BBC Culture Names the Top 100 Comedies of All Time, From ‘Some Like It Hot’ to ‘Airplane!’
“Well, nobody’s perfect,” may be the last line of “Some Like It Hot,” but BBC Culture’s newest list of the 100 greatest comedies of all time comes pretty darn close. Billy Wilder’s cross-dressing buddy comedy earned the most votes, but the rest of the list is as robust and varied as one would hope, containing slam dunk smash hits as well as lesser known hidden gems.
The survey included responses from 253 film critics internationally, with freelancers writing in from Syria, Azerbaijan, and Montenegro. For a deeper dive into your favorite critics’ comedic tastes, each individual top ten list is also available for perusal. IndieWire’s Eric Kohn, David Ehrlich, and Kate Erbland participated; their number one picks were “City Lights,” “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” and “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation,” respectively.
“Dr. Strangelove,” “Annie Hall,” “Groundhog Day,” and “Duck Soup” fill out the top five, with “Life of Brian,” “Airplane!,” and “This is Spinal Tap” making the top ten. The recently deceased king of comedy Jerry Lewis made the top 100 more than once, as did Christopher Guest, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks, Harold Ramis, George Cukor, Buster Keaton, and Charlie Chaplin.
Browse the BBC’s full list of the greatest comedies of all time here.
