Mel Brooks scored his first commercial hit with this raucous Western spoof starring the late Cleavon Little as the newly hired (and conspicuously black) sheriff of Rock Ridge. Sheriff Bart teams up with deputy Jim (Gene Wilder) to foil the railroad-building scheme of the nefarious Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman). The simple plot is just an excuse for a steady stream of gags, many of them unabashedly tasteless, that Brooks and his wacky cast pull off with side-splitting success.
The 1988 sequel to one of the most successful movies of all time finds Eddie Murphy reprising his role as Detroit police detective Axel Foley, and once again playing a fish out of water as he tries to solve a series of heists in Beverly Hills that may be connected to the attempted murder of his friend, a Beverly Hills police captain (Ronny Cox). Constructed in a much flashier and faster-paced visual style than the first film, the song still remains the same as Foley tries to keep his job in Detroit while solving crimes for the Beverly Hills cops.
Filmmaker Robert Zemeckis topped his breakaway hit Romancing the Stone with Back to the Future, a joyous comedy with a dazzling hook: what would it be like to meet your parents in their youth? Billed as a special-effects comedy, the imaginative film (the top box-office smash of 1985) has staying power because of the heart behind Zemeckis and Bob Gale's script. High schooler Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox, during the height of his TV success) is catapulted back to the '50s where he sees his parents in their teens, and accidentally changes the history of how Mom and Dad met.
In this hilarious farce, three of Hollywood's favorite female stars - Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton - live every secretary's dream as they turn the tables on their boss and turn their male controlled workplace into a model office. At Consolidated, the office manager (Tomlin), the vice president's secretary (Parton) and the newest employee (Fonda) become great friends as they share their resentment about their egotistical, sexist boss (Dabney Coleman).
Terry Brogan (Jeff Bridges), a cynical ex-football star, is hired to find Jessie Wyler (Rachel Ward), the runaway mistress of a ruthless L.A. nightclub owner, Jake Wise (James Woods). According to Jake, Jesse has stabbed him and vanished with $50,000. But Terry's mission is soon forgotten when he tracks down and falls in love with the beautiful Jessie on a Mexican island. Trouble brews, however, when Jake dispatches his henchman, Hank Sully (Alex Karras), to bring the lovers back.
One of the best comedies of the 1970s, Blake Edwards's ode to midlife crisis and the hazards of infidelity now plays like a valentine to that self-indulgent decade, and it's still as funny as it ever was. In the signature role of his career (along with "Arthur"), Dudley Moore plays a songwriter with a severe case of marital restlessness, and all it takes is a chance encounter with Bo Derek (in her screen debut) to jump-start his libido.
