THE 20 BEST COMEDIES ON MAX
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This article is updated frequently as titles leave and enter Max. *New additions are indicated with an asterisk.
,Who doesn’t need a laugh these days? Max (formerly HBO Max) has one of the richest and deepest catalogs of any of the streaming services, and so it naturally has the comedy you’re looking for tonight. From classic comedies starring iconic performers to movies that played in theaters recently, this rotating list of laugh generators should have something for everyone.
,,,Barbershop
,Year: 2002
Runtime: 1h 43m
Director: Tim Story
,It’s been over two decades since the release of this comedy hit that made several times its modest budget, leading to multiple sequels (which are also on Max). The appeal was the feeling that audiences were being transported to an actual barbershop, a community hub where friends could assemble and work through their lives together. It made stars of Michael Ealy and Eve, and boosted the acting careers of Anthony Anderson, Ice Cube, and Cedric the Entertainer.
,,Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
,Year: 1989
Runtime: 1h 30m
Director: Stephen Herek
,It’s really hard to dislike this charming time travel comedy about two underachieving buddies who travel through time for a school project. Keanu Reeves (Ted) and Alex Winter (Bill) are so wonderfully sweet and funny in a film that has held up better than most comedies of its era. Note: The also-excellent follow-up Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey is also on Max.
,,Barbie
,Year: 2023
Runtime: 1h 55m
Director: Greta Gerwig
,One of the biggest films of 2023 has already landed on Max in the form or Greta Gerwig’s daring blockbuster, a comedy that works both as a reminder of the power imagination and the fight for equality. Anyone who thinks this movie is anti-male isn’t paying any attention. The theme of the movie is that no one — not even Barbie nor Ken — should be defined by traditional roles. We should all be free to play however we want. It’s a wonderful film that will truly stand the test of time.
,,Dear White People
,Year: 2014
Runtime: 1h 49m
Director: Justin Simien
,This Sundance hit unpacked racial and class issues at a fictional university called Winchester, launching not just a Netflix original series but the careers of Tessa Thompson, Teyonah Parris, and more. It’s a viciously smart movie with scenes that are alternately hysterical and razor sharp in their social commentary.
,,Dr. Strangelove
,Year: 1964
Runtime: 1h 35m
Director: Stanley Kubrick
,The large fan base of Stanley Kubrick often mentions dark pieces of work like 2001, A Clockwork Orange, and The Shining, but one of his best and most influential films is a comedy about the end of the world. Satirizing the Cold War this aggressively way back in 1964, Kubrick rewrote the textbook for political comedy and presented viewers with an instant classic that was both hysterical and terrifying.
,,*Dream Scenario
,Year: 2023
Runtime: 1h 42m
Director: Kristoffer Borgli
,Nicolas Cage is wonderful in this twisted comedy, the story of an ordinary man thrust into an impossible spotlight. Cage plays Paul Matthews, an incredibly normal guy who ends up filtering into the dreams of others around the world. Suddenly famous, Paul doesn’t know exactly what to do as his reputation as a modern-day Freddy Krueger starts to shift. It doesn’t quite stick the landing, but it’s smart enough throughout to make that forgivable.
,,Election
,Year: 1999
Runtime: 1h 43m
Director: Alexander Payne
,What a great movie. The writer/director of Nebraska and The Descendants adapted Tom Perrotta’s novel of the same name and produced arguably his best film to date. Reese Witherspoon is amazing as Tracy Flick, an overachieving student who really aggravates a high school teacher named Jim McAllister, played by Matthew Broderick. So much so that he sabotages her run for student government president in a film that understands the intersection of the political and the personal in ways that movies actually set in D.C. rarely do.
,,Fargo
,Year: 1996
Runtime: 1h 38m
Director: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
,Joel and Ethan Coen’s masterpiece is only one of the best films ever made, a story of violence and redemption in the great American North. The Coens won Best Original Screenplay and Frances McDormand took her first Oscar home for playing the unforgettable Marge Gunderson, a Minnesotan cop who gets entangled in a car salesman’s deeply inept foray into the criminal world.
,,Get Shorty
,Year: 1995
Runtime: 1h 45m
Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
,Look at me. Barry Sonnenfeld directed one of the best adaptations of an Elmore Leonard novel and anchored it with one of John Travolta’s best performances. Everyone remembers the comeback with Pulp Fiction, but Get Shorty really allows Travolta’s incredible ‘90s charisma to shine. It’s a perfectly calibrated comedy with phenomenal performances all around, including Rene Russo, Danny DeVito, Delroy Lindo, and Gene Hackman too.
,,I, Tonya
,Year: 2017
Runtime: 2h
Director: Craig Gillespie
,Who could have ever guessed that the true(-ish) story of Tonya Harding would become an Oscar-winning dramedy? Margot Robbie does some of the best work of her career as the title character, who reclaims her own story through this odd, funny, and ultimately moving character study that won Allison Janney an Academy Award.
,,Kingpin
,Year: 1996
Runtime: 1h 54m
Director: The Farrelly Brothers
,The Farrelly brothers follow-up to their hit Dumb and Dumber was an even funnier (but less commercially successful) film about another pair of idiots. Woody Harrelson stars as a disgraced bowler who tries to mentor an Amish hurler (Randy Quaid) to win a championship, toppling his nemesis, unforgettably played by Bill Murray. Fearless in its attempts to make you laugh, Kingpin holds up.
,,Legally Blonde
,Year: 2001
Runtime: 1h 36m
Director: Robert Luketic
,Long before she won an Oscar or worked magic with The Morning Show, Reese Witherspoon turned a ditzy blonde into a comedy star in this 2001 romantic comedy from director Robert Luketic. It could be stretching it to call this silly fluff “great” but what elevates the saga of Elle Woods from sorority queen to legal eagle is the total charm and commitment of Witherspoon herself. It’s one of her most likable and memorable performances.
,,The Lobster
,Year: 2016
Runtime: 1h 58m
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
,Comedy doesn’t get much darker than this offering from the 2019 Oscar-nominated Yorgos Lanthimos. The Greek director co-wrote and directed the story of a place where single people go to hook up with others looking for love. The catch? If they don’t find a partner within 45 days, they are turned into animals. As dry and deadpan as comedy gets, there are still some very funny beats in Lanthimos’s exaggerated look at the folly of human connection.
,,Lost in Translation
,Year: 2003
Runtime: 1h 42m
Director: Sofia Coppola
,Sofia Coppola exploded onto the filmmaking scene with her second film, this 2003 dramedy about a fading movie star who meets an American girl in Tokyo and both of their lives change. Bill Murray does career-best work in the film (and should have won an Oscar), and he’s matched by Scarlett Johansson, but this really is Coppola’s film, a tender, brilliant character study with personal resonance.
,,The Naked Gun
,Year: 1988
Runtime: 1h 25m
Director: David Zucker
,No one ever could have guessed that the unsuccessful TV series Police Squad! would turn into the wildly successful film series The Naked Gun, which was such a hit on its release that it turned Leslie Nielsen into a massive star and produced two sequels. The first film is still the best, a gloriously ridiculous spoof of cop shows/films in which Nielsen’s Frank Drebin stumbles upon a plot to kill Queen Elizabeth II that involves Reggie Jackson. It’s too bad they don’t make movies this gloriously stupid (in a good way) as often as they did in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
,,Observe and Report
,Year: 2009
Runtime: 1h 27m
Director: Jody Hill
,Jody Hill’s brand of humor isn’t for everyone but if you watched Eastbound and Down or The Righteous Gemstones and have yet to see this then you’re doing something wrong. Similar to that show, Hill’s pitch-black comedy is about an aggressive idiot, played here by Seth Rogen as a mall cop who goes to extremes. In your face in every way, Observe and Report is the kind of movie that either really works for you or really doesn’t. Find out on which side of the aisle you fall.
,,Office Space
,Year: 1999
Runtime: 1h 29m
Director: Mike Judge
,It barely made a dime when it was released ($12.2 million total) but Mike Judge’s workplace comedy developed a cult following on VHS almost immediately upon its release. Ron Livingston stars in a satire of life in cubicles in the 1990s. Set at a software company and a horrible chain restaurant, the film captured something about the surreal daily drudgery of work life at the turn of the century that changed this kind of comedy forever.
,,The Player
,Year: 1992
Runtime: 2h 4m
Director: Robert Altman
,After a rough patch in the ‘80s, Robert Altman came roaring back with his scathing Hollywood satire written by Michael Tolkin. Tim Robbins does his best film work as a studio executive who can’t decide if his biggest problem is at work or the writer sending him death threats. Altman’s skill with improvisational comedy and knowledge of the Hollywood machine blend to make a simply perfect movie, one of the best of the ‘90s.
,,Singin’ in the Rain
,Year: 1952
Runtime: 1h 43m
Director: Stanley Donen
,Movies don’t get more delightful than this beloved classic about backstage drama on the advent of the talkie. Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O’Connor are as charming as charming can be, and the movie contains some of the best choreography of its era, and not just in the titular number. It’s joyous from front to back. Honestly, you have to be kind of a jerk not to like this movie.
,,Up in the Air
,Year: 2009
Runtime: 1h 50m
Director: Jason Reitman
,One of the best midlife crisis comedies of the modern era, this Oscar winner stars George Clooney as a man who has spent more time on airplanes than he has with his family. Clooney’s Ryan Bingham is a full-time “downsizer,” someone who essentially ruins lives everywhere he goes. Clooney does some of his best work here, matched by Vera Farmiga and a breakthrough performance from Anna Kendrick – all three were nominated for Oscars.
,,*Zola
,Year: 2020
Runtime: 1h 26m
Director: Janicza Bravo
,The best movie based on a Twitter thread. Aziah “Zola” King started a story on Twitter back in the days when it was still fun and good in 2015, recounting a tale too crazy not to be true. Taylour Paige, Riley Keough, and a stunningly great Colman Domingo star in the film version of that tale, the journey of a stripper and her friend to Tampa, where things go wrong in wild and unpredictable ways.
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2021-04-14T21:23:01Z dg43tfdfdgfd