The best comedy movies to watch on Netflix right now

Rom-coms have the tricky task of straddling the “rom” and the “com” part, with a lot of star-steered vehicles leaning toward the former. thankfully focuses on the latter; there are a lot of laughs packed into its friendship-becomes-something-more story. In keeping with , ABMM offered director Nahnatchka Khan her film directorial debut; Grimm scribe Michael Golamco wrote the screenplay with the movie’s stars, Ali Wong and Randall Park. The film smartly kicks off by showing the pair as adorable childhood best friends, so that we’re rooting for them right out of the gate. []

Everyone knows the old saw about anthology movies being less than the sum of their parts; it’s a tale as old as the singing cowboy or the stagecoach ghost story. Joel and Ethan Coen should be especially familiar, having contributed to and faced assumptions that was really supposed to be a TV series. But it’s hard to imagine breaking their six Western mini-movies into a Netflix “season,” because they complement each other so gracefully. Set in a beguiling netherworld between unforgiving real-life grimness and heightened tall-tale pulpiness, the stories range from delightfully mordant musical slapstick starring Tim Blake Nelson to a heartbreaking gut-punch starring Zoe Kazan, to name just two standouts. Death haunts the whole thing, which builds toward the simultaneously hilarious and hushed “The Mortal Remains,” as satisfying and language-besotted a closer as the Coens have ever concocted. Their sometimes-fatalist outlook has seen them tagged as nihilists, a group they savaged as well as anyone in The Big Lebowski. But nihilists don’t put this much thought into endings. []

Mel Brooks was understandably apprehensive about cramming his movie so full of racial slurs. But Richard Pryor, one of the film’s five co-writers, reassured him that it was okay, since the bad guys were the ones saying all the vile shit. (Brooks wanted Pryor to play the lead in the movie, but Warner Bros. didn’t think Pryor would be dependable enough to show up for work every day.) Pryor was right. Blazing Saddles is, in effect, a knowingly absurd comedy about how dumb racism is. A rapacious rich guy wants to run all the people out of a small town because the land’s about to be worth a lot of money, so he sends in a Black sheriff, knowing that the town’s residents will be too blinded by their own racism to look after their self-interests. Really, Blazing Saddles has as much to say about American capitalism as does. []

For a movie where someone says “motherfucker” every few seconds, Dolemite Is My Name is surprisingly wholesome. The film is a biopic about stand-up comedian and blaxploitation leading man Rudy Ray Moore, an Arkansas native who, after several failed attempts at becoming famous, finally succeeded by combining the rhythms of traditional African American storytelling with the sexually liberated energy of the early ’70s on raunchy X-rated “party records” with titles like . And as such, any film about Moore’s life that didn’t include wall-to-wall dirty jokes would be a disservice to his foul-mouthed legacy. At the same time, however, posits Moore’s story as a feel-good inspirational tale about outsiders succeeding despite all odds. And while Moore’s sexuality was than this movie lets on, characterizing him as an underdog who forces Hollywood to notice him through sheer talent and force of will is right on. []

In a lot of ways, resembles Ferrell retreating into a greatest-hits mode, in sync with a movie about cheesy pop music. As in Step Brothers, he plays a young-at-heart, older-in-body goofball who lives with a single parent and harbors dreams of becoming a singer. He sports long hair and a ridiculous costume, just like he does in Blades Of Glory, and the narrative is driven by a contest—a singing competition, now that he’s run out of athletic ones. Eurovision even boasts an unwieldy subtitle in the style of The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby or The Legend Of Ron Burgundy. But like a scrappy underdog with no rational shot at winning an international singing contest, this Netflix production proves surprisingly lively. It highlights something that has always been a part of Ferrell’s work—his understanding of American mediocrity, and his delight in poking at its oblivious limitations. Eurovision both softens and expands his worldview, allowing him to indulge some small-town-dreamer pathos without getting into hokey Americana. If he’s playing the hits, he’s starting to interpret them with style. [Jesse Hassenger]

There’s plenty to admire about , not the least of which is its brevity. Netflix, after all, is a great offender in the “too much content” era in which we live, and we wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve been pitching the creative team of Frankenstein (director Daniel Gray Longino, writer John Levenstein, and star David Harbour) on more episodes. Somehow, though, Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein remains, for now, at least, a standalone comedy special clocking in at 28 minutes. May the gods bless it for that. It begins with Harbour, the veteran actor best known as ’ chief of police, introducing the mockumentary as an exploration of the career of his late father, David Harbour Jr. (also played by Harbour), a master of “televised theatricals.” Specifically, Harbour wants to mine a screening of his father’s final play, the ornate, overwrought Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein, for clues into his temperament and parental absence. As one might expect of Levenstein, an alum, that’s about a season’s worth of story—a lot to be explored in 28 minutes. A brisk pace and general disinterest in lingering on Harbour’s myriad revelations helps in that regard, as does the aesthetic itself, which is spot-on in its re-creation of the chintzy, self-serious televised mysteries of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. []

Forgetting Sarah Marshall could be pegged as yet another Apatow tale of arrested adolescence, but Segel has always played more a serial monogamist than a horndog, and his earnest, self-deprecating screen persona graces the film’s crudest moments with a kind of innocence. He and director Nicholas Stoller also spread the laughs around to a fine ensemble, including Apatow regulars like Paul Rudd and Jonah Hill, 30 Rock’s Jack McBrayer as a spooked Christian newlywed, SNL’s Bill Hader as Segel’s reluctant confidante, and a scene-stealing William Baldwin as Bell’s smarmy, David Caruso-like TV co-star. If the film has a nagging flaw, it’s that the women are bright but slightly underserved, especially in a mean-spirited third-act scene that throws the tone off completely. Until then, Forgetting Sarah Marshall gives another Apatow player a much-deserved day in the sun. Maybe Jay Baruchel or Martin Starr will soon get turns in the rotation. []

, an enjoyably goofy adventure that manages to bring some freshness to the moldy “cantankerous adult reluctantly bonds with adorable kid” subgenre. Starring Sam Neill as the cantankerous adult, the film plays a bit like Jurassic Park minus Lex and dinosaurs, mining humor from the incongruity of its odd-couple pairing and basic fish-out-of-water elements, plus some Flight Of The Conchord-ish wit. []

, from writer-director Jim Strouse (), nails the trendsetting speech patterns and whip-smart witticisms familiar to listeners of Jessica Williams’ podcast with fellow comedian Phoebe Robinson, 2 Dope Queens, and writes Williams as a confident, charismatic young woman who rocks the hell out of a jumpsuit and who’s incapable of living on anyone’s terms but her own. Chris O’Dowd and Williams play well off of each other, conveying the stages of a new relationship from awkward first date to first big fight with an easy and believable chemistry. She plays well off of Lakeith Stanfield as well, in recurring interludes where Jessica imagines getting the last word with her feckless ex, which add a welcome dash of surrealism to the proceedings. The film does contain a few truly funny bits, like Jessica’s gift of a homemade child’s guide to dismantling the patriarchy to her conservative pregnant sister, making it feel like an enjoyable hangout with a funny friend throughout its 85-minute running time. []

In terms of plot, is nothing new. In fact, it’s simply the latest in a recent series of films, like and and , about a couple coincidentally caught up in wacky but legitimately dangerous criminal activity. In this case, it’s hipster creatives Jibran (Kumail Nanjiani) and Leilani (Issa Rae) who get pulled into a blackmail ring after they accidentally run over a cyclist with their car in the midst of a relationship-ending fight. Add a New Orleans location that isn’t especially necessary to the story and a dinner party full of judgmental friends (and one hunky coworker), and the Mad Libs card is pretty much filled out. The dialogue is the real star here—that, and the chemistry between the leads, of course. []

doesn’t confine its screen-time observations to metaphors: As a synth-y score builds and the Mitchells embark on a last-ditch road trip to drop Katie off at college, a new line of robo-helpers rebel against their masters, efficiently creating a (bloodless, family-friendly) apocalypse. By sheer luck, the Mitchells evade capture and become humanity’s last long-shot hope. When other humans are shipped off to the “rhombus of infinite subjugation” and rogue comic-relief robots voiced by SNL alumni become crucial to the plot, the Mitchells’ animated lineage becomes more clear: This is the latest work godfathered by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, architects of , , and … []

never wastes a joke-telling opportunity. The opening credits are a rolling snowball of jokes. The songs by Python associate (and future Rutle) Neil Innes are whirligigs of funny rhymes and piercing insults. “Camelot Song” is matched to slapstick choreography—and one key cutaway—mounted in the difficultly lit interior of a castle that had to serve as multiple castles due to uncooperative Scottish officials. As part of the independent spirit of the enterprise, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam stepped up to direct, essentially learning on the job while sharing a vision that sets the postmodern absurdity of Arthur and his knights against a backdrop of moody fantasy and barbaric history. Like the best Python products, Holy Grail speaks in a single voice, but the Terrys’ individual directorial signatures remain evident: Jones’ focus on performance (the Pythons are all in peak form here) and coverage with an eye toward putting the funniest version together in the edit; Gilliam’s animation-bred control-freak tendencies colliding with his flair for visual clutter and chaos. []

Not since has a movie gotten as much mileage out of having its hero fuck up as does. Shane Black’s entertaining but shaggy homage to -era detective series and mid-to-late 1970s cheese finds its offbeat gumshoe in Holland March (Ryan Gosling), a smartass with no sense of smell who tends to make bad guesses, lose guns, misread addresses, drink whatever’s handed to him, and defenestrate himself repeatedly; early on, he tries to break into a window, only to slice his wrist up so badly that he passes out from blood loss. Structured like a TV pilot, the movie partners March with Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe), the Yoo-hoo-loving goon who broke the private eye’s arm just days before, in the search for a missing activist. []

Opening with a diagnosis of cancer that’s soon revealed to be terminal, more or less amounts to an hour and a half of slow-motion assisted suicide. Sound like fun? Remarkably, this low-budget two-hander—arriving on Netflix just a few weeks after its Sundance premiere—manages to generate a fair number of laughs, even as it does full justice to the scenario’s underlying gravity. Written by Alex Lehmann (who also directed) and Mark Duplass (who also plays one of the two lead roles), Paddleton takes its emotional cue from Terms Of Endearment, expanding that film’s final stretch into an entire feature and replacing mother-daughter bonds with the deep but usually unspoken love shared by two male buddies. A bit of cheating is necessary to achieve the stripped-down dynamic that Lehmann and Duplass apparently wanted, but the payoff is an atypically intimate portrait of testosterone-fueled friendship. []

Typing “Pee-wee” into the Netflix search bar brings up a and a Playhouse right alongside . This film—directed by Wonder Showzen’s John Lee, produced by Judd Apatow, and co-written by Paul Reubens with ’s Paul Rust—doesn’t shy from comparisons to Pee-wee’s first, Tim Burton-helmed big-screen outing. The parallels are right there in the title, but the films also follow roughly the same structure, a hero’s journey that breaks Pee-wee out of his idiosyncratic small-town routine and sends him on an epic road trip. Pee-wee’s Big Holiday is a comeback vehicle, but it’s also an attempt to reprise one of the funniest movies ever made. To a large degree, it succeeds. []

The main characters of Tamara Jenkins’ , Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) and Richard (Paul Giamatti), are a fortysomething Manhattan couple who have spent a small fortune trying to have a baby—an obsession that their friends and relations liken to an addiction. She is a novelist who put off having kids for too long so she could focus on her writing; he used to be a theater director, but now sells pickles. They’ve had bad luck with adoption agencies and fertility clinics, but they keep trying. Like compulsive gamblers, they borrow money from Richard’s brother, Charlie (), a successful periodontist who lives outside the city, for treatments with a low-single-digit rate of success. Of all the passed opportunities in their lives, parenthood is the last one they can’t let go. Whether they really want to be parents remains an open question. []

, the surrealist, wildly enjoyable 1993 cartoon created by Joe Murray, has what you might call a “bad boy” reputation. Static Cling maintains the original show’s look, sound, and aesthetic perfectly (although Philbert appears a bit off-model at times). It takes a moment to get reacquainted with the show’s energy and pacing, which is a bit slower and more easygoing than one might remember, but by the time Rocko, Heffer, and Philbert land back in O-Town, you’ll feel right at home. And the more genuine storyline that’s explored is a much more significant piece worthy of consideration, so much so that it’s worth re-evaluating Rocko’s Modern Life as a whole. []

It would be easy and accurate to describe Sausage Party as a parody of contemporary family-friendly animation, particularly of the Pixar-produced variety. It explores the secret life, unseen by humans, of seemingly inanimate objects; it sends its celebrity-voiced lead character on an epic journey that ends in an antic showdown; and in a further nod to Disney heritage, it opens with a song co-written by studio stalwart Alan Menken. Yet this vulgar cartoon from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg doesn’t limit itself to inserting “fuck”s (verbally and otherwise) into the alive-object narrative. Rogen and Goldberg start with spoofery and work their way into something bolder and stranger; it’s as if playing in the Pixar sandbox, or a reasonable approximation thereof, can’t help but inspire creativity. []

Though tagged as the director’s bid for commercial success, School Of Rock is as philosophical in its own way as Slacker or Waking Life. It was made by people who not only know the music well enough to create magnificent flowcharts around it, but also understand how a simple, soul-stirring rock song can seem revolutionary. Beyond Black’s hilarious lessons on power stances, middle-period Pink Floyd, and the all-important G-chord on bass is a design for living (“You’re not hardcore / unless you live hardcore”) that’s more instructive than anything the simps in Dead Poets’ Society ever learned. []

This NYC-set heartbreak story is written and directed by creator Jennifer Kaytin Robinson and stars Gina Rodriguez, Brittany Snow, and DeWanda Wise as three longtime best friends. When Rodriguez’s Jenny gets dumped by her boyfriend of nine years, Nate (LaKeith Stanfield), she suddenly has to take inventory of her life, evaluate what she wants, and reflect on nearly a decade of memories she built with a person who suddenly can’t be a permanent part of her life anymore. is one of the genre’s most gutting and complete portraits of a breakup and its sticky, chaotic aftermath. []

At first glance, is a silly satire of early ’70s blaxploitation flicks like or that adds what writer-director Juel Taylor and writer Tony Rettenmaier call a “… dash of .” Fortunately, the filmmakers here have something more in mind, as they create a meticulously constructed world to tell a tale that uses age-old theories, myths, and conspiracies—some proven to be accurate, like the infamous Tuskegee experiments—to explain the woes of the Hood. As the movie continues, it adds heavy layers of social commentary to a rather nimble and funny genre mashup, tackling the relationship of Black folks to Black folks, both despite and because of the influence of white folks in our communities. Clones notwithstanding, the movie becomes a drama and the “pimp and hoe” schtick becomes the foundation of a more thoughtful commentary. It’s funny and more thoughtful than it looks while still maintaining itself as a trenchant social satire. Also, for the record, there is no character named Tyrone. [Tim Cogshell]

, To All The Boys combines the stylized cinematography of a Wes Anderson movie with the heart of a John Hughes film and the spirit of the best of the 1990s high school rom-coms. Based on the first in Jenny Han’s best-selling trilogy of young adult novels, centers on introverted high school junior Lara Jean Covey (Lana Condor), whose world comes crashing down when her secret stash of love letters accidentally make their way out into the world. To avoid dealing with the fallout from the note sent to her older sister’s ex-boyfriend Josh Sanderson (Israel Broussard), Lara Jean pulls a classic move and impulsively kisses another letter recipient, Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo). Once Peter gets a handle on Lara Jean’s situation, he suggests they start fake dating each other so that Lara Jean can avoid Josh and he can win back his ex-girlfriend by making her jealous. They draw up a contract of ground rules (no to any more kissing, yes to Sixteen Candles-inspired back pocket spins), and set about duping their school—both in person and via social media. Soon enough, however, Lara Jean and Peter’s fake relationship leads to some real feelings. []

brings with it all of the series’ sorely missed cast members, including Kimmy (Ellie Kemper); Titus, the greatest roommate in the history of roommates (Tituss Burgess); Kimmy’s snooty former boss, Jacqueline (Jane Krakowski); and Kimmy’s enterprising former landlady, Lillian (Carol Kane). Jon Hamm—in his hilarious depiction as Kimmy’s captor, Richard Wayne Gary Wayne—showed up all too sporadically in the series’ later seasons (granted, his character was in prison). But as the title suggests, he plays a large part here, as Kimmy finds out that Dick has another bunker of mole women, who she has to save mere days before her wedding, to Prince Frederick (Daniel Radcliffe). Using the same technology seen in Black Mirror’s but with much funnier results, Kimmy Vs. The Reverend tracks the titular eternally optimistic redhead as she heads out on her biggest adventure yet. Intriguing tech options aside, all the one-liner, blink-and-you’ll-miss-them jokes that made Kimmy Schmidt so much fun in the first place are thankfully still intact. []

Even (maybe especially) for , a new Happy Madison picture getting uploaded to Netflix does not inspire much genuine hope for a good time. Imagine my surprise, then, that Adam Sandler enlisted his old pal Robert Smigel to make , his best broad comedy in at least a decade—a funny and sweetly grounded story about a couple of dads hitting assorted bumps in the lead-up to their kids’ wedding. Smigel ditches most of the usual Sandler hangers-on, keeps the best ones (Rock, Dratch, Buscemi), and makes a movie rooted in the specifics of suburban Long Island, rather than the latest Happy Madison-favored resort. []