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The 20 Best Comedies of 2020

In a year when we really needed a laugh, these movies granted us that, albeit mostly amidst dark and bittersweet themes.
Best Comedy Movies
By  · Published on December 29th, 2020

5. Babyteeth

Babyteeth best comedy movies 2020

Shannon Murphy is off to the races with her directorial debut, Babyteeth, an Australian coming-of-age dramedy that offers in tears as much as it does in laughter. Eliza Scanlen plays a teen with a terminal illness and Toby Wallace plays the drug-addled twenty-something bad boy that uses her to steal drugs. Together, they form an outrageous relationship that hinges on emotional turbulence, dishonesty, and palliative desperation, often shocking us into laughter, just as Essie Davis and Ben Mendelsohn do as fucked up parents trying to get a grasp on their daughter’s poor taste in men. Much of the comedy comes in the way Murphy and screenwriter Rita Kalnejais express life as a grave, mysterious disappointment and portray parents and children as equally existentially lost parties. It’s an emotional rollercoaster that will leave you beaming with an exuberance for life.


4. I’m Thinking of Ending Things

Thinking of Ending Things best comedy movies 2020

If his directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York, didn’t do enough to reveal Charlie Kaufman as a cinematically extreme version of Thornton Wilder, then his third feature at the helm definitely does the trick. That’s simplifying the film, though, and labeling it a comedy definitely is, as well. With a work of art like I’m Thinking of Ending Things, which Kaufman loosely adapted from a thriller novel by Iain Reid, there is no one apt genre, and saying it’s every genre or most genres is too easy. Still, Kaufman always finds humor in his psychological epics. They’re like satires of the mind.

This time, we’re inside the mind of a high school janitor following a young woman protagonist who is his idea of a woman whom he had or would bring home to meet his parents. Well, that’s one bare-bones way of describing the plot. Putting it so simply is rather funny, and so is the idea of considering all there is to the story, and so is so many little moments, like the dog who doesn’t stop shaking and Toni Collette doing her wildest maternal character yet and anything that comes off as strange, surreal, absurd, or awkward, which is most everything. Comedy comes out of deviation from normalcy, and I’m Thinking of Ending Things is totally, brilliantly abnormal. – Christopher Campbell


3. Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

Borat Subsequent Movie best comedy movies 2020

It’s been fourteen years since Sacha Baron Cohen rattled the planet with his iconic socio-political satire Borat, and it should go without saying that in an age of overwrought sequels, there was a lot of timidity going into Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. As it turns out, fourteen years and one groundbreakingly awful presidential run were the ingredients for a gut-busting sequel that re-achieved mass cultural relevancy, spoke specifically to the chaotic politics of the time, and unveiled historic, impossibly captured candid footage of how Rudy Giuliani conducts professional affairs with female journalists in the privacy of his hotel room.

Like the first movie, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is boundary-pushing and absolutely bonkers, landing almost every attempt to scandalize viewers with cancel-rate behavior. On the surface, some will find it too offensive, but underneath, it amounts to a brilliant, incisive takedown of the racist, sexist, and bigoted traditional values of the far right – one that is bound to leave your side split.


2. Promising Young Woman

Promising Young Woman best comedy movies 2020

Carey Mulligan stars as a former med school student who now spends her days at a coffee shop and her nights trying to teach men a lesson by pretending to be an easily taken-advantage-of drunk girl. Bo Burnham plays her old classmate, now a doctor, who may just charm her out of her near-vigilante funk and toward a life of having a boyfriend and a pilates class and a house and kids and a job that her mom could brag about. What a wonderful rom-com that would be. But without spoiling anything, that’s not this movie.

You can picture the more Hollywood version of Promising Young Woman where the romantic comedy angle follows through to the ending. Where the guy saves the woman from her true self. But as with too many rom-coms, that would lose the point of the initially established scenario. Writer/director Emerald Fennell takes the story to a darker place, but it’s also a more logical and affecting place that feels true to its characters, for better or worse for them. The rom-com stuff is funny and enjoyable, but the climax of the film has a surprisingly satisfying edge. And Mulligan and Burnham play their respective roles in it to perfection from start to finish.


1. Palm Springs

Palm Springs comedy movies 2020

Thirteen years ago, The Lonely Island left us on the floor with their first feature production, Hot Rod, changing the comedy scene for good with a unique sensibility toward ironic characterization, the absurd, a vast pop culture lexicon, glam production value, and co-creator Andy Samberg. Yes, that feels like thirty years ago, but time doesn’t exist anymore, remember? Well, it doesn’t in Palm Springs, at least.

Their new desert neon odyssey follows Samberg and co-star Cristin Milioti through a Groundhog Day-esque time loop in which the two, having just met, relive a friend’s wedding together. With a goldmine of supporting performances from June Squibb, J.K. Simmons, Peter Gallagher, and a riotous Conner O’Malley, the rom-com has a cross-generational comedic appeal that’s driven by a raunchy sense of humor and grounded in the loveable nature of its leads. It’s the kind of comedy that doesn’t let you stop laughing once you’ve started. So, if you’re drinking something while watching, take small sips few and far between to reduce the risk of spewing liquid in a pandemic.

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Luke Hicks is a New York City film journalist by way of Austin, TX, and an arts enthusiast who earned his master's studying film philosophy and ethics at Duke. He thinks every occasion should include one of the following: whiskey, coffee, gin, tea, beer, or olives. Love or lambast him @lou_kicks.