Best Hilarious Movies
Ranked by how strongly each film carries the visual signature of hilarious cinema — measured across 3,838 indexed frames from 50 films, against a 408,752-frame catalogue baseline. Not by box office, and not by vote.
Hilarious films over-index on blazer, neon sign and necktie — the objects that make the genre recognisable before a line is spoken.
- 1
The King Of Comedy (1982)
Martin ScorseseDP Fred SchulerIMDb 7.8TMDB 7.8See in full on FrameThrower →
Rupert Pupkin is obsessed with becoming a comedy great. However, when he confronts his idol, talk show host Jerry Langford, with a plea to perform on the Jerry's show, he is only given the run-around. He does not give up, however, but persists in stalking Jerry until he gets what he wants. Eventually he must team up with his psychotic Langford-obsessed friend Masha to kidnap the talk show host in hopes of finally getting to perform his stand-up routine.
- 2
Ricky Stanicky (2024)
Peter FarrellyDP John BrawleyIMDb 6.2TMDB 6.5See in full on FrameThrower →
When three childhood best friends pull a prank gone wrong, they invent the imaginary Ricky Stanicky to get them out of trouble. Twenty years later, the trio still uses the nonexistent Ricky as a handy alibi for their immature behavior. But when their spouses and partners get suspicious and demand to finally meet the fabled Mr. Stanicky, the guilty trio decide to hire a washed-up actor and raunchy celebrity impersonator to bring him to life.
- 3
Werner HerzogDP Peter ZeitlingerIMDb 6.6TMDB 6.2See in full on FrameThrower →
After Katrina, police sergeant Terence McDonagh rescues a prisoner, hurts his back in the process and earns a promotion to lieutenant plus an addiction to cocaine and painkillers. Six months later, a family is murdered over drugs; Terence runs the investigation. His drug-using prostitute girlfriend, his alcoholic father's dog, run-ins with two old women and a well-connected john, gambling losses, a nervous young witness, and thefts of police property put Terence's job and then his life in danger. He starts seeing things. He wants a big score to get out from under mounting debts, so he joins forces with drug dealers. The murders remain unsolved. A bad lieutenant gets worse.
- 4
Rush Hour (1998)
Brett RatnerDP Adam GreenbergIMDb 7.0TMDB 7.1See in full on FrameThrower →
Cultures clash and tempers flares as the two cops named Detective Inspector Lee a Hong Kong Detective and Detective James Carter FBI, a big-mouthed work-alone Los Angeles cop who are from different worlds discovers one thing in common: they can't stand each other. With time running out, they must join forces to catch the criminals and save the eleven-year-old Chinese girl of the Chinese consul named Soo Yung.
- 5
Sorry to Bother You (2018)
Boots RileyDP Doug EmmettIMDb 6.9TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →
In an alternate version of Oakland, Cassius Green gets a telemarketing job and finds the commission paid job a dispiriting struggle as a black man selling to predominately white people over the phone. That changes when a veteran advises him to use his "white voice," and the attitude behind it to make himself more appealing to customers. With a bizarrely high-pitched accent, Cassius becomes a success even as his colleagues form a union to improve their miserable jobs. Regardless, Cassius finds himself promoted a "Power Caller" selling the most morally abhorrent but lucrative products and services as his connection to his girlfriend and colleagues fades away. However, Cassius' conscience arises anew as he finds himself in the midst of his boss' bizarre world of condescending bigoted decadence and his sinister plans to create the perfect subservient work force with Cassius' help.
- 6
Heads of State (2025)
Ilya NaishullerDP Ben DavisIMDb 6.4TMDB 6.8See in full on FrameThrower →
The UK Prime Minister and US President have a public rivalry that risks their countries' alliance. But when they become targets of a powerful enemy, they're forced to rely on each other as they go on a wild, multinational run. Allied with Noel, a brilliant MI6 agent, they must find a way to thwart a conspiracy that threatens the free world.
- 7
Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
John CarpenterDP Dean CundeyIMDb 7.2TMDB 7.2See in full on FrameThrower →
Truck driver Jack Burton arrives in Chinatown, San Francisco, and goes to the airport with his Chinese friend Wang Chi to welcome his green-eyed fiancée Miao Yin who is arriving from China. However she is kidnapped on the arrival by a Chinese street gang and Jack and Wang chase the group. Soon they learn that the powerful evil sorcerer called David Lo Pan, who has been cursed more than two thousand years ago to exist without physical body, needs to marry a woman with green eyes to retrieve his physical body and Miao is the chosen one. Jack and Wang team-up with the lawyer Gracie Law, the bus driver and sorcerer apprentice Egg Shen and their friends and embark in a great adventure in the underground of Chinatown, where they face a world of magicians and magic, monsters and martial arts fighters.
- 8
The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
Martin ScorseseDP Rodrigo PrietoIMDb 8.2TMDB 8.0See in full on FrameThrower →
Jordan Belfort (DiCaprio) is Long Island penny stockbroker who serves almost two years in prison for refusing to co-operate in a huge 1990s securities fraud case that involved widespread corruption on Wall Street and in the corporate banking world, including mob infiltration.
- 9
Peter SegalDP Robert M. StevensIMDb 6.5TMDB 6.5See in full on FrameThrower →
Tasting the fruit of his labor with his wife Jane Spencer (Priscilla Presley), the maladroit and now retired Police Squad Lieutenant, Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen), secretly dreams of getting back in action. Before long, his old partners, Ed Hocken (George Kennedy) and Nordberg (O.J. Simpson), will have to enlist the help of their loose-cannon friend, when Rocco (Fred Ward), the deranged terrorist, intends on blowing the annual Academy Awards ceremony to smithereens. Once more, Drebin goes undercover, interrogating dangerous blonde bombshells, and putting his precious, but fragile marriage in jeopardy. Are this year's Oscars doomed to disaster?
- 10
Shiva Baby (2020)
Emma SeligmanDP Maria RuscheIMDb 7.1TMDB 7.1See in full on FrameThrower →
College student Danielle must cover her tracks when she unexpectedly runs into her sugar daddy at a shiva - with her parents, ex-girlfriend and family friends also in attendance.
What hilarious films are made of
How much more often each element appears in a hilarious frame than in an average frame from the catalogue. A ratio, not a share — blazer is not in most frames, it is simply far more common here than anywhere else.
- blazer2.2×
- neon sign2.1×
- necktie1.8×
- tie1.7×
- steering wheel1.6×
- microphone1.6×
- suit jacket1.6×
How hilarious films are shot
Weaker signals than the objects above, and worth saying so: most dramatic genres skew dark and night-heavy, so these numbers separate hilarious from the catalogue far more than they separate it from its neighbours.
- 20%high keyvs 12% baseline
- 83%eye levelvs 69% baseline
What breaks the pattern
Army of Darkness (1992) is the least typical film here — it carries the least of what the rest of this list is made of. Which is either a failure of the genre label, or the most interesting film on the page.
Method
Every frame in the FrameThrower catalogue is tagged for shot size, lighting, time of day, camera angle, colour and the objects visible in it. This page aggregates those tags across 3,838 frames from 50 films carrying the hilarious label, and compares each figure to the same measurement across the whole catalogue (408,752 frames). Films are ranked by how closely they match the theme’s over-indexed elements, weighted by how distinctive each element is; one film per series. Only films with at least 20 indexed frames and 500 TMDB votes are listed.
Machine-readable: /api/list/hilarious
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