When I think back to so the movies I’ve ever seen, I think the thing that made me laugh the hardest (and best of all I didn’t see where the scene was going) is in the movie Rat Race when Jon Lovitz is driving a car and gets shoeshine on his face and burns his finger.
Would love to hear your favorites. Maybe setup the scene but don’t spoil it (or use spoiler option) so we can all watch the movie to enjoy as well.
Cheers!
Good question. It might be the Creedence driving scene in The Big Lebowski when he’s being tailed by Bunny’s family’s detective and drops the joint. I’ve seen it so many times and settled on anticipating that scene the most. The cuts between the mirror looks and his reactions while the music plays are perfect. And I still laugh.
To me, the best comedic scenes have a mix of dialog humor, physical humor and situational humor. It’s hard to find a mix of that but, again to me, when they limit the scene in some way it really shines.
As an example, car scene humor. Examples being ‘Vacation,’ ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles,’ ‘Dumb and Dumber,’ and the mentioned ‘The Big Lebowski.’
I’ll have to watch that again. I don’t remember any standout scenes though I found it an enjoyable movie overall.
Blues Brothers, the Penguin.
When I was young I use to laugh my ass off at the Bespin scene when Han meets Lando on the landing pad. Han’s face to Lando’s fake out was priceless.
I don’t know … maybe this one?
I agree about Planes, Trains and Automobiles for sure. The scene with the hicks, where the one is trying to clear his (her?) sinuses is so gross and funny it cracks me up every time I see it. Or the scene where the car gets pulled over after catching fire and Candy is saying the car is safe. I miss John Candy, he was a great comic actor.
The other movie that comes to mind is Snatch. Every time Brad Pitt talked it tickled me. I just found that so funny.
My biggest laughs both have to do with human cremains. The ash scene from The Big Lebowski had me literally slide out of my seat onto the floor when I saw it the first time in the theater. Just the way Jeff Bridges stands there, arms crossed with those sunglasses on while it coats his beard and mustache. OMG.
And, the cremains scene in Meet the Parents, with the cat. Jesus.
So many, I’ve gotten so many huge laughs that made those around me embarrassed to be seen with me in the theater or even at home. I just can’t remember any of them? Well, here are some I can remember!
Get Smart - the Swordfish Scene
“Old ‘flip-flop-Ra’ we call him” had me cackling for like 10 straight minutes. I’ll never forget it.
I mean, this was one of the best things ever when it first happened.
I’ll add more if I think of the, but that’s what came to my head in the moment!
EDIT:
Oh, almost the entire film The Dictator had me in stiches, but this scene was pantomimed at the office 10 years later it’s so classic. I had to rewind it because I missed half of it I was laughing so hard.
EDIT2:
This isn’t a movie, but it happened this morning on my run listening to Critical Role and I had to stop and catch my breath this hit me at just the right angle and I lost my mind. The set up is the girl talking at the time stamp the link should take you to is trying to talk an NPC character down through a diplomacy check. She’s… not great at it. But the help she gets from the guy sitting next to her is what really got me.
A lot of humor depends on the viewer/listener’s mood and circumstances.
The scene in Deadpool 2 where X-Force is parachuting in and they (mostly) all die horribly had me literally gasping for air in the theater, but seeing it again, it simply makes me smile and I wouldn’t rank the scene in my top 10.
For some reason this was the first thing I thought of:
Still cracks me up to this day.
Other would have to be the Jive scene in Airplane:
I thought of Airplane! too, but the scene that came to mind was this:
The thing that made me laugh the hardest ever was not in a comedy. It was when Sean Connery machine guns his own tail off in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade. I think because of a few things, the setup was so dramatic and you thought there was going it to be a big air battle, then a panning shot has him chew up his own tail and the battle is over before it starts. His “more or less” was the understated punctuation on that joke.
But yeah, the Lovitz crashing Barbie’s car into the veterans meeting and stumbling around with the hitlerstash accidentally saluting while dazed was uproarious. That was like a half hour long setup for that joke and the climax of a bunch of funny setup jokes (though the rest of the movie isn’t nearly as funny, it’s worth it for those scenes.
“I wanna go the Barbie museum!”
Death at a Funeral, the original UK production featuring Alan Tudyk & Peter Dinklage in the cast.
If you’ve seen it, you know what scene, and why Hollywood felt compelled to remake it despite not having the nous to do it justice.
Hair gel from There’s something about Mary
HAhahaha soooo good.
Oh yeah, that was one for me as well - came out of nowhere and was just perfect.
The power outage scene from Parenthood.