You know what?
We're done with crying. We spent the last few episodes
on some heavy emotional (Bleep). Tugging hearts, jerking tears, but
now we think it's time to slap some knees. These are our picks for the top ten
funniest movie moments of all time. (Music) How do you break down humor? It's something we all experience, but most of us probably couldn't
explain it if our life depended on it. I mean give it a try. What makes something funny? E.B. White probably put it best when
he said that analyzing humour is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and
the frog dies. But we're in the business of
frog murder here at Cinefix, so get your lab gloves on. Because we're going in. The first of three prominent theories
of humor is called relief theory, and it comes to us mostly by way of our
favorite phallic symbol smoking German psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud. In it he slots humor into his
existing theories of repression and psychic energy as a release valve. According to Freud and his ilk we've got
all this pent up energy from clenching out buttholes, repressing our sexual and
aggressive urges, and humor lets us blow off some much needed steam about it
without letting go of those defenses. A joke then is something that looks
like it's going to take even more energy to repress our urges, maintaining
our emotional or cognitive stasis. But it veers away at the last second and
we laugh at the relief. Think 'Blazing Saddles''
sheriffs Self hostage situation. - The next man makes a move,
the (Sound) gets it. - Where a clever back dooring
theoretically allows us to revel in racial aggression in a scenario where
the actual social stakes are rendered artificially low. Or Dr. Strangelove's famous outburst, where the psychological tension involved
with having to explain why the Doctor has suddenly stood up out of his chair is
instead quickly waved off as a miracle. - What a relief, we don't have to resolve that conflict it's Buster Keaton
and Steamboat Bill Jr. miracousley threading the needle through a window as
the house falls sparing him from harm. And our emotional shock that
might have had to go with it. And it's little Ms. Sunshine when Olive's
family get's on the stage with her and spares us the immense discomfort
of her embarrassment. But for our first pick, we're going with the infamous diner scene
reveal from 'When Harry Met Sally'. - Most women, at one time or
another, have faked it. - Well, they haven't faked it with me. - How do you know?
- Because I know. - It's just that all men are sure
it never happened to them. And most women, at one time or
another have done it, so you do the math. - You don't think that I
could tell the difference? - No. - Get out of here. - Are you okay? - (Sound)
God. (Sound) God. - Now the most famous part of
this scene is obviously the end. - I'll have what she's having. - And that seems to function as
a social awkwardness relief too. But we want to talk about the moment when
Harry first realizes what's going on, because it's pretty perfectly Freudian. We're already laughing and
having a good time from Harry and Sally's fake orgasm banter,
where there's clearly some awkwardness and repression that goes unreleased. - How do you know that they're really
- And released. - What are you saying
that they fake orgasm. - When "Sally" starts acting strange. And here he is first
concerned about her health. Is she okay, is she choking? He doesn't quite know what's going on and
we don't either. But then it becomes clear,
no, she's not choking. She's faking an orgasm. It's a near miss. It looks like we're heading towards danger
until we veer off towards sex land. And this back doors Harry and
us into a sexual experience. In this context, the whole scene is really
a release valve for their sexual tension. They get to use humor to express
the feelings they're repressing without committing to them. It's funny because it allows us to get our
metaphorical rocks off without the actual stakes, which sounds a whole
a whole lot like flirting to me. Of course,
the relief theory isn't exactly perfect. It's pretty obvious that everything
relieving doesn't end in laughter, and it doesn't seem like it's capable
of explaining all jokes either. Enter 'Superiority Theory', the idea
behind the 'Superiority Theory' of humor originating all the way back with "Plato"
and "Aristotle" is that we laugh because we get an opportunity to experience
our own superiority over another. This is the classic pratfall,
why tripping can be funny. Our superiority can be physical,
intellectual, certainly social or even emotional. We see someone else behaving like a fool,
and our laughter is joy at
our own not foolness. Think the can scene from The Jerk. - Stay away from the cans! - The cinema line from Annie Hall. - What I wouldn't give for
a large sock with horse manure in it. - Most of the discreet charm of
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. - (Foreign)
- It's schadenfreude on screen like Jackass' golf course 'Pineapple Express'"
chase and 'Something About Mary's' zipper. A superiority theorist would say 'When
Harry Met Sally' is actually funny because we know what's happening before Harry
does and we're identifying with Sally by the time she proves she's more
orgasmically knowledgable than he is. But for our number nine pick,
we think that The Princess Bride's battle of the wits is an example as
perfect and hilarious as they come. - You've beaten my giant,
which means you're exceptionally strong. So, you could've put
the poison in your own goblet, trusting on your strength to save you. So, I could clearly not choose
the wine in front of you. But you've also bested my Spaniard,
which means you must have studied. And in studying you must have
learned that man is mortal, so you would have put the poison as
far from yourself as possible. So I can clearly not choose
the wine in front of me. - Your trying to trick me
into giving away something. It won't work. - It has worked,
you've given everything away. I know where the poison is. - Then make your choice. - I will, and I choose,
what in the world could that be? - What?
Where? I don't see anything
- I could have sworn I saw something. No matter. - What's so funny? - I'll tell you in a minute. First, let's drink. Me from my glass and you from yours. (Music) - You guessed wrong. - You only think I guessed wrong. That's what's so funny. I switched glasses when
your back was turned. (Laugh)
- So the big punchline is pretty obvious here. Vizzini is convinced he's
outsmarted Westley, our hero, until he falls over dead. Pretty obviously wrong. And who doesn't want to feel superior
to the blithering, bragging, boasting, self-proclaimed genius? We just want Westley to shove his
own words back down his smug throat. So when he does boy,
is that a big kick of superiority humor. And sure, it's also a relief. But it gets even better for superiority. What is he doing right before he croaks? Laughing, and why is he laughing? Because he think he's bested "Wesley". That's right, we got some meta superiority
humor up in this (Bleep), classic. (Music) Superiority isn't quite a catch all,
either. Who were we feeling
superior to with this joke? - The Supremes were to hit the top
of the charts with this really big one in the 60's. - we're not sure. And why are we laughing at this poor,
sad sap? Not sure either. So next up we got incongruity theory,
the reigning humor theory king, championed by those famous comedians Kant,
Schopenhauer, and Hagel. It suggests that humor comes from
the realization of incongruity, a mismatch between our expectations and
reality. In comic terms, the setup creates in us an expectation
while the punchline subverts it. And the humor lies in
the moment of realization. The instant of collapse between
the imagined and the actual. This is Young Frankenstein's,
"Putting on the Ritz." - If you're blue and you don't know where to go to,
why don't you go to where fashion sits? - Putting on the Ritz. - Or in "Glorious Bastards," Italian where
the infiltrating bastards are far worse than the german they are trying to fool. (Foreign). - It's puppet sex, or
an accidental "Hitler" speech. Or an awkward skinny,
dorky boy named "Mclovin". Incongruity theory would tell you that
'The Princess Bride' moment is funny more because of "Vissini's" proclamations
of his own intelligence are so wildly out of whack with reality, than because
we like how smart he makes us feel. It's almost every single joke that you'd
look at and call ridiculous or absurd. However, for our number eight pick, there's no incongruity more delightful
than the 'Black Knight's' refusal to acknowledge his obvious defeat from
'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'. - (Sound)
- "Victory is mine"! "We thank thee Lord that in thy-"
- (Sound) - "Come on, then". - "What"? - "Have at you". - "You are indeed brave,
sir knight, but the fight is mine". - " had enough, ey"? - "Look, you stupid bastard,
you've got no arms left". - "Yes, I have, look, just a flesh wound". - (Sound) As the duel proceeds, we are continuously confronted
with the 'Black Knight's' denial. Each time he gets a limb chopped off,
he downplays its importance. But each time he has one less limb,
so the incongruence is much worse and the laughs much better. So it heightens and
it heightens the absurdity of the bit, turning what was a possible
comeback into a hilarious farce. And yet he persists, and we love it all the more because it's such
a human kind of denial with machismo and pride so tragically misplaced as to
be hysterical rather than grating. It's a brilliant, shameless inconsistency
between his reality and his proclamations. And for that very reason,
it's impossible not to love him. (Sound) But we're a bit in
the weeds here with the theory. We've got seven more slots and
we want to spend them looking more at the technique of humor
than the philosophy of it. And the good news is that cinema has
a ton of different ways to tell a joke. And probably the best one to
start off with is dialogue. In a nutshell, it's word play where
the text, itself, contains the humor. The relief, the superiority,
the incongruity, they're imbedded in the language. Think 'Life of Brian's- Biggus Dickus'. - Wait till "Biggus Dickus" hears of this. - Or 'Ghostbusters' dickless. - Yes, it's true. This man has no dick. - 'Airplane's' jive. - "What it is big momma,
my momma didn't raise no dummies. I dug her rap". - 'Blazing Saddle's' harumph,
'Naked Gun's' fireworks, and how could we not mention the all
time class, 'Who's on First'. But, if it's clever verbal banter you
want our preference goes to the now and then insanity of
'Spaceballs' video review. - What the hell am I looking at? When does this happen in the movie? - Now, you're looking at now, sir everything that happens
now is happening now. - What happened to then? - We passed it. - When?
- Just now. We're at now, now. - Go back to then. - When?
- Now. - Now?
- Now. - I can't.
- Why? - We missed it.
- When? - Just now. - And the same way that a pun is
funny because it's a word used for an incongruous meaning, with the language
choice conflicts with normal expectations, here, they're doing something
similar with the words now and then. They use each word to mean
multiple different things. Sometimes now means at this
moment on the tape, and at other times it means at
this moment in reality. And then, they never use them in
the same way at the same time, such that their use is always incongruous. And then, they repeat it over and over and
over rapid fire like 80 times in a row, constantly shifting the meanings back and
forth, never on the same page, until everyone's in stitches and
no one knows what time it is. (Sound) Of course, sometimes it's not
about the words they're saying so much as the underlying
silliness behind it. Switch up the language and
the punch lines still land. That's because our number six is not
wordplay, it's situation comedy. The silliness lies in the core conflict. Some improv comics call
this the game of the scene. The fundamental funny thing
about what's driving the action. The incongruity isn't in words and
meaning. It's in wants and worldviews. This is life 'Life of Brian's' gang of
men playing women pretending to be men so they can stone to death anyone who so
much as dares to say "Jehovah". - 'Sorry (Inaudible)
- 'We started.' - It's 'Django Unchained's KKK' mask bickering. - 'No, nobody brought an extra bag. - Or 'Super Trooper's' cat game. - All right, meow. - Or 'Naked Gun's' baseball pat down. - Strike two! - It's any scene where the description
of the scene itself is hysterical. For our number six pick, we're going with 'His Girl Friday's'
introduction of "Bruce Baldwin". - Well, I can see right away my wife
picked out the right husband for herself. How do you do sir? - Must be some mistake,
I'm already married. - Already married? (Sound) Yeah, you should have told me. Congratulations again "Mr Baldwin". - No my name is-
- Excuse me, will you. I'm terribly busy,
just leave your card a with the boy. What did you say "Mr Baldwin"? - My name is-
- Some other time, I'm busy with "Mr Boost Baldwin" here. I didn't hear what you said. - I was going to say that my name is-
- Now, look what is it with you? Do you mind? Can't you see that-
- You're Bruce Baldwin. - Yes. - Who is he? Who are you? - My name's "P Davis". - Well, "Mr Davis",
is this any concern of yours? - No.
- Well, from now on I'd like you to keep your nose out of my affairs. - The underlying game here
is that "Carrie Grant's", "Walter" has mistaken his ex-wife's new
fiance for a very old man and he's so fixated on impressing this wrong "Bruce"
that he keeps brushing off the right one. And while the dialogue is great,
it's not what's on display here, instead it's the three way case of
mistaken identity playing out first and dirty right in front of our eyes. Is there incongruently? Check. Superiority? You bet you. Even relief theory would point to
the final biggest punchline as a relief in avoidance of the emotional toll
of apologizing to the old man. But, the three leading theories of
humor had damn well better be able to look at one of the funniest
scenes ever shot on film and declare it what audiences
around the world already have. God damn right! (Sound) Some comedy scenes are just a okay
in the dialogue and structural sense. But then along comes
a brilliant comic actor, who delivers a performance that
seemingly turns a basic into a home run. It's not what they said or what they're
doing, it's how they said or did it that offer to some of that comic relieving,
superior, or incongruence madness. Think of "Will Ferrel" in 'Anchorman'. - I'm in a glass case of emotion! - And his telephone booth scene is a funny
idea, and it's got some clever lines, but could you imagine anyone getting as big
of a laugh out of his delivery as him? What about "Jim Carey" in the 'rhino',
in "Ace Ventura"? - (Sound)
- "Bill Murray" telling his "Dalai Lama" tale in 'Caddyshack'? - (Foreign)
- "Christopher Guess" naming nuts in 'Best of Show.'
- Peanut, hazelnut, cashew nut. - It's moments of "Jeff Bridges",
"Lebowski", "Steve Carell's" '40-Year-Old Virgin', "Joe Brown" and "Jack Lemmon"
at the end of 'Some Like it Hot'. They're all funny scenes elevated
by absolutely magical performances. But, the best of all has
to go to 'Peter Sellers', "President Merkin Muffley" on the phone
with "Soviet Premier Dimitri Kissoff" and "Dr Strangelove" or 'How I Learned
to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb'. - Well now what happened is,
one of our base commanders, he had a sort of,
Well he went a little funny in the head. Just a little funny. And he went and did a silly thing. Well, I'll tell you what he did. He ordered his planes,
To attack your country. Well, let me finish "Dimitri". Let me finish "Dimitri". Well, listen how do think I feel about it? - We consider picking this
scene in the last category, because it's such
a brilliant idea on its own. But, there's something extra magical about
"Seller's" performance that takes it to the next level. The incongruity is clear,
what if two heads of state, actually chatted on the phone
like a married couple? Plan it in a giant officious underground
war room and the contrast is even clearer. But the shy, hesitant, tentative
sensitivity of "Muffley" just flies so far in the face of everything we
think of as presidential that we can't help ourselves from laughing. "Sellers" plays him like a waspy soccer
dad who'd be uncomfortable running a 'PTO meeting', much less a country
with an uncomfortable whine and just a hint of stutter. And it absolutely makes the scene. (Music) (Sound) While dialog, structure, and
performance are all tools that give us humor driven primarily by the characters,
that's not the only way to make a joke. Because, while most movies don't
have actual voiceover narration, they're narrated nonetheless. The camera, the editing,
the sound, the music. These are all the voice of
the cinematic narrator. They're just visual and
sonic rather than verbal, and the narrator can make jokes too. One of our favorite ways
a narrator can make a joke, is through cleaver use of the camera. Punchline isn't just what's happening,
but how it's being shown to us. The trick. Is in the telling. Think psych acts, like 'Top Secret's'
boots, 'High Anxiety's' crashing dolly, and 'Austin Powers'' nudit. There's 'A Knight's Tales'' feet,
'Dodgeball's' sign, and 'Men in Black's' chaotic background. Samberg falling through a serene frame
in 'Hot Rod' gets us every time, as does '21 Jump Street's' tripping balls. And pretty much everything made by "Edgar
Wright" but for our favorite psych act we think that 'This Is Spinal Tap',
"Stonehenge" is just to (Bleep) much. - When we get the actual set, when we get the piece it'll follow
exactly these specifications. I mean even these contours and everything. - I don't understanding. - That I mean.
- Wasn't it the actual piece. - Well when we, I mean when,
when you build the actual piece. - This is what you asked for, isn't it? (Music) At daybreak, I come too soon. - What a perfectly silly camera angle. Sure, the punchline is
embedded in the scenario. But it's the camera that delivers it,
mischievously framing the miniature as it lowers hesitantly over Christopher Guest's
unsuspecting shoulder. We're superior because it
makes a fool out of Guest. It's incongruous with his expectations. And are we getting any relief? I suppose it's relieving the emotional
investment that would come with a big epic set piece. But however you wanna interpret it, it's excellent visual comedy which is
enough to make this slot on our list. But it doesn't just have to be
the camera that makes the visual jokes, editing can do it to. Could you imagine a better engine for
incongruity than the uniquely cinematic instant juxtaposing
machine that is the edit. Is there anything more perfect for
smashing together the unexpected for a sudden laugh? It's the classic smash cut. Someone says I'm not ever doing that,
and then boom, they're already there. - Man,
what am I supposed to tell the press? - Training exercises,
isn't that the usual BS? It's not that simple. (Music) (Sound)
- An unfortunate training exercise. - But it can also be as simple as
a reaction shot, as in 'The Producers's' 'Springtime for Hitler', or '22 Jump
Street's', 'Ice Cube's' daughter reveal. 'Zoolander' builds jokes
out of a walk-off montage. 'Austin Powers' combines editing
with dialog for double entendre. And 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' mucks about
hilariously with a castle charge. However, for our number three pick,
I don't think we've ever laughed harder at a cut than in 'Bruce
Almighty's' broadcast sabotage. - "A potential scandal with the Buffalo PD surfaced today when the mayor (Sound). (Cough) (Sound) (Cough) (Sound) " (Cough) (Noise) (Noise)
- Okay, at first glance you might want to throw this in with
performance or scenario for its humor. We definitely did too. But our test involved paying
attention to ourselves as we watched, noticing when we laughed hardest,
and then asking why. And for us, we laugh hardest here,
the astonishingly perfect lip-syncing of Jim Carrey's mouth with
Steve Carell's gibberish just kills us. And here we are again,
looking at an obvious basic incongruity. Jim Carrey's mouth is moving but
Steve Carell is talking. And far more than the superiority of the
"Bruce" "Evan" relationship of this scene, we react to the incongruity of cause and
effect of movement and sound. And that punchline? That's right there in how it's cut,
between picture and picture and between picture and sound. (Sound) If you're not suspecting
it from our last pick already, in addition to visuals,
audio can contain our punch lines, too. And nowhere is this more
obvious than in the score. Whether it's 'Sean of the Dead's'
'Don't Stop Me Now,' 'Dr. Strangelove's' 'We'll Meet Again,' every
music cue in 'Team America World Police,' 'Uncle Fucker' in the South Park movie,
or the 'Big Lebowski's' 'Intro to Jesus'. However, for our number 3 pick, we've gotta go with the Office
Printer Massacre from 'Office Space.' (Music) If you haven't already gotten tired of us
sucking all the fun out of funny scenes by analyzing them to death like our frog, you can probably pretty easily identify
the pattern of silliness here. It's hilarious, because of
the mismatch between the music and the scene itself, incongruity style. And this is a pretty common music trope. This playing against the scene, but it's interesting to note that it's
not always funny when it happens. Compare Office Space to this. - (Sound) (Music) Not the same vibe. So, what gives? Not to keep harping on
these different models, but it seems like the relief theory
has a pretty clear answer. 'Office Space's' scene is funny
because the action provides us a silly relief from the aggression of the music. Whereas, there's no such relief
in the torture of 'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo', which maybe reveals something deeper
about these three competing theories. Maybe they're not really competing at all. Both these scenes pass an incongruity
test, but only 'Office Space' passes a relief one, while 'Dragon
Tattoo' fails with flying colors. So maybe the truth of humor is that while
you may only need to secure an A+ in either the relief, the superiority,
or the incongruity, you can't just flunk a whole category and
still expect to graduate to laughter. (Music) And finally, arriving at number 1,
we've reserved this slot for perhaps the gee source
of cinematic comedy. Originated largely in 16th
century Italian theater, we're talking about physical comedy. Think Slapstick. Think 'Charlie Chaplin' and
'Buster Keaton' and 'Jackie Chan'. It's the Pink Panther and
Wallace & Gromit. It's Lebowski's door, ' Brother's' fall
and 'Young Frankenstein's' priest. Our second favorite runner up here
is Kung Fu Hustle's knife scene. (Music) - (Foreign)
- But, for our number one pick, we've got to give it to the 'Marx
Brothers' mirror routine from 'Duck Soup'. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
we know we're big film hipsters for picking a comedy scene that's older
than your grandma for our top slot. But did you watch it? It's (Bleep) Hysterical. Look at them work their craft, it's
absolutely incredible the amount of work, precision, and
choreography that went into this sequence. And it's so long. It has its own narrative arc. It's not just one joke, but
one after another, after another, nonstop. It's got relief, superiority,
and, in our favorite part, a serious dose of incongruity,
all without a single word or phrase. And, most of all, above the technical,
philosophical jibber-jabber of dissecting our frogs, it absolutely
slays us more than 80 years later. Which is why it's our pick for
the funniest movie moment of all time. (Music) So what do you think? What's your favorite comedy moment? Do you disagree with any of our picks? Let us know in the comments below,
and be sure to subscribe for more Cinefix MovieLists. (Music)
