The 10 best R-rated comedies

Let’s just say it: dirty jokes are pretty effing funny. The best R-rated comedies, however, are more than exercises in vulgarity. They’re happily transgressive, pushing past the boundaries of good taste and dragging the audience along with them. Laughter may be the best medicine, but sometimes adults need something stronger than aspirin. 

10. The Hangover (2009, dir. Todd Phillips)

The no-holds-barred bachelor’s party is one of life’s great paradoxes. As anyone who has engaged in such depravity can attest, this particular rite of passage rests on the conceit that the most memorable times are those that one can barely remember. The Hangover takes that paradox and chases it with a few shots of Jägermeister. Doug (Justin Bartha) is getting married, so best friends Phil and Stu (Bradley Cooper and Ed Helms, respectively) take him to Las Vegas for a final blowout. Tagging along is Alan (Zach Galifianakis), Doug’s über-strange brother-in-law-to-be. Cut to the following morning. Phil, Stu, and Alan wake up hungover in a thoroughly trashed hotel suite. Doug is missing, and no one can remember the night before. Todd Phillips keeps the debauchery cheerful. The film went on to become the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time, a record it would hold for years.

9. Blazing Saddles (1974, dir. Mel Brooks)

When people lament that Hollywood doesn’t make ‘em the way they used to, I can’t help but think of Mel Brooks’ uproarious western spoof. It’s doubtful a major studio would dare produce this today. Blazing Saddles concerns a black sheriff (Cleavon Little) who is sent by a scheming state bureaucrat (Harvey Korman) as a calculated insult to the embattled town of Rock Ridge. The movie tweaks racism by aggressively rubbing the audience’s collective nose in it. The script—by Brooks, Norman Steinberg, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor, and Alan Uger—employs the N-word more than a Klan meeting. Unfortunately, Blazing Saddles’ homophobia, in the form of Dom DeLuise as a prissy movie director, seems more about amplifying stereotypes than undercutting them. Still, Brooks keeps the jokes coming at a breakneck pace. For every clunker, there are at least two gems, whether it’s Madeline Kahn doing a perfect Marlene Dietrich or even a cowboy campfire that goes a little heavy with the beans.

8. The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005, dir. Judd Apatow)

Judd Apatow reportedly shot more than 1 million feet of film in his directorial debut, a testament to the anything-goes improvisational style that made The 40-Year-Old Virgin a comic milestone. Steve Carell (who co-wrote the script with Apatow) is Andy Stitzer, a decent enough guy who works at an electronics store and long ago gave up on romance. That lack of experience surfaces over a poker game with his coworkers, when he tries to join their talk of sexual conquests. “You know, when you grab a woman’s breast … and it feels like a bag of sand,” he says. Apatow’s modus operandi is gathering very funny people to say very funny things, and his doozy of an assemblage here includes Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Romany Malco, Elizabeth Banks, and Jane Lynch. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that what sounds like the punchline of an off-color joke is in the end a good-hearted romcom—at least once you get past that chest-waxing scene.

7. Superbad (2007, dir. Greg Mottola)

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg drafted Superbad when they were teens, which may explain its authenticity in capturing how teen boys think and act. Jonah Hill is Seth (loud, abrasive, porn-obsessed) and Michael Cera is Evan (reserved, twee); both want to lose their virginity before they graduate from high school. “You know when you hear girls say, ‘Ah, man, I was so shitfaced last night. I shouldn’t have fucked that guy?’” Seth tells Evan in preparation for a big party. “We could be that mistake!” They have great chemistry together but it’s 17-year-old Christopher Mintz-Plasse, in his film debut, who steals most of his scenes as their nerdy friend McLovin, or at least that’s what it says on his fake ID. Superbad is gleefully obscene; Seth’s childhood compulsion to doodle penises is worth the price of admission alone. For all its crudity, the tenderest scene has nothing to do with sex—it’s two friends on separate escalators, silently realizing they’re about to grow apart.
(See more in The 10 best male buddy films.)

6. Bridesmaids (2011, dir. Paul Feig)

Screenwriting collaborators Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo hit box-office paydirt with this overdue female-fronted answer to Judd Apatow’s bromance comedies. Wiig stars as Annie Walker, whose life is falling apart at the same time her longtime best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) is about to get married. To complicate matters, Annie finds herself, as maid of honor, forced to interact with Rose Byrne as Lillian’s insufferably perfect new friend. The story of a close friendship under strain has its poignant moments, but they are balanced by glorious crassness, much of it delivered by Melissa McCarthy in a star-making performance as Lillian’s future sister-in-law. Bridesmaids begins with Wiig and Jon Hamm in a deeply squirm-inducing sex scene that looks hard to top. But that’s well before bride-to-be Lillian, still in a wedding dress, is struck with food poisoning and lets loose in the middle of a street amid a mad dash to a restroom. Annie looks on in amazement. “Wow, you’re really doing it, aren’t you?” she says, a blank deadpan. “You’re shitting in the street.”
(See more in The 10 best female buddy films and The 10 best bathroom scenes in film)

5. There’s Something About Mary (1998, dir. Peter Farrelly and Bobby Farrell)

There’s Something About Mary throws down its gauntlet of gross-out early on, when dorky high schooler Ted Stroehmann (Ben Stiller) is thwarted from getting to senior prom with his dream date, Mary Jensen (Cameron Diaz), after his pecker gets caught in his zipper. Thirteen years later, Ted is still carrying a torch for her––one of many who are. Slimy private eye Pat Healy (Matt Dillon) tries to ingratiate himself to Mary, whose brother has an intellectual disability, by declaring, “I love retards”—a line that lands precisely because Healy thinks he’s winning her over. Another admirer, Tucker (Lee Evans), feigns a disability in order to get close to Mary. One person’s masturbation misfire becomes another’s hair gel. Brothers Peter and Bobby Farrelly cranked out a slew of reliably lowbrow comedies in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but There’s Something About Mary transcends their oeuvre of tastelessness by melding raunch with heart. How can you be too offended by a movie that ends with outtakes of its cast lip-synching the Foundations’ bubblegum hit “Build Me Up Buttercup”?
(See more in The 10 best bathroom scenes in film and The 10 most memorable masturbation scenes in film.)

4. Animal House (1978, dir. John Landis)

National Lampoon’s collegiate “slobs vs. snobs” plotline set the comic template for years of imitators, but even the lesser successors have failed to dull the shine from John Landis’ third (and best) movie. Sure, not everything has aged gracefully in this comedy about a fraternity wreaking havoc at fictional Faber College circa 1962. Date rape, body shaming, and peeping Toms don’t generate the same laughs they did when Animal House burst onto screens in 1978—but plenty still holds up. The drunks, losers, and assorted miscreants comprising Delta House have the advantage of being played by some fantastically funny actors. John Belushi had his movie-breakout as Bluto (“Christ, seven years of college down the drain!”), but many others––particularly Tim Matheson, Tom Hulce, Stephen Furst, and, perhaps best of all, John Vernon as Faber’s scheming dean––are equally terrific. I was 12 when I snuck into a theater to see Animal House. To this day, I cannot hear the word “kiln” without immediately thinking of poor Fawn Leibowitz.

3. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004, dir. Adam McKay)

I don’t know how to put this, but … this movie is kind of a big deal. Eminently quotable and sublimely silly, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy is a depantsing to the chauvinistic “boys’ club” that flourished in local television news stations of the 1970s. Lampooning white male pomposity is a specialty of Will Ferrell, stupendous here as San Diego news anchor Ron Burgundy. A legend in his own mind, Ron finds his status threatened when Channel 4 pairs him up with a woman. “It’s anchorman, not anchor lady—and that’s a scientific fact!” decries sportscaster Champ Kind (David Koechner). The “lady,” Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), is a hard-charging reporter-anchor whose presence both upsets and titillates the heavily cologned machismo of the newsroom. Director Adam McKay, who co-wrote the script with Ferrell, makes fine use of a cast that includes Paul Rudd, Fred Willard, and a scene-stealing Steve Carell as imbecilic weatherman Brick Tamland. Oh, what am I saying? Everyone is a scene-stealer in Anchorman.
(See more in The 10 best journalism movies.)

2. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006, dir. Larry Charles)

Sacha Baron Cohen is fearless. Maybe foolhardy is more accurate. In this searingly funny mockumentary, the chameleon-like British comic actor disguises himself as Borat Sagdiyev, a clueless Kazakhstani journalist traveling across the United States to report on its culture and customs. Baron Cohen, Borat director Larry Charles, and their small guerrilla-style film crew are in on the joke, but not the people they punk—er, interview—on their travels. The Borat character is sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, and a general idiot, but he presents himself as so naive and well-meaning that many of his interviewees chalk up his outrageous behavior to cultural differences. That’s why the faux journalist gets away with presenting a bag of human feces to a Southern etiquette coach or explaining to a group of feminists that women in his native land are not allowed to assemble unless it’s in a brothel. But then Borat butchers the National Anthem at a rodeo, and the film suddenly shifts from comedy to suspense, as Baron Cohen hopes to escape with his body intact.

1. Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979, dir. Terry Jones)

This biblical satire from the Monty Python troupe rankled an awful lot of people, which is a shame because it’s honest-to-God hilarious. Granted, The Life of Brian is uproariously irreverent, but its humor is more of an affectionate elbowing to the ribs of Judeo-Christianity. Graham Chapman is Brian Cohen, a simple Judean chafing under Roman rule. Terry Jones (who also directed) is his cranky, long-suffering mum. Brian’s life keeps bumping up into that of the messiah, who was born in the stable next door––hence an accidental visit to Brian from three gift-bearing wise men. Along the way, The Life of Brian explores the dicey acoustics of the Sermon on the Mount (“What did he say? I think it was, ‘Blessed are the cheesemakers’”), how women manage to sneak into men-only public stonings, and Pontius Pilate’s dear friends Bigus Dickus and Incontinentia Buttocks. There’s even a musical number built around a crucifixion. OK, so maybe there was a reason nuns picketed the film upon its release. If only blasphemy were always this funny. 

Honorable mention: The Big Lebowski (1998, dir. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen), Clerks (1994, dir. Kevin Smith), Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982, dir. Amy Heckerling), Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008, dir. Nicholas Stoller), The Jerk (1979, dir. Carl Reiner), South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999, dir. Trey Parker), Step Brothers (2008, dir. Adam McKay), This Is the End (2013, dir. Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen), Tropic Thunder (2008, dir. Ben Stiller), Used Cars (1980, dir. Robert Zemeckis)