Need a pick-me-up and don’t quite know which comedy movie to put on? There’s certainly a lot to choose from. It might only take Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly failing at interviews in “Step Brothers” to get the job done. Perhaps you always get chuckles from watching the late John Candy wake up with Steve Martin to find that those aren’t really pillows in “Planes, Trains and Automobiles.” While those laugh magnets are comedy gems in their own right, science has proven one film to be the funniest of all time.
In 2012, Forbes shared how now-defunct LoveFilm got down to the nitty (and giggle-filled) gritty to uncover which comedy movie was the funniest of all time. After polling their members on the top ten funniest movies, a dedicated batch of LoveFilm employees sat down and logged how often they laughed per minute for each entry. The top result was an absolute classic: none other than the 1980 Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker spoof “Airplane!”
“Surely you can’t be serious?” we hear you cry. Well, we are serious. (Don’t say it … don’t say it.) It turns out “Airplane!” delivered one laugh every 20 seconds, or three laughs per minute. With that rapid-fire pace, it’s clear that — among the select few big-screen gut-busters on the list — the spoof set 30,000 feet high was ahead of the rest. That’s not to say the runners-up weren’t worth a chuckle or two, either.
The Hangover and The Naked Gun are almost the funniest films
Without a doubt, some of the jokes in “Airplane!” haven’t aged a day. It’s crammed with so many quips that some are easy to miss on the first viewing. That’s what’s made it not only a classic comedy, but also the greatest film ever made, according to Vice.
Outside Leslie Nielsen checking people for food poisoning and a plane outputting questionable autopilot performance, one film that came close to knocking “Airplane!” from its top spot was Todd Phillips’ 2009 movie, “The Hangover.” According to Forbes, the wake-up call in Vegas that involved missing teeth and Mike Tyson accumulated a commendable 2.4 lpm (laughs per minute). Trailing behind that was another Leslie Nielsen laugh-fest from 1988, “The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!,” which drew an impressive 2.3 lpm.
Other entries in the pile included “Superbad,” “Anchorman,” “American Pie” (as poorly as it might have aged), and “Bridesmaids.” As great as they are, though, they can’t hold a candle to the spoof that so many have tried to replicate. “The Naked Gun” might come close, and even the likes of “Scary Movie” has dipped its toes into a similar funny pool. But “Airplane!” will always be the number one comedy worth going back to.