The 25 funniest comedies on Netflix UK

Directors: Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam

Cast: Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin

It may lack the authority-baiting, satire-with-a-purpose edge of Life of Brian, but Holy Grail is the looser, sillier, ultimately funnier film, packed with goofy laughs rather than hey-I-get-that cleverness. It’s aged better too, less beholden to outdated notions of race and revolutionary politics and more reliant on slapstick violence, sudden explosions, surrealist wordplay and scatological asides. Ni!

Director: Greg Mottola

Cast: Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Emma Stone

On paper, Superbad sounds a lot like a throwback to ‘80s sex romps, featuring, as it does, a trio of awkward teens on a quest to score booze and lose their V-cards. What a joy, then, when what emerges is a gross-out cousin to Dazed and Confused – a John Hughes-indebted hangout comedy examining friendship at the cusp of adulthood through a series of hysterically cringey set pieces. This is the film that made Jonah Hill and Emma Stone household names, but it’s the genuine pathos lurking beneath all the vomit and f-bombs that make it a classic. 

Director: Radha Blank

Cast: Radha Blank, Peter Kim, Imani Lewis

If you took 8 Mile and made it about a middle-aged female playwright trying to muscle in on the rap game, it might look a little like this Sundance award winner. It’s a pitch-perfect intro to Radha Blank, writer-actor-star of an autobiographical comedy-drama that tackles creative compromise, the Black experience, hip hop and theatre culture and a fair few big laughs in its exploration of New York’s not-that-rich and not-quite-famous. TLDR? She’s great. 

Director: Armando Iannucci

Cast: Tom Hollander, Peter Capaldi, James Gandolfini

If you thought Armando Iannucci was cynical about Western governance from HBO’s Veep, check out his earlier skewering of Anglo-Americans politics, which is arguably even more cruel, crude and pitch-black – and just about dead on the money in its critique. A spinoff of his BBC series The Thick of It, it’s a bit of a knotty thing plotwise, involving the manipulation of an internal document to justify the invasion of Iraq. But you don’t need to be a politico to appreciate Peter Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker – just a lover of creative swearing.

Director: Nahnatchka Khan

Cast: Ali Wong, Randall Park, James Saito

The Keanu Reeves cameo is a showstopper, but Always Be My Maybe is so much more than its biggest viral moment. At its heart, this tale of two childhood pals trapped in the friend zone is a classic rom-com in the mold of The Philadelphia Story and Nora Ephron’s best movies, with Randall Park and Ali Wong shining bright as they navigate dating in San Francisco and the relentless pull of their feelings. John Wick may steal the show, but it’s Park and Wong who elevate what could be a pat meet-cute into the stuff of rom-com legend.

Director: David Zucker

Cast: Leslie Nielsen, Priscilla Presley, OJ Simpson

Using the same joke-spraying approach that made Airplane! a comedy classic eight years earlier, the comedy team of Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker struck gold once again with this detective spoof. The trio machine-gun puns, visual gags and pratfalls at the screen, but the reason it works to the degree it does is Leslie Nielsen’s pitch-perfect performance as Lt Frank Drebin, a bumbling cop unaware that he’s not in a pulpy potboiler from the ’50s.  

Director: Tamara Jenkins

Cast: Paul Giamatti, Kathryn Hahn, Gabrielle Reid

Paul Giamatti and Kathryn Hahn are a middle-aged New York couple who desperately want a kid, but fate seems to want them to remain childless - until their niece agrees to act as a surrogate. But that, of course, brings its own set of complications. While it scans as a downcast drama, Giamatti and Hahn bring lived-in humour to the couple’s plight, while writer-director Tamara Jenkins balances the tone with a deft hand and deep relatability. 

Director: Dennis Dugan

Cast: Adam Sandler, Christopher McDonald, Julie Bowen

Pretty much every Adam Sandler performance is just a variant on the man-child persona he established in the ’90s - even Uncut Gems has traces of it. It always worked a lot better back when Sandler was closer to being an actual child, and the act reached its apex with this classic sophomoric sports comedy about a failed hockey player who brings his athletic goonery to the mannered world of golf. Say the phrase: ‘The price is wrong, bitch’ to any ’90s kid and they’ll know exactly what you’re talking about.  

Director Terry Jones

Cast Terry Jones, Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Michael Palin, Eric Idle

The Pythons stick a big fat skewer into religious intolerance in their most controversial (unless you’re a medieval French knight, in which case it’d be ‘The Holy Grail’) and arguably, funniest film. Brian Cohen (Graham Chapman) is the young Jewish man who lives next door to Jesus and is mistaken for the messiah by a swelling army of followers. Of course, the more he tells them he’s not, the more devoted they become. The cross and a rousing singalong of ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’ await.

Directors: Michael Rianda, Jeff Rowe

Cast: Danny McBride, Maya Rudoplh, Abbi Jacobson, Olivia Coleman

An instant road-trip classic upon its release, the team behind Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse beat Pixar at its own game with a hilarious family comedy smashed together with a vividly colorful robot-invasion action extravaganza. Seldom has a film so fully realized the push and pull of the online generation and its elders, and seldom has a film so overflowing with visual and verbal gags hit its marks with such precision. You'll never look at a Furby or an iPhone the same way again.

Director: Jennifer Kaytin Robinson

Cast: Camila Mendes, Maya Hawke

Mix an unabashed love of (and numerous visual nods to) ’90s teen comedies like Clueless and Cruel Intentions with a little bit of Strangers on a Train and you get one of the most entertaining Netflix originals to come along in a while. Riverdale’s Camila Mendes is a high-school debutante out for revenge after she suspects her boyfriend of leaking a risqué private video online. She enlists social outcast Maya Hawke (Stranger Things) for help in exchange for assisting in a comeuppance of her own – but it just gets more twisted (and twistier) from there. 

Director: Jay Roach

Cast: Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Teri Polo

It may have been the movie that convinced Robert De Niro to spend 90 percent of his twilight years appearing in broad comedies, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s one of the better broad comedies of the early 2000s. Ben Stiller plays the unfortunately named Greg Focker who just can’t seem to stop screwing up in front of his girlfriend’s already sceptical ex-CIA father (De Niro). It’s a slapstick comedy of errors that nevertheless taps into some very common, and very real, relationship anxiety.

Director: Craig Brewer

Cast: Eddie Murphy, Keegan Michael Key, Mike Epps

Every few years, Eddie Murphy decides to remind everyone - and himself, probably - that his prodigious talents as both an actor and comedian have not been completely suffocated under the weight of so many Nutty Professor movies. Most recently, he stepped into the platforms of comedy and Blaxploitation icon Rudy Ray Moore, whose rise to legend status is a true Hollywood story that justifies the biopic treatment. He earned a well-deserved Golden Globe nomination for it.

Director: Kitao Sakurai

Cast: Eric André, Tiffany Haddish, Lil Rel Howery

On paper, Bad Trip sounds a lot like a tired mix of Borat and Bad Grandpa, featuring a lovesick André on a road trip interacting with real people via elaborate pranks involving crashed cars, projectile vomit and plenty of nudity. What a surprise, then, when the film reveals itself not as a ‘gotcha’ flick seeking to show the dark underbelly of the American south, but rather one in which its marks prove to be kind, helpful and empathetic. The movie is uneven, but when the laughs hit, they hit hard, all while positioning Bad Trip as the unexpected feel-good comedy of the year.

Director: Richard Linklater

Cast: Jack Black, Mike White, Joan Cusack

Jack Black cranks his Jack Blackness to 11 as a struggling musician who cons his way into a substitute teaching gig and helps a bunch of band nerds unleash their inner rock stars. Although School of Rock is mostly remembered as a Black vehicle, in retrospect it also serves as a prologue to the career of writer and co-star Mike White, who’d go on to create the HBO phenomenon The White Lotus.

Director: Kelly Fremon Craig

Cast: Hailee Steinfeld, Haley Lu Richardson, Blake Jenner

Not to be confused with the 1998 romcom of the same name - although who would do that? - this likeable dramedy stars Hailee Steinfeld as a teenager thrust into serious self-reflection when her best friend begins dating her brother. Steinfeld earned critical raves for her performance, as did first-time director Kelly Fremon Craig for her heartfelt, insightful screenplay.

Director: John Hamburg

Cast: Paul Rudd, Jason Segel, Rashida Jones

In what’s probably the purest example of a ‘bromantic comedy’ produced in the post-Apatow era, Paul Rudd plays an engaged dude who’s been sucked so deep into his relationship he no longer has any guy friends. In desperate need of a best man, he ends up getting a bit too close to his new bestie, Jason Segel, at least for the comfort of his fiancée (Rashida Jones). It’s one of the more honest – and hilarious – explorations of male friendship produced in the post-Apatow era.  

Director: Mark Osborne, John Stevenson

Cast: Jack Black, Ian McShane, Angelina Jolie

It would seem nearly impossible to capture Jack Black’s manic energy in computer animation, but the first entry in the Kung Fu Panda series succeeds in doing just that. He leads an A-list voice cast that also includes Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan and Seth Rogen in telling the story of Po, a bumbling panda bear who dreams of becoming an expert martial artist. 

Director: Whit Stillman

Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Chloë Sevigny, Xavier Samuel

Whit Stillman does Jane Austen and everyone wins. Adapted from Austen’s epistolary novel Lady Susan, the film stars Kate Beckinsale as an 18th century widow looking to bag herself a rich new husband, only to wind up intertwined in her teenage daughter’s attempts to woo her own breadwinner. Tom Bennett steals the show as a wealthy bachelor confused by peas.

Director: John Hughes

Cast: Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald

John Hughes’s career-defining film remains the standard bearer for smart, heartfelt high school comedies. If we’re being honest, the message is a bit muddled – so deep down, all nonconformists just want to date and/or be Molly Ringwald? – but it remains essential as one of the few teen movies to that point that refused to condescend to its target demographic. Also, the scene where Emilio Estevez smokes weed and becomes a gymnast for some reason? Classic.  

Director: Adam McKay

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Will Ferrell, Dwayne Johnson, Samuel L Jackson

Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell display surprising chemistry in this buddy cop action-comedy, as NYPD desk jockeys suddenly forced into the field, chafing their aggressive counterparts, Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L Jackson. That chemistry manages to elevate the movie above many others in its crowded genre, turning what scans like an assembly-line mainstream comedy into one of the overlooked gems of the 2010s. 

Director: Paul King

Cast: Hugh Bonneville, Sally Hawkins, Julie Walters, Ben Whishaw (voice)

One of the best family films of the last decade, this adaptation of the beloved children’s book character is sweeter than it is side-splitting, but you have to admit that the idea of an anthropomorphic bear in a raincoat and bucket hat being chased by Nicole Kidman’s taxidermist eager to stuff and mount him is a pretty hilarious premise for a 21st century Paddington movie.

Director: Noah Baumbach

Cast: Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Elizabeth Marvel

Netflix is a rich repository for Adam Sandler’s very binary-looking back catalogue. There’s the grim-faced slapstick comedies like The Do-Over and The Ridiculous 6, and the Genuinely Good ones, including Uncut Gems and this winning comedy-drama of New York family dysfunction. Sandler is the troubled offspring of Dustin Hoffman’s grumpy, self-absorbed artist. The spiky dialogue and hil-awk-rious domestic moments come thick and fast.

Director: David Dobkin

Cast: Will Ferrell, Rachel McAdams, Dan Stevens

Your enjoyment of this spoof of the world’s biggest talent show will largely depend on how much love Will Ferrell doing his Will Ferrell thing… but really, if you don’t reflexively chuckle at the idea of Ferrell as an Icelandic pop hopeful singing a song called ‘Jaja Ding-Dong’, your funny bone has gone missing.

Director: Guy Ritchie

Cast: Jason Statham, Brad Pitt, Benicio Del Toro, Vinnie Jones

It's hard to remember a time when Guy Richie's ultra-polished aesthetic still had its rugged edges and Jason Statham cracked wise without cracking heads. Two decades on, though, Snatch still registers with its grimy visual humor, kinetic camera tricks and a ensemble of perfectly honest sleazeballs engaging in all manner of comic mayhem across the London underground. It's become fashionable to bag on Richie in a post-Aladdin landscape. Snatch will make you long for a return to the quippy world of criminals he only seldom visits these days.