People ask me about the funniest movies list and wonder how things get included. To summarize, in 2017 I searched the internet for lists of “Funniest Movies of All Time” and I specifically looked for lists that were made by groups, organizations, or voting, rather than on any one person’s opinions. Here are the sources I ended up using:
- IGN (13 Mar 2012)
- American Film Institute (27 Jun 2000)
- Boston Globe (28 Apr 2014)
- The Telegraph (24 Mar 2017)
- Bravo Television Network (1 Jul 2006)
- UnderScoopFire! (1 Jul 2016)
- Rolling Stone (21 May 2014)
- The Top Tens (2,000+votes) (5 Oct 2017)
- Ranker.com (3 Oct 2017)
- BBC Culture (22 Aug 2017)
- CollegeHumor (15 Feb 2011)
- Empire (25 Jul 2017)
- Empire Online (voters)
- Time Out London (10 Jan 2017)
- Cinelinx (23 Sep 2016)
- Lovefilm.com (21 Sep 2012)
- Splitsider.com (31 Mar 2015)
I brought all their lists into Excel and assigned them numerical values based on their rank in each list. The first tab in the spreadsheet is the Raw Data. This is just the lists directly imported as I found them. The Tabulation tab is where I combined all the lists into one huge list, including the ranking each one received.
The rankings only mean so much, though, if the movie is only in one or two of the lists. Movies that show up on most of the lists are obviously more deserving of a higher rank than ones that are only on a couple. So I took each movie’s average ranking score and weighted it based on a count of how many lists the movie was in. That’s the last tab in the spreadsheet, and that’s the source of my final list. See below for the top 50 to give you an idea. You can use the spreadsheet for the complete list of 343 movies that were on at least one of those 17 lists I used.
Rank | Title | AVERAGE RANK | COUNT | WEIGHTED RANK |
1 | Airplane! (1980) | 5.75 | 16 | 36 |
2 | Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) | 8.15 | 13 | 63 |
3 | Blazing Saddles (1974) | 13.07 | 14 | 93 |
4 | Annie Hall (1977) | 11.20 | 10 | 112 |
5 | The Big Lebowski (1998) | 13.50 | 12 | 113 |
6 | Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) | 16.86 | 14 | 120 |
7 | Life of Brian (1979) | 13.82 | 11 | 126 |
8 | Dr. Strangelove (1964) | 18.62 | 13 | 143 |
9 | This Is Spinal Tap (1984) | 22.67 | 15 | 151 |
10 | Borat (2006) | 18.36 | 11 | 167 |
11 | Caddyshack (1980) | 19.18 | 11 | 174 |
12 | Some Like It Hot (1959) | 17.60 | 10 | 176 |
13 | Animal House (1978) | 21.33 | 12 | 178 |
14 | Duck Soup (1933) | 16.44 | 9 | 183 |
15 | The Naked Gun (1988) | 20.18 | 11 | 183 |
16 | Groundhog Day (1993) | 20.27 | 11 | 184 |
17 | Dumb & Dumber (1994) | 17.67 | 9 | 196 |
18 | Ghostbusters (1984) | 28.07 | 14 | 201 |
19 | Young Frankenstein (1974) | 30.71 | 14 | 219 |
20 | The Hangover (2009) | 18.25 | 8 | 228 |
21 | The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005) | 25.44 | 9 | 283 |
22 | The Jerk (1979) | 34.92 | 12 | 291 |
23 | Superbad (2007) | 25.38 | 8 | 317 |
24 | Shaun of the Dead (2004) | 29.00 | 9 | 322 |
25 | There’s Something About Mary (1998) | 36.91 | 11 | 336 |
26 | Withnail & I (1987) | 17.20 | 5 | 344 |
27 | South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999) | 41.42 | 12 | 345 |
28 | Office Space (1999) | 35.20 | 10 | 352 |
29 | The Producers (1968) | 24.86 | 7 | 355 |
30 | The General (1926) | 21.33 | 6 | 356 |
31 | Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987) | 32.56 | 9 | 362 |
32 | The Blues Brothers (1980) | 36.90 | 10 | 369 |
33 | Step Brothers (2008) | 26.43 | 7 | 378 |
34 | Raising Arizona (1987) | 30.63 | 8 | 383 |
35 | Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) | 27.43 | 7 | 392 |
36 | Happy Gilmore (1996) | 23.67 | 6 | 394 |
37 | Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997) | 28.00 | 7 | 400 |
38 | Bringing up Baby (1938) | 21.60 | 5 | 432 |
39 | Old School (2003) | 34.63 | 8 | 433 |
40 | Bridesmaids (2011) | 27.17 | 6 | 453 |
41 | A Fish Called Wanda (1988) | 36.75 | 8 | 459 |
42 | MASH (1970) | 33.00 | 7 | 471 |
43 | National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983) | 28.67 | 6 | 478 |
44 | Modern Times (1936) | 19.75 | 4 | 494 |
45 | Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) | 34.57 | 7 | 494 |
46 | American Pie (1999) | 34.57 | 7 | 494 |
47 | Napoleon Dynamite (2004) | 34.86 | 7 | 498 |
48 | Wayne’s World (1992) | 31.67 | 6 | 528 |
49 | City Lights (1931) | 21.25 | 4 | 531 |
50 | A Night at the Opera (1935) | 22.75 | 4 | 569 |