Comedy

Hot newcomers Josie (Rachael Leigh Cook), Melody (Tara Reid) and Val (Rosario Dawson) are three small town musicians with big dreams but little future. Then fate gives the Pussycards the chance of a lifetime when band manager Wyatt (Alan Cumming) of MegaRecords signs them overnight to an awesome recording contract. Suddenly, Josie and the Pussycats are living life in the fast lane with sold out concerts, a number one single and global stardom. But it's not all limousines and private jets.

Heaven Can Wait is a romantic fantasy about Joe Pendleton (Warren Beatty), a Los Angeles Rams quarterback who is accidentally summoned to heaven by an overly zealous celestial escort. Pendleton is returned to earth in the body of another man, who is a corporate giant. While practicing to once again play for the Rams, Pendleton must escape attempts on his life while romantically pursuing a beautiful Englishwoman (Julie Christie) who protests the destruction caused to her village by one of his many corporations.

The Fab Four from Liverpool--John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr--in their first movie. Nobody expected A Hard Day's Night to be much more than a quick exploitation of a passing musical fad, but when the film opened it immediately seduced the world--even the stuffiest critics fell over themselves in praise (highbrow Dwight Macdonald called it "not only a gay, spontaneous, inventive comedy but it is also as good cinema as I have seen for a long time").

Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn star in this hilarious romantic comedy about the consequences of "stretching" the truth. When architect Newton Davis' girlfriend Becky (Dana Delany) turns down his marriage proposal, his newly-built dream house suddenly becomes nothing more than an empty monument to her rejection. That is, until a chance encounter with Gwen (Hawn) turns his life upside-down. Intrigued by Newton's story, Gwen visits the house and decides to move in on her own.

After her brilliant career in a comedy duo with Mike Nichols, Elaine May made tentative progress as a director, making only four films between 1971 and 1987 (her last being the disastrous but underrated Ishtar). Released in 1972, The Heartbreak Kid (from a screenplay by Neil Simon) is widely considered her best work from behind the camera, and it's still one of the most accomplished--but least recognized--comedies of the 1970s.

Bill Murray does warmth in his most consistently effective post-Stripes comedy, a romantic fantasy about a wacky weatherman forced to relive one strange day over and over again, until he gets it right. Snowed in during a road-trip expedition to watch the famous groundhog encounter his shadow, Murray falls into a time warp that is never explained but pays off so richly that it doesn't need to be.

Since Adolf Hitler had the audacity to borrow his mustache from the most famous celebrity in the world--Charlie Chaplin--it meant Hitler was fair game for Chaplin's comedy. (Strangely, the two men were born within four days of each other.) The Great Dictator, conceived in the late thirties but not released until 1940, when Hitler's war was raging across Europe, is the film that skewered the tyrant. Chaplin plays both Adenoid Hynkel, the power-mad ruler of Tomania, and a humble Jewish barber suffering under the dictator's rule.

Oscar nominee Kate Hudson (Almost Famous) and Matthew McConaughey (A Time To Kill) give the battle of the sexes an outrageously unexpected twist in their runaway comedy hit the Daily News applauds as "Hilarious"! As the "How to..." columnist for trendy Composure Magazine, Andie Anderson (Hudson) agrees to write a first-hand account about what it takes to drive a man out of your life...in exactly 10 days. At the same time, eligible ad agency bachelor Benjamin Barry (McConaughey) accepts a high-stakes bet that he can lure any woman into falling head-over-heels in love with him...

Based on Oscar Wilde's play, The Importance Of Being Earnest is the hilarious adventure of two young bachelors who create alter egos in order to find romance. Worthing is a wealthy chap who resides in the country but often visits the city as his "brother" Ernest. There he falls in love with the beautiful Gwendolyn. Montcrieff is Worthing's boisterous friend who lives in the city and spends money beyond his means. In order to escape bill collectors and boring dinner parties, Montcrieff creates "Bumbry," a sick friend whom he often visits out of town.

I.Q. has all the elements of a classic romantic comedy. Certainly Meg Ryan has demonstrated she has the stuff for funny love with films such as When Harry Met Sally... and Sleepless in Seattle, and director Fred Schepisi's Roxanne ranks among top contemporary romantic comedies. Even though Tim Robbins received acclaim for dramatic work in Jacob's Ladder and The Shawshank Redemption, his early comedic work shouldn't be forgotten (well, maybe Howard the Duck, but not the hilarious Sure Thing). And Walter Matthau? No explanation needed.