Top 5 21st Century Comedies (Archive)

19:21Josh Larsen:So I think that just that captures a lot. But, you know, what's funny about this, too, is I think I like every other Noah Baumbach movie. Really? You could have gone with the squid and the whale. You could have gone Margot at the Wedding, Mistress America and Frances High. Both like I even like Greenberg. Yeah, I like all of those. You have to go with While We're Young.

19:38Adam Kempenaar:For me, the only exception. While We're Young is my favorite. I think Mistress America is fantastic. Highly recommend that, too. The only one for me that's always been the standout in terms of not working at all is Margot at the Wedding.

19:49Josh Larsen:Okay. Well, I'd call you on this not being a pure comedy, but I might have a bit of a stretch myself coming up, so I can't be too harsh right now. So we got a lot of great voicemails from listeners for this top five. I don't know if it was just that a movie came immediately to mind when they heard about the topic, Best Comedy Since the Year 2000. Yeah, passion for plenty of movies. did we get a lot. So let's share another one here from a listener in Kenosha.

20:14Adam Kempenaar:Hey, guys, this is Michelle R. from Kenosha, Wisconsin. My favorite 21st century comedy is the much maligned Freddie Got Fingered, savaged upon release as the quote unquote worst movie ever. In actuality, it's both a brilliant real life prank on the studio system and a gross comedy that goes so far it becomes a surreal parody of the same totally ahead of its time and clearly presaging modern alt comedy geniuses like Tim and Eric and Alan Resnick. No movie has made me laugh more.

20:41Josh Larsen:Oh, look, honey, our boy's a genius. He's rigged a pulley system so he can eat sausage and work on his stupid drawings. I'm being creative. Now, if you'll excuse me, I still have some work to do. Freddie, would you like some sausage? Freddie, would you like some sausages? Freddie, would you like some sausage? Sausages, sausage. So I wish that I could find my original review from the newspaper of Freddie Got Fingered. I never saw it. There's a chance I gave it a positive review. Really? Well, why am I not surprised actually at all? But this was like, you know, this isn't even in their digital archives.

21:19Josh Larsen:So we'll just have to hope that was the case. But there were things I liked about it. I can at least say that.

21:26Adam Kempenaar:Let's just not know.

21:27Josh Larsen:I like it. Number four for me, however, I am going with Mean Girls, the Heathers of the early 21st century. It's a broader comedy than Heathers. That one was pitch black, but I think it's as incisive and certainly as influential. Lindsay Lohan is the previously homeschooled high schooler here who's thrust into the social maze of a public school. And Lohan, she's really fresh and funny, if you can remember that in this film. And you also have, in addition to her, this great supporting cast. Rachel McAdams is the supporting player here as Regina George, leader of the A-list plastics. and Amy Poehler, so good as Regina's mother, who desperately still wants to be one of the plastics or at the very least be accepted as a cool mom.

22:12Adam Kempenaar:Hey, you guys. Happy hour is from 4 to 6. Um, is there alcohol in this? Oh, God, honey, no. What kind of mother do you think I am? Why do you want a little bit? Because if you're going to drink, I'd rather you do it in the house. No, thank you. So, you guys, what is the 411? What has everybody been up to? What is the hot gossip? Tell me everything. What are you guys listening to? What's the cool jams? Mom, could you go fix your hair? Okay.

22:46Josh Larsen:You girls keep me young. Oh, I love you so much. Besides the laughs, the emotional accuracy here is just brilliant. Tina Fey wrote the screenplay and she based it on Rosalind Wiseman's nonfiction book, Queen Bees and Wannabes. I remember feeling that truth when Mean Girls first came out. I wasn't, you know, this was in 2004. High school was, I could still remember it fairly well at that point. Now, though, with my oldest daughter starting her first year of high school, I don't know if I could bear to revisit this whole movie and be reminded of just how complicated that social structure can be.

23:21Josh Larsen:So Mean Girls, my number four.

23:23Adam Kempenaar:So now, of course, I'm regretting that we didn't share our picks with each other ahead of time, which we don't normally do, but there are exceptions. And I really wanted to avoid having a pick on your list that I hadn't seen. And despite having a female friend a few years back being aghast that I'd never seen Mean Girls, and I want to see it, I just haven't made the time. She even bought it for me for Christmas, the DVD, and I still haven't done it. No, instead, Josh, going back to Adam McKay and Talladega Nights, you had to convince me that you might go with the other guys. And so I watched that.

23:52Adam Kempenaar:You did watch it for that. I watched the other guys. And? I like it. Good. I like it. It did. Well, Adam McKay is a great director. Yes. I know that now. You've come to appreciate that. But it's funny.

24:04Josh Larsen:Few people talk about the other guys. No, it's funny. But it is up there with their best stuff, I think.

24:09Adam Kempenaar:I mean, Farrell is great. Wahlberg is great. Thank you. All the scenes with Eva Mendes are fantastic. Everything about that whole dynamic is great. But here's why the other guys is worth seeing, to go off on a little tangent here. for this one scene. The best sequence in the film by far. Michael Keaton plays their captain. Almost every scene he's in, I crack up. But there's one in particular, and I'm trying to remember now, is it Wahlberg or Farrell who gets into a fight with another cop at a wake, basically.

24:40Josh Larsen:Well, and Wahlberg's the hothead, right? Yeah, Wahlberg's the hothead since I've seen it. So I think it's him.

24:44Adam Kempenaar:They get into a fight at a wake. So you have a group of cops standing around a circle, Just like a schoolyard fight. But since it's awake, they're trying to be quiet and respectful. So they're like, get him, get him. But they're whispering. And then that's funny enough. But then Michael Keaton comes in and he tries to break it up. And the way he breaks it up by yelling but whispering, I was laughing so hard watching it that I was thinking to myself, they must have done 57 takes of this. Because how anybody else in that circle could have watched Keaton do that so seriously and not just lose it, they'd have to be the best actors of all time.

25:23Adam Kempenaar:That scene is amazing. See, now you're making me wish I put the other guys on this list. This was hard. Yeah, it was. So the moral of the story is I still need to see Mean Girls. My number four is a film that came out in 2010. It actually started as a BBC series that was edited into a film. Michael Winterbottom, the director, the movie is The Trip, Coogan and Rob Brydon, where it's these two great comedians and comedic actors playing versions of themselves, for sure, as they go around the English countryside on a trip being paid for, I believe, by The Guardian. And Coogan's been sent out and he can't bring his love interest along with him.

26:07Adam Kempenaar:I think they've just had a falling out. So he brings Rob Brydon along with him. Now, we really could just play one great scene from all of these movies and shut up. And that's probably what we should have done here. And I will get to that eventually with one of these picks. But the Michael Caine scene where they're sitting over a meal and they go back and forth over how to properly do Michael Caine. is among the scenes that made me laugh the most I can think of, certainly of the past 15 or 16 years. Well, broadsheet journalists have described my impressions as stunningly accurate.

26:44Josh Larsen:Well, they're wrong.

26:45Adam Kempenaar:I've not heard your Michael Caine,

26:46Josh Larsen:but I assume it would be something along the lines of, my name's Michael Caine.

26:49Adam Kempenaar:That is where you are so wrong. And you can look at my live video for proof, because that's the very thing I don't do. I say that he used to talk like that. Do you Michael Caine? Okay. I say Michael Caine used to talk like this in the 1960s, right? But that has changed, and I say that over the years, Michael's voice has come down several. I've said, let me finish, and all of the cigars and the brandy, don't let me finish, can now be heard. I've not fucking finished in the back of the voice and the voice now. I've still not finished the voice. Because you're panicking. Because you look like you're about to bloody talk.

27:25Adam Kempenaar:Let me finish. Right, so, Michael Cade's voice now in the Batman movies and in Harry Brown. I can't go fast because Michael Caine talks very, very slowly. What made me really laugh more than anything in this film, and I noted this during a review back in 2010 when this came out, is watching them when they actually do crack each other up. Because you hear in that Michael Caine scene how they really are kind of fighting with each other in a way. They're trying to one-up each other so much throughout the whole film that when they actually do make the other guy laugh, those are the really rewarding, amusing moments in the film because they're each other's toughest critics by far, and they're brutally honest with each other.

28:10Adam Kempenaar:So when someone else does something that is genuinely brilliant, well, they have to applaud. They have to give them that. So I love that, but I do also love the way that reality and fantasy line blurs. Again, playing themselves, they are versions, certainly. It's heightened, but it is them, and it's their personas. So the humor comes out of the honesty of a lot of those moments. They're tapping into some genuine antagonism, I think it's fair to assume, that exists between them. And we get those kind of moments then when they go to the cemetery where Keats and Shelley are buried, and they get into a conversation about how they would eulogize the other person.

28:49But, um, but of course, let's not remember a man who has lost, desperately trying to legitimise his life by doing silly voices constantly and not confronting the truth.

29:04Josh Larsen:is let's remember the other side of Rob. The entertainer. The Rob Brydon, the entertainer. The Rob Brydon who gave some levity to our life and helped us avoid confronting the harsh realities and helped us avoid looking at the brutal reality of what life is. Talk about some of the characters.

29:26Adam Kempenaar:Oh, so some of the characters. Who can forget his Tom Jones impression? Who can forget that? think I better die now. You can say that. Think I better die now. That's good.

29:40Josh Larsen:Yeah, I know.

29:41Adam Kempenaar:Well, I'll take over when you're doing it. There'll be plenty of,

29:43Josh Larsen:I'll do plenty of Tom Jones when you're dead. Don't worry about that.

29:47Adam Kempenaar:Funny and brutal and brutally funny. And if you enjoyed those scenes as much as I did and you love the riffing on impressions as much as I did, you can watch more of it in The Trip to Italy from 2014, another movie I thought was hilarious. And apparently there's a third one coming out. I didn't know it.

30:04Josh Larsen:Maybe that will be my chance to finally catch up on these. You've got me here. I never saw the trip and wanted to correct that when a trip to Italy came out. Thought I could knock out both. Didn't get to it. So I better get to it soon. It sounds like.

30:18Adam Kempenaar:Sam actually said, after I told him it was going on my list, he said, yeah, you know what? You've convinced me it's going in my top five as well. He was kind of ruling it out because it really is more of a character study. I said, yeah, but again, quantity and quality of laughs. The trip has it. So my number four. Let's get to our number three picks here, Josh. But to help us do that, we will hear from longtime listener David L. Williams. He's in Central Pennsylvania. Hi, FilmSpotting. This is David L. Williams from Central, PA. And the best comedy of the 21st century is 2009's In the Loop. Armando Iannucci's take on the invasion of Iraq is the funniest political film since Dr.

30:57Adam Kempenaar:Strangelove. It begins with a British government official saying in an interview that war is unforeseeable and then does everything to prove him wrong It is dark, acerbic and laugh out loud funny with a fantastically witty script that was nominated for an Oscar Peter Capaldi's Malcolm Tucker is a force of nature, maybe the most profane character ever put on film And I'd love to quote some of his lines, but you would just hear a string of beeps

31:18Josh Larsen:In the Loop is not just the best comedy of the 21st century, it's one of my top 10 comedies of all time Where do you think you are in some f***ing Regency costume drama? This is a government department, not a Jane Foss novel. Malcolm. Allow me to pop a jaunty little bonnet on your pub, you and ram out of the shit with a lubricated horse. David is so right about the Dr. Strangela vibes in that one. I'd actually forgotten that until David brought it up on Twitter and reminded me and looked up my review. And yeah, I did enjoy that quite a bit when it came out. My number three is the one that maybe crosses the line a little bit from pure comedy.

31:55Josh Larsen:I went back and forth on whether or not to include it. Unlike my first two picks, I can't say that it ever really made me burst out in laughter, but I was sort of, it had me on a low chuckle throughout. Okay. And then eventually that would bubble into an audible laugh here and there. And it was just kind of always on this hum. So I went with it. It's Roy Anderson's Songs from the Second Floor.

32:18Adam Kempenaar:I thought about it. Did you? I thought about it. Good.

32:20Josh Larsen:That is one we just saw. We just discovered it in our Contemporary Nordic Cinema Marathon. Now, for those who didn't join us on that journey, and you really should, you still can, obviously, in our previous few episodes, we found a couple of gems there. It's been a good trip. This one was a series of droll, absurdist vignettes. We talked in particular about the recently fired office worker who's clinging to his boss's legs as he's being dragged down this cold corporate hallway, as well as the magician who ends up actually cutting into the audience member who he was pretending to saw in half. Now, I described Songs from the Second Floor as capturing the world's last whimper, yet on my website where my reviews are archived by genre, I filed it under comedy.

33:04Josh Larsen:So why? It doesn't seem to make sense. But for some reason, and I mentioned this in our review of Songs from the Second Floor, every time that magician's victim would show up in another segment and he'd wince while holding his side, I'd laugh. I would just start chuckling. And I don't think it's that I'm cruel. I guess it could be that. But it's more that Anderson has found a way in this movie to take all of the world's collective angst over life's little miseries and how those pile up on us. And he has these characters bear it in a way that makes us laugh. And then by laughing, we feel a little bit of relief ourselves.

33:41Josh Larsen:So maybe stretching things a bit, but I'm going to go with songs from the second floor.

33:46Adam Kempenaar:Okay. A film that very well could come up a little bit more when we get to our Nordic Cinema Awards. And yeah, if you haven't watched the film yet and you throw it in because of Josh putting it on this top five list and you start watching it and think, well, Josh is crazy. And it's a little bit of an outlier crazy here before. It happens pretty regularly. You might be right. But not only are a lot of the scenes that you just mentioned, Josh, really genuinely funny, if not laugh out loud, it's not about jokes, but definitely absurd and makes you chuckle to yourself. That's probably a good description.

34:18Adam Kempenaar:I would throw in the two scenes I highlighted during our discussion of that movie. I'll just say the cross convention, the salesman convention, and the scene, I think it's the first one that takes place at the mental hospital with the doctor who is watching this encounter between family members. Those two scenes, those did genuinely make me laugh out loud.

34:39Josh Larsen:Well, and what's the goal of all the scenes we just mentioned? And I would say probably 90 % of the film, the goal is to make you laugh. And I think it's successful. So it may not look or move or sound exactly like the broad American comedies we're used to. Right. But it is certainly a comedy.

34:57Adam Kempenaar:Well, let's get to some more traditional laughs with my number three. And we're going to get to another voicemail. In this case, Josh, this isn't another option. John in Salt Lake City has my number three pick. Hey, Filmspotting, this is John in Salt Lake City. My choice for the 21st century comedy is definitely Role Models. It's the most interesting comedy in that that was kind of a dark time because comedy was kind of headed down a really kind of dark, sarcastic, snarky past. and Role Models has that. It's also super gross out and very adult, but it really rises above and I really appreciated it.

35:37Adam Kempenaar:It had real wants that replaced the snark in the face with a really, really easy set of targets and it was just, I was smiling at the end and I love it. So that's my choice. Thank you, John, for that voicemail and thank you for reminding me just how much I loved Role Models. That is the 2008 comedy directed by David Wayne. He was a co-writer on the film as well. Sean William Scott, Paul Rudd, the stars in that movie. They play two dudes who are punished basically for a few different offenses and they have to do 150 hours of community service. So they have to be role models for some younger kids.

36:14Adam Kempenaar:They're the bigs to the littles in Jane Lynch's little program. And a lot of what John said, I think, is dead on, of course, about what makes role models a really good and really interesting film where there is something about the movie that is sweet and uplifting by the end of it and it works at the end of the film despite the fact josh that there's still that really strong rebellious spirit to it that we've had throughout the whole film and we get wonderful moments like a dinner table scene where rudd finally recognizes in his little christopher mince ploss who plays augie a kid who plays those fantasy games and goes out and Dungeons and Dragons, he's got the swords and all that stuff.

36:54Adam Kempenaar:Well, I think Dungeons and Dragons just takes place all in your head, doesn't it? He's actually full-blown dressed up. I don't know how into it you can get. We are losing our nerd credentials here, Josh. But that's a wonderful scene, and there are lots of little wonderful war moments in this film. That all said, it's hysterically funny because of scenes like this one.

37:15Josh Larsen:What's your drawing there? Oh, Beyonce. She's smoking. I don't want to take my pants off. What? Whoa, whoa. All right, Ronnie, that's enough. This bitch tried to grab my joint. Language, Ronnie. My language is English, and this mother**** tried to grab on my hangdown. I got my own hangdown to touch, kid. Hockey ass wanted a handful on my balls. Hockey, that's racist. Well, I trust you two will work this out. I'm not going to micromanage. Not my modus operandi.

37:44Adam Kempenaar:Now, I don't know how much of that scene we were actually able to play on the radio or how much we had to bleep, but hilarious stuff. Sean William Scott proving in this film and a few others that we probably didn't fully appreciate him after all being introduced to him as Stifler in the American Pie movies because he's really a legitimately good comedic actor, really funny guy.

38:05Josh Larsen:Oh yeah, a movie that almost made my list, The Promotion, which he's in with John C. Reilly. He absolutely holds both the comedy and the dramedy there. I'm glad you went with the role models though for the Wayne film. I think the one that you'd most often hear There's Wet Hot American Summer. People just have such a relationship with that picture. But I enjoy role models, probably the most of his. And Wanderlust, too, is really, really strong. So he is one of those names in that tier you were talking about at the start of our list.

38:32Adam Kempenaar:Well, then it worked out very well that I reached out to David Wayne. And I thought, as one of those directors in one of those tiers, we should get his perspective on his favorite comedy of the 21st century. and I did not see his pick coming. Let's hear it.

38:50Josh Larsen:Perhaps it's generational, but for me, there haven't been so many classic pure comedies in the 21st century so far along the lines of my all-time favorites, including The Graduate, Tootsie, Woody Allen's Best Ones, Animal House, Pink Panther, Airplane, Flirting with Disaster, etc. I think part of it might be that a lot of the real creative energy in narrative comedy these days has moved to TV and to the web. With that said, if I really think about what movie made me laugh the most and hardest this century, I'd have to go with MacGruber from Jorma Ticconi and Will Forte. Unabashedly stupid, yet obsessively tight and crafted under the surface.

39:24Josh Larsen:Honorable mention has to go to the Jackass movies, which also had me laughing hard from beginning to end, even though it's kind of cheating. And final honorable mention goes to Tommy Wiseau's unintentionally funny movie, The Room, which is the only movie I've ever seen that elicits giant roars of laughter on nearly every line of dialogue. Well, I guess if David Wayne has gone out on this limb already, it's safe for me to go out and say that I really like the jackass films too.

39:49Adam Kempenaar:Yeah, no, I do as well. At least one of them was reviewed here on the show and favorably, but I'm with David. Thank you for that wonderful voicemail because it prompted me to do more homework. No, didn't watch Mean Girls, but I did watch MacGruber in preparation for this list. And he's absolutely right. It's hysterical. MacGruber is a really funny film. Did you see it, Josh? I still need to see it. I'm going to do it before I see Popstar. Smart. I think that does make sense. Directed by Jorma Tacconi, who is part of that Lonely Island group. And I thought Popstar was really good and really well-directed and well-conceived all around.

40:23Adam Kempenaar:And you can go back to MacGruber and see that he certainly knows what he's doing. Popstar wasn't an anomaly at all. And just real quick, I have to say my favorite, favorite line in the movie. MacGruber, who has been out of civilization for like a decade and is a huge dork to begin with, so isn't really in touch with anything cool, he drives this Mazda convertible this red Mazda convertible that he thinks is like a hot car and everybody makes fun of him for it and he's got one of those old car stereos that he takes out when he gets out of his car I have one of those oh yeah I did too so it doesn't get stolen but he takes it to another level Josh like he pulls up to talk to someone and just gets out of the car and is standing behind it he pulls the stereo out if he walks into a restaurant or a party, he brings it with him.

41:14Adam Kempenaar:It doesn't matter where he's going, which leads to the best line in the film when some bouncers destroy it. He says, that is a Blaupunkt. You owe me a Blaupunkt. Well, it was one of the better brands. That's why it's funny. And that concludes Adam Does Lines from MacGruber. Let's get to your number two. Cedar Rapids. Knew it was coming.

41:37Josh Larsen:Yep, yep, absolutely. I mean, think about it this way. some of our best comedies turn on minor moral dilemmas think of jack lemons cc baxter in the apartment i'm talking your language here you are i see cedar rapids as working in the tradition of a movie like that this is pretty much what we've got ed helms plays tim lippie a mild-mannered insurance agent who's sent to his first business convention and is shocked just shocked he can't believe how regular people behave when they're away from home helms is so good here i'm not going to say he's jack lemon but really his naivete and the way he commits to it and his excruciating normalcy i think is something we don't often see on screen we see nerds or we see guys who are idiots but just to see a painfully normal everyday guy played like this is a rarity and he still manages to be funny while doing it too the movie that was almost stolen by its supporting cast.

42:36Josh Larsen:We have Anne Hayes, who is revelatory to me in this movie. Never thought of her this way before. She plays a married mom who's looking to have her own sort of fun at this convention. And then John C. Reilly, who, if it's not clear by now, I consider a comic national treasure. He is the convention's notorious partier who tries to turn every year into Mardi Gras. Who wants to get wasted?

43:00Adam Kempenaar:Juju! Joe!

43:01Josh Larsen:Oh, fuck. How about check out those studs? Woo! Joe Ostrowski, fuck! Oh, Ron, Ronald, you look rontastic.

43:10Adam Kempenaar:This one, look, you're just squeezing the dots,

43:13Josh Larsen:you little firecracker. Oh, yeah, sweetheart. Oh, so good. Oh, lippy. My lippies are sealed. You know this guy? Oh, that's right, from the fitness center. Yeah, I was really naughty with you down there. I'm really sorry, too. Oh, no, she's not. Oh, no, I'm not. Oh, shots! Let's do it. What do you want, guys? Jaeger time. What's really unique about Cedar Rapids, I think, is the level of complications that it brings to this morality play. Again, like the apartment. When Tim gets embroiled in the convention's annual awards ceremony, he finds out how corrupted they are and kind of gets caught up in it.

43:50Josh Larsen:It's actually these misbehaving new friends who help him find his moral compass. So it's not one of these bad behavior comedies that lets its characters run wild for 90 minutes and then hypocritically tries to punish them. This is so much better than that. So once more, I'm going to bang the drum for Cedar Rapids.

44:06Adam Kempenaar:And I can't complain about that as much as I'd like to because I really like Cedar Rapids quite a bit. And I especially like it if it's the de facto super obvious Larson choice for this list. And it means that I'm not going to hear the words Casa de Mi Padre with your number one. We've got another pick. What are you talking about? Just trying to lay the groundwork here, Josh. You have an out if you want to take it. But I like the comparison as well to C.C. Baxter because it's interesting that in that movie, Jack Lemmon starts out as a pretty nice and seemingly decent guy who nevertheless has to figure out how to be a mensch.

44:41Adam Kempenaar:And Tim Lippe is a mensch already from the very beginning. He's a really good guy who's getting more and more corrupted as the movie goes on. My number two is a movie I haven't seen since it came out, so I can't say how gut-bustingly funny it is. I don't really remember, but I do remember just thinking it was so consistently clever it is, and when I see scenes from it or I'm prepping for a list, I'm always reminded of that, and it comes from one of those top-tier directors, Edgar Wright and his Shaun of the Dead. I have said this on the show before, of course, I have never been a big horror guy, So it wasn't a case where I watched Shaun of the Dead and thought, wow, I've been looking for this movie that was going to send up horror films or be a send up of zombie movies.

45:24Adam Kempenaar:And thinking about it, I go back to Young Frankenstein a little bit. We talked about how the accuracy of that movie and how it really succeeds because of how lovingly they pay tribute to movies like the James Whale, Frankenstein. And this is another case of that, where it's not Scream, and Scream's a perfectly fine movie, but that's one that's just overtly self-referential. All the jokes are based on our understanding of horror movies and their tropes, and a lot of the humor comes from you getting those references. But this is a film, Shaun of the Dead, that works completely on its own as a buddy movie, as a pseudo-thriller, as a sort of coming-of-age movie, certainly as a character study.

46:02Adam Kempenaar:And I think that can be said of all of Wright's films. the other thing I like about Wright on this list and why I wanted to make sure he was here this is also something that's come up a few times over the past couple of years on the show is how I think safe to say unlike all the others on this list he is as a director a visual humorist the editing, the pace of the cutting the types of cuts, the shots themselves, his use of space what's in the frame and what's outside the frame, what we know is there but sometimes a character doesn't that's where a good chunk of his humor derives and I think we need to be sure to praise filmmakers like that who are really using the medium and not just writing a lot of really funny jokes or funny scenes.

46:42Josh Larsen:That's absolutely right. It speaks to a little bit what I was mentioning to Michael Phillips about maybe why the BBC list didn't give more credit to comedies because they're not always this formally inventive. But it also makes me wish I could have revisited each of these films on my list and think about them in those terms and really study them that way. I think maybe Songs from the Second Floor is the one that absolutely uses composition for gags. We talked about the comparison to Jacques Tati when we reviewed it. So that is definitely a strength, something that Edgar Wright has in his toolbox.

47:16Josh Larsen:And I'm glad you went with Shaun of the Dead. I think that's what I would have gone with if I didn't go with it. It's probably because it does work so well just as a horror film, too.

47:25Adam Kempenaar:I thought about that. I almost wrote it off for that reason, but a lot of listeners mention it, and I do think it is about the humor, first and foremost. I think that's true with all of his films, despite what else we get from them. And to that point, I will mention that, sort of like what I was saying with Role Models, this is a movie that has really sincere moments amidst all the humor, but more extreme, right? On both ends of the spectrum, the humor is way more absurd, I'd say, than anything, of course, that we get in Role Models, but there's nothing in Role Models anywhere near as emotionally raw as the standoff in the pub where these friends have this standoff and they share a lot of really dark hidden truths or things that have been unsaid and then sean has to make a decision involving his mom that's legitimately heartbreaking in this spoof of zombie movies very much drawn from the

48:13Josh Larsen:zombie tradition as well and they make that work yeah it's it's a really strong film all right we're at our number one picks no it's not casa de mi padre sorry adam it is one that i share with Eddie from Austin, so I'll let him make the pick. You know, part of me badly wants to go to that

48:30Adam Kempenaar:for Idiocracy or Jackass number two, but I'm going to have to go with the one that also features the best comedic performance, I think, which would be Borat, which, you know, say what you will about descriptive parts. It's, you know, totally hilarious start to finish. And there's a, the thing that puts it over the top for me is, is that the palpable sense of danger you get from some of those scenarios that that baron cohen puts himself in and it's just just tremendous i cried laughing like three at least three times watching it the first time and it still makes me laugh just as hard each time since so uh good luck with the list i hope you guys find uh you know room to agree with me and have a good one i am with eddie and michael phillips incidentally

49:16Josh Larsen:who mentioned borat as one of the comedies he might have picked for this list in that vulture article we talked about that inspired the list from Jesse David Fox. He writes this, So first, Borat needs to be on this list and probably top 50. Not only is it inventive in its blending of completely fictional and real world elements, but Sacha Baron Cohen created a brilliant, loudly hilarious title character and fully realized universe for him to live in. It is both the greatest satire of post 9-11 America and a love letter to the country. Borat was, of course, Sacha Baron Cohen's tour of America in the guise of a boorish Kazakh television reporter.

49:51Josh Larsen:And then in these stunts and these interviews that he would do with actual people, he would hilariously and cringe-inducingly expose the intolerant underbelly of contemporary America. I think you could argue that Borat is even more timely. If he visited the America of 2016, I don't think he'd be as much of a fish out of water. Maybe when he's randomly kissing strangers on the subway. Yeah, that wouldn't fly. But a lot of these scenes, he wouldn't stand out as much. His brand of intolerance is more openly spoken in just these few years. I think you can thank the internet for a lot of that. And you can also thank this year's election climate.

50:33Josh Larsen:So if you were to rewatch that infamous speech he gives at the rodeo and the crowd's reaction, tell me this couldn't be mistaken for a Trump rally. Yeah. My name is Borat. I come from Kazakhstan. Can I say first we support your war of terror?

50:55Josh Larsen:May we show our support to our boys in Iraq? May the US and A kill every single terrorist?

51:10Josh Larsen:May George Bush drink the blood of every single man, woman, and child of Iraq. May you destroy their country so that for the next thousand years, not even a single lizard will survive in their desert. So that phrase Eddie used, palpable sense of danger, that is really there in that scene. and a lot of them in Borat. So for that, and, you know, honestly, also for the naked wrestling scene, Borat is my number one 21st century comedy.

51:44Adam Kempenaar:Well, it's a really good pick, and it's a movie that I remember reviewing favorably on the show. I remember laughing at it quite a bit, but I also remember there's just something about it that didn't sit well with me. There was something about some of the provocation. Maybe it was that it felt too forced, and I honestly don't know. I'd have to go back and listen to what I said or look in my notes or revisit the movie, But I just remember feeling like some of it was not only too forced, but some of it was mean spirited in a way that that differs from the other types of mean spirited moments in the film.

52:15Adam Kempenaar:There's a distinction between some of them versus the other where maybe it's that the subjects are in on the joke or sometimes the subjects are more worthy of his score and others don't seem to be.

52:26Josh Larsen:It's sort of the Colbert show and Daily Show dynamic, right, where those interviews you're always wondering what did they know beforehand? So that's definitely an element. And I remember having a bit of that experience as well. I also think, though, that Borat is not a movie that you should come out of feeling comfortable. I mean, it should disturb you in some way. I know you're probably talking about a little bit of a different way, but it is meant to provoke and put you in a state of unease.

52:55Adam Kempenaar:It's one I need to revisit for sure. Okay, my number one is a film from a director who came up in our discussion of the top tiers of current comedic filmmakers. And I really strongly considered Judd Apatow's knocked up for this list. I remember seeing that critic screening and losing my mind laughing at it. But I have to go back to the film that I think if you look, he'd had some success as a producer with Anchorman in 2004. But it really was, I believe, 2005 that The 40-Year-Old Virgin came out. The movie that really gave us, I know he'd been on The Daily Show, but the movie that gave us Steve Carell comedic genius.

53:37Adam Kempenaar:And this scene, I said sometimes you can just play a scene and you don't really need to say anything else. That's what I'm going to do here, because there were a lot of really funny moments in this movie. But this dialogue, this conversation, the guys night out, I think they're at the electronic store they work at. That's always playing Michael McDonald music in the back room. And they're playing cards and they kind of force Steve Carell to share his sexual experiences.

54:06Josh Larsen:I dated this girl for a while and she was really a nasty freak. She just loved to get down with sex all the time. She was like, any time of day, she was like, yeah, let's go. I'm so nasty. And I'd be nailing her. Oh,. She'd be like, oh, you're nailing me. Cool. She talk dirty to you? Oh, she loved to dirty talk. Totally into it. She'd be like, yeah, let's screw. Let's, I want to. God, it was so dirty. She'd be like, oh, me so horny. Me love you long time.

54:47Adam Kempenaar:So I remember seeing that for the first time and convulsing with laughter. That's how funny I thought it was. And of course, we only could play a little snippet of it there. But pure, broad comedy, huge laughs. This was a no brainer for me, the 40 year old version.

55:03Josh Larsen:And it probably is ridiculous that I don't have an Apatow film on this list. I think I may be punishing him because his run has been so good and I don't have a clear fire favorite among them. I mean, between Trainwreck, Knocked Up and this, love them all. This is 40 is the only one that funny people. I like funny people as well. And so it's not fair, but I'm punishing him because he's been too consistently good. I guess I can't just pick one.

55:30Adam Kempenaar:Fair enough. Those are our top five comedies of the 21st century. We want to know your picks, maybe some of your favorite directors, but those films in particular that made you laugh the most over these past 15 years. You can email us feedback at filmspotting.net. Hold up. Hold up. Hold up.

55:46Josh Larsen:You'll answer this question.

55:48Adam Kempenaar:Are you a virgin? Are you a virgin?

55:53Josh Larsen:Yeah. Not since I was 10. It all makes sense. You're a virgin. I am. Shut up. How does that happen?

56:01Adam Kempenaar:We would love to have you as a FilmSpotting family member. You can learn more at FilmSpottingFamily.com. And if you have any questions about that membership or you're just not sure if it's entirely worth it, not only can you go visit FilmSpottingFamily.com, send me an email. Send us an email. Feedback at FilmSpotting.net. Happy to chat with you about the membership. Answer any questions that you have. This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.

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