1980 – Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker – High comedy? Not hardly. If you relish the sophistications of the later Woody Allen, you may not like Airplane!. But if you enjoy a good time, like to laugh so hard it brings tears to your eyes, and want a movie so silly it will help you escape the drudgery of everyday life, this might just be your cinematic experience. Airplane! is …
1956 – Norman Panama, Melvin Frank – Not everyone is partial to the antics of Danny Kaye, but the richness of The Court Jester combines so many comic devices that it has still earned a wide, appreciative audience. The film gently spoofs swashbuckling, adventure films in the tradition of The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Mark of Zorro. It has the added merit of featuring Basil Rat…
1964 – Stanley Kubrick – Dr. Strangelove is a deliciously black comic look at nuclear annihilation, courtesy of Stanley Kubrick, with Peter Sellers in a three-role tour de force and Sterling Hayden as a mad general. The end of the world comes about not from complicated territorial disputes of geopolitics but from some all-thumbs general out to prove he's virile. General Rippe…
1933 – Leo McCarey – A government has been mismanaged, if you can imagine such a thing. Mrs. Teasdale (Margaret Dumont), who has already spent half of her late husband's legacy supporting Freedonia, now insists that her choice, Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho Marx), be placed in charge of the country. The comic insolence of the Marxes has never been exercised more freely than in th…
1965 – Blake Edwards – Dashing daredevil record breaker The Great Leslie Gallant, III (Tony Curtis) enjoys testing the laws of physics with daring and dangerous new stunts. Professor Fate (Jack Lemmon), The Great Leslie's arch nemesis, has a comical and very loud obsession with topping him. Pitting the two against each other in the first-ever New York to Paris car race makes …
1967 – Gene Kelly – Or should it be called The Twelve-Year Itch? Walter Matthau is the happy but bored husband who after twelve years of marriage to beautiful Inger Stevens starts to fancy every woman he passes on the sidewalk as a possible partner for a fling. For tips on how to succeed without getting caught, Matthau turns to his friend Robert Morse, who brims with sage advice. Th…
1963 – Stanley Kramer – Mystery man Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante), out of prison and on the run, drives his car off a cliff in California. Four carloads of good Samaritans stop to render aid, and with his dying breaths Grogan tells them of his $350,000 stash from a vague crime committed fifteen years earlier. He speaks in riddles, promising his would-be rescuers that the mone…
1975 – Woody Allen – Taking on the melodrama of Russian literature and with sly little send-ups of classic Russian film, Love and Death is the last of the joke-first comedies of Woody Allen, a change of interest lamented by some of his fans, appreciated by others. Following its release, Allen acted in Martin Ritt's movie The Front, about show-business blacklisting during the …
1974 – Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones – The silliness and irreverence of the Monty Python troupe meets the King Arthur legend in this often inspired comedy. The cinematography has a surprisingly impressive look and imparts an earthiness to scenes like the one when the medieval equivalent of a trash collector comes around with a giant pushcart calling for plague victims: “Bring ou…
1985 – Tim Burton – With unbelievable antics and his classic annoying laugh, Pee-Wee Herman sets off on his “big adventure” to recover his stolen bike (the one streamlined, red-chromed, glorious perfection that means almost as much to him as his dog Speck). Children and child-hearted adults alike will sympathize with Pee-Wee, the victim of a senseless robbery by the ne…
1975 – Jim Sharman – “I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey.” These are the first words from the Criminologist (Charles Gray) and narrator. A strange journey, indeed. This rock-music spoof of horror movies begins with two clean cut, straight arrows, Brad Majors (Barry Bostwick) and his betrothed, Janet Weiss (Susan Sarandon), at the wedding of a frie…
1965 – Ken Annakin – The first-ever international airplane race from London to Paris is the brainchild of a heroic English pilot, Richard Mays (James Fox), who wants to promote flying and flying machines and who is certain he can win. The financial backers are rounded up, the announcement is made, and contestants from countries all over the world converge on England to test their sk…
1974 – Mel Brooks – Mel Brooks is the master of some of the finest spoofs of serious movies ever done. High Anxiety lampoons Vertigo and Hitchcock, Spaceballs takes on Star Wars, Blazing Saddles skewers Virginia City and just about every western filmed between 1950 and 1970. Spoofing the original Karloffian Frankenstein as well as The Bride and other sequels, Young Frankenstein, whi…
The epic is a film genre just asking for someone to make fun of it. It takes itself so seriously, often assuming (in the hands of less capable filmmakers) that size and grandness, whether measured by running time or cast members or geographic locations or all of these equals artistic quality. For his first feature-length film, The Three Ages (1923), Buster Keaton pricked the balloon of the epic, s…