Raising Arizona (1987)

Dirs Joel Coen, Ethan Coen (Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter, John Goodman)
‘Would you shop at a store called Unpainted Huffheins?’

A wild and raucous world away from their laconic desert-noir debut ‘Blood Simple’, the Coen brothers’ second outing sees them showcase their genius for creating jabbering arias of breakneck cartoon anarchy that never, ever threaten to tip over into ‘zaniness’. Baby-snatching may not strike you as the perfect trigger for comedy dynamite, but this is a film shot through with so much goofy charm and homespun warmth, and giddy with such an uncommon degree of cinematic zest that you just know that abducted blond munchkin Nathan Arizona Jr is in the safest of hands on his turbocharged odyssey through trailer-park Americana. A cracked and dusty gem that’s too often excluded from broadsheet rundowns of the Coens’ very best work. ALD

Mean Girls

Dir Mark Waters (Lindsay Lohan, Jonathan Bennett, Rachel McAdams)
‘She’s fabulous but she’s evil.’

Where does ethnography meet teen comedy? At North Shore High! Lindsay Lohan stars as Cady, the sensitive and naive heroine – you could get away with such casting in 2004 – who gets a rude awakening when she enters the school system after being home-taught by zoologist parents in Africa. She’s soon dealing with the complexities of adolescent social interaction, most of it underhanded and bitchy, while trying to keep her head. The script, by Tina Fey, is inspired by high-school ethnography 'Queen Bees and Wannabes' and offers genuine insight and empathy as well as a hefty dose of put-downs and comeuppances. BW

The Pink Panther (1963)

Dir Blake Edwards (David Niven, Peter Sellers, Robert Wagner)
'Simone, where is my Surété Scotland Yard-type mackintosh?'

The first in a long-running series of five films featuring the clumsy antics of Peter Sellers's bungling pseudo-French detective Inspector Clouseau, 'The Pink Panther' is also the most measured, languorous and subtle of the set. Not wishing to sound patronising, but there's a nagging suspicion that one or two of our contributors for this poll may have mistakenly or forgetfully chosen this diamond-heist comedy as a generic title for one of the others in the series, possibly 'The Pink Panther Strikes Again' (at number 95). While often very funny, Sellers's incompetent character only came to the fore from the second film, 'A Shot in the Dark', onwards. Consequently, anyone seeing this expecting wall-to-wall Sellers may be a mite disappointed. But hey, it still knocks spots off the awful 2006 remake. DA

Sullivan's Travels

Dir Preston Sturges (Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake, Robert Warwick)
‘There's a lot to be said for making people laugh. It isn't much, but it's better than nothing in this cock-eyed caravan.’

The appearance of Preston Sturges’s meaning-of-life masterpiece at a paltry 83 is a damning indictment of the state of film education in this country. Believe it or not, there was comedy before 'Monty Python' and 'Saturday Night Live', and some of it was pretty damn funny. ‘Sullivan’s Travels’ is perhaps best known today as being the movie that ‘inspired’ the Coens' ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’, but it deserves so much more. At once witty, wacky, wholesome, devious and devastatingly smart, it showcases a writer-director at the absolute pinnacle of his game, offering up not just a wildly entertaining Hollywood romp but a razor-sharp (and explosively political) examination of why comedy matters at all. A work of genius, plain and simple. And damn, Veronica Lake! TH

Aliens in 'Galaxy Quest'

Dir Dean Parisot (Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman)
‘By Grabthar's Hammer, by the suns of Warvan, you shall be avenged!’

There aren’t too many films that work so completely that you couldn’t – if really pushed to do so – pick out the odd tiny fault. ‘Godfather II’? Bit long. ‘Rear Window’? Enough already with the windows! But ‘Trek’-spoof ‘Galaxy Quest’ is such an elegantly conceived and precision-tooled belter that it gets as close as a movie can to achieving all-round perfection. A big-hearted film that boasts some mighty action sequences and a perfectly drawn cast, it also displays the love and understanding for its original source material that’s necessary to sell any genre parody. Director Dean Parisot misfired next time with 2005 flop ‘Fun With Dick and Jane’ and has since been demoted to directing TV. A shame. ALD

Caddyshack (1980)

 
Dir Harold Ramis (Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield, Bill Murray)
‘Did somebody step on a duck?’

The Bushwood Country Club is either one of Florida’s more exclusive and prestigious golf clubs or ‘a crummy snobatorium’. The latter description is courtesy of Rodney Dangerfield, the wisecracking, cigar-chomping, ogling vulgarian who horrifies the patrician stiffs running the Bushwood club when he decides to join. For those unbelievers who maintain golf is boring, this exquisitely crass film offers as a riposte Chevy Chase’s womanizing zen golfer, Bill Murray’s incoherent, gopher-hating groundsman and Dangerfield’s endless one-liners. Plus, some valuable advice on how to clear a full swimming pool with an unwrapped chocolate bar. EL

The Great Dictator

Chaplin acts the roles of Hitler (alias Adenoid Hynkel) and a Jewish barber who returns as an amnesiac, decades after an accident in World War I, totally unaware of the rise of Nazism and the persecution of his people. The representation of Hitler is vaudeville goonery all the way, but minus the acid wit and inventive energy that Groucho Marx managed in his impersonation of authoritarianism gone berserk in Duck Soup. Mr Nobody is eventually carted away to a concentration camp, which leads to a reversal of roles when the barber escapes and is mistaken for Hynkel on the eve of the invasion of Austria. Cue for an impassioned speech about freedom and democracy calculated to jerk tears out of the surliest fascist, in a manner startlingly similar to Hitler's very own delivery.