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• Top 6 Buddy Comedy Films of All Time

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• Dumb and Dumber

  Dumb and Dumber, released in 1994, follows two profoundly unintelligent friends on a cross-country road trip to return a briefcase, unaware it's filled with ransom money, and Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels's performances established one of the most beloved comedic duos in 1990s film. The film's willingness to commit fully to its characters' genuine, unwavering stupidity, rather than having them occasionally demonstrate hidden competence, distinguished it from other buddy comedies that typically balanced a "smart" character against a more foolish counterpart. Carrey's performance, delivered at the height of his early-1990s comedic stardom following Ace Ventura and The Mask, showcased his signature physical comedy style, and the film's combination of gross-out humor with genuine warmth between its two central characters gave it broader appeal than pure shock comedy alone. Dumb and Dumber's massive commercial success established the comedic template that Carrey and directors the Farrelly Brothers continued building on throughout the 1990s, and the film remains one of the most quoted and beloved buddy comedies of its era.

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• The Hangover

  The Hangover, released in 2009, follows a group of friends piecing together the chaotic events of a Las Vegas bachelor party after waking up with no memory of the previous night, and the film's mystery-structured comedic plotting, gradually revealing increasingly absurd revelations, became its defining structural innovation. Its massive commercial success, becoming the highest-grossing R-rated comedy in history at the time of its release, reflected genuine mainstream appetite for the film's combination of raunchy adult humor with a genuinely well-constructed mystery plot structure. Zach Galifianakis's performance as the group's eccentric, socially awkward member became a breakout comedic role that significantly elevated his career, and the character's odd, deadpan line deliveries became widely quoted and imitated. The Hangover's combination of its innovative reverse-mystery structure and its massive commercial success launched a franchise of sequels and established a significant new commercial template for R-rated ensemble buddy comedies throughout the following decade.

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• Tommy Boy

  Tommy Boy, released in 1995, follows the bumbling son of an auto parts factory owner who must save the family business alongside a more competent but reluctant coworker after his father's sudden death, and the film became one of the most beloved buddy comedies to emerge from the Saturday Night Live comedic ensemble's film career. Chris Farley's performance, built around his established physical comedy style, gave the film genuine emotional stakes beneath its broad comedic set pieces, particularly given Farley's own tragic death just two years after the film's release, which added retrospective poignancy to his performance. David Spade's more restrained, sarcastic comedic delivery provided an effective contrast to Farley's more physically exuberant style, establishing a mismatched buddy dynamic that became closely associated with the two performers' broader comedic partnership. Tommy Boy's combination of genuine warmth beneath its slapstick comedy and Farley's memorable performance has made it one of the most enduringly beloved buddy comedies associated with the Saturday Night Live comedic film tradition of the 1990s.

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• Pineapple Express

  Pineapple Express, released in 2008, follows a process server and his marijuana dealer who become fugitives after witnessing a murder, blending stoner comedy with genuine action film sequences in an unusual genre combination that distinguished it from more purely comedic entries in either category. Seth Rogen and James Franco's on-screen chemistry, playing an unlikely but genuinely affectionate friendship between their two mismatched characters, gave the film's central buddy relationship a sincerity that grounded its increasingly chaotic action-comedy plot developments. Its combination of genuinely well-executed action sequences, including extended fight and chase scenes, with the film's central stoner comedy sensibility reflected director David Gordon Green's unusual background in more serious independent dramatic filmmaking before this genre-blending comedic effort. Pineapple Express's combination of genuine buddy comedy warmth and its surprisingly competent action filmmaking has made it one of the more structurally distinctive entries in the buddy comedy genre, blending action and stoner comedy conventions more successfully than most similar genre-crossing attempts.

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• Wedding Crashers

  Wedding Crashers, released in 2005, follows two friends who make a hobby of attending strangers' weddings uninvited to meet women, and the film's massive commercial success established it as one of the defining R-rated comedies of the mid-2000s. Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson's rapid-fire comedic chemistry, built around Vaughn's motor-mouthed delivery contrasted with Wilson's more laid-back charm, established one of the most commercially successful comedic duos of that era. Its combination of genuine romantic comedy plotting with raunchier adult humor gave the film crossover appeal to both traditional romantic comedy audiences and viewers seeking more explicitly adult-oriented comedic content, a combination that helped drive its massive box-office success. Wedding Crashers' commercial success helped cement the mid-2000s R-rated comedy boom that also included films like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and its combination of romantic comedy structure with buddy comedy dynamics has made it one of the most commercially successful entries in the genre.

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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.