2023 turned out to be a pretty good year for those of us who enjoy laughing at the movies. Here’s my list of the top 10 best comedy movies of the past year.
10. Ghosted. A beautiful young woman meets a hot young man. Sparks fly. Romance ensues. But one of them is a secret agent trying to save the world, while the other is a “normal” person just trying to live their life, until they’re unwittingly thrust into one death-defying situation after another, only to be saved once again by the spy. It’s a familiar story to be sure, but Ghosted flips the script by casting Ana de Armas as the spy and Chris Evans as the everyman. After meeting at a farmer’s market, where Evens sells plants, the two go on an all-night date, but when she appears to ghost him by not returning calls or texts, he decides to surprise her in London, where he soon ends up in the middle of one of her more dangerous missions. The movie never allows itself to get too bogged down in anything serious, and the result is a light, fun, and genuinely funny movie, made all the better by the genuine on-screen chemistry between Evans and de Armas. Ghosted is on Apple+.
9. No Hard Feelings. A down-on-her-luck woman trying to save her family home in Hamptons agrees to go on a date with the young, virginal son of a wealthy family. And, yes, his parents fully expect more to happen than just holding hands. What follows is pretty much exactly what you think follows, but the movie has real heart, and there probably aren’t too many other actresses working today besides Jennifer Lawrence who wouldn’t let all of those awards keep them from not taking themselves so seriously that they could pull off a role like this one. (But it’s worth noting that she’s been nominated for a Golden Globe for the movie, so she might get to add to those awards.) The movie is available on Netflix.
8. Joy Ride. Hard R comedies, once a staple of Hollywood, had all but fallen by the wayside, but Joy Ride shows that at least a few studios haven’t lost their touch. Ashley Park plays an Asian-American adoptee who decides to mix business with pleasure by taking an opportunity on a business trip to China to try to find her birth mother. She takes along her best friend and her friend’s cousin, mostly because a buddy comedy doesn’t work without buddies. What follows is the usual mix of harsh language, drug use, and sex that you’d expect to see in any comedy from the ’90s. But, like the best of those movies, Joy Ride also has real heart, and if you aren’t tearing up at least a little by the end, then you may have lost the joy in your own life. Joy Ride is available on Starz.
7. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. I doubt too many households in the ’70s and ’80s didn’t have a copy of the Judy Blume classic. And yet, somehow, it took 50 years for Hollywood to adapt the novel. But perhaps it’s good they waited, since the adaptation, when it finally happened, was even better than the book. And that’s not my opinion, it’s Judy Blume’s. Rachel McAdams anchors a fantastic cast for the coming-of-age story that is funny and heartwarming at the same time. It’s available on Starz.
6. The Blackening. The tagline for the movie—“We can’t all die first”—tells you all you need to know about this irreverent yet still sadly topical comedy slasher. It starts out like so many other movies in the genre—a group of friends get together in a remote cabin and stumble across a haunted board game (this one, based around a racist Sambo character) that unleashes mayhem on them. But instead of just being an exercise in gore, The Blackening is almost a satire of the genre, commenting on many of the tropes, both racist and not, of slasher films, but it keeps itself just serious enough to be entertaining throughout. The movie is available on Starz.
5. Somewhere in Queens. I’ll admit that a movie that’s written and directed by Ray Romano would be enough to get me to watch even if he made something terrible, but, thankfully, he instead delivered a touching and funny movie as his directorial debut. Romano plays the patriarch of an Italian-American family in the titular New York borough who will do almost anything to see his son succeed at basketball. It’s a movie about those terrible obsessive sports parents, but also about the power of family, coming of age, and learning to accept those you love. Somewhere in Queens is available on Hulu.
4. If You Were the Last. I’ll admit I stopped this movie about 10 minutes in and needed to do some reading to make sure I wasn’t missing something. It’s the tale of two astronauts who believe they are hopelessly stranded somewhere between Jupiter and Saturn and so, despite each being married to someone else on Earth, start discussing if they should do it because, really, they’re running out of other ways to entertain themselves and each other. What follows is a sweet rom-com that does what all great movies in the genre do: make you laugh and cry at the same time. And that thing that almost made me not watch? Well, you’ll see right away that the movie has a pretty unique visual style. But unlike overwrought films from the likes of Wes Anderson, there’s actually a reason for it, and once it’s revealed, the movie is all the more touching. See for yourself on Peacock.
3. The Great Escaper. In what he has said will be his final film, Michael Caine plays an aging World War II veteran who decides that he needs to travel to Normandy for the commemoration of D-Day one final time. And so, against the wishes of everyone at his nursing home except his loving and very understanding wife, he “escapes” and heads across the channel. There, he’s forced to confront the horrors of the war that he had mostly managed to suppress over the years. Along the way he meets other aging vets also facing their demons, and remembers the days before the invasion, when he first met and fell in love with his wife. It’s the kind of comedy that makes you smile through the tears, and both Caine and Glenda Jackson—who died shortly before the movie’s release—deliver truly phenomenal performances. If it is indeed Caine’s final film, he’s going out on a very high note. The movie is, unfortunately, not currently playing in theaters or on any streaming service.
2. Barbie. What more needs to be said about the smash hit of the year, other than this: if you haven’t yet seen it, do yourself a favor, head over to Max, and see it.
1. The Holdovers. Alexander Payne and Paul Giamatti are pretty much guaranteed to do great things when they work together, and The Holdovers continues that fine tradition. It doesn’t really go places that haven’t been gone to before: a stodgy old teacher at an elite boarding school learns about himself and humanity through the eyes of a young protege. The set-up is a bit unique: Giamatti’s Paul Hunham gets stuck being the caregiver for a group of kids whose parents can’t be bothered to bring them home over Christmas, but then one of them does, in fact, come pick up the group (in his private helicopter, of course), leaving only Angus Tully, whose mother is unreachable as she’s on her honeymoon with her new husband. And so it soon becomes only Hunham, Tully, and the school’s live-in cook, played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph, a woman still struggling with the recent death of her only child in Vietnam, to find a way to make the holidays at least bearable. When the Oscar nominations are announced next month, expect to hear this movie mentioned a lot. It’s an extremely safe bet you’ll see nominations for Randolph, Payne, and Giamatti, and for the movie itself for the top prize—a prize it has a real chance of winning. The Holdovers is now playing in theaters.
