Some Like It Hot

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• Top 6 Comedy Films of All Time

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• Airplane!

  Airplane!, released in 1980 and written and directed by the trio of Jim Abrahams and brothers David and Jerry Zucker, pioneered a rapid-fire, joke-dense parody comedy style, packing an unusually high density of visual and verbal gags into every scene rather than relying on a single central comedic premise sustained across the runtime. The film parodied the disaster movie genre, particularly the earlier film Zero Hour!, whose plot Airplane! closely follows scene-for-scene while playing every dramatic beat for absurdist comedy, and the film's deliberate casting of serious dramatic actors, including Leslie Nielsen and Robert Stack, delivering ridiculous dialogue with complete deadpan sincerity became central to its comedic approach. Airplane!'s joke-density style, layering background sight gags with rapid-fire verbal jokes and audience-expectation subversions, directly established the template that the same creative team and numerous imitators continued using across subsequent parody films throughout the 1980s and beyond. Leslie Nielsen's subsequent career pivot from a respected dramatic actor into a beloved comedic performer, built almost entirely on the deadpan delivery style he first showcased in Airplane!, reflected the film's broader influence on how deadpan, straight-faced delivery could be deployed as a comedic technique in service of increasingly absurd material.

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• Annie Hall

  Annie Hall, directed by and starring Woody Allen and released in 1977, won the Academy Award for Best Picture, an unusual recognition for a romantic comedy given the category's historical tendency to favor more overtly dramatic films, reflecting the movie's genuine critical ambition beneath its comedic surface. The film's innovative narrative structure, including direct-to-camera address, animated sequences, split-screen comparisons, and non-chronological storytelling, broke significantly from conventional romantic comedy filmmaking of its era and influenced how subsequent films could structurally play with narrative form while remaining fundamentally comedic. Diane Keaton's performance as the title character, including her distinctive androgynous fashion sense featuring men's ties, vests, and oversized clothing, sparked a genuine mainstream fashion trend following the film's release, an unusually direct example of a comedy film's aesthetic choices shaping broader popular culture. Allen's blend of neurotic, self-deprecating humor with genuine emotional insight into the difficulties of modern romantic relationships established a comedic voice and narrative approach that influenced decades of subsequent romantic comedies, and Annie Hall remains widely regarded as one of the most structurally innovative comedies ever made.

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• Ghostbusters

  Ghostbusters, released in 1984, blended supernatural horror-comedy with genuinely impressive practical special effects for its era, following a team of eccentric parapsychologists who start a ghost-catching business in New York City, and the film became the highest-grossing comedy of its time. Its combination of Bill Murray's improvisational, deadpan comedic style with genuinely large-scale visual effects sequences, including the massive Stay Puft Marshmallow Man climax, gave the film a technical production scale unusual for a comedy of its era, closer to a big-budget action film's effects work than typical studio comedies. The film's theme song, performed by Ray Parker Jr., became a chart-topping hit and one of the most recognizable movie theme songs in film history, extending Ghostbusters' cultural reach well beyond the film itself into mainstream radio and pop culture. Ghostbusters' New York City firehouse headquarters, depicted through exterior shots of a real functioning FDNY firehouse in Manhattan's Tribeca neighborhood, became a genuine tourist attraction following the film's release, and the franchise's continued sequels and spinoffs across four decades reflect the original film's lasting commercial and cultural influence.

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• The Big Lebowski

  The Big Lebowski, released in 1998 and written and directed by the Coen brothers, was a modest box-office and critical performer on its initial release but has since developed one of the most devoted cult followings of any American comedy film, complete with annual fan festivals called "Lebowski Fest" held in multiple cities. Jeff Bridges's performance as "The Dude," a laid-back, White Russian-drinking bowling enthusiast mistakenly drawn into a convoluted kidnapping plot, became one of the most beloved and widely quoted comedic characters in modern film, and the character's relaxed philosophy has even inspired "Dudeism," a semi-satirical religion loosely based on his worldview. The film's meandering, deliberately loose plot structure, more interested in atmosphere and character interaction than conventional narrative momentum, initially confused some critics expecting a more traditional Coen brothers crime story, but that same shaggy, unhurried quality became central to the film's eventual cult appeal. The Big Lebowski's slow-building reputation, moving from a box-office disappointment to a film now frequently cited among the greatest comedies ever made, reflects a pattern of delayed critical reappraisal similar to several other now-classic films whose cultural significance emerged substantially after their original theatrical release.

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• Groundhog Day

  Groundhog Day, released in 1993, follows a cynical weatherman forced to relive the same single day repeatedly in an endless time loop, a premise so culturally influential that "Groundhog Day" itself entered common English usage as a shorthand phrase for any repetitive, seemingly inescapable situation. Bill Murray's performance traces the character's gradual transformation across what the filmmakers have estimated, based on details scattered throughout the film, could represent anywhere from several years to multiple decades of repeated days, though the exact number was deliberately left ambiguous rather than explicitly stated on screen. The film's underlying philosophical and spiritual themes, exploring self-improvement, redemption, and the search for meaning through repetition, have made it a frequently cited example in philosophy and religious studies courses examining cyclical time and personal transformation, an unusually substantive academic afterlife for a mainstream studio comedy. Its filming location, the small town of Woodstock, Illinois standing in for the film's fictional Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania setting, embraced the film's legacy by hosting annual Groundhog Day-themed events, and the film's central time-loop premise has since become one of the most widely imitated structural devices in subsequent film and television comedy.

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More in Film & TV

• Hidden Figures

  "Hidden Figures" (2016), directed by Theodore Melfi, dramatizes the true story of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, three Black women mathematicians whose calculations at NASA were critical to the success of the early American space program, based on Margot Lee Shetterly's nonfiction book of the same name. The film brought significant mainstream public attention to the real contributions of Black women "computers" at NASA during the Space Race, a history that had received relatively little prior widespread recognition, and it prompted renewed public interest in and honors for the real Katherine Johnson, who was still alive at the time of the film's release. Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monáe's central performances drew significant critical acclaim, and the film became a notable box office success, outperforming many contemporary awards-season dramas and demonstrating a substantial mainstream audience for historical stories centered on Black women. Hidden Figures's combination of its overdue mainstream spotlight on real, previously under-recognized NASA scientists and its strong central performances has made it one of the most culturally significant true-story films of its decade.

• 12 Years a Slave

  "12 Years a Slave" (2013), directed by Steve McQueen, dramatizes the true story of Solomon Northup, a free Black man from New York who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the antebellum South, based on Northup's own 1853 memoir of the same name. Chiwetel Ejiofor's lead performance and Lupita Nyong'o's supporting performance, in her film debut, both drew significant critical acclaim, with Nyong'o winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and the film itself won the Academy Award for Best Picture. McQueen's unflinching, sustained visual approach to depicting the brutality of slavery, including several extended, unbroken takes of violence that the camera refuses to look away from, was widely credited with giving American slavery a more direct and confrontational cinematic treatment than most previous major studio films had attempted. 12 Years a Slave's combination of its direct grounding in Solomon Northup's own historical memoir and Steve McQueen's unflinching directorial approach has made it one of the most acclaimed and historically significant true-story films ever produced.

• Catch Me If You Can

  "Catch Me If You Can" (2002), directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, dramatizes the real early life of Frank Abagnale Jr., who successfully impersonated an airline pilot, a doctor, and a lawyer while forging millions of dollars in checks before being caught by an FBI agent, played by Tom Hanks. The film was based on Abagnale's own memoir, and the real Abagnale, who later became a longtime security consultant working with the FBI, served as a consultant on the production, giving the filmmakers direct access to the actual details and methods behind his real-life cons. The film's stylish, buoyant tone and 1960s period production design, paired with John Williams's jazz-inflected score, gave the true story a lighter, more playful cinematic register than many other crime-based true stories, emphasizing the audacious cleverness of Abagnale's real schemes over their consequences. Catch Me If You Can's combination of its direct access to the real Frank Abagnale's own account and its stylish period filmmaking has made it one of the most purely entertaining true-story films ever produced.

• Erin Brockovich

  "Erin Brockovich" (2000), directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Julia Roberts, dramatizes the true story of the real Erin Brockovich, an unemployed single mother who, working as a legal clerk, helped build a massive lawsuit against Pacific Gas & Electric over water contamination in Hinkley, California. Roberts's performance won her the Academy Award for Best Actress, and her portrayal of the real Brockovich's brash, persistent determination in the face of both corporate stonewalling and professional condescension became one of the most acclaimed performances of her career. The real underlying case resulted in a $333 million settlement, at the time the largest settlement ever paid in a direct-action lawsuit in U.S. history, and the real Erin Brockovich served as a consultant on the film and appeared in a small cameo role. Erin Brockovich's combination of Julia Roberts's Oscar-winning lead performance and its grounding in one of the largest environmental settlements in American legal history has made it one of the most acclaimed true-story legal dramas ever produced.

• The Social Network

  "The Social Network" (2010), directed by David Fincher from Aaron Sorkin's screenplay, dramatizes the founding of Facebook by Mark Zuckerberg at Harvard University and the subsequent legal disputes with his co-founders and the Winklevoss twins over credit and ownership of the company. Sorkin's screenplay, built around competing depositions and conflicting accounts of the same events, embraced the genuine ambiguity of the real underlying legal disputes rather than presenting a single definitive version of what happened, a structural choice widely praised by critics as an unusually sophisticated approach to dramatizing contested recent history. Jesse Eisenberg's performance as a fictionalized version of Zuckerberg drew significant critical acclaim, and the film's release while the real Facebook was still a relatively young and rapidly growing company gave it an unusually immediate, real-time quality rare for a historical biopic. The Social Network's combination of its sophisticated multi-perspective legal-dispute structure and its unusually immediate proximity to still-unfolding real events has made it one of the most critically acclaimed true-story films of the 21st century.