Unsought Input

Perhaps you shouldn’t go right now, since I’m writing this at midnight on a weekday, but go at your earliest convenience. Hot Fuzz is the latest film by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, the guys who made Shaun of the Dead. If you haven’t yet seen Shaun of the Dead, go out and get it - it’s one of the funniest, most clever movies I’ve seen in a long time.

You may not have heard of Hot Fuzz, it doesn’t seem to be getting much advertising and didn’t open in a large number of theaters. If you’ve seen a review, you might have heard that it’s a buddy cop action movie spoof. Really, it isn’t a spoof so much as an homage wrapped up in a bunch of postmodern cleverness. It’s also a damn good film in it’s own right.

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I often wonder how movies get made, specifically: how does a studio decide to film one script and not another? I think about this a lot because so many bad movies get made each year that the decision-making process must involve coin-flipping or developmentally disabled children.

The worst, perhaps, are the unfunny comedies. A crappy action movie might still have good explosions, and a boring drama will at least show the clerk at Blockbuster that you are a smart person with discerning tastes. But unfunny comedies have no redeeming value.

Even unfunny movies, though, can strike comedy gold once in a while. Below are five funny moments in some very unfunny movies.

1. Freddy Got Fingered

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By the time Christmas is over, you’re going to have some gift cards to spend and some returns to make. Forget buying books or CDs with your Borders gift card (dude, CDs are so 2005) - instead, stock up on some television show boxed sets. Instead of shoveling the driveway or doing whatever people do in the winter in places where it doesn’t snow, stay inside and rot your brain AGAIN with these hours upon hours of television goodness. All commercial-free!

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

This is hands-down the best Holmes series out there. Jeremy Brett (as Holmes) basically turned himself into a raving lunatic to bring us the most true-to-story Sherlock possible, and the writers of this first series worked hard to keep true to Doyle’s works as well. Fans of House and CSI will appreciate the original “so clever it hurts” character after which Greg House and Gil Grissom are often cited as being modeled after. Brett is a sexy bastard as well.

There’s other Granada Television (of Great Britian) Holmes series starring Brett, such as The Return of Sherlock Holmes and The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, which are also good but Adventures is the place to start. The original 13 episodes, included in this set, had the best scripts and Brett was still at the top of his game. As the later series came about, the quality of Holmes stories left from which to choose became a stumbling block for the writers. Brett also started losing his mind a bit and his health got worse. By the time The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes was shot (the final series), Brett was literally having to be propped up in order to appear in the shows.

But this first series is can’t-miss. Sets are amazingly accurate, Brett and David Burke/Edward Hardwicke as Watson give spot-on performances and the scripts couldn’t be more accurate. Investing in this series will definitely up your geek cred by letting you discuss Holmes with your bookstorecoffeeshop buddies as if you’ve actually read the books.

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If you take a look at the CIA World Fact book, you’ll see that Turkey’s top exports include apparel, foodstuffs, textiles, metal manufactures, and transport equipment. What the United States government doesn’t know, or doesn’t want you to know, is that Turkey tops the world in a commodity not listed here: comedies.

In our ongoing quest to discover the greatest comedies of all time, I decided to take a look at what IMDB had to say. IMDB does have an official list of the top 50 comedies, but I wanted more. Many lists include 100 movies, so I went to the Advanced Search and searched for all movies in the genre “comedy”, with at least 1000 votes, excluding TV movies, TV shows, and direct-to-video releases.

The first thing I noticed is that IMDB’s search is broken, apparently “ignore TV series” really means “litter the results with lots of TV series.” The next thing I noticed is something even the CIA couldn’t discover: Turkish dominance of the top 3 comedies of all time.

At number 1, with a rating of 9.2, is Babam Ve Oglum (2005), also known as My Father and My Son. At number 2, with an 8.9 rating, is Tosun Pasa (1976), with Hababam sinifi (1975) just a notch below at 8.8. The Turkish dominance is finally interrupted by Dr. Strangelove (1964) at the number 4 spot.

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A few weeks ago JessB mentioned she had seen a list of the 100 greatest comedies (I think it was Bravo’s list) and that it was pretty lacking. The full list can be seen here, in Manroom Magazine, and no, I didn’t just make up Manroom Magazine, it actually exists.

At the time a few of us remarked that although constructing a definitive list would be difficult, we could come up with 100 that were, on average, much better than the Bravo list and even the fancy important AFI list.

So I am issuing two challenges:

1. To all Unsought Input writers: I am seeking your input to a list of the greatest comedies. Write a follow-up post with some of your picks.
2. To all UnsoughtInput readers: give us suggestions and critique our choices in the comments section.

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