Which are the 20 highest rated comedy movies of all time? We all have our own personal favorites that have us bending over with laughter and tears escaping without our consent, so deciding which ones get to be on this list is no easy task.
To obtain a better estimate, we decided to use IMDB’S top 250 movies and Empire’s 301 Greatest Movies of All Time. By using these two sources of primary data, we are more likely to obtain an accurate result. From there, we selected the first twenty that fit into the comedy category, combined the results and came up with our own unique ranking.
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Let us take a moment and explain why combining multiple sources into a single “consensus” estimate produces better results. When you are using an indirect approach to produce an estimate for anything, your estimate is always biased in one or multiple ways in various magnitudes. When you combine two or more approaches it is more likely that some of these biases cancel out and the resulting estimate is more accurate. For example if you are trying to predict an election’s outcome by using a single poll, your estimates will contain a large margin of error. However, if you combine estimates from multiple polls conducted by different pollsters, the estimates will have smaller margins of error and will usually have higher accuracy.
We have been using this same approach at Insider Monkey to identify the best stocks to invest in the stock market by calculating the consensus picks of 700+ hedge fund managers. Any hedge fund manager may be biased in one direction or the other at any point in time. However, our research had shown that their consensus stock picks actually beat the market by double digits annually in a back testing covering 13 years. At the end of August 2012 we launched an investment newsletter being encouraged by these promising results. Guess how this strategy performed in the 3 years since August 2012? One word: amazing. The strategy returned 102% in its first 3 years versus a gain of 48.8% for the S&P 500 ETF (SPY). You can read the details of this investment strategy here. Our strategy doesn’t beat the market every month but on average it produced much better returns on average. This is generally the case when we use multiple sources to calculate a consensus estimate.
Finally, if you are interested in our top 20 highest rated comedies, you should definitely check out our article: The 20 Highest Rated Movies of All-Time
20. Annie Hall (1977)
To start from bottom to top, we have the movie Annie Hall. Originally the film was supposed to be called “Anhedonia”, and other names like “A Rollercoaster Named Desire”, “It Had to Be Jew” were considered. Finally, they named it after actress Diane Keaton, whose original name was Diane Hall and she usually went by Annie.
Rating: 8,1
Votes: 173.571
19. Groundhog Day (1993)
Bill Murray is one of the funniest actors of our time, but shooting this film wasn’t much fun for him, as he was actually bitten twice by the groundhog and had to have anti rabies injections.
Ratings: 8,1
Votes:392.183
18. The Princess Bride (1987)
Can you imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger playing the part of of Fezzic? Well, he almost did, but by the time the movie was being shooted he was too expensive, and Andre the Giant ended up portraying the beloved character.
Rating: 8,2
Votes: 268.936
17. The Sting (1973)
The limp Robert Shaw’s character has during the movie is actually real. Shaw had injured himself a few days before the filming began, and along with the director they decided to make it a character trait.
Rating: 8.4
Votes: 158,591
16. Up (2009)
The first few minutes of the movie “Up” had most of us in tears instead of laughter, and not exactly for the fun reasons.
Rating: 8.3
Votes: 581,489
15. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
The scene shown below, that also happens to be one of the most iconic, came out as a result of the low budget of the movie. The producers couldn’t afford having horses in the film, so they used coconuts to imitate the noises they made.
Rating: 8.3
Votes:348,968
14. The Breakfast Club (1985)
The screenplay for this movie was actually written in just two days, back in 1982 by John Hughes.
Ratings: 7,9
Votes:233.449
13. Toy Story 3 (2010)
A lot of crazy things can happen during the making of a movie like Toy Story 3, but, one of the craziest happened before the process began, when the animation team and director Lee Unkrich agreed to shave their heads so as to represent a “clean start”.
Rating: 8.4
Votes: 481,441
12. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
If you thought Leonardo Dicaprio had to take dancing lessons for this movie, then you are mistaken. According to Dicaprio, he used to be a “pop locker”, so he already had the knowledge to improvise those moves.
Rating: 8,2
Votes: 648.578
11. The Apartment (1960)
This was the last black and white movie to win an Oscar for Best Picture up until “The Artist” won in 2011.
Rating: 8.3
Votes: 98,015
10. The Intouchables (2011)
Halfway down the 20 Highest Rated Comedy Movies of All Time, we have “The Intouchables”. The relationship between the two actors that play the main characters is both funny and beautiful. We are glad it turned out that way, as movie directors Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakach had to actually change the nationality of the real life Driss because they wanted Omar Sy to play the part so bad.
Rating: 8.6
Votes: 428,930
9. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
The crew that shooted some aerial footage over Greenland, where a secret US military base was located, were suspected of being Soviet spies and were forced out of the plane after accidentally filming it.
Rating:8.5
Votes: 313,909
8. Some Like It Hot (1959)
Making the movie featuring Marilyn Monroe wasn’t that much fun. Only after the director had written the line on a blackboard and after 46 takes could the actress get the phrase “It’s me, Sugar” right.
Rating: 8.3
Votes: 159,141
7. The Big Lebowski (1998)
In the movie we never know where from The Dude gets his money, but after it came out it, was revealed that he was actually an heir to the person that invented the Rubik’s Cube.
Rating: 8,2
Votes: 483.666
6. City Lights (1931)
Despite being a silent movie when the sound era had just began, City Lights was Charles Chaplin most successful production, and out of all the films he made, this was his favourite one.
Rating: 8.6
Votes: 94,732
5. Life Is Beautiful (1997)
We are excited to present you the number five movie on this list, though admittedly not as excited as Roberto Benigni when he won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film, check out the video here:
Rating: 8.6
Votes: 367,537
4. Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
Donald O’Connor was smoking up to four packs of cigarettes a day while filming the movie, which made the dancing scenes to be quite exhausting. By the end of filming the “Make Em Laugh” number, O’Connor was so exhausted he had to take several days off to rest, and because of an accident with the initial footage, he had to do it all over again when he came back.
Rating: 8.4
Votes: 135,364
3. Toy Story (1995)
Remember the little three eyed green toys in the movie? Of course you do, you probably even tried to mimic their funny voices. Surprisingly, this wasn’t done by editing the audio, the voice actors had to simply inhale a bit of helium and pronounce the famous words: “The Claaaww”.
Rating:8.3
Votes: 548,565
2. Amélie (2001)
This beautiful film was originally written with the actress Emily Watson in mind to play the role of Amélie, but in the end Watson turned it down. Audrey Tautou finally got the part after Director Jean-Pierre Jeunet saw a poster that portrayed her and arranged a meeting.
Rating: 8.4
Votes: 482,843
1. Back to the Future (1985)
At the end of our 20 Highest Rated Comedy Movies of All Time list, we have the film “Back To the Future”. In the year of its 30th anniversary, we are still glad that producers decided to use the car as the time machine, instead of a refrigerator as it was originally planned, and kept the title name rather than changing it to Spaceman from Pluto as it was suggested.
Rating: 8.5
Votes: 639,987
