It’s been a bit of a slow time of year for comedy movies, but 2024 has enough laugh-out-loud gems to round out a list. And there’s a wide variety of subgenres to pick from: musical reboots, existential animated kids’ movies, campy horror flicks, and even a DC parody.
So behold: the best comedy movies of 2024 so far. This list will continue to be updated throughout the year, and will be sorted in reverse chronological order, so the newest movies always show up first. Our latest update added Saturday Night.
Saturday Night
Where to watch: Theaters
It’s perfectly reasonable to feel dubious about Jason Reitman’s extremely loose approach to Saturday Night Live history in his film Saturday Night. He and co-writer Gil Kenan lionize SNL producer Lorne Michaels as an starry-eyed idealist who just wants to give New York City’s most iconoclastic comedians a home. They conflate pretty much everything that happened in a year of production into a single antic 90-minute period. There’s some hilariously broad, obvious symbolism at work in the piece, particularly with the single harried worker trying to lay the set’s brick flooring — with real New York bricks, we’re told, you know, for authenticity — literally minutes before showtime, with no one helping him, until suddenly everyone decides to pitch in and get it done. It’s corny, even pandering.
And yet. The performances, as a group of actors try to recreate young Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Jane Curtin, Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman, Garrett Morris, and so on are surprisingly spot-on, and where their interactions aren’t believable as history, they still pop as entertainment. Playing the first airing of Saturday Night Live half as a Robert Altman scene movie and half as exaggerated mythmaking is a smart idea that allows the movie to ride on sharp banter, sharp editing, and curiosity about what it might have actually been like behind the scenes with this many highly idiosyncratic, difficult people all vying for the spotlight. Saturday Night isn’t meant to be an educational or true-to-life movie: It’s practically a fantasy movie, just populated with famous faces. If you can ride the wave without expecting a historical biopic, it’s an absolute blast. —Tasha Robinson
Space Cadet
Where to watch: Prime Video
Space Cadet stars Emma Roberts as Rex, a Florida party girl who once had big dreams to see the stars. Thanks to a few real life complications, she’s had to put her dreams aside — till she gets the chance to attend NASA’s astronaut training program. The only problem? Her best friend may have embellished her resume just a liiiiittle bit more than she should’ve.
Seeing Rex juxtaposed with her more traditional, buttoned-up classmates is a fun time, harkening back to Legally Blonde and similar comedies. But it’s also super heartwarming to see her moxie and heart rewarded, as she approaches the challenges of astronaut training with a glittery spark in her eye. —Petrana Radulovic
Babes
Where to watch: Hulu
Director Pamela Adlon (Better Things) gets nitty and gritty about the epic highs and lows of pregnancy in Babes, but the best part is the central relationship between two best friends. Eden (Ilana Glazer), a single yoga teacher, and Dawn (Michelle Buteau), a married dentist with two kids, have been besties for decades — and even though their life priorities are a bit different now, they make time for each other.
Eden finds herself pregnant after a one-night stand, and decides to go through with having the baby. It’s a new stage of their relationship, especially as Dawn struggles with balancing her job, her family, and her friendship with Eden, all while Eden embarks on this scary journey of single motherhood. It’s wickedly funny, but also says a lot about the strain adulthood puts on friendships. — PR
The People’s Joker
Where to watch: For digital rental or purchase on Apple
Director-star Vera Drew initially planned The People’s Joker as a found footage movie, pulling together clips from Joker’s past, present, and future to create a new Jokerfied experience. While the found footage element didn’t happen, the end result (after a brief delay over rights issues) is a breath of fresh, satirical air in our IP-saturated landscape, part of a new wave of trans-authored cinema that is shaking up what mainstream audiences can experience in trans film.
The People’s Joker cleverly uses the DC canon as grounding for the setting, an avenue to explore gender expression, and for comedy, subverting expectations of these well-known characters. But my favorite part of the movie is how Vera utilizes many different styles of animation from many different creators to create a mixed media effect. It’s unlike anything else you’ll see this year. —Pete Volk
Wicked Little Letters
Where to watch: Netflix, or for digital rental/purchase on Amazon, Apple TV
The true story of the Littlehampton poison pen letter scandal of 1923 is a fairly depressing one, another in a long line of reminders that justice systems depend on people’s judgment, and people are notoriously prone to prejudice, stereotypes, and other forms of confirmation bias that get in the way of the truth. But Thea Sharrock’s lively (and heavily fictionalized) British comedy about the scandal addresses those points with a light perspective that offers a little uplift and a lot of good humor. International treasure Olivia Colman (The Favourite) stars as Edith Swan, a pious working-class spinster who starts getting obscene anonymous letters; Jessie Buckley is her neighbor, Rose Gooding, a foul-mouthed libertine accused of writing them, in an era where calling someone a “foxy ass whore” in print was enough to warrant a prison sentence at hard labor.
The absolute shock and disbelief Edith and Rose’s entire community feels over seeing words like “asshole” in print is part of the humor here, but a lot more of it comes from Jonny Sweet’s bouncy, winking script, which keeps the action zippy and highlights the ironies of an entire community full of hypocrites delighting in their self-righteous offense at the letters. (Any metaphor for today’s online communications is strictly intended.) Colman and Buckley’s performances add a terrific edge to it all, but this is an ensemble piece at heart, and Anjana Vasan as a lady detective trying to wade through institutional sexism rounds out the cast for a lively, sparky story that isn’t particularly believable as history, but sure lands well as funny, engaging metaphor. —TR
Drive-Away Dolls
Where to watch: Prime Video, or for digital rental/purchase on Amazon/Apple TV
Don’t get fooled by only seeing one Coen name in the credits; Drive-Away Dolls (or its original title, which still appears in the credits: Drive-Away Dykes) has the same hilarious crime-caper spirit that marks all of the Coen brothers’ best early works.
The ’90s-set movie follows two lesbian friends (Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan) on an East Coast road trip with two clueless gangsters hot on their trail. Equal parts excellent friends-on-the-road movie and crime comedy, Drive-Away Dolls is an early contender for the most fun movie of 2024, and one that will likely be hard to beat. —Austen Goslin
Lisa Frankenstein
Where to watch: Prime Video, or for digital rental/purchase on Amazon/Apple TV
Sometimes, you just want to see Kathryn Newton wear increasingly elaborate ’80s goth outfits as she and an undead Victorian musician go around killing people who’ve wronged her.
Lisa Frankenstein is a loving homage-slash-parody of old schlocky horror comedies, and even though some of the connective tissue is missing from scene to scene, it’s a shockingly good time. —PR
Orion and the Dark
Where to watch: Netflix
On its surface, Orion and the Dark seems like a standard fairy-tale-like children’s story about a scared boy meeting the personification of Darkness, who helps him get over his fears. But it takes a twisty turn when it’s revealed this story is being told by a grown-up version of that little boy to his daughter.
It’s not just a cute framing device, but one that warps the story and makes it way weirder than when it starts out (in the best way). —PR
Hundreds of Beavers
Where to watch: Fandor, free with ads on Tubi and Pluto TV, free with a library card on Hoopla, or digital rental/purchase on Amazon and Apple TV
“What if Looney Tunes, but for adults, and filtered through video games and silent slapstick comedy?” That’s the genius combination that makes Hundreds of Beavers one of the most special movies of the year, a pure expression of cinematic comedy that will have you laughing in stitches. The low-budget indie follows Jean Kayak (Ryland Brickson Cole Twes), a trapper trying to survive in the harsh winter of the Great Lakes region. He’s surrounded by hundreds of beavers (which are presented as people in mascot beaver costumes) who view him as a threat, and he must solve a series of problems and puzzles to survive and thrive in the harsh environment.
Ludicrously silly and packed to the brim with jaw-dropping gags and special effects on its limited budgets, Hundreds of Beavers is the funniest movie I’ve seen in years. It’s the perfect antidote for what has ailed mainstream American comedy for years, by actually bringing back jokes instead of just the tone of comedy. I can not recommend it highly enough. —PV
Mean Girls
Where to watch: Paramount Plus
Fans of the Broadway musical Mean Girls, based on the 2004 movie Mean Girls, have understandably bridled against some of the changes in this screen adaptation, from the many songs cut from the Broadway version to the casting of protagonist Cady Heron. But while it’s an imperfect translation of the stage experience, it still stands on its own as a lively, creatively staged movie that puts plenty of verve into its catchy, inviting musical numbers.
The performances aren’t out to replace the 2004 version of the movie: They’re new interpretations, delivered with big musical energy. This is a tremendously fun movie, designed to send people home singing. —TR
Self Reliance
Where to watch: Hulu
Jake Johnson’s directorial debut follows a man who’s so at sea after a breakup that he agrees to star in an underground reality competition where he tries to survive for a month with assassins trying to kill him. But Self Reliance isn’t the kind of manic thriller that premise suggests; Johnson told Polygon it’s much more of a mashup of two of his favorite movies: Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket and the Adrian Lyne thriller Jacob’s Ladder. That’s an odd combination of improbably dissimilar projects, but they coalesce into an offbeat indie comedy about human connection, and the mortifying ordeal of trying to be known by people who aren’t all that interested in the knowing.
Produced by The Lonely Island and featuring Andy Samberg playing himself in a pretty hilarious cameo, Self Reliance has some of the same dry humor and secret sentiment as the group’s movie Palm Springs, but with even smaller stakes and even less predictable storytelling. It’s goofy stuff, but it’s an enjoyably light story that’s designed to keep the audience guessing. And it’s just about impossible to watch without wondering: Would I do any better under these circumstances? —TR
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