I am serious… and don’t call me Shirley. That’s right, the spoof disaster movie Airplane has been voted the funniest movie of all time.
There aren’t man movie fans out there who can’t quote at least one of the classic one-liners from the 1980 flick, which was directed by David and Jerry Zucker and Jim Abrahams and starred Leslie Nielsen, Lloyd Bridges (both have since passed away) and basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar amongst others.
Airplane came out on top after research was conducted by movie subscription service Lovefilm, who came up with a laugh by minute ratio for the top ten funny films chosen by their members.
With lines such as ‘What’s our vector, Victor’, ‘We have clearance Clarence’ and ‘Roger, roger’ and cameo performances from Nielsen as a hapless doctor and Bridges as a air traffic controller who has picked the wrong week to stop drinking, smoking and sniffing glue, Airplane was always going to feature high on the list, with Lovefilm calculating that it generated three laughs per minute.
Another film directed by Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker, The Naked Gun came in third place with 2.3 laughs a minute, sandwiched between two more recent offerings, The Hangover (2.4 laughs) and Superbad (1.9 laughs).
Making up the rest of the top ten were the likes of Borat, Anchorman, comedy chick flick Bridesmaids and the Monty Python classic The Life of Brian.
Commenting on the survey, Helen Cowley, editor of Lovefilm, said: “After many heated debates about whether The Hangover really is the funniest movie ever, we asked our members to vote for the 10 movies that make them laugh the most, and then conducted our own research into how many times those included in this list made us giggle.
“Interestingly, while Lovefilm members voted Life of Brian as the funniest film, our research shows that for laughs a minute the hilarious aircraft-based satire of Airplane beats the Monty Python epic hands-down.”
We could have chosen practically any scene in the movie, but we’ll leave you with a snippet of perhaps our favourite passage. Enjoy.
Top 10 Films With The Highest ‘Laugh A Minute’ Scores:
1. Airplane – 3 Laughs a minute
2. The Hangover – 2.4 Laughs a minute
3. The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad ! – 2.3 Laughs a minute
4. Superbad – 1.9 Laughs a minute
5. Borat – 1.7 Laughs a minute
6. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy – 1.6 Laughs a minute
7. American Pie – 1.5 Laughs a minute
8. Bridesmaids – 1.4 Laughs a minute
9. Shaun of the Dead – 1.3 Laughs a minute
10. Life of Brian – 1.2 Laughs a minute
