10 Underrated Comedy Movies That Can Be Called Masterpieces

Image via Warner Bros. Published Jul 30, 2026, 6:08 PM EDT Sign in to your Collider account Rating any comedy media is tricky because the act of laughing at things itself is relative. A film or a clip could be extremely funny to one person and absolutely boring to another. Because of that, people often end up remembering the loudest laughs and ignore the machinery underneath them. A great comedy, therefore, needs timing, rhythm, casting, escalation, and a point of view sharp enough to keep the jokes from floating away. The ten films below deserve more love because they are funny with actual design behind the chaos. And perhaps, the unsaid truth here is that you might need to believe a bit at first, that they’re funny. That would require some focus. And that’s exactly why they’re underrated — people want the most shiny funny thing and these ones might require you to sit with them for a bit before they make you roll on the floor. 10 'The Wrong Guy' (1997) Image via Lions Gate Films The Wrong Guy follows a man who thinks he is a fugitive while the police already know he is innocent — now that is one of those comedy premises that feels almost too perfect. Nelson Hibbert (Dave Foley), a desperate corporate nobody, loses a promotion, finds his boss murdered, panics, and runs because he assumes every crime story must now be about him. The actual killer is out there, but Nelson is too committed to his own misunderstanding to notice how little the world is chasing him. That is the joke that keeps giving. Nelson hides, schemes, disguises himself, and treats every normal situation like a thriller set piece, while the cops are basically a few steps ahead in the most useless way possible. The movie has that Canadian cult-comedy looseness where a gag can be tiny, absurd, or completely deadpan and still land. Its genius is how confidently it lets stupidity become momentum. Nelson is not a criminal mastermind, a framed genius, or a brave innocent man. He is a guy who watched the wrong movie in his own head and then sprinted into it. 9 'In the Loop' (2009) Image via Optimum Releasing Political satire rarely feels this nasty and this close to real panic as it does in In the Loop. Simon Foster (Tom Hollander) follows one vague comment about war being unforeseeable into a transatlantic storm of spin, ambition, cowardice, and bureaucratic bloodsport. Around him, Malcolm Tucker (Peter Capaldi) turns language into assault, while American officials, aides, generals, and policy climbers treat a possible war like a career opportunity with body bags attached. The comedy is brutal because everyone sounds clever while behaving like a moral coward. Malcolm’s insults are legendary, but the film’s sharper pleasure is watching whole institutions convert human catastrophe into messaging strategy. Meetings become traps. Leaks become weapons. A phrase gets repeated, softened, denied, and weaponized until nobody seems fully in control of the thing they are helping create. Capaldi gives Malcolm volcanic force, but the quieter joke is that even his fury cannot stop the machine. This is a masterpiece of people talking fast so they never have to sit with what they are doing. 8 'The Nice Guys' (2016) Image via Warner Bros. Ryan Gosling falling apart in a bathroom stall, slicing his arm open on broken glass, and somehow making panic look balletic should have turned this into a modern comedy classic on sight. Holland March (Ryan Gosling) is a drunk, grieving private eye in 1970s Los Angeles, and Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe) is an enforcer who punches people for money before a missing-girl case forces them into the same mess. The mystery pulls them through porn parties, auto-industry corruption, dead bodies, and March’s terrifyingly capable teenage daughter Holly March (Angourie Rice). The reason the movie is so rewatchable is the rhythm between the three of them. March is useless in exactly the ways Healy expects, then weirdly brilliant when nobody is ready for it. Healy has the tougher exterior, but Holly keeps seeing the decent man he has almost trained himself to ignore. The ankle gun, the bee hallucination, the elevator body drop, the “and stuff” protest, all of it has proper detective-story shape underneath the chaos. 7 'Top Secret!' (1984) Image via Paramount Pictures Some comedies throw jokes at the wall. Top Secret fires them through the wall, reloads, then somehow finds another wall behind it. The film follows Nick Rivers (Val Kilmer), an American rock-and-roll singer who is sent to East Germany for a cultural festival, where he gets tangled with a resistance movement trying to stop the regime from using a kidnapped scientist’s invention. That plot is mostly an excuse for the movie to attack spy thrillers, Elvis films, war movies, language barriers, and basic visual logic. So the joke density is absolutely outrageous. A backwards bookstore scene plays like a magic trick. The underwater bar fight treats physics as optional. The cow disguise, the giant phone, the ballet, the skeet-surfing song, the forced-perspective gags, and the throwaway lines keep piling up until the movie feels almost generous. It gives you more than you can catch in one watch. That is why it deserves far more respect than it gets. 6 'Local Hero' (1983) Image via Warner Bros. The funniest thing about Local Hero is how gently it humiliates the idea of corporate conquest. Mac MacIntyre (Peter Riegert) is an oil-company dealmaker from Houston sent to a tiny Scottish village to buy the whole place for a refinery project. His boss, Felix Happer (Burt Lancaster), is rich enough to treat the world like a personal toy, while Mac assumes the villagers will be sentimental obstacles. Then he discovers that most of them are perfectly ready to sell, and somehow that makes his job more confusing. The movie’s comedy has this beautiful sideways calm. Mac keeps expecting resistance, but the village keeps seducing him through conversation, weather, food, gossip, beach walks, and a slower sense of life. The locals know exactly how much money could change their lives, which gives the film a funnier and more adult emotional shape. Happer staring at the sky, Mac falling for a place he came to purchase, and the village negotiating its own future with cheerful practicality all create something rare: a comedy about capitalism losing to atmosphere. 5 'The Death of Stalin' (2017) Image via Entertainment One Films The Death of Stalin follows the story after Joseph Stalin dies and the Soviet leadership scrambles for position. Men who spent years surviving one dictator’s paranoia suddenly start turning on each other with smiles, panic, paperwork, and whispered threats. Beria (Simon Russell Beale), Khrushchev (Steve Buscemi), Malenkov (Jeffrey Tambor), Molotov (Michael Palin), Zhukov (Jason Isaacs), and the rest all understand that the wrong sentence can become a death warrant. The brilliance is in how the film keeps the fear alive inside the farce. A body lies on the floor while officials debate procedure. People are arrested because lists exist and nobody wants to be the person who questions them. Khrushchev keeps calculating, Beria radiates rot, and Zhukov kicks through the room with military confidence so funny it almost becomes oxygen. The jokes are savage. The victims are never treated as decoration. That balance gives the movie its force. It shows a political system where everyone is ridiculous and almost everyone is afraid. 4 'Withnail and I' (1987) Image via HandMade Films Some comedies feel hungover from the first frame. Withnail and I basically turns a hangover into a worldview. Two unemployed actors, the dramatic and self-mythologizing Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and his anxious friend Marwood (Paul McGann), flee their filthy London flat for a country cottage owned by Withnail’s eccentric Uncle Monty (Richard Griffiths). They imagine fresh air, peace, and renewal. Instead, they get rain, mud, suspicious locals, no useful survival skills, and their own uselessness echoing louder in the countryside. The film is so funny and underrated. I love it because the dialogue sounds like despair trying to win an argument while drunk. Withnail is hilarious because he turns every inconvenience into a grand injustice, but the sadness underneath keeps cutting through. Marwood can see that their life is collapsing, and that awareness gives the comedy a real ache. The lighter-fluid drinking, the “we’ve gone on holiday by mistake” panic, the terrifying bull, Monty’s theatrical invasion of the cottage, all of it feels like a life phase rotting in real time. 3 'What We Do in the Shadows' (2014) Image via Unison/Paladin What We Do in the Shadows is about vampires arguing about dishes. Now that should have killed the mystique forever, and somehow it made the whole myth feel fresh again. A documentary crew follows Viago (Taika Waititi), Vladislav (Jemaine Clement), Deacon (Jonathan Brugh), and Petyr (Ben Fransham), ancient vampires sharing a flat in Wellington, as they deal with house chores, club entry, feeding routines, old grudges, and the arrival of newly turned vampire Nick (Cori Gonzalez-Macuer). The joke begins with immortal monsters behaving like terrible roommates, then keeps expanding without losing that stupidly perfect center. What makes the movie special is how affectionate it is toward every supernatural cliché it mocks. Viago is fussy and romantic. Vladislav carries old erotic villain energy like a man still dining out on past glory. Deacon wants to be rebellious even though he is centuries old. The werewolves trying to be polite lads in tracksuits are comedy gold every single time. The mockumentary style lets every awkward pause and petty argument breathe. It is a tiny movie with massive comic afterlife because it understands that monsters become funnier when you give them rent, chores, exes, and social anxiety. 2 'Defending Your Life' (1991) Image via Warner Bros. Albert Brooks turning the afterlife into a calm, beige, customer-service tribunal has created one of the most quietly brilliant comedy ideas through Defending Your Life. Daniel Miller (Albert Brooks) dies in a car accident and wakes up in Judgment City, where people review scenes from their lives to determine whether they overcame fear enough to move forward. He meets Julia (Meryl Streep), a woman whose life appears generous, brave, and emotionally open in ways that make Daniel’s own choices look even more cramped. The movie is hilarious because the cosmic system is so weirdly bureaucratic. The food is endless and nobody gains weight. Lawyers argue over clips from childhood, romance, work, and embarrassment. Daniel’s defense keeps coming down to moments where fear made him smaller than he wanted to be. Brooks makes that self-protection funny without letting it off the hook. Streep’s Julia gives the story warmth that never feels fake, and Daniel falling for her turns the judgment process into something painfully personal. This is a comedy masterpiece because it asks a terrifying question with a soft voice: how much life did you avoid while trying to stay safe? 1 'Broadcast News' (1987) image via 20th Century Studios Broadcast News takes the #1 spot and nobody makes professional anxiety feel as funny, romantic, and humiliating as this movie. Not even The Office. This film fellows Jane Craig (Holly Hunter) as a brilliant TV news producer whose standards are high enough to keep her employed and lonely enough to keep her miserable. Aaron Altman (Albert Brooks) is the smart reporter who understands the news and loves Jane from too close a distance. Tom Grunick (William Hurt) is the handsome anchor with less experience, more ease on camera, and enough self-awareness to be more complicated than the empty suit Aaron wants him to be. The triangle is killer because nobody is simply wrong about the others. Jane is drawn to Tom’s warmth and horrified by what his rise says about television. Aaron is right about journalistic decline, then lets bitterness make him cruel. Tom knows he is out of his depth in some rooms, yet he is not stupid, and that makes his success harder for Aaron to dismiss. The sweat during Aaron’s anchor attempt, Jane crying on schedule, the editing-room pressure, the ethical wound around Tom’s report, every piece feels painfully adult. It is romantic, hilarious, sharp, and still one of the best films ever made about being excellent at work and terrible at peace. Broadcast News Release Date December 16, 1987 Runtime 133 minutes Cast Robert Prosky Ernie Merriman