Dom DeLuise

Celebrate the ultimate frogs-to-riches story with the one that started it all - The Muppet Movie. Laugh along with the mostly-true story of how the Muppets got their start. From the very first "plunk!" of Kermit's banjo playing "The Rainbow Connection" (Oscar nominee, Best Original Song, 1979), to the hysterical road trip that brings our fearless frog together with Fozzie, Gonzo, Animal and most importantly of all, Miss Piggy, join the jam-packed heartwarming hilarity, outrageous antics and big-shot Hollywood cameos.

It's not Blazing Saddles, but there are some chuckles to be found in Mel Brooks's 1993 spoof of the Robin Hood legend. Cary Elwes is Robin (with a lighthearted jab at Kevin Costner's bad English accent in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves), while Richard Lewis plays an angst-ridden King John, and Roger Rees a snotty Sheriff of Nottingham. Comic David Chappelle has some good moments as the only black member of Robins's noble thieves, and Brooks does his own spin on Friar Tuck: Rabbi Tuchman.

Set in the 1930's, this gangster spoof tells the comic tale of a Johnny Kelly (Michael Keaton) who is forced into a life of crime in order to pay for his ailing mother's medical treatment. Attempting to keep his straight life and his life of crime separate Johnny takes the name Dangerously and is soon a powerful mobster flush with women and riches. The Dangerously name is about to be slandered, though, by the Kelly family when Johnny's brother (Griffin Dunne) becomes the district attorney.

Mel Brooks's 1981, three-part comedy--set in the Stone Age, the Roman Empire, and the French Revolution--is pure guilty pleasure. Narrated by Orson Welles and featuring a lot of famous faces in guest appearances (beyond the official cast), the film opens well with Sid Caesar playing a caveman, then moves along to the unlikely but somehow hilarious juxtaposition of Caesar's soldiers (the other Caesar, not Sid) with pot humor, and ends on a dumb-funny note in the French bloodbath. This is a take-it-or-leave-it movie, and it works best if you're in a take-it-or-leave-it mood.

Thirty big-name stars, 300-horsepower horseplay and 3,000 breakneck miles: that's the revved-up sequel Cannonball Run II. A real-life race inspired both The Cannonball Run and this follow-up. Director Hal Needham drove in a good-natured yet admittedly illegal race called The Cannonball Sea-to-Shining Sea Memorial Trophy Dash. To elude the law, Needham and his pals disguised their entry as an ambulance.

Like The Gumball Rally (1976) before it, former stuntman Hal Needham's The Cannonball Run was inspired by the same real-life cross-country road race. If The Gumball Rally was the critical favorite, The Cannonball Run was the box-office favorite (spawning the almost-as-successful sequel, Cannonball Run II, a few years later). Aside from top-billed stars Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise (stars of Needham's Smokey and the Bandit series) plus Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr.

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas documents in rousing song and dance a new Texas Legend, which now joins the Alamo as a historical institution immortalized in story, song, book, play and movie. The demise of the real life Chicken Ranch inspired the musical stage play, and now the big screen version stars Burt Reynoldsias Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd and Dolly Parton as the Chicken Ranch's proprietress, Miss Mona. The two join together not only in romance, but to fight big city TV crusader Melvin P.