Top Comedy Movies of 2004

1. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

This movie serves as the coming out party for Apatow Productions as a major comedy player as well as launching a string of Will Ferrell as ridiculous character movies. It featured an astounding cast (Ferrell, Rudd, Applegate, Carell) with cameos and small roles for major players (Ben Stiller, Tim Robbins, Jack Black) or future stars (Seth Rogen). You can blame this and 40 Year Old Virgin a year later for virtually every good comedy since.

2. Mean Girls

All bow down before Tina Fey. She has a slam dunk career in TV and does a great job with movies too. This features Lindsay Lohan before she became the train wreck she is now, Rachel McAdams playing the bitchy girl (somehow she avoided being typecast in the role, Amanda Seyfried before she started scoring lead roles, Lizzy Caplan before she got really hot (she's always been funny, so no surprise there). Throw in some SNL vets, and, you have yourself a movie.

3. Shaun of the Dead

Every couple years, a British gem makes it's way across the pond and becomes a word-of-mouth hit (without making much money). The really remarkable thing about this is how it did the whole zombie thing before it was cool. Considering the mixed results of Hot Fuzz, it's still hard to say if  Edgar Wright & Simon Pegg are just getting started or, like Orson Wells, peaked early.

4. Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle

I guess you could praise it a win for Asian actors considering both John Cho and Kal Penn broke out of being typecast. I just think it's a great, story in the vein of the Odyssey. Numerous small adventures are mixed together by the binding force of stoner comedy. This has the same director as Dude Where's My Car?, which shows you how this type of movie can go right or wrong without much being different in the production. The X-Factor here: NPH.

5. Saved!

I'm a sucker for a good religious satire. Jena Malone is a great choice for character ostracized from her community. Mandy Moore shows considerable range going from A Walk to Remember to Saved! and only has poor casting choices to blame for not having a higher profile acting career yet. Anytime Macaulay Culkin shows up is a treat too. The movie plays out as you expect it to, and there are certainly more jokes early than late (happens far too often). Overall, it's a very solid movie, poking on blind religious devotion without viciously attacking those who are afflicted by it.

6. Team America: World Police

"America, Fuck Yeah!" Trey Parker and Matt Stone don't appeal to everyone and projects like this are almost designed to annoy the hell out of a lot of people. You have to respect the people in the business who experiment they way they do. A parody of dramatic super-patriotic movies. Sure. With puppets. Huh? Singing Kim-Jong Il. Retarded Matt Damon. Painfully long puppet sex scene. One almost gets sensory overload. What puts it on my list: The Dicks/Pussies/Assholes speech. Brilliant!

7. 50 First Dates

I can never put an Adam Sandler movie at the top of my list, but I can't ignore them either. You start to run out of things to say. Adam Sandler playing himself. Drew Barrymore plays the role of Julie Bowen, Winona Rider, or that girl from The Wedding Singer. Throw in a mix of Happy Madison regulars and a couple SNL people. Insert variable plot device (in this case, amnesia). It's a relative formula, but dammit, it works.

Man of the Year: Ben Stiller

This is a special award going out to Mr. Stiller for working so damn hard. In 2004 alone, he had the following movies:
-Meet the Fockers
-Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
-Envy
-Starsky & Hutch
-Along Came Polly
I didn't rank any of these because I couldn't decide which one (it was between the top 2, I can say).


HONORABLE MENTION

Napoleon Dynamite
You have to love a good sleeper summer cult hit? ...No, really, that's a question. Do you have to love it? Maybe if it wasn't the most over-quoted movie this side of Borat, I'd think higher of it. The movie was great at the time, but has no shelf life. Good to see they are finally making an animated series for it...7 years later.

Shrek 2
The biggest hit of the Shrek series, it lacked the shiny newness of the first and made so much money due to goodwill from the first and Puss In Boots. Still good. Not great.

Ocean's Twelve
I love love love the first movie. This one, not so much. It relied too much on the star power and the plot twists are not nearly as clever. It is still fun to watch but a let down from the first.

Sideways
Critics say I should love this movie. More dramedy than comedy, it focuses more on dealing with a midlife crisis (only not in the traditional sense) than I care for. I accept the possibility that I don't get it.

Garden State
If your soundtrack makes more money than your movie, you have issues. A good start for Zach Braff in films. It's sad he never figured out his next step. Natalie Portman makes anything better. The movie was overall unremarkable, although very watchable.

Eurotrip
When did Michelle Trachtenberg get hot? That was the entirety of the ad campaign when it came out. That's still what people take away from it.  In 1997, this movie would've been PG-13 and toned down a lot. I like that it wasn't, but I don't think the comedy itself stepped up to the R rating.


The Girl Next Door
As a comedy, this was not that remarkable. Like Eurotrip, it didn't warrant it's R rating. It held itself back a lot given the subject matter. Some movies get rated R because it's what the story needs. This kind of subject matter should've started NC-17 and edited and appealed till it got the R, otherwise, cut it down to PG-13, rely more on innuendo than nudity, and make more money.