Speaker 1: What kind of a show you guys putting.
Speaker 2: On here today?
Speaker 3: You're not interested in armed now? No, look, we're going
Speaker 3: to do this thing.
Speaker 2: We're going to have a conversation.
Speaker 4: Hey, film spotters Adam and Josh here. You know, we
Speaker 4: were looking at the calendar and I noticed Josh that
Speaker 4: the forty year Old Virgin is turning twenty this year,
Speaker 4: a movie that Sam and I reviewed that first year
Speaker 4: of Film Spotting episode thirty one. We both raved about
Speaker 4: the film turning twenty. A big Blu ray release is
Speaker 4: happening on August twelfth, and it's actually going to be
Speaker 4: back in theaters on August twenty seconds. So we thought, well,
Speaker 4: maybe we could revisit the review, but we never like
Speaker 4: going that far back into the archive. Baby. Instead, we'd
Speaker 4: take a look at a recent top five where the
Speaker 4: forty year Old Virgin was mentioned.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean Sam seemed a little hesitant. I don't know.
Speaker 6: I'm sure you guys had smart things to say about
Speaker 6: the forty year old Virgin.
Speaker 5: Can't believe that's twenty.
Speaker 6: That was, you know, the start of the Appatow era, really,
Speaker 6: or at least at the very beginning, these big studio
Speaker 6: raunchy comedies that had a little bit of heart to
Speaker 6: them as well. So, yeah, twenty years ago and now
Speaker 6: we get to reconsider it with this Blu ray release.
Speaker 4: We are going to share with you now our top
Speaker 4: five twenty first century comedies from episode six two. Forty
Speaker 4: year old Vision ranking pretty high on my list. And
Speaker 4: if you're a Film Spotting Family member and you want
Speaker 4: to hear whether or not Sam and I had smart
Speaker 4: things to say about the forty year old Virgin, I
Speaker 4: make no promises. Of course, you can find episode thirty
Speaker 4: one in your Film Spotting Archive feed, and if you
Speaker 4: would like access to that Film Spotting Archive feed, you
Speaker 4: can become a Film Spotting Family member where that archive
Speaker 4: access is just one of the benefits that you get,
Speaker 4: along with a weekly newsletter, access to the Film Spotting
Speaker 4: Family discord, an incredible community there, early access to events,
Speaker 4: possibly special seeding, and other discounts that are happening. I
Speaker 4: say possibly because there's some coming up, but you definitely
Speaker 4: get it early access and discounts for things like Film
Speaker 4: Spotting Fest, which you know those may be coming in
Speaker 4: the future too, Josh, and you get bonus content. We
Speaker 4: recently recorded an episode and dropped an episode of us
Speaker 4: taking a look at burn after reading revisiting that con
Speaker 4: Brothers film to see if maybe I had a change
Speaker 4: of heart about it again. All available to you as
Speaker 4: a Film Spotting Family member. You can learn more at
Speaker 4: Filmspottingfamily dot com. And here are those top five twenty
Speaker 4: first century comedies.
Speaker 6: Hey, Adam and Josh.
Speaker 7: This is Nate Goss, a longtime listener calling out of
Speaker 7: the Verbs of Chicago, also co host of the Can
Speaker 7: We Still Be Friends?
Speaker 1: Podcast?
Speaker 7: And my pick my favorite pick of twenty first century comedy.
Speaker 7: So it's got to be Idiocracy, you might judge two
Speaker 7: thousand and six movie that is as When on Twitter,
Speaker 7: slowly becoming a documentary, and I remember seeing it for
Speaker 7: the first time when I just heard it with a
Speaker 7: new Mike Judge film, hadn't heard anything else about it,
Speaker 7: and I remember just laughing phil hard and not understanding
Speaker 7: why no one else is in the theater and also
Speaker 7: why no one else was talking about it. But here
Speaker 7: we are, and it is becoming more and more relevant
Speaker 7: and in a lot of ways, more and more funny.
Speaker 4: So that's my vote.
Speaker 7: For top five, and my vote this year for president
Speaker 7: is going to have to be Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew,
Speaker 7: Herbert Camacho. Love the show, guys, keep it up.
Speaker 4: Thanks, Thank you, Nate. A great way to kick off
Speaker 4: officially here this top five our favorite comedies of the
Speaker 4: twenty first century. His pick Idiocracy Mike Judge film reviewed
Speaker 4: favorably here on the show back in the early days
Speaker 4: of film spotting. There are some hilarious moments in that
Speaker 4: film alas not quite make the cut for me, Josh.
Speaker 6: Not for me, very prescient, absolutely hysterical. I honor it
Speaker 6: with one of my top five picks, I think, so.
Speaker 4: Okay, So we have set up throughout the show already.
Speaker 4: The BBC list that inspired this top five, they were
Speaker 4: not focusing on comedies. They just surveyed critics. They said,
Speaker 4: what are your ten favorite movies of this millennium so far?
Speaker 4: They ended up with one hundred and three movies there
Speaker 4: in that top one hundred and What actually really provoked
Speaker 4: this list was an article I saw probably on Twitter.
Speaker 4: Jesse David Fox was the writer writing for Vulture dot
Speaker 4: com and the headline basically was comedy shut out of
Speaker 4: BBC's Greatest Films of the twenty first Century list, and
Speaker 4: he made the case, basically, Josh that yes, there were
Speaker 4: some comedies on there, like Michael Phillips had on his
Speaker 4: list Ratituy and The Grand Budapest Hotel. Those are funny movies,
Speaker 4: but maybe not in the same way Step Brothers is
Speaker 4: right a comedy. So he set out to try to
Speaker 4: make that write a little bit, and he settled on
Speaker 4: a couple movies that he thought probably could have made
Speaker 4: the list that if you just focused on those broad
Speaker 4: comedies pure comedies, and then threw in I don't know
Speaker 4: eight or nine other dealer's choice options.
Speaker 5: At the end.
Speaker 4: I'm not going to read those here because our listeners
Speaker 4: can read them if they want. They can go to
Speaker 4: filmspotting dot net and they can find the link in
Speaker 4: our show notes. But also we're going to get to
Speaker 4: a few of these. I think, as we decided to
Speaker 4: take up the challenge that Jesse David Fox threw.
Speaker 6: Down, well, I now understand why I wasn't asked to
Speaker 6: be part of this BBC voting, because I certainly would
Speaker 6: have put a broad comedy on my top ten list,
Speaker 6: and clearly they didn't want anyone who would be silly
Speaker 6: enough to do that. So this was a lot of
Speaker 6: fun because these are films that in all honesty, have
Speaker 6: appeared on my top ten lists over the years, yes,
Speaker 6: including some of the honorable mentions I will get to.
Speaker 6: There's a very simple reason why I love comedy and
Speaker 6: value it highly broad comedy in general, it tells the truth, right,
Speaker 6: That's all the best comedy does. It gets to the
Speaker 6: heart of the matter. There's no obfuscation going on, there's
Speaker 6: no contentiousness involved. It just takes one great joke or
Speaker 6: a gag that hits home and bang, you know where
Speaker 6: things stand. So that's what I love about comedies. Not
Speaker 6: everyone does that, of course, but the great ones do,
Speaker 6: and those are the ones that I've chosen here.
Speaker 4: So this is just one of the many reasons why
Speaker 4: you're a far more interesting critic than me, because, of
Speaker 4: course I went usually or I do, tend to go
Speaker 4: with the conventional wisdom. If I was picking my top
Speaker 4: ten of this century so far for the BBC list,
Speaker 4: very doubtful any of these comedies I'm about to mention
Speaker 4: would have made the cut or really probably been in
Speaker 4: the top fifteen or twenty, I don't know. But some
Speaker 4: of these that are going to get mentioned and are
Speaker 4: going to get mentioned in the honorable mentions are films
Speaker 4: that have made top tens over the years. So it's
Speaker 4: not like I disregard comedy completely when I put together
Speaker 4: those end of year lists. Now, before we actually jump in,
Speaker 4: because we are focusing on those pure comedies, and also
Speaker 4: because we don't want really to give love to movies
Speaker 4: that have already been given love on the BBC list,
Speaker 4: we have decided to rule out a few different filmmakers.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we're not going to have the Cohen's on here,
Speaker 6: We're not going to have Wes Anderson on here.
Speaker 4: No Pixar right as well, and even Paul Thomas Anderson.
Speaker 5: Ye, I mean, I think Hilarious.
Speaker 6: Is probably his purest comedy, if you want to look
Speaker 6: at it that way. But it's not only that those
Speaker 6: filmmakers are often lauded, and are in fact lauded on
Speaker 6: this list. But yeah, it's not the sort of going
Speaker 6: for the comic jugular films that we considered for this list.
Speaker 4: Right, And if you were going to create sort of
Speaker 4: a mount rushmore of current filmmakers who make really funny movies,
Speaker 4: but the types of movies that you wouldn't necessarily label
Speaker 4: as broad comedies, you'd be hard pressed to find four
Speaker 4: better filmmakers than Wes Anderson, the Coen Brothers, Paul Thomas Anderson,
Speaker 4: and Pixar. So that got me thinking, and also going
Speaker 4: back to our review of Young Frankenstein earlier, mel Brooks
Speaker 4: made Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein in the same year.
Speaker 4: They were both released in nineteen seventy four. The producers
Speaker 4: had come seven years earlier. But just take those three
Speaker 4: movies in a seven year span, that clearly cemented him
Speaker 4: as the comedic director or one of the comedic directors
Speaker 4: of the nineteen seventies. Someone else you'd put in there,
Speaker 4: Woody Allen, who's still making films, but who's not going
Speaker 4: to come anywhere close to making either of our list.
Speaker 4: But what I want to throw out to you before
Speaker 4: we really jump in, Josh, is if mel Brooks and
Speaker 4: Woody Allen, let's say we're at the top of the list,
Speaker 4: the top tier of filmmakers making comedies in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 4: and we could probably go through different decades and identify
Speaker 4: other filmmakers as well, Woody maybe in the eighties too.
Speaker 4: Who would those directors be. Right now, let's not talk
Speaker 4: about films specifically, and this will maybe reveal a little
Speaker 4: bit of our thinking as we get into our picks.
Speaker 4: But if you had to right now, think of three
Speaker 4: or four names that you think are synonymous with comedic films,
Speaker 4: the best comedic films right now? Who comes to mind?
Speaker 6: Yeah, this may be a giveaway for some of our lists,
Speaker 6: but I've got to consider Appatoo. I think Edgar Wright
Speaker 6: may come up for one or both of us. And
Speaker 6: what's interesting is I look at the films that I
Speaker 6: have listed. That doesn't necessarily mean I've got their films
Speaker 6: on here, but I think they've been consistent and maybe
Speaker 6: that's somewhat what you're talking about. They're consistently hitting a
Speaker 6: high level of comedic work. But Apataw, certainly, I think
Speaker 6: the Fairly Brothers. I mean, this was going to come
Speaker 6: up in my honorable mentions, but I was maybe well, no,
Speaker 6: I was with them.
Speaker 5: Through I don't know.
Speaker 6: I think you could say stuck on you I still
Speaker 6: like really quite a bit. Yeah, so that's you know,
Speaker 6: a long string that went myself. I yeah, funny thing,
Speaker 6: Oh yes, yes, with Jim Carrey, Wow, very good and
Speaker 6: in Shallow Howe. There's three there since two thousand that
Speaker 6: I would hold up as still strong comedic work. Now
Speaker 6: they're not in my top five, but I think they
Speaker 6: were still doing good stuff. Maybe there are other filmmakers
Speaker 6: I'm missing that you're thinking of.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, you named the first two, and you could
Speaker 4: go in whatever order of preference you want. But I
Speaker 4: think if you're talking about comedies, unless you just hate
Speaker 4: these films in these filmmakers, to overlook Judd Apatow and
Speaker 4: Edgar Wright would be a little bit ridiculous, and I
Speaker 4: would throw in there. I think you have to include
Speaker 4: in that conversation. Adam McKay and some of his films
Speaker 4: may come up here, but I think those three are
Speaker 4: kind of the obvious top tier. I think then depending
Speaker 4: on your taste, in that second tier, and maybe they
Speaker 4: could even be bumped up into the first tier. Noah
Speaker 4: Boundback has to be considered when you look at the
Speaker 4: fact that he's made five or six movies in the
Speaker 4: two thousands that maybe are not all broad comedies, wearing stuff,
Speaker 4: very very funny movies, and he's made a lot of them.
Speaker 4: Christopher Guest, he really only has Best in Show and
Speaker 4: a Mighty Wind that were good anyway, right here in
Speaker 4: the two thousand strong. I think with Stillman belongs in
Speaker 4: the dialogue David Wayne, and then you could go to
Speaker 4: the third tier. And I think these are the up
Speaker 4: and comers who maybe right now have done enough to
Speaker 4: be part of the conversation, but ten years from now
Speaker 4: will really be talking about them in grander terms. Lord
Speaker 4: and Miller, who gave us the Lego movie in twenty one,
Speaker 4: Jump Street and the Lonely Island Guys. Yeah, for pop
Speaker 4: Star and some other work. For sure they may come
Speaker 4: up as well. So with that long winded preface, we
Speaker 4: actually get into our picks. Josh, what's your number five?
Speaker 6: Let's start with Adam McKay and I struggled over which
Speaker 6: option to go with until I remembered just the experience
Speaker 6: of watching this film, and it has to be Talladagonites
Speaker 6: the Ballad of Ricky Bobby. Really, this is the one.
Speaker 6: I mean, ask me which of my top five films
Speaker 6: I would rewatch right now, and it's this collaboration with
Speaker 6: Will Ferrell. It's at the top of their collaborations for me.
Speaker 6: It's just an improvisational cornucopia. Farrell and co stars John
Speaker 6: c Riley, Leslie Bibb, Gary Cole, Sasha Baron Cohen. They
Speaker 6: take the scenes here swerving in all sorts of directions,
Speaker 6: and that's appropriate as faroh play is a NASCAR star
Speaker 6: and they almost always find their way to comic gold
Speaker 6: along the way and then definitely at the end of
Speaker 6: the scenes.
Speaker 5: It's a good thing.
Speaker 6: I believe God has a sense of humor, because otherwise
Speaker 6: I would be in big trouble for how hard I
Speaker 6: laugh every time I watch Will Ferrell say, Grace.
Speaker 8: You're tiny, Jesus, your golden flee stappers with your tiny
Speaker 8: little fat, bald up fist.
Speaker 5: Paulis a man, he had a beard look.
Speaker 6: I like the baby version the best, do you hear me?
Speaker 1: I win the races and I get the money.
Speaker 6: Ricky finish the damn Grace.
Speaker 9: I like to picture Jesus in a tuxedo T shirt
Speaker 9: because it says like I want to be formal, but
Speaker 9: I'm here to party too, because I like to party,
Speaker 9: so I like my Jesus to party.
Speaker 4: I like to picture.
Speaker 3: Jesus as a ninja fighting off evil samurai.
Speaker 9: I like to think of Jesus like with John Eagle's
Speaker 9: wings and singing lead vocals for Lynyrd Skynyrd with like
Speaker 9: an angel band, and I'm in the front row and
Speaker 9: I'm hammered drunk.
Speaker 10: Hey, cal why you just shut up, ma'am.
Speaker 6: You know, it's interesting to look back on Talladega Nights
Speaker 6: after McKay went on to make The Big Short your
Speaker 6: favorite film of last year. Speaking of comedies, I mean,
Speaker 6: you put one at the top there, Adam.
Speaker 5: I mean, so many.
Speaker 6: Of the jokes here have to do with corporate domination
Speaker 6: of the NASCAR scene or reckless personal consumption, which The
Speaker 6: Big Short was all about as well. I mean, this
Speaker 6: is what the foundation is for all the improv going
Speaker 6: on here, and as I said, they mine it.
Speaker 5: For great stuff.
Speaker 6: So I really right now, I just want to skip
Speaker 6: the rest of my listen, go watch Teleadegon.
Speaker 4: I do need to re see it because I haven't
Speaker 4: watched it since it was reviewed when it came out
Speaker 4: here on the show. It did make me laugh quite
Speaker 4: a bit though, my number five. Man, we're going to
Speaker 4: get off to a really rocky start here. I already
Speaker 4: knew you didn't like the movie, and then now you
Speaker 4: disagree with the whole premise of me selecting it. But
Speaker 4: as I went through them, as I went through these choices,
Speaker 4: I had one criterion for once I didn't have some
Speaker 4: extravagant set of rules. It was just thinking about the
Speaker 4: films that gave me the greatest quant and quality of laughs.
Speaker 4: That's it. I made one exception, and it's this number
Speaker 4: five because I had so many in contention for that
Speaker 4: number five slot, as I'm sure you did as well.
Speaker 4: At least seven or eight that easily could be in
Speaker 4: this number five slot. That I did consider that mel
Speaker 4: Brooks Woody Allen question, who probably deserves to be represented
Speaker 4: on this list? And what's that filmmaker's funniest movie? And
Speaker 4: I am going with the one we saw together, but
Speaker 4: somehow saw completely different films. It is Noah Boundbacks while
Speaker 4: We're young. We discussed it on episode five sixty seven.
Speaker 4: It made my top ten films of twenty fifteen. We
Speaker 4: talked about it on episode five forty five, my top
Speaker 4: five of twenty fifteen so far, and we reviewed it
Speaker 4: on episode five thirty seven. So I really don't have
Speaker 4: the strength or the will here to try to convince
Speaker 4: you that it's both hilarious and a little bit profound,
Speaker 4: but more funny than profound. So I brought in a
Speaker 4: little bit of help here. Andrew O'Hare over at Salon
Speaker 4: wrote a great, glowing review of the film, and he
Speaker 4: agrees with me that it's Boundback's best film. He writes, this,
Speaker 4: if my initial description of While We're Young carries exactly
Speaker 4: the kind of ironic precision that would be employed by Jamie,
Speaker 4: the ambitious young filmmaker and male half of the hipster
Speaker 4: couple so marvelously portrayed by Adam Driver, that's because this
Speaker 4: movie has the ability to burrow into your brain and
Speaker 4: affect your consciousness for weeks afterwards. Every time I hear
Speaker 4: a middle of the road pop song from my own
Speaker 4: youth in a retail store, I consider whether it's something
Speaker 4: Jamie would love the way he loves Aya the Tiger,
Speaker 4: or Caribbean Queen John Mellencamp's Small Town possibly too authentic,
Speaker 4: Billy Joel's The Longest Time, confusingly doubly retro, and also
Speaker 4: genuinely terrific, despite its often irritating author. All the songs
Speaker 4: on Cyndi Lauper's debut album that aren't Girls just want
Speaker 4: to have Fun bingo. So I love all that partly too,
Speaker 4: because it reminds me of the entire conversation we had
Speaker 4: with Chuck Closterman on our six hundred episode where you
Speaker 4: could talk about some of this stuff and how it's
Speaker 4: considered and reconsidered and reconsidered again over the years. But
Speaker 4: that really spoke to me, Josh, because when I think
Speaker 4: about this film, I do think about the laughs, but
Speaker 4: I specifically think about how much I laughed at the
Speaker 4: scene that I think might be in one of the
Speaker 4: trailers most people know from the film, where they're sitting
Speaker 4: there these two couples Naomi Wattson Still are the older
Speaker 4: couple and the hipster couple across from them, and they're
Speaker 4: trying to figure out the word marzipan, and none of
Speaker 4: them can think of it, and then finally Dryfer just says,
Speaker 4: let's just not know what it is yea and him
Speaker 4: to not take his iPhone out. And there was just
Speaker 4: something so truthful about that that I think about that
Speaker 4: moment probably at least a couple times a month, I'll
Speaker 4: have an encounter like that where I'll think about that
Speaker 4: scene because I'm going through exactly what they're going through,
Speaker 4: or I'll even say the line out loud to someone
Speaker 4: when they're about to look something up and they look
Speaker 4: at me like I'm crazy. But it really has stuck
Speaker 4: with me, and I do funnel a little bit of
Speaker 4: how I look at the world and the younger generation
Speaker 4: through the eyes of Noah bound Back. One last quick note,
Speaker 4: I went back to look at my notes from that
Speaker 4: review my intro for you. I had the setup that week,
Speaker 4: which was great because I focused completely on how much
Speaker 4: the Stiller character spoke to me and I could relate
Speaker 4: to the movie. My longest intro ever has to be
Speaker 4: in six hundred episodes at the show. I did the math,
Speaker 4: one hundred words longer than your entire written review of
Speaker 4: the movie.
Speaker 5: That sounds about.
Speaker 4: My intro was way longer than your review, So.
Speaker 5: I think that just that captures a lot.
Speaker 6: But you know what's funny about this too is I
Speaker 6: think I like every other Noah bombback move. Really, you
Speaker 6: could have gone with this Squid the Whale. You could
Speaker 6: have gone Margot at the wedding, Mistress American, Francis high
Speaker 6: both like I even like Greenberg.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I like all of those. You have to go
Speaker 4: with one for me, the only exception while we're Young's
Speaker 4: my favorite. I think Mistress America's fantastic. Highly recommend that too.
Speaker 4: The only one for me that's always been The standout
Speaker 4: in terms of not working at all is Margot at
Speaker 4: the Wedding.
Speaker 5: Okay, well, i'd call.
Speaker 6: You on this not being a pure comedy, but I
Speaker 6: might have a bit of a stretch myself coming up,
Speaker 6: so I can't be too harsh right now. So we
Speaker 6: got a lot of great voicemails from listeners for this
Speaker 6: top five. I don't know if it was just that
Speaker 6: the movie came immediately to mind when they heard about
Speaker 6: the topic. Best comedy since here.
Speaker 4: Two thousand passion for many movies?
Speaker 6: Did we get a lot? So let's share another one
Speaker 6: here from a listener in Kenosha.
Speaker 11: Hey, guys, this is Michelle R. From Kenosha, Wisconsin. My
Speaker 11: favorite twenty first century comedy is the much maligned Freddy
Speaker 11: Got Fingered Savage upon release as the quote unquote worst
Speaker 11: movie ever in actuality. It's both a brilliant real life
Speaker 11: prank on the studio system and a gross out comedy
Speaker 11: that goes so far it becomes a surreal parody of
Speaker 11: the same, totally ahead of its time and clearly presaging
Speaker 11: modern all comedy geniuses like Tim and Eric and Alan Ressix.
Speaker 4: No movie has made me laugh more.
Speaker 2: Oh are boys genius?
Speaker 8: These rigged a police system.
Speaker 10: Sorry, can eat sausage and work on a stupid drawing
Speaker 10: and being creative.
Speaker 5: Now, if you'll excuse me, I still have some work to.
Speaker 3: Do that would not sip sausage.
Speaker 12: They would do some ses, would do some sausage.
Speaker 6: So I wish that I could find my original review
Speaker 6: from the newspaper of Freddie got fingeredn there's a chance
Speaker 6: I gave it a positive review?
Speaker 4: Really well, why am I not surprised actually at all?
Speaker 6: But this was, like, you know, this isn't even in
Speaker 6: their digital archives, so we'll just have to hope that
Speaker 6: was the case.
Speaker 5: But there were things I.
Speaker 6: Liked about it. I can at least just let's just
Speaker 6: not know. I like it Number four for me, however,
Speaker 6: I am going with Mean Girls the Heathers of the
Speaker 6: early twenty first century. It's a broader comedy than Heathers.
Speaker 6: That one was pitch Black, but I think it's as
Speaker 6: incisive and certainly as influential. Lindsay Lohan is the previously
Speaker 6: homeschooled high schooler here who's thrust into the social maze
Speaker 6: of a public school in Lohand she's really fresh and funny.
Speaker 6: If you can remember that in this film, and you
Speaker 6: also have, in addition to her, this great supporting cast.
Speaker 6: Rachel McAdams is the supporting player. Here is Regina George,
Speaker 6: leader of the A List Plastics, and Amy Poehler so
Speaker 6: good as Regina's mom, who desperately still wants to be
Speaker 6: one of the Plastics, or at the very least be
Speaker 6: accepted as a cool mom.
Speaker 3: Hey, you guys, happy hour is from four to six?
Speaker 3: Is there alcohol in this?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 7: God, honey, No. What kind of mother do you think
Speaker 7: I am?
Speaker 3: Why do you want a little bit? Because if you're
Speaker 3: gonna drink, it'd rather you do it in the house. No,
Speaker 3: thank you. So you guys, what is the four to
Speaker 3: one one? What has everybody you've been up to?
Speaker 4: What is the hot gossip? Tell me everything?
Speaker 3: What are you guys listening to?
Speaker 13: What's the cool jams?
Speaker 8: Mom?
Speaker 1: Could you go fix your hair?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 4: You girls?
Speaker 14: Keep me young? Oh?
Speaker 4: I love you so much.
Speaker 6: Besides the laughs, the emotional accuracy here is just brilliant.
Speaker 6: Tina Fey wrote the screenplay and she based it on
Speaker 6: Rosalind Wiseman's nonfiction book Queen Bees and Wannabes. I remember
Speaker 6: feeling that truth when me and Girls first came out,
Speaker 6: I wasn't you know this was in two thousand and
Speaker 6: four high school was I could still remember it fairly
Speaker 6: well at that point. Now, though, with my oldest daughter
Speaker 6: starting her first year of high school, I don't know
Speaker 6: if I could beare to revisit this whole movie and
Speaker 6: be reminded of just how complicated that social structure can be.
Speaker 6: So Mean Girls my number four.
Speaker 4: So now, of course, I'm regretting that we didn't share
Speaker 4: our picks with each other ahead of time, which we
Speaker 4: don't normally do, but there are exceptions, and I really
Speaker 4: wanted to avoid having a pick on your list that
Speaker 4: I hadn't seen. And despite having a female friend a
Speaker 4: few years back being a gas that I'd never seen
Speaker 4: Mean Girls and I want to see it, I just
Speaker 4: haven't made the time. She even bought it for me
Speaker 4: for Christmas the DVD, and I still haven't done it. No, Instead, Josh,
Speaker 4: going back to Adam McKay and Talladega Knights. You had
Speaker 4: to convince me that you might go with the other guys,
Speaker 4: and so I watched that you did. I watched the
Speaker 4: other guys and I like it good. I like it. It
Speaker 4: did it did well. Adam McKay is a great director,
Speaker 4: so yes, I know that.
Speaker 6: Now, come to appreciate that. But few it's funny will
Speaker 6: talk about the other but it is up there with
Speaker 6: their best stuff.
Speaker 4: I mean, Farrell is great, Wallberg is great. All the
Speaker 4: scenes with Eva Mendez are fantastic. Everything about that whole
Speaker 4: dynamic is great. But here's why the other guys is
Speaker 4: worth saying. To go off on a little tangent here
Speaker 4: for this one scene, the best sequence in the film
Speaker 4: by far. Michael Keaton plays their captain. Almost every scene
Speaker 4: he's in I crack up. But there's one in particular,
Speaker 4: and I'm trying to remember, now, is it Wahlberg or
Speaker 4: Farrell who gets into a fight with another cop at awake? Basically, well,
Speaker 4: and Wahlberg is the hothead, right, so I've seen him.
Speaker 4: They get into a fight at a wake. So you
Speaker 4: have a group of cops standing in a circle, just
Speaker 4: like a school you heard fight, But since it's awake,
Speaker 4: they're trying to be quiet and respectful, so they're like,
Speaker 4: get him, get it, but they're whispering. And then that's
Speaker 4: funny enough, But then Michael Keaton comes in and he
Speaker 4: tries to break it up. And the way he breaks
Speaker 4: it up by yelling but whispering. I was laughing so
Speaker 4: hard watching it that I was thinking to myself, they
Speaker 4: must have done fifty seven takes of this, because how
Speaker 4: anybody else in that circle could have watched Keaton do
Speaker 4: that so seriously and not just lose it. They'd have
Speaker 4: to be the best actors of all time. That scene
Speaker 4: is amazing.
Speaker 5: See now you make me wish I put the other
Speaker 5: guys up.
Speaker 4: Plus this was hard, Yeah, it was so The moral
Speaker 4: of the story is I still need to see Me
Speaker 4: and Girls. My Number four is a film that came
Speaker 4: out in twenty ten. It actually started as a BBC
Speaker 4: series that was edited into a film. Michael Winterbottom the director.
Speaker 4: The movie is The Trip Coogan and Rob Brydon, where
Speaker 4: it's these two great comedians and comedic actors playing versions
Speaker 4: of themselves for sure, as they go around the English
Speaker 4: countryside on a trip being paid for. I believe by
Speaker 4: the Guardian Coogan's been sent out and you can't bring
Speaker 4: his love interest along with them. I think they've just
Speaker 4: had a falling out, so he brings Rob Brydon along
Speaker 4: with him. Now we really could just play one great
Speaker 4: scene from all of these movies and shut up and
Speaker 4: probably what we should have done here, And I will
Speaker 4: get to that eventually with one of these picks. But
Speaker 4: the Michael Kaine scene where they're sitting over a meal
Speaker 4: and they go back and forth over how to properly
Speaker 4: do Michael Kine is among the scenes that made me
Speaker 4: laugh the most I can think of, certainly of the
Speaker 4: past fifteen or sixteen years.
Speaker 14: Well, broadsheet journalists have described my impressions as stunningly accurate.
Speaker 2: Well, they're wrong. I've not heard of Michael Kaine, but
Speaker 2: I assume it would be something along the lines of
Speaker 2: my hi'm's Michael Kay.
Speaker 14: That is where you were so wrong. You could look
Speaker 14: at my life video, because that's the very thing I
Speaker 14: don't do. I say that he used to tell.
Speaker 5: That Michael Kain.
Speaker 14: Okay, I say, Michael Kay, and used to talk like
Speaker 14: this in the nineteen sixties, right, But that has changed.
Speaker 14: And I say that over the years, who's voice has
Speaker 14: cap down cepho act let me finish, and all of
Speaker 14: the cigars and the brandy don't let me finish? It
Speaker 14: can now be heard. I've not finished in the bat
Speaker 14: of the voice, and the voice now well I've still
Speaker 14: not finished the voice of panicing. Yeah, because you look
Speaker 14: like you're a back of bloody chalk. Let me finish, right,
Speaker 14: so Michael Kat's voice down in the Batman movies, added
Speaker 14: Harry Brown. I can't go fast because Michael Kaine talks very,
Speaker 14: very slowly.
Speaker 4: What made me really laugh more than anything in this film,
Speaker 4: and I noted this during a review back in twenty
Speaker 4: ten when this came out, is watching them when they
Speaker 4: actually do crack each other up, because you hear in
Speaker 4: that Michael Kine scene how they really are kind of
Speaker 4: fighting with each other in a way. They're trying to
Speaker 4: one up each other so much throughout the whole film
Speaker 4: that when they actually do make the other guy laugh,
Speaker 4: those are the really rewarding, amusing moments in the film
Speaker 4: because they're each other's toughest critics by far, and they're
Speaker 4: brutally honest with each other. So when someone else does
Speaker 4: something that is genuinely brilliant, well they have to they
Speaker 4: have to applaud, They have to give them that. So
Speaker 4: I love that, But I do also love the way
Speaker 4: that reality and fantasy line blurs again playing themselves, they
Speaker 4: are versions, certainly it's heightened but it is them and
Speaker 4: it's their personas. So the humor comes out of the
Speaker 4: honesty of a lot of those moments they're tapping into
Speaker 4: some genuine antagonism. I think it's fair to assume that
Speaker 4: exists between them, and we get those kind of moments.
Speaker 4: Then when they go to the cemetery where Keats and
Speaker 4: Shelley are buried, and they get into a conversation about
Speaker 4: how they would eulogize the other person.
Speaker 2: But of course, let's not remember a man who is lost,
Speaker 2: desperately trying to legitimize his life by doing silly voices
Speaker 2: constantly and not confronting the truth. Let's remmer the other
Speaker 2: side of Rob, the Rob Brydon, the entertainer, the Rob
Speaker 2: Brydon who gave some levity to our life and helps
Speaker 2: us avoid confronting the harsh realities and helps us avoid
Speaker 2: looking at the brutal reality of what life is about
Speaker 2: some of the characters. Of the characters who can forget
Speaker 2: his Tom Jones impression? Who can forget that I think.
Speaker 5: I'd better die now?
Speaker 2: You can see think I'd better die now?
Speaker 1: That's good?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, Well I'll take her when you're doing
Speaker 2: there'll be plenty of I'll do plenty of Tom Jones
Speaker 2: when you're dead, don't worry about that.
Speaker 4: Funny and brutal and brutally funny. And if you enjoyed
Speaker 4: those scenes as much as I did, and you love
Speaker 4: the riffing on impressions as much as I did, you
Speaker 4: can watch more of it in the Trip to Italy
Speaker 4: from twenty fourteen, another movie I thought was hilarious, and
Speaker 4: apparently there's a third one coming out. I didn't know
Speaker 4: it Spain.
Speaker 6: Maybe that will be my chance to finally catch up
Speaker 6: on these You've got me here. Oh, I never saw
Speaker 6: the Trip and wanted to correct that. When a Trip
Speaker 6: to Italy came out, thought I could knock out both.
Speaker 6: Didn't get to it, so I better get to it soon.
Speaker 4: It's on Sam actually said. After I told him it
Speaker 4: was going on my list, he said, yeah, you know what,
Speaker 4: You've convinced me. It's going in my top five as well.
Speaker 4: He was kind of ruling it out because it really
Speaker 4: is more of a character study. I said, yeah, but again,
Speaker 4: quantity and quality of laughs, the trip has it, so
Speaker 4: my number four. Let's get to our number three picks here, Josh,
Speaker 4: but to help us do that we will hear from
Speaker 4: longtime listener David L. William Season Central Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: Hi, I'm spotting.
Speaker 8: This is David L.
Speaker 15: William trom Central Pa. And the best comedy of the
Speaker 15: twenty first century is two thousand and nine's In the Loop.
Speaker 15: Armando Ian and She's take on the Invasion of Iraq
Speaker 15: is the funniest political film since Doctor Strangelove. It begins
Speaker 15: with a British government official thing in an interview that
Speaker 15: war is unforseeable, and then does everything to prove him wrong.
Speaker 15: It is arc a sherbick and laugh out loud funny,
Speaker 15: with a fantastically witty script that was nominated for an Oscar.
Speaker 15: Peter Capaldi's Malcolm Tucker is a force of nature, maybe
Speaker 15: the most profane character ever put on film, and I'd
Speaker 15: love to quote some of his lines, but you would
Speaker 15: just hear a string of beep in the Loop. If
Speaker 15: not just the best comedy of the twenty first century,
Speaker 15: it's one of my top ten comedies of all time.
Speaker 16: Yes, where'd you think you are? In some regency costume drama?
Speaker 16: This is a government department, not a jans Host novel. Malcolm,
Speaker 16: allow me to pop a Johnty little bonnet on your
Speaker 16: pub you and run out of the lubricated the horse.
Speaker 6: David is so right about the doctor strange love vibes
Speaker 6: in that one. I'd actually forgotten that until David brought
Speaker 6: it up on Twitter and reminded me and looked up
Speaker 6: my review, and yeah, I did enjoy that quinettle bit
Speaker 6: when it came out. My number three is the one
Speaker 6: that maybe crosses the line a little bit from pure comedy.
Speaker 6: I went back and forth on whether or not to
Speaker 6: include it. Unlike my first two picks, I can't say
Speaker 6: that it ever really made me burst out in laughter,
Speaker 6: but I was sort of It had me on a
Speaker 6: low chuckle throughout, okay, and then eventually that would bubble
Speaker 6: into an audible laugh here and there, and it was
Speaker 6: just kind of always on this hum So I went
Speaker 6: with it. It's Roy Anderson's songs from the second Floor.
Speaker 4: I thought about it. Did you thought about it?
Speaker 5: Good?
Speaker 6: That is one we just saw. We just discovered it
Speaker 6: in our Contemporary Nordic Cinema Marathon. Now, for those who
Speaker 6: didn't join us on that journey, and you really should,
Speaker 6: you still can. Obviously, in our previous few episodes, we
Speaker 6: found a couple of gems there. It's been a good trip.
Speaker 6: This one was a series of droll, absurdist vignettes. We
Speaker 6: talked in particular about the recently fired office worker who's
Speaker 6: clinging to his boss's legs as he's being dragged down
Speaker 6: this cold corporate hallway, as well as the magician who
Speaker 6: ends up actually cutting into the audience member who he
Speaker 6: was pretending to saw in half.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 6: I described Songs from the Second Floor as capturing the
Speaker 6: world's last whimper. Yet on my website, where my reviews
Speaker 6: are archived by genre, I filed it under comedy why
Speaker 6: it doesn't seem to make sense? But for some reason
Speaker 6: and I mentioned this in our review of Songs from
Speaker 6: the Second Floor. Every time that magician's victim would show
Speaker 6: up in another segment and he'd WinCE while holding his side,
Speaker 6: I'd laugh. I would just start chuckling. And I don't
Speaker 6: think it's that I'm cruel. I guess it could be that,
Speaker 6: But it's more that Anderson has found a way in
Speaker 6: this movie to take all of the world's collective angst
Speaker 6: over life's little miseries and how those pile up on us,
Speaker 6: and he.
Speaker 5: Has these characters bear it.
Speaker 6: In a way that makes us laugh, and then by
Speaker 6: laughing we feel a little bit of relief ourselves. So
Speaker 6: maybe stretching things a bit, but I'm going to go
Speaker 6: with Songs from the Second Floor.
Speaker 4: Okay, a film that very well could come up a
Speaker 4: little bit more when we get to our Nordic Cinema Awards.
Speaker 4: And yeah, if you haven't watched the film yet and
Speaker 4: you throw it in because of Josh putting it on
Speaker 4: this top five list, and you start watching it and think, well,
Speaker 4: Josh is crazy and it's a little bit of anold
Speaker 4: crazy here before it happens pretty regularly, you might be right.
Speaker 4: But not only are a lot of the scenes that
Speaker 4: you just mentioned, Josh really genuinely funny, if not laugh
Speaker 4: out loud. It's not about jokes, but definitely absurd and
Speaker 4: makes you chuckle to yourself. That's probably a good description.
Speaker 4: I would throw in the two scenes I highlighted during
Speaker 4: our discussion of that movie, I'll just say the cross convention,
Speaker 4: oh yeah, the salesman convention and the scene I think
Speaker 4: it's the first one that takes place at the mental
Speaker 4: hospital with the doctor who is watching this encounter between
Speaker 4: family members. Those two scenes those did genuinely make me
Speaker 4: laugh out loud.
Speaker 6: Well, and what's the goal of all the scenes we
Speaker 6: just mentioned? And I would say probably ninety percent of
Speaker 6: the film. The goal is to make you laugh, and
Speaker 6: I think it's successful. So it may not look or
Speaker 6: move or sound exactly like the broad American comedies were
Speaker 6: used to, but it is certainly a comedy.
Speaker 4: Well, let's get to some more traditional laughs with my
Speaker 4: number three, and we're going to get to another voicemail
Speaker 4: in this case, Josh, this isn't another option. John in
Speaker 4: Salt Lake City has my number three pick.
Speaker 17: I hate film spotting. This is John in Salt Lake City.
Speaker 17: My choice for the twenty first century comedy is definitely
Speaker 17: Role Models. It's the most interesting comedy in that that
Speaker 17: was kind of a dark time, because comedy was kind
Speaker 17: of headed down a really kind of dark, sarcastic, snarky pass.
Speaker 1: And Role Models has that.
Speaker 17: It's also super gross out and very adults, but it
Speaker 17: really rises above and I really appreciated that it had
Speaker 17: real wants that replaced the schnock in the face with
Speaker 17: a really really easy set of targets, and it was
Speaker 17: just I was smiling at the end, and I love it.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's my choice.
Speaker 4: Thank you John for that voicemail, and thank you for
Speaker 4: reminding me just how much I loved Role Models. That
Speaker 4: is the two thousand and eight comedy directed by David Wayne.
Speaker 4: He was a co writer on the film as well
Speaker 4: Sean Williams, Scott Paul Rudd, the stars in that movie.
Speaker 4: They play two dudes who are punished basically for a
Speaker 4: few different offenses, and they have to do one hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty hours of community service, so they have to
Speaker 4: be role models for some younger kids. They're the bigs
Speaker 4: to the littles in Jane Lynch's Little Program, and a
Speaker 4: lot of what John said I think is dead on,
Speaker 4: of course, about what makes Role Models a really good
Speaker 4: and really interesting film, where there is something about the
Speaker 4: movie that is sweet and uplifting by the end of it,
Speaker 4: and it works at the end of the film despite
Speaker 4: the fact, Josh, that there's still that really strong rebellious
Speaker 4: spirit to it that we've had throughout the whole film,
Speaker 4: and we get wonderful moments like a dinner table scene
Speaker 4: where Rudd finally recognizes in his little Christopher mintz Ploss,
Speaker 4: who plays Augie, a kid who plays those fantasy games
Speaker 4: and jo dragons. He's got the swords and all that stuff. Well,
Speaker 4: I think dungeons the dragons just takes place all in
Speaker 4: your head, doesn't it. He's actually full blown dressed up.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 4: We are losing our NERD credentials here, Josh. But that's
Speaker 4: a wonderful scene. And there are lots of little wonderful
Speaker 4: war moments in this film that all said. It's hysterically
Speaker 4: funny because of scenes like this one.
Speaker 3: It's drawing there, Oh, Beyonce, she's smoking. I want to
Speaker 3: take my pants off.
Speaker 12: What whoa? Whoa?
Speaker 6: All right, Ronnie, that's enough trying to grab my joint language, Ronnie.
Speaker 4: My language is English, and this my trying to grab
Speaker 4: all my hang Dad.
Speaker 3: Got my own hang down to touch kid.
Speaker 5: Oh, he has one of the handful of the ball Oky.
Speaker 5: That's racist.
Speaker 3: Well, I trust you too, will work this out. I'm
Speaker 3: not going to micromanage.
Speaker 6: Not my modus operone.
Speaker 4: Now. I don't know how much of that scene we
Speaker 4: were actually able to play on the radio, or how
Speaker 4: much we had to bleep, but hilarious stuff. Sean Williams
Speaker 4: Scott proving in this film and a few others that
Speaker 4: we probably didn't fully appreciate him after all, being introduced
Speaker 4: to him as Stiffler in the American Pie movies, because
Speaker 4: he's really a legitimately good comedic actor, really funny guy.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, a movie that almost made my list, the Promotion,
Speaker 6: which he's in with John c Riley. He absolutely holds
Speaker 6: both the comedy and the dramedy there. I'm glad you
Speaker 6: went with the role models though for the Wayne film,
Speaker 6: I think the one that you most often hear is
Speaker 6: what Hot American Summer. People just have such a relationship
Speaker 6: with that picture. But I enjoy Role Models probably the
Speaker 6: most of his and wander Lust too, is really really strong.
Speaker 6: So he is one of those names in that tier
Speaker 6: you were talking about at the start of our list.
Speaker 4: Well, then it worked out very well that I reached
Speaker 4: out to David Wayne, and I thought, as one of
Speaker 4: those directors in one of those tiers, we should get
Speaker 4: his perspective on his favorite comedy of the twenty first century,
Speaker 4: and I did not see his pick coming. Let's hear it.
Speaker 13: Perhaps it's generational, but for me, there haven't been so
Speaker 13: many classic pure comedies in the twenty first century so far.
Speaker 13: Along the lines of my all time favorites, including The
Speaker 13: Graduate Tutsi, Woody Allen's Best Ones, Animal House, Pink Panther, Airplane,
Speaker 13: Flirting with Disaster, et cetera. I think part of it
Speaker 13: might be that a lot of the real creative energy
Speaker 13: and narrative comedy these days has moved to TV and
Speaker 13: to the Web. With that said, if I really think
Speaker 13: about what movie made me laugh the most and hardest
Speaker 13: this century, I'd have to go with mcgroober from Yorma
Speaker 13: Toconi and Will Forte unabashedly stupid yet obsessively tight and
Speaker 13: crafted under the surface. Honorable mention has to go to
Speaker 13: the Jackass movies, which also had me laughing hard from
Speaker 13: beginning to end, even though it's kind of cheating. And
Speaker 13: final honorable mention goes to Tommy Wiseau's unintentionally funny movie
Speaker 13: The Room, which is the only movie I've ever seen
Speaker 13: that illicits giant roars of laughter on nearly every line
Speaker 13: of dialogue.
Speaker 6: Well, I guess if David Wayne has gone out on
Speaker 6: this limb already, it's safe for me to go out
Speaker 6: and say that I really like the Jackass film.
Speaker 4: Still No, I do as well. At least one of
Speaker 4: them was reviewed here on the show and favorably. But
Speaker 4: I'm with David. Thank you for that wonderful voicemail because
Speaker 4: it prompted me to do more homework. No, didn't watch
Speaker 4: me Girls, but I did watch mcgroober in preparation for
Speaker 4: this list, and he's absolutely right. It's hysterical. Mcgruber is
Speaker 4: a really funny film. Did you see it, Josh?
Speaker 5: I still need to see it.
Speaker 6: I'm going to do it before I see pop Star Smart.
Speaker 4: I think that does make sense. Directed by Jorma Taconi,
Speaker 4: who is part of that Lonely Island group, And I
Speaker 4: thought pop Star was really good and really well directed
Speaker 4: and well conceived all around. And you can go back
Speaker 4: to mcgroober and see that he certainly knows what he's doing.
Speaker 4: Pop Star wasn't an anomaly at all. And just real quick,
Speaker 4: I have to say my favorite favorite line in the movie. Mcgroober,
Speaker 4: who has been out of civilization for like a decade
Speaker 4: and is a huge dork to begin with, so isn't
Speaker 4: really in touch with anything cool. He drives this Mazda convertible,
Speaker 4: this red Mazda convertible that he thinks is like a
Speaker 4: hot car, and everybody makes fun of him for it,
Speaker 4: and he's got one of those old car stereos that
Speaker 4: he takes out. Oh yeah when he gets out of
Speaker 4: his car those oh yeah, I did do so it
Speaker 4: doesn't get stolen, but he takes it to another level,
Speaker 4: Josh like he pulls up to talk to someone and
Speaker 4: just gets out of the car and is standing behind it.
Speaker 4: He pulls the stereot if he walks into a restaurant
Speaker 4: or a party, he brings it with him. It doesn't
Speaker 4: matter where he's going, which leads to the best line
Speaker 4: of the film. When some bouncers destroy it, he says,
Speaker 4: that is a blow punkd you oh be a bloupunked.
Speaker 6: Well, it was one of the better brakers exactly.
Speaker 4: That's why it's funny. And that concludes Adam does lines
Speaker 4: from mcgruber. Let's get to You're number two.
Speaker 6: Cedar Rapids knew it was coming. Yep, yep, absolutely. I
Speaker 6: mean think about it this way. Some of our best
Speaker 6: comedies turn on minor moral dilemmas. Think of Jack Lemons, C. C.
Speaker 6: Baxter in the apartment. I'm talking your language here are
Speaker 6: I see Cedar Rapids as working in the tradition of
Speaker 6: a movie like that and this is pretty much what
Speaker 6: we've got at. Helms plays Tim Lippy, a mild mannered
Speaker 6: insurance agent who's sent to his first business convention and
Speaker 6: is shocked, just shocked. He can't believe how regular people
Speaker 6: behave when they're away from home. Helms is so good here.
Speaker 6: I'm not gonna say he's Jack Lemon, but really his
Speaker 6: naivete and the way he commits to it and his
Speaker 6: excruciating normalcy, I think is something we don't often see
Speaker 6: on screen. We see nerds, or we see guys who
Speaker 6: are idiots.
Speaker 5: But just to.
Speaker 6: See a painfully normal, everyday guy played like this is
Speaker 6: a rarity, and he still manages to be funny while
Speaker 6: doing it too. The movie that was almost stolen by
Speaker 6: its supporting cast, we have Anne Hayesh, who is revelatory
Speaker 6: to me in this movie, never thought of her this
Speaker 6: way before. She plays a married mom who's looking to
Speaker 6: have her own sort of fun at this convention. And
Speaker 6: then John c Riley, who, if it's not clear by now,
Speaker 6: I consider a comic national treasure. He is the convention's
Speaker 6: notorious partier who tries to turn every year into Marty
Speaker 6: Grass who.
Speaker 5: Wasn't get wasted jo Jo.
Speaker 6: Haven't check out those studs Ostrowski.
Speaker 5: Oh, ron Ronald, do you look fantastic?
Speaker 3: This one squeezing a little firect?
Speaker 4: Oh ye oh so good? Oh let me.
Speaker 6: Sealed?
Speaker 1: You know this game?
Speaker 4: Oh that's right from the fitness center.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I was really naughty with you down there.
Speaker 2: I'm really sorry too.
Speaker 13: Oh no, she's not.
Speaker 3: Oh no, I'm not shots. Let's do it.
Speaker 1: What do you want?
Speaker 16: Guys.
Speaker 6: What's really unique about Cedar Rapids, I think is the
Speaker 6: level of complications that it brings to this morality play again,
Speaker 6: like the Apartment. When Tim gets embroiled in the convention's
Speaker 6: annual awards ceremony, he finds out how corrupted they are
Speaker 6: and kind of gets caught up in it. It's actually
Speaker 6: these misbehaving new friends who help him find his moral compass.
Speaker 6: So it's not one of these bad behavior comedies that
Speaker 6: lets his characters run wild for ninety minutes and then
Speaker 6: hypocritically tries to punish them. This is so much better
Speaker 6: than that. So once more, I'm going to bag the
Speaker 6: job for Cedar Rapids.
Speaker 4: And I can't complain about that as much as I
Speaker 4: like to, because I really like Cedar Rapids quite a bit.
Speaker 4: And I especially like it if it's the de facto,
Speaker 4: super obvious Larsen choice for this list, and it means
Speaker 4: that I'm not going to hear the words casadae me
Speaker 4: padre with your number one.
Speaker 5: We've got another pick. What are you talking about?
Speaker 4: Just trying to play the groundwork here, Josh, you have
Speaker 4: an out if you want to take it. But I
Speaker 4: like the comparison as well to C. C. Baxter because
Speaker 4: it's interesting that in that movie, Jack Lemon starts out
Speaker 4: as a pretty nice and seemingly decent guy who nevertheless
Speaker 4: has to figure out how to be a mensch, and
Speaker 4: Tim Lippy is a mensch already from the very beginning.
Speaker 4: He's a really good guy who's getting more and more
Speaker 4: corrupted as the movie goes on. My number two is
Speaker 4: a movie I haven't seen since it came out, so
Speaker 4: I can't say how gut bustingly funny it is. I
Speaker 4: don't really remember, but I do remember just thinking it
Speaker 4: was so consistently clever it is, and when I see
Speaker 4: scenes from it or I'm prepping for a list, I'm
Speaker 4: always reminded of that. And it comes from one of
Speaker 4: those top tier directors, Edgar Wright, and his Shawn of
Speaker 4: the Dead. I have said this on the show before.
Speaker 4: Of Course, I have never been a big horror guy,
Speaker 4: so it wasn't a case where I watched Shaann of
Speaker 4: the Dead and thought, Wow, I've been looking for this
Speaker 4: movie that was going to send up horror films or
Speaker 4: be a send up of zombie movies, and thinking about it,
Speaker 4: I go back to Young Frankenstein a little bit. We
Speaker 4: talked about how the accuracy of that movie and how
Speaker 4: it really succeeds because of how lovingly they pay tribute
Speaker 4: to movies like the James Whale Frankenstein. This is another
Speaker 4: case of that where it's not Scream and Screams a
Speaker 4: perfectly fine movie, but that's one that's just overtly self referential.
Speaker 4: All the jokes are based on our understanding of horror
Speaker 4: movies and their tropes, and a lot of the humor
Speaker 4: comes from you getting those references. But this is a film,
Speaker 4: Shanna Dead, that works completely on its own as a
Speaker 4: buddy movie, as a pseudo thriller, as a sort of
Speaker 4: coming of age movie, certainly as a character study. And
Speaker 4: I think that can be said of all of Wright's
Speaker 4: film films. The other thing I like about right on
Speaker 4: this list and why I wanted to make sure he
Speaker 4: was here. This is also something that's come up a
Speaker 4: few times over the past couple of years on the show,
Speaker 4: is how I think safe to say, unlike all the
Speaker 4: others on this list, he is as a director of
Speaker 4: visual humorous. Yeah, the editing, the pace of the cutting,
Speaker 4: the types of cuts, the shots themselves, his use of space,
Speaker 4: what's in the frame and what's outside the frame. What
Speaker 4: we know is there, but sometimes a character doesn't. That's
Speaker 4: where a good chunk of his humor derives. And I
Speaker 4: think we need to be sure to praise filmmakers like
Speaker 4: that who are really using the medium and not just
Speaker 4: writing a lot of really funny jokes or funny scenes.
Speaker 6: That's absolutely right. It speaks to a little bit what
Speaker 6: I was mentioning to Michael Phillips about maybe why the
Speaker 6: BBC list didn't give more credit to comedies because they're
Speaker 6: not always this formally inventive. But it also makes me
Speaker 6: wish I could have revisited each of these films on
Speaker 6: my list and think about them in those terms, right,
Speaker 6: and really study them that way. I think maybe Songs
Speaker 6: from the Second Floor is the one that absolutely uses
Speaker 6: composition for gags. We talked about the comparison to Jacques
Speaker 6: Tati right when we reviewed it, so that is definitely
Speaker 6: a strength something that Edgar Wright has in his toolbox,
Speaker 6: and I'm glad you met with Sean of the Dead.
Speaker 6: I think if that's what I would have gone with.
Speaker 6: If I didn't go with it, it's probably because it
Speaker 6: does work so well just as a horror film too.
Speaker 4: I thought about that. I almost wrote it off for
Speaker 4: that reason. But a lot of listeners, a lot of
Speaker 4: funny first mention it, and I do think it is
Speaker 4: about the humor first and foremost. I think that's true
Speaker 4: with all of his films, despite what else we get
Speaker 4: from them, And to that point, I will mention that
Speaker 4: sort of like what I was saying with Role Models,
Speaker 4: this is a movie that has really sincere moments amidst
Speaker 4: all the humor, but more extreme right on both ends
Speaker 4: of the spectrum. The humor is way more absurd, i'd say,
Speaker 4: than anything, of course that we get in Role Models.
Speaker 4: But there's nothing in role Models anywhere near as emotionally
Speaker 4: raw as the standoff in the pub where these friends
Speaker 4: have this standoff and they share a lot of really dark,
Speaker 4: hidden truths or things that have been unset and then
Speaker 4: Sean has to make a decision involving his mom that's
Speaker 4: legitimately heartbreaking in this spoof of zombie movies.
Speaker 5: Very much.
Speaker 6: Tradition as well, and they make that work. Yeah, it's
Speaker 6: it's a really strong film. All right, we're at our
Speaker 6: number one picks. No it's not Padre, sorry, Adam. It
Speaker 6: is one that I share with Eddie from Austin, so
Speaker 6: I'll let him make the pick.
Speaker 1: Uh. You know, part of me badly wants to go
Speaker 1: to that Radiocracy or Jackass number two, but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have to go with the one that also features the
Speaker 1: best comedic performance I think, which would be a bore
Speaker 1: at which you say what you will about descriptive parts. It's,
Speaker 1: you know, totally hilarious start to finish, and there's the
Speaker 1: thing that puts it over the top for me is
Speaker 1: that the palpable sense of danger you get from some
Speaker 1: of those scenarios that that Baron Cohen puts himself in.
Speaker 8: And it's just just tremendous. I cried laughing like three
Speaker 8: at least three times watching it the first time, and
Speaker 8: it's still makes me laugh, just this hard each time.
Speaker 1: I since so.
Speaker 8: Good luck with the list. I hope you guys find room.
Speaker 8: Do you agree with me and have a good one.
Speaker 6: I am with Eddie and Michael Phillips, incidentally, who mentioned
Speaker 6: Boat as one of the comedies he might have picked
Speaker 6: for this list in that Vulture article we talked about
Speaker 6: that inspired the list from Jesse David Fox. He writes this,
Speaker 6: so first, Brett needs to be on this list and
Speaker 6: probably top fifty. Not only is it inventive in its
Speaker 6: blending of completely fictional and real world elements, but Sasha
Speaker 6: Baron Cohen created a brilliant, loudly hilarious title character and
Speaker 6: fully realized universe for him to live in. It is
Speaker 6: both the greatest satire of post nine to eleven America
Speaker 6: and a love letter to the country. Borett was, of course,
Speaker 6: Sasha Baron Cohen's tour of America and the guys of
Speaker 6: a boorish Kazakh television reporter. And then in these stunts
Speaker 6: and these interviews that he would do with actual people,
Speaker 6: he would hilariously and cringe inducingly expose the intolerant underbelly
Speaker 6: of contemporary America. I think you could argue that borat
Speaker 6: is even more timely. If he visited the America of
Speaker 6: twenty sixteen, I don't think he'd be as much of
Speaker 6: a fish out of water. Maybe when he's randomly kissing
Speaker 6: strangers on the subway, yeah, that wouldn't fly.
Speaker 5: But a lot of.
Speaker 6: These scenes he wouldn't stand out as much. His brand
Speaker 6: of intolerance is more openly spoken in just these few years.
Speaker 6: I think you can thank the Internet for a lot
Speaker 6: of that, and you can also thank this year's election climate.
Speaker 6: So if you were to rewatch that infamous speech he
Speaker 6: gives at the rodeo and the crowd's reaction, tell me
Speaker 6: this couldn't be mistaken for a Trump rally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my name of Bora. I come from a Kazakhstan.
Speaker 12: Can I say at first we support your war? After all?
Speaker 12: May we show support the boys in you up? May
Speaker 12: you say and kill every single that at May it
Speaker 12: judge bush and drink the love of every single man,
Speaker 12: woman and.
Speaker 8: Child of ra.
Speaker 12: May you be say that country so that for the
Speaker 12: next thousand years not even a single lizard will survive
Speaker 12: in their deserts.
Speaker 6: So that phrase Eddie used palpable sense of danger that
Speaker 6: is really there in that scene, and a lot of
Speaker 6: them in Borat So for that and you know, honestly
Speaker 6: also for the naked wrestling scene. Uh, Borad is my
Speaker 6: number one twenty first century comedy.
Speaker 4: Well, it's a really good pick, and it's a movie
Speaker 4: that I remember reviewing favorably on the show. I remember
Speaker 4: laughing at it quite a bit, but I also remember
Speaker 4: there's just something about it that didn't sit well with me.
Speaker 4: There was something about some of the provocation. Maybe it
Speaker 4: was that it felt too forced, And I honestly don't know.
Speaker 4: I'd have to go back and listen to what I said,
Speaker 4: or look in my notes or revisit the movie, but
Speaker 4: I just remember feeling like some of it was not
Speaker 4: only too forced, but some of it was mean spirited
Speaker 4: in a way. Well, that differs from the other types
Speaker 4: of mean spirited moments in the film. There's a distinction
Speaker 4: between some of them versus the other where maybe it's
Speaker 4: that the subjects are in on the joke, or sometimes
Speaker 4: the subjects are more worthy of his score and others
Speaker 4: don't seem to be.
Speaker 6: It's sort of the Colbert Show and Daily Show dynamic,
Speaker 6: right where those interviews you're always wondering what did they
Speaker 6: know beforehand? So that's definitely an element, and I remember
Speaker 6: having a bit of that experience as well. I also think, though,
Speaker 6: that Boat is not a movie that you should come
Speaker 6: out of feeling comfortable. I mean it should disturb you
Speaker 6: in some way. I know you're probably talking about a
Speaker 6: little bit of a different way, but it is meant
Speaker 6: to provoke and put you in a state of under sure.
Speaker 4: It's one I need to revisit for sure. Okay. My
Speaker 4: number one is a film from a director who came
Speaker 4: up in our discussion of the tiers of current comedic filmmakers,
Speaker 4: and I really strongly considered Judd Apatow's Knocked Up for
Speaker 4: this list. I remember seeing that critic screening and losing
Speaker 4: my mind laughing at it. But I have to go
Speaker 4: back to the film that I think if you look,
Speaker 4: he'd had some success as a producer with Anchorman in
Speaker 4: two thousand and four, but it really was I believe
Speaker 4: two thousand and five that the fourty year Old Virgin
Speaker 4: came out the movie that really gave us. I know
Speaker 4: he'd been on The Daily Show, but the movie that
Speaker 4: gave us Steve Carell comedic genius. And this scene I said,
Speaker 4: sometimes you can just play a scene and you don't
Speaker 4: really need to say anything else. That's what I'm gonna
Speaker 4: do here, because there were a lot of really funny
Speaker 4: moments in this movie. But this dialogue, this conversation, the
Speaker 4: guys night out. I think they're at the electronics store
Speaker 4: they work at that's always playing Michael McDonald music in
Speaker 4: the back room, and they're playing cards and they kind
Speaker 4: of forced Steve Carell to share sexual experiences.
Speaker 10: I dated this girl for a while and she was
Speaker 10: really a nasty freak. She just loved to get down
Speaker 10: with sex all the time. She was like anytime of day,
Speaker 10: she was like, yeah, let's go. I'm so nasty and
Speaker 10: I be nailing her.
Speaker 3: Oh, she'd be like, oh, you're nailing me.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 5: She talked dirty to you.
Speaker 10: Oh. She loved the dirty talk, totally into it. She'd
Speaker 10: be like, yeah, let's.
Speaker 5: Screw let's I want to.
Speaker 3: God, I was so dirty.
Speaker 16: She'd be like, oh me so honey, me love you
Speaker 16: long time.
Speaker 4: So I remember seeing that for the first time and
Speaker 4: convulsing with laughter. That's how funny I thought it was.
Speaker 4: And of course we only could play a little snippet
Speaker 4: of it there, but pure broad comedy, huge laughs. This
Speaker 4: was a no brainer for me, the forty old version.
Speaker 6: And it probably is ridiculous that I don't have an
Speaker 6: appetite film on this list. I think I may be
Speaker 6: punishing him because his run has been so good and
Speaker 6: I don't have a clear fire favorite among them. I mean,
Speaker 6: between train Wreck, Knocked Up and This Love them All,
Speaker 6: This is forty is the only one that funny people.
Speaker 6: I likely need to be funny people as well, and
Speaker 6: so it's not fair. But I am punishing him because
Speaker 6: he's been too consistently good. I guess I can't just
Speaker 6: pick one fair enough.
Speaker 4: Those are our top five comedies of the twenty first century.
Speaker 4: We want to know your picks, maybe some of your
Speaker 4: favorite directors, but those films in particular that made you
Speaker 4: laugh the most over these past fifteen years. You can
Speaker 4: email us feedback at film spotting dot net.
Speaker 6: Holda HOLDA HOLDO you'll answer this question.
Speaker 5: Are you a virgin? Are you a virgin?
Speaker 13: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Not?
Speaker 12: Since I was ten, it all makes sense.
Speaker 3: You're a virgin?
Speaker 10: I am shut up?
Speaker 5: How does that happen?
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