because otherwise I would be in big trouble for how hard I laugh every time I watch Will Ferrell say, Grace.
You're tiny, Jesus, your golden flee stappers with your tiny little fat, bald up fist.
Paulis a man, he had a beard look.
I like the baby version the best, do you hear me?
I win the races and I get the money.
Ricky finish the damn Grace.
I like to picture Jesus in a tuxedo T shirt because it says like I want to be formal, but I'm here to party too, because I like to party, so I like my Jesus to party.
I like to picture.
Jesus as a ninja fighting off evil samurai.
I like to think of Jesus like with John Eagle's wings and singing lead vocals for Lynyrd Skynyrd with like an angel band, and I'm in the front row and I'm hammered drunk.
Hey, cal why you just shut up, ma'am.
You know, it's interesting to look back on Talladega Nights after McKay went on to make The Big Short your favorite film of last year. Speaking of comedies, I mean, you put one at the top there, Adam.
I mean, so many.
Of the jokes here have to do with corporate domination of the NASCAR scene or reckless personal consumption, which The Big Short was all about as well. I mean, this is what the foundation is for all the improv going on here, and as I said, they mine it.
For great stuff.
So I really right now, I just want to skip the rest of my listen, go watch Teleadegon.
I do need to re see it because I haven't watched it since it was reviewed when it came out here on the show. It did make me laugh quite a bit though, my number five. Man, we're going to get off to a really rocky start here. I already knew you didn't like the movie, and then now you disagree with the whole premise of me selecting it. But as I went through them, as I went through these choices, I had one criterion for once I didn't have some
extravagant set of rules. It was just thinking about the films that gave me the greatest quant and quality of laughs. That's it. I made one exception, and it's this number five because I had so many in contention for that number five slot, as I'm sure you did as well. At least seven or eight that easily could be in this number five slot. That I did consider that mel Brooks Woody Allen question, who probably deserves to be represented
on this list? And what's that filmmaker's funniest movie? And I am going with the one we saw together, but somehow saw completely different films. It is Noah Boundbacks while We're young. We discussed it on episode five sixty seven. It made my top ten films of twenty fifteen. We talked about it on episode five forty five, my top five of twenty fifteen so far, and we reviewed it
on episode five thirty seven. So I really don't have the strength or the will here to try to convince you that it's both hilarious and a little bit profound, but more funny than profound. So I brought in a little bit of help here. Andrew O'Hare over at Salon wrote a great, glowing review of the film, and he
agrees with me that it's Boundback's best film. He writes, this, if my initial description of While We're Young carries exactly the kind of ironic precision that would be employed by Jamie, the ambitious young filmmaker and male half of the hipster couple so marvelously portrayed by Adam Driver, that's because this movie has the ability to burrow into your brain and
affect your consciousness for weeks afterwards. Every time I hear a middle of the road pop song from my own youth in a retail store, I consider whether it's something Jamie would love the way he loves Aya the Tiger, or Caribbean Queen John Mellencamp's Small Town possibly too authentic, Billy Joel's The Longest Time, confusingly doubly retro, and also genuinely terrific, despite its often irritating author. All the songs on Cyndi Lauper's debut album that aren't Girls just want
to have Fun bingo. So I love all that partly too, because it reminds me of the entire conversation we had with Chuck Closterman on our six hundred episode where you could talk about some of this stuff and how it's
considered and reconsidered and reconsidered again over the years. But that really spoke to me, Josh, because when I think about this film, I do think about the laughs, but I specifically think about how much I laughed at the scene that I think might be in one of the trailers most people know from the film, where they're sitting there these two couples Naomi Wattson Still are the older couple and the hipster couple across from them, and they're trying to figure out the word marzipan, and none of
them can think of it, and then finally Dryfer just says, let's just not know what it is yea and him to not take his iPhone out. And there was just something so truthful about that that I think about that moment probably at least a couple times a month, I'll have an encounter like that where I'll think about that scene because I'm going through exactly what they're going through, or I'll even say the line out loud to someone when they're about to look something up and they look
at me like I'm crazy. But it really has stuck with me, and I do funnel a little bit of how I look at the world and the younger generation through the eyes of Noah bound Back. One last quick note, I went back to look at my notes from that review my intro for you. I had the setup that week, which was great because I focused completely on how much the Stiller character spoke to me and I could relate to the movie. My longest intro ever has to be
in six hundred episodes at the show. I did the math, one hundred words longer than your entire written review of the movie.
That sounds about.
My intro was way longer than your review, So.
I think that just that captures a lot.
But you know what's funny about this too is I think I like every other Noah bombback move. Really, you could have gone with this Squid the Whale. You could have gone Margot at the wedding, Mistress American, Francis high both like I even like Greenberg.
Yeah, I like all of those. You have to go with one for me, the only exception while we're Young's my favorite. I think Mistress America's fantastic. Highly recommend that too. The only one for me that's always been The standout in terms of not working at all is Margot at the Wedding.
Okay, well, i'd call.
You on this not being a pure comedy, but I might have a bit of a stretch myself coming up, so I can't be too harsh right now. So we got a lot of great voicemails from listeners for this top five. I don't know if it was just that the movie came immediately to mind when they heard about the topic. Best comedy since here.
Two thousand passion for many movies?
Did we get a lot? So let's share another one here from a listener in Kenosha.
Hey, guys, this is Michelle R. From Kenosha, Wisconsin. My favorite twenty first century comedy is the much maligned Freddy Got Fingered Savage upon release as the quote unquote worst movie ever in actuality. It's both a brilliant real life prank on the studio system and a gross out comedy that goes so far it becomes a surreal parody of the same, totally ahead of its time and clearly presaging modern all comedy geniuses like Tim and Eric and Alan Ressix.
No movie has made me laugh more.
Oh are boys genius?
These rigged a police system.
Sorry, can eat sausage and work on a stupid drawing and being creative.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I still have some work to.
Do that would not sip sausage.
They would do some ses, would do some sausage.
So I wish that I could find my original review from the newspaper of Freddie got fingeredn there's a chance I gave it a positive review?
Really well, why am I not surprised actually at all?
But this was, like, you know, this isn't even in their digital archives, so we'll just have to hope that was the case.
But there were things I.
Liked about it. I can at least just let's just not know. I like it Number four for me, however, I am going with Mean Girls the Heathers of the early twenty first century. It's a broader comedy than Heathers. That one was pitch Black, but I think it's as incisive and certainly as influential. Lindsay Lohan is the previously homeschooled high schooler here who's thrust into the social maze of a public school in Lohand she's really fresh and funny.
If you can remember that in this film, and you also have, in addition to her, this great supporting cast. Rachel McAdams is the supporting player. Here is Regina George, leader of the A List Plastics, and Amy Poehler so good as Regina's mom, who desperately still wants to be one of the Plastics, or at the very least be accepted as a cool mom.
Hey, you guys, happy hour is from four to six? Is there alcohol in this?
Oh?
God, honey, No. What kind of mother do you think I am?
Why do you want a little bit? Because if you're gonna drink, it'd rather you do it in the house. No, thank you. So you guys, what is the four to one one? What has everybody you've been up to?
What is the hot gossip? Tell me everything?
What are you guys listening to?
What's the cool jams?
Mom?
Could you go fix your hair?
Okay?
You girls?
Keep me young? Oh?
I love you so much.
Besides the laughs, the emotional accuracy here is just brilliant. Tina Fey wrote the screenplay and she based it on Rosalind Wiseman's nonfiction book Queen Bees and Wannabes. I remember feeling that truth when me and Girls first came out, I wasn't you know this was in two thousand and four high school was I could still remember it fairly
well at that point. Now, though, with my oldest daughter starting her first year of high school, I don't know if I could beare to revisit this whole movie and be reminded of just how complicated that social structure can be. So Mean Girls my number four.
So now, of course, I'm regretting that we didn't share our picks with each other ahead of time, which we don't normally do, but there are exceptions, and I really wanted to avoid having a pick on your list that I hadn't seen. And despite having a female friend a few years back being a gas that I'd never seen Mean Girls and I want to see it, I just haven't made the time. She even bought it for me for Christmas the DVD, and I still haven't done it. No, Instead, Josh,
going back to Adam McKay and Talladega Knights. You had to convince me that you might go with the other guys, and so I watched that you did. I watched the other guys and I like it good. I like it. It did it did well. Adam McKay is a great director, so yes, I know that.
Now, come to appreciate that. But few it's funny will talk about the other but it is up there with their best stuff.
I mean, Farrell is great, Wallberg is great. All the scenes with Eva Mendez are fantastic. Everything about that whole dynamic is great. But here's why the other guys is worth saying. To go off on a little tangent here for this one scene, the best sequence in the film by far. Michael Keaton plays their captain. Almost every scene he's in I crack up. But there's one in particular, and I'm trying to remember, now, is it Wahlberg or
Farrell who gets into a fight with another cop at awake? Basically, well, and Wahlberg is the hothead, right, so I've seen him. They get into a fight at a wake. So you have a group of cops standing in a circle, just like a school you heard fight, But since it's awake, they're trying to be quiet and respectful, so they're like, get him, get it, but they're whispering. And then that's funny enough, But then Michael Keaton comes in and he tries to break it up. And the way he breaks
it up by yelling but whispering. I was laughing so hard watching it that I was thinking to myself, they must have done fifty seven takes of this, because how anybody else in that circle could have watched Keaton do that so seriously and not just lose it. They'd have to be the best actors of all time. That scene is amazing.
See now you make me wish I put the other guys up.
Plus this was hard, Yeah, it was so The moral of the story is I still need to see Me and Girls. My Number four is a film that came out in twenty ten. It actually started as a BBC series that was edited into a film. Michael Winterbottom the director. The movie is The Trip Coogan and Rob Brydon, where it's these two great comedians and comedic actors playing versions of themselves for sure, as they go around the English
countryside on a trip being paid for. I believe by the Guardian Coogan's been sent out and you can't bring his love interest along with them. I think they've just had a falling out, so he brings Rob Brydon along with him. Now we really could just play one great scene from all of these movies and shut up and probably what we should have done here, And I will
get to that eventually with one of these picks. But the Michael Kaine scene where they're sitting over a meal and they go back and forth over how to properly do Michael Kine is among the scenes that made me laugh the most I can think of, certainly of the past fifteen or sixteen years.
Well, broadsheet journalists have described my impressions as stunningly accurate.
Well, they're wrong. I've not heard of Michael Kaine, but I assume it would be something along the lines of my hi'm's Michael Kay.
That is where you were so wrong. You could look at my life video, because that's the very thing I don't do. I say that he used to tell.
That Michael Kain.
Okay, I say, Michael Kay, and used to talk like this in the nineteen sixties, right, But that has changed. And I say that over the years, who's voice has cap down cepho act let me finish, and all of the cigars and the brandy don't let me finish? It can now be heard. I've not finished in the bat of the voice, and the voice now well I've still not finished the voice of panicing. Yeah, because you look
like you're a back of bloody chalk. Let me finish, right, so Michael Kat's voice down in the Batman movies, added Harry Brown. I can't go fast because Michael Kaine talks very, very slowly.
What made me really laugh more than anything in this film, and I noted this during a review back in twenty ten when this came out, is watching them when they actually do crack each other up, because you hear in that Michael Kine scene how they really are kind of
fighting with each other in a way. They're trying to one up each other so much throughout the whole film that when they actually do make the other guy laugh, those are the really rewarding, amusing moments in the film because they're each other's toughest critics by far, and they're brutally honest with each other. So when someone else does something that is genuinely brilliant, well they have to they
have to applaud, They have to give them that. So I love that, But I do also love the way that reality and fantasy line blurs again playing themselves, they are versions, certainly it's heightened but it is them and it's their personas. So the humor comes out of the honesty of a lot of those moments they're tapping into some genuine antagonism. I think it's fair to assume that exists between them, and we get those kind of moments.
Then when they go to the cemetery where Keats and Shelley are buried, and they get into a conversation about how they would eulogize the other person.
But of course, let's not remember a man who is lost, desperately trying to legitimize his life by doing silly voices constantly and not confronting the truth. Let's remmer the other side of Rob, the Rob Brydon, the entertainer, the Rob Brydon who gave some levity to our life and helps us avoid confronting the harsh realities and helps us avoid looking at the brutal reality of what life is about some of the characters. Of the characters who can forget
his Tom Jones impression? Who can forget that I think.
I'd better die now?
You can see think I'd better die now?
That's good?
Yeah, I know, Well I'll take her when you're doing there'll be plenty of I'll do plenty of Tom Jones when you're dead, don't worry about that.
Funny and brutal and brutally funny. And if you enjoyed those scenes as much as I did, and you love the riffing on impressions as much as I did, you can watch more of it in the Trip to Italy from twenty fourteen, another movie I thought was hilarious, and apparently there's a third one coming out. I didn't know it Spain.
Maybe that will be my chance to finally catch up on these You've got me here. Oh, I never saw the Trip and wanted to correct that. When a Trip to Italy came out, thought I could knock out both. Didn't get to it, so I better get to it soon.
It's on Sam actually said. After I told him it was going on my list, he said, yeah, you know what, You've convinced me. It's going in my top five as well. He was kind of ruling it out because it really is more of a character study. I said, yeah, but again, quantity and quality of laughs, the trip has it, so my number four. Let's get to our number three picks here, Josh, but to help us do that we will hear from longtime listener David L. William Season Central Pennsylvania.
Hi, I'm spotting.
This is David L.
William trom Central Pa. And the best comedy of the twenty first century is two thousand and nine's In the Loop. Armando Ian and She's take on the Invasion of Iraq is the funniest political film since Doctor Strangelove. It begins with a British government official thing in an interview that war is unforseeable, and then does everything to prove him wrong. It is arc a sherbick and laugh out loud funny, with a fantastically witty script that was nominated for an Oscar.
Peter Capaldi's Malcolm Tucker is a force of nature, maybe the most profane character ever put on film, and I'd love to quote some of his lines, but you would just hear a string of beep in the Loop. If not just the best comedy of the twenty first century, it's one of my top ten comedies of all time.
Yes, where'd you think you are? In some regency costume drama? This is a government department, not a jans Host novel. Malcolm, allow me to pop a Johnty little bonnet on your pub you and run out of the lubricated the horse.
David is so right about the doctor strange love vibes in that one. I'd actually forgotten that until David brought it up on Twitter and reminded me and looked up my review, and yeah, I did enjoy that quinettle bit when it came out. My number three is the one that maybe crosses the line a little bit from pure comedy. I went back and forth on whether or not to
include it. Unlike my first two picks, I can't say that it ever really made me burst out in laughter, but I was sort of It had me on a low chuckle throughout, okay, and then eventually that would bubble into an audible laugh here and there, and it was just kind of always on this hum So I went with it. It's Roy Anderson's songs from the second Floor.
I thought about it. Did you thought about it?
Good?
That is one we just saw. We just discovered it in our Contemporary Nordic Cinema Marathon. Now, for those who didn't join us on that journey, and you really should, you still can. Obviously, in our previous few episodes, we found a couple of gems there. It's been a good trip.
This one was a series of droll, absurdist vignettes. We talked in particular about the recently fired office worker who's clinging to his boss's legs as he's being dragged down this cold corporate hallway, as well as the magician who ends up actually cutting into the audience member who he was pretending to saw in half.
Now.
I described Songs from the Second Floor as capturing the world's last whimper. Yet on my website, where my reviews are archived by genre, I filed it under comedy why it doesn't seem to make sense? But for some reason and I mentioned this in our review of Songs from the Second Floor. Every time that magician's victim would show up in another segment and he'd WinCE while holding his side, I'd laugh. I would just start chuckling. And I don't
think it's that I'm cruel. I guess it could be that, But it's more that Anderson has found a way in this movie to take all of the world's collective angst over life's little miseries and how those pile up on us, and he.
Has these characters bear it.
In a way that makes us laugh, and then by laughing we feel a little bit of relief ourselves. So maybe stretching things a bit, but I'm going to go with Songs from the Second Floor.
Okay, a film that very well could come up a little bit more when we get to our Nordic Cinema Awards. And yeah, if you haven't watched the film yet and you throw it in because of Josh putting it on this top five list, and you start watching it and think, well, Josh is crazy and it's a little bit of anold crazy here before it happens pretty regularly, you might be right. But not only are a lot of the scenes that you just mentioned, Josh really genuinely funny, if not laugh
out loud. It's not about jokes, but definitely absurd and makes you chuckle to yourself. That's probably a good description. I would throw in the two scenes I highlighted during our discussion of that movie, I'll just say the cross convention, oh yeah, the salesman convention and the scene I think it's the first one that takes place at the mental hospital with the doctor who is watching this encounter between family members. Those two scenes those did genuinely make me laugh out loud.
Well, and what's the goal of all the scenes we just mentioned? And I would say probably ninety percent of the film. The goal is to make you laugh, and I think it's successful. So it may not look or move or sound exactly like the broad American comedies were used to, but it is certainly a comedy.
Well, let's get to some more traditional laughs with my number three, and we're going to get to another voicemail in this case, Josh, this isn't another option. John in Salt Lake City has my number three pick.
I hate film spotting. This is John in Salt Lake City. My choice for the twenty first century comedy is definitely Role Models. It's the most interesting comedy in that that was kind of a dark time, because comedy was kind of headed down a really kind of dark, sarcastic, snarky pass.
And Role Models has that.
It's also super gross out and very adults, but it really rises above and I really appreciated that it had real wants that replaced the schnock in the face with a really really easy set of targets, and it was just I was smiling at the end, and I love it.
Oh, that's my choice.
Thank you John for that voicemail, and thank you for reminding me just how much I loved Role Models. That is the two thousand and eight comedy directed by David Wayne. He was a co writer on the film as well Sean Williams, Scott Paul Rudd, the stars in that movie. They play two dudes who are punished basically for a few different offenses, and they have to do one hundred and fifty hours of community service, so they have to
be role models for some younger kids. They're the bigs to the littles in Jane Lynch's Little Program, and a lot of what John said I think is dead on, of course, about what makes Role Models a really good and really interesting film, where there is something about the movie that is sweet and uplifting by the end of it, and it works at the end of the film despite the fact, Josh, that there's still that really strong rebellious spirit to it that we've had throughout the whole film,
and we get wonderful moments like a dinner table scene where Rudd finally recognizes in his little Christopher mintz Ploss, who plays Augie, a kid who plays those fantasy games and jo dragons. He's got the swords and all that stuff. Well, I think dungeons the dragons just takes place all in your head, doesn't it. He's actually full blown dressed up.
I don't know.
We are losing our NERD credentials here, Josh. But that's a wonderful scene. And there are lots of little wonderful war moments in this film that all said. It's hysterically funny because of scenes like this one.
It's drawing there, Oh, Beyonce, she's smoking. I want to take my pants off.
What whoa? Whoa?
All right, Ronnie, that's enough trying to grab my joint language, Ronnie.
My language is English, and this my trying to grab all my hang Dad.
Got my own hang down to touch kid.
Oh, he has one of the handful of the ball Oky. That's racist.
Well, I trust you too, will work this out. I'm not going to micromanage.
Not my modus operone.
Now. I don't know how much of that scene we were actually able to play on the radio, or how much we had to bleep, but hilarious stuff. Sean Williams Scott proving in this film and a few others that we probably didn't fully appreciate him after all, being introduced to him as Stiffler in the American Pie movies, because he's really a legitimately good comedic actor, really funny guy.
Oh yeah, a movie that almost made my list, the Promotion, which he's in with John c Riley. He absolutely holds both the comedy and the dramedy there. I'm glad you went with the role models though for the Wayne film, I think the one that you most often hear is what Hot American Summer. People just have such a relationship with that picture. But I enjoy Role Models probably the most of his and wander Lust too, is really really strong.
So he is one of those names in that tier you were talking about at the start of our list.
Well, then it worked out very well that I reached out to David Wayne, and I thought, as one of those directors in one of those tiers, we should get his perspective on his favorite comedy of the twenty first century, and I did not see his pick coming. Let's hear it.
Perhaps it's generational, but for me, there haven't been so many classic pure comedies in the twenty first century so far. Along the lines of my all time favorites, including The Graduate Tutsi, Woody Allen's Best Ones, Animal House, Pink Panther, Airplane, Flirting with Disaster, et cetera. I think part of it might be that a lot of the real creative energy and narrative comedy these days has moved to TV and
to the Web. With that said, if I really think about what movie made me laugh the most and hardest this century, I'd have to go with mcgroober from Yorma Toconi and Will Forte unabashedly stupid yet obsessively tight and crafted under the surface. Honorable mention has to go to the Jackass movies, which also had me laughing hard from
beginning to end, even though it's kind of cheating. And final honorable mention goes to Tommy Wiseau's unintentionally funny movie The Room, which is the only movie I've ever seen that illicits giant roars of laughter on nearly every line of dialogue.
Well, I guess if David Wayne has gone out on this limb already, it's safe for me to go out and say that I really like the Jackass film.
Still No, I do as well. At least one of them was reviewed here on the show and favorably. But I'm with David. Thank you for that wonderful voicemail because it prompted me to do more homework. No, didn't watch me Girls, but I did watch mcgroober in preparation for this list, and he's absolutely right. It's hysterical. Mcgruber is a really funny film. Did you see it, Josh?
I still need to see it.
I'm going to do it before I see pop Star Smart.
I think that does make sense. Directed by Jorma Taconi, who is part of that Lonely Island group, And I thought pop Star was really good and really well directed and well conceived all around. And you can go back to mcgroober and see that he certainly knows what he's doing. Pop Star wasn't an anomaly at all. And just real quick, I have to say my favorite favorite line in the movie. Mcgroober, who has been out of civilization for like a decade and is a huge dork to begin with, so isn't
really in touch with anything cool. He drives this Mazda convertible, this red Mazda convertible that he thinks is like a hot car, and everybody makes fun of him for it, and he's got one of those old car stereos that he takes out. Oh yeah when he gets out of his car those oh yeah, I did do so it doesn't get stolen, but he takes it to another level, Josh like he pulls up to talk to someone and just gets out of the car and is standing behind it. He pulls the stereot if he walks into a restaurant
or a party, he brings it with him. It doesn't matter where he's going, which leads to the best line of the film. When some bouncers destroy it, he says, that is a blow punkd you oh be a bloupunked.
Well, it was one of the better brakers exactly.
That's why it's funny. And that concludes Adam does lines from mcgruber. Let's get to You're number two.
Cedar Rapids knew it was coming. Yep, yep, absolutely. I mean think about it this way. Some of our best comedies turn on minor moral dilemmas. Think of Jack Lemons, C. C. Baxter in the apartment. I'm talking your language here are I see Cedar Rapids as working in the tradition of a movie like that and this is pretty much what we've got at. Helms plays Tim Lippy, a mild mannered insurance agent who's sent to his first business convention and
is shocked, just shocked. He can't believe how regular people behave when they're away from home. Helms is so good here. I'm not gonna say he's Jack Lemon, but really his naivete and the way he commits to it and his excruciating normalcy, I think is something we don't often see on screen. We see nerds, or we see guys who are idiots.
But just to.
See a painfully normal, everyday guy played like this is a rarity, and he still manages to be funny while doing it too. The movie that was almost stolen by its supporting cast, we have Anne Hayesh, who is revelatory to me in this movie, never thought of her this way before. She plays a married mom who's looking to have her own sort of fun at this convention. And then John c Riley, who, if it's not clear by now,
I consider a comic national treasure. He is the convention's notorious partier who tries to turn every year into Marty Grass who.
Wasn't get wasted jo Jo.
Haven't check out those studs Ostrowski.
Oh, ron Ronald, do you look fantastic?
This one squeezing a little firect?
Oh ye oh so good? Oh let me.
Sealed?
You know this game?
Oh that's right from the fitness center.
Yeah, I was really naughty with you down there.
I'm really sorry too.
Oh no, she's not.
Oh no, I'm not shots. Let's do it.
What do you want?
Guys.
What's really unique about Cedar Rapids, I think is the level of complications that it brings to this morality play again, like the Apartment. When Tim gets embroiled in the convention's annual awards ceremony, he finds out how corrupted they are and kind of gets caught up in it. It's actually these misbehaving new friends who help him find his moral compass. So it's not one of these bad behavior comedies that lets his characters run wild for ninety minutes and then
hypocritically tries to punish them. This is so much better than that. So once more, I'm going to bag the job for Cedar Rapids.
And I can't complain about that as much as I like to, because I really like Cedar Rapids quite a bit. And I especially like it if it's the de facto, super obvious Larsen choice for this list, and it means that I'm not going to hear the words casadae me padre with your number one.
We've got another pick. What are you talking about?
Just trying to play the groundwork here, Josh, you have an out if you want to take it. But I like the comparison as well to C. C. Baxter because it's interesting that in that movie, Jack Lemon starts out as a pretty nice and seemingly decent guy who nevertheless has to figure out how to be a mensch, and Tim Lippy is a mensch already from the very beginning. He's a really good guy who's getting more and more
corrupted as the movie goes on. My number two is a movie I haven't seen since it came out, so I can't say how gut bustingly funny it is. I don't really remember, but I do remember just thinking it was so consistently clever it is, and when I see scenes from it or I'm prepping for a list, I'm always reminded of that. And it comes from one of those top tier directors, Edgar Wright, and his Shawn of the Dead. I have said this on the show before.
Of Course, I have never been a big horror guy, so it wasn't a case where I watched Shaann of the Dead and thought, Wow, I've been looking for this movie that was going to send up horror films or be a send up of zombie movies, and thinking about it, I go back to Young Frankenstein a little bit. We talked about how the accuracy of that movie and how it really succeeds because of how lovingly they pay tribute
to movies like the James Whale Frankenstein. This is another case of that where it's not Scream and Screams a perfectly fine movie, but that's one that's just overtly self referential. All the jokes are based on our understanding of horror movies and their tropes, and a lot of the humor comes from you getting those references. But this is a film, Shanna Dead, that works completely on its own as a buddy movie, as a pseudo thriller, as a sort of
coming of age movie, certainly as a character study. And I think that can be said of all of Wright's film films. The other thing I like about right on this list and why I wanted to make sure he was here. This is also something that's come up a few times over the past couple of years on the show, is how I think safe to say, unlike all the others on this list, he is as a director of
visual humorous. Yeah, the editing, the pace of the cutting, the types of cuts, the shots themselves, his use of space, what's in the frame and what's outside the frame. What we know is there, but sometimes a character doesn't. That's where a good chunk of his humor derives. And I think we need to be sure to praise filmmakers like that who are really using the medium and not just writing a lot of really funny jokes or funny scenes.
That's absolutely right. It speaks to a little bit what I was mentioning to Michael Phillips about maybe why the BBC list didn't give more credit to comedies because they're not always this formally inventive. But it also makes me wish I could have revisited each of these films on my list and think about them in those terms, right, and really study them that way. I think maybe Songs from the Second Floor is the one that absolutely uses
composition for gags. We talked about the comparison to Jacques Tati right when we reviewed it, so that is definitely a strength something that Edgar Wright has in his toolbox, and I'm glad you met with Sean of the Dead. I think if that's what I would have gone with. If I didn't go with it, it's probably because it does work so well just as a horror film too.
I thought about that. I almost wrote it off for that reason. But a lot of listeners, a lot of funny first mention it, and I do think it is about the humor first and foremost. I think that's true with all of his films, despite what else we get from them, And to that point, I will mention that sort of like what I was saying with Role Models, this is a movie that has really sincere moments amidst all the humor, but more extreme right on both ends
of the spectrum. The humor is way more absurd, i'd say, than anything, of course that we get in Role Models. But there's nothing in role Models anywhere near as emotionally raw as the standoff in the pub where these friends have this standoff and they share a lot of really dark, hidden truths or things that have been unset and then Sean has to make a decision involving his mom that's legitimately heartbreaking in this spoof of zombie movies.
Very much.
Tradition as well, and they make that work. Yeah, it's it's a really strong film. All right, we're at our number one picks. No it's not Padre, sorry, Adam. It is one that I share with Eddie from Austin, so I'll let him make the pick.
Uh. You know, part of me badly wants to go to that Radiocracy or Jackass number two, but I'm gonna have to go with the one that also features the best comedic performance I think, which would be a bore at which you say what you will about descriptive parts. It's, you know, totally hilarious start to finish, and there's the thing that puts it over the top for me is that the palpable sense of danger you get from some of those scenarios that that Baron Cohen puts himself in.
And it's just just tremendous. I cried laughing like three at least three times watching it the first time, and it's still makes me laugh, just this hard each time.
I since so.
Good luck with the list. I hope you guys find room. Do you agree with me and have a good one.
I am with Eddie and Michael Phillips, incidentally, who mentioned Boat as one of the comedies he might have picked for this list in that Vulture article we talked about that inspired the list from Jesse David Fox. He writes this, so first, Brett needs to be on this list and probably top fifty. Not only is it inventive in its blending of completely fictional and real world elements, but Sasha Baron Cohen created a brilliant, loudly hilarious title character and
fully realized universe for him to live in. It is both the greatest satire of post nine to eleven America and a love letter to the country. Borett was, of course, Sasha Baron Cohen's tour of America and the guys of a boorish Kazakh television reporter. And then in these stunts and these interviews that he would do with actual people, he would hilariously and cringe inducingly expose the intolerant underbelly of contemporary America. I think you could argue that borat
is even more timely. If he visited the America of twenty sixteen, I don't think he'd be as much of a fish out of water. Maybe when he's randomly kissing strangers on the subway, yeah, that wouldn't fly.
But a lot of.
These scenes he wouldn't stand out as much. His brand of intolerance is more openly spoken in just these few years. I think you can thank the Internet for a lot of that, and you can also thank this year's election climate. So if you were to rewatch that infamous speech he gives at the rodeo and the crowd's reaction, tell me this couldn't be mistaken for a Trump rally.
Yeah, my name of Bora. I come from a Kazakhstan.
Can I say at first we support your war? After all? May we show support the boys in you up? May you say and kill every single that at May it judge bush and drink the love of every single man, woman and.
Child of ra.
May you be say that country so that for the next thousand years not even a single lizard will survive in their deserts.
So that phrase Eddie used palpable sense of danger that is really there in that scene, and a lot of them in Borat So for that and you know, honestly also for the naked wrestling scene. Uh, Borad is my number one twenty first century comedy.
Well, it's a really good pick, and it's a movie that I remember reviewing favorably on the show. I remember laughing at it quite a bit, but I also remember there's just something about it that didn't sit well with me. There was something about some of the provocation. Maybe it was that it felt too forced, And I honestly don't know.
I'd have to go back and listen to what I said, or look in my notes or revisit the movie, but I just remember feeling like some of it was not only too forced, but some of it was mean spirited in a way. Well, that differs from the other types of mean spirited moments in the film. There's a distinction between some of them versus the other where maybe it's that the subjects are in on the joke, or sometimes the subjects are more worthy of his score and others don't seem to be.
It's sort of the Colbert Show and Daily Show dynamic, right where those interviews you're always wondering what did they know beforehand? So that's definitely an element, and I remember having a bit of that experience as well. I also think, though, that Boat is not a movie that you should come out of feeling comfortable. I mean it should disturb you in some way. I know you're probably talking about a little bit of a different way, but it is meant to provoke and put you in a state of under sure.
It's one I need to revisit for sure. Okay. My number one is a film from a director who came up in our discussion of the tiers of current comedic filmmakers, and I really strongly considered Judd Apatow's Knocked Up for this list. I remember seeing that critic screening and losing
my mind laughing at it. But I have to go back to the film that I think if you look, he'd had some success as a producer with Anchorman in two thousand and four, but it really was I believe two thousand and five that the fourty year Old Virgin came out the movie that really gave us. I know he'd been on The Daily Show, but the movie that gave us Steve Carell comedic genius. And this scene I said, sometimes you can just play a scene and you don't
really need to say anything else. That's what I'm gonna do here, because there were a lot of really funny moments in this movie. But this dialogue, this conversation, the guys night out. I think they're at the electronics store they work at that's always playing Michael McDonald music in the back room, and they're playing cards and they kind of forced Steve Carell to share sexual experiences.
I dated this girl for a while and she was really a nasty freak. She just loved to get down with sex all the time. She was like anytime of day, she was like, yeah, let's go. I'm so nasty and I be nailing her.
Oh, she'd be like, oh, you're nailing me.
Cool.
She talked dirty to you.
Oh. She loved the dirty talk, totally into it. She'd be like, yeah, let's.
Screw let's I want to.
God, I was so dirty.
She'd be like, oh me so honey, me love you long time.
So I remember seeing that for the first time and convulsing with laughter. That's how funny I thought it was. And of course we only could play a little snippet of it there, but pure broad comedy, huge laughs. This was a no brainer for me, the forty old version.
And it probably is ridiculous that I don't have an appetite film on this list. I think I may be punishing him because his run has been so good and I don't have a clear fire favorite among them. I mean, between train Wreck, Knocked Up and This Love them All, This is forty is the only one that funny people. I likely need to be funny people as well, and so it's not fair. But I am punishing him because he's been too consistently good. I guess I can't just pick one fair enough.
Those are our top five comedies of the twenty first century. We want to know your picks, maybe some of your favorite directors, but those films in particular that made you laugh the most over these past fifteen years. You can email us feedback at film spotting dot net.
Holda HOLDA HOLDO you'll answer this question.
Are you a virgin? Are you a virgin?
Yeah?
Not?
Since I was ten, it all makes sense.
You're a virgin?
I am shut up?
How does that happen?
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