The Rough Guide to Comedy Movies 1

by Bob McCabe

The Rough Guide to Comedy Movies uncovers cinema''s funniest and most varied genre, from silent slapstick, to 90s gross-out and the dark indie humour of today. The canon of fifty greatest funnies runs from The Gold Rush and Duck Soup to Airplane and Shaun of the Dead, plus double-acts, drag-acts and ensembles from Laurel & Hardy and the Marx Bros, to the Pythons and the Coen Brothers. Seeking out the films that have amused people the most - or simply amused the most people - the Rough Guide gives you the ultimate lowdown on laughter in the movies from Wes Anderson''s Rushmore to Withnail and I, and from John Belushi to Billy Wilder.

Genres: Comedy

312 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's some interesting tidbits in here - but for the most part, it's information that's better covered in other sources. In other words, it's not detailed enough for the real movie buff and it's too detailed for the casual reader... leaving me wondering who the intended audience is/was.

[Eric Copeland · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a nice surprise. I thought it would be a simple "best of" collection of the 100 "best" comedies or something, but it was much more.

I mean, there is a list of best comedies (up through about 2005, when it was published), but this book starts out with a brief history of comedy on the big screen. Mentions are made of related areas like vaudeville, stand-up, and TV, but only as they relate to cinematic comedy. From there we move straight into the list of 50 "canonical" comedy films, but the descriptions and analyses are quite in-depth. From there the author moves on to "the icons," a fairly complete list of the people -- both individuals and teams -- who have shaped silver-screen comedy, complete with a selection of suggested films to check out. To wrap things up in the main text of the book, the author goes outside what has generally focused on the U.S. and Great Britain to go into the areas of film comedy elsewhere in the world -- South America, Asia, Africa, the various parts of continental Europe, and even Canada and Mexico, which were mentioned in the earlier parts of the book but not in depth.

I will admit I skipped the appendix which refers the reader to things like books by and about the people and movies discussed in the book, as well as resources about where to track down additional information and the movies themselves (this obviously has changed a lot with the advent of streaming video services). But if you're looking for a broad and surprisingly deep analysis of cinematic comedy, you can't go wrong starting with this one.

[Kate Knowles · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book for any fan of comedy!