If you still think Hulu is just a place to watch sitcoms the day after the networks broadcast them, it must’ve been a few years since you last logged in. The streaming site has long been a full-service rival to Netflix, and arguably has a deeper and stronger lineup of films. With not just comedy, but all genres, Hulu tends to offer a more diverse set of films than Netflix, with something for all tastes and ages.
Before we jump in, let me include the standard disclaimer that I always start that Netflix comedy list with. I’m a comedy editor. I’m mostly looking at how much a movie makes me laugh when I’m putting together a list like this. So if you feel the need to go all Margaret Dumont about the sheer impropriety of these rankings, maybe go check out some of our more tasteful overall movie rankings, instead.
Here are the funniest movies on Hulu today as of March 2023, listed in alphabetical order.
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
Year: 2005
Director: Judd Apatow
Stars: Steve Carell, Catherine Keener, Paul Rudd, Seth Rogen, Romany Malco, Kat Dennings, Elizabeth Banks, Leslie Mann
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 85%
Rating: R
Runtime: 112 minutes
Watch on Hulu
Judd Apatow emerged as a major new voice in the world of romantic comedy with his first directorial effort, The 40-Year-Old Virgin—a big, goofy, hilarious mess of a movie that is anchored by the easy charm of its two principal leads, Steve Carell and Catherine Keener. Their no-nonsense romance is surprisingly understated and adult in a movie with an outrageous premise and lewd jokes. Leslie Mann also deserves credit for that hilarious French toast scene.—Jeremy Medina
Adaptation
Year: 2002
Director: Spike Jonze
Stars: Nancy Lenehan, Nicolas Cage, Tilda Swinton
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 91%
Rating: R
Runtime: 114 minutes
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As utterly gonzo as Kaufman’s characters and stories are, they’re only as outrageous as the errant, obsessive rhythms of thought going clickety-clickety-click inside our own heads. It’s just that Kaufman has more immediate access to all those idiosyncratic brainwaves. He can’t stop himself. Kaufman—not unlike his anxious, lovestruck and artistically fraught heroes—compulsively thinks outside the box. And then he builds a bigger box. Adaptation is an adaptation of New Yorker writer Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief that centers on a Hollywood frustrated screenwriter’s efforts to adapt the book into a movie. —Steve Dollar
Another Round
Year: 2020
Director: Thomas Vinterberg
Stars: Mads Mikkelsen, Thomas Bo Larsen, Lars Ranthe, Magnus Millang
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92%
Rating: NR
Runtime: 115 minutes
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In Thomas Vinterberg’s new film Another Round, camaraderie starts out as emotional support before dissolving into male foolishness cleverly disguised as scientific study: A drinking contest where nobody competes and everybody wins until they lose. Martin (Mads Mikkelsen), a teacher in Copenhagen, bobs lazily through his professional and personal lives: When he’s at school he’s indifferent and when he’s at home he’s practically alone. Martin’s closest connections are with his friends and fellow teachers, Tommy (Thomas Bo Larsen), Nikolaj (Magnus Millang) and Peter (Lars Ranthe), who like many dudes of a certain age share his glum sentiments. To cure their malaise, Nikolaj proposes putting Norwegian psychiatrist Finn Skårderud’s blood alcohol content theory to the test: Skårderud maintains that hovering at a cool 0.05% BAC helps people stay relaxed and loose, thus increasing their faculty for living to the fullest. As one of the day’s preeminent screen actors, Mikkelsen finds the sweet spot between regret and rejoicing, where his revelries are honest and true while still serving as covers for deeper misgivings and emotional rifts. Sorrow hangs around the edges of his eyes as surely as bliss spreads across his face with each occasion for drinking. That balancing act culminates in an explosive burst of anger and, ultimately, mourning. Good times are had and good times always end. What Another Round demonstrates right up to its ecstatic final moments, where Mikkelsen’s sudden and dazzling acrobatics remind the audience that before he was an actor he was a dancer and gymnast, is that good times are all part of our life cycle: They come and go, then come back again, and that’s better than living in the good times all the time. Without a pause we lose perspective on all else life has to offer, especially self-reflection. —Andy Crump
The Beach Bum
Year: 2019
Director: Harmony Korine
Stars: Matthew McConaughey, Snoop Dogg, Isla Fisher, Martin Lawrence, Zac Efron, Jonah Hill
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 56%
Rating: R
Runtime: 95 minutes
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Witness Matthew McConaughey, transcending. Revel in it, because this has got to be as high as he goes. As Moondog, the opposite, arch nemesis perhaps, to the Matthew McConaughey of the Lincoln commercials—on TV the interstitial, nonchalant pool shark and connoisseur of fine leather everything, a man to whom one whispers courteously, in reverence between network shows—Matthew McConaughey realizes the full flat circle of his essence. The actor bears multitudes, and they all converge upon the befuddled Moondog, consummate inhuman and titular hobo of the southern sands of these United States. One could claim that Moondog’s hedonism represents a moral imperative to consume all that’s truly beautiful about life, and Moondog says as much even if he’s plagiarising D.H. Lawrence (which he admits to his best friend Lingerie, who’s carried on a long-time affair with Moondog’s wife, and who’s played by Snoop Dog in a career best performance). Speaking of Lawrence, Martin also gives a career-best performance as Captain Wack, dolphin lover; the film slides effortlessly into absurdity. One could claim, too, that Moondog’s little but a self-destructive addict somehow given a free pass to circumvent basic human responsibility altogether. One could claim that director Harmony Korine doesn’t believe in basic human responsibility anyway. He doesn’t claim much in the way of explicating Moondog’s whole way of being, doesn’t reserve any judgment for the man’s mantra and blissful lurch towards oblivion. Or annihilation. The uniform for which is casual, including JNCO jeans, brandished by Flicker (Zac Efron), with whom Moondog escapes the court-mandated rehab that seemingly does nothing to pierce the armor of intoxication Moondog’s spent his life reinforcing. Whether he’s protecting himself from any serious human connection or from the crass hellscape of capitalistic society—whether he’s deeply grieving a tragedy that occurs halfway through The Beach Bum, Harmony Korine’s masterpiece of feeling good in the face of feeling the worst, or avoiding all feeling completely—he’s still a bad dad. Or he’s an artist. Or a saint. Or he’s from a different dimension, as his wife (Isla Fisher) explains to their daughter, as she most likely always has, against a breathtaking vista followed not long after by a heartbreaking sunset, both photographed by Benoît Debie, in Miami of all places, all magnificent and hollow, the film a hagiography for the end of history. —Dom Sinacola
The Breakfast Club
Year: 1985
Director: John Hughes
Stars: Emilio Estevez, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Anthony Michael Hall, Paul Gleason, John Kapelos
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 89%
Rating: R
Runtime: 92 minutes
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We shouldn’t have to tell you what makes The Breakfast Club an all-time classic. There’s not a single weak link in the film’s ensemble cast, and Ringwald holds her own as Claire, the princess forced to spend her Saturday in detention with a brain, a basket case, a jock and a criminal. She gives a richly layered performance, turning what could easily be a one-dimensional character into someone we pity, empathize with and root for—which, if you haven’t seen the movie, is kind of the whole point. —Bonnie Stiernberg
Booksmart
Year: 2019
Director: Olivia Wilde
Stars: Kaitlyn Dever, Beanie Feldstein, Jessica Williams, Jason Sudeikis, Lisa Kudrow, Will Forte
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97%
Rating: R
Runtime: 105 minutes
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Booksmart, the directorial debut of Olivia Wilde, is another journey down the halls of a wealthy high school days before graduation, but it’s different enough to be endearing. Written by an all-female writing team—Susanna Fogel, Emily Halpern, Sarah Haskins and Katie Silberman—it centers on life-long besties Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein) as they attempt to party one time before the end of high school. Wilde and company draw from a whimsical, rainbow palate to explore friendship at diverging roads. Feldstein and Dever shine as an odd couple. Molly wants to be the youngest person ever elected to the Supreme Court, while Amy seeks to discover what possibilities life may open up for her. Easily feeding off of one another’s energy, as Amy and Molly travel around town, jumping gatherings, trying to reach the ultimate cool kids’ party, they cross paths with a diverse array of students also attempting to hide their painfully obvious insecurities. As the night progresses, those masks begin to slip, and the person each of these students is striving to become begins to emerge. The pendulum of teen girl movies swings typically from Clueless—girl-powered, cutesy, high-fashion first-love-centered—to Thirteen, the wild, angry, depressed and running from all genuine emotion kind of movie. Most of these films lay in the space of heteronormative, white, upper or middle class, and able-bodied representation. Even in films centered on otherness, like Bend It Like Beckham, the white best friend is given equal space in the advertising of the film, and the original queer angle was written out in favor of a love triangle. Visit nearly any segment of the internet visited by Millennial, Gen X, and Gen Z women, and the cry for better representation is loud and clear. There’s a fresh-faced newness of raw talent in Booksmart that begs to be a touchstone for the next generation of filmmakers. Like Wes Anderson’s Rushmore or Sofia Coppola’s Virgin Suicides, Booksmart is an experience cinema enthusiasts will revisit again and again. —Joelle Monique
The Cable Guy
Year: 1996
Director: Ben Stiller
Stars: Jim Carrey, Matthew Broderick, Leslie Mann, Jack Black, George Segal, Diane Baker, Ben Stiller, Janeane Garofalo, Andy Dick, David Cross, Eric Roberts
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 55%
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 91 minutes
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Ben Stiller and Judd Apatow’s black comedy faltered at the box office, but it quickly became a cult classic due to Jim Carrey’s uncharacteristically dark performance and cameos by a who’s who of mid ‘90s alternative comedy greats. It’s a de facto Ben Stiller Show reunion, with Stiller, Bob Odenkirk, Janeane Garofalo and Andy Dick all putting in memorable appearances. Between Odenkirk, David Cross and Jack Black, it also felt like a bit of Mr. Show on the big screen, at a time when that HBO series was still new and unheralded. Cable Guy isn’t worth watching because of the other shows it’ll make you think of, though. It’s a hilarious movie in its own right, almost as cringeworthy and unsettling as Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, but not quite as violent or malevolent.—Garrett Martin
Casa de Mi Padre
Year: 2012
Director: Matt Piedmont
Stars: Will Ferrell, Diego Luna, Gael García Bernal, Efren Ramirez, Adrian Martinez, Nick Offerman, Pedro Armendáriz Jr.
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 41%
Rating: R
Runtime: 84 minutes
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Will Ferrell’s Spanish-language comedy is more than just a gimmick or one-note joke. It alternates between being a pitch perfect telenovela parody and a bloated, feature-length version of Ferrell’s more surreal Saturday Night Live work. Ferrell is wonderful, of course, but it also has great turns by Diega Luna and Gael García Bernal (who, yes, American film critics will always automatically associate with one another because of Y Tu Mamá También). There’s one scene with all three of them in a bar together that is one of the most scathing and hilarious criticisms of modern day America you’ll see in any comedy.—Garrett Martin
Dear White People
Year: 2014
Director: Justin Simien
Stars: Tyler James Williams, Tessa Thompson, Kyle Gallner, Teyonah Parris, Brandon P. Bell, Malcolm Barrett
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 91%
Rating: R
Runtime: 106 minutes
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While Dear White People anchors its perspective in the struggles of its black leads, it argues that racism is a universal issue—or that, at least, dealing with the implications of racism, rooting it out at its source, is a personal task for every single human being to undertake. Who hasn’t, at one point or another, felt like they didn’t fit in with their peers? Who doesn’t feel the tug of social pressure when they’re in school? These aren’t questions about racism, but they do inch us collectively closer to targeting the very deep-seated core of what it is that still makes racism so prevalent today. Simien stumbles in the third act thanks to an amalgam of plot complications (a stroke of simplicity could have smoothed over Dear White People’s landing), but maybe a diluted ending would have glossed over the truth at the film’s core: that race politics are more complex than pretty much any one of us realizes.—Andy Crump
Fire Island
Hulu Release Date: June 3, 2022
Director: Andrew Ahn
Stars: Joel Kim Booster, Bowen Yang, Margaret Cho, Conrad Ricamora, James Scully
Rotten Tomatoes Score: Rating: R
Runtime: 105 minutes
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Fire Island is, for the most part, exceptionally well-done. Noah is a fascinating lead character, one who toes the line between acknowledging the unfair beauty standards gay Asian men are expected to conform to while simultaneously conforming to those standards. Booster brings an effortless and surprising blend of confidence and insecurity, but despite his powerhouse performance, it’s Yang who steals the show. Comedian and SNL alum Yang is funny as hell, but he plays Howie with such breathtaking vulnerability that it’s impossible not to empathize with his idealistic romantic yearnings. Other highlights include Margaret Cho as the boys’ house-mom figure, an unsurprising scene-stealer who bursts into every room with a healthy dose of hijinks and shock. Ricamora enacts a wonderful refurbish of the iconic Darcy character: Will is at once likable and unlikable, cold-blooded and sensitive.—Aurora Amidon
Groundhog Day
Year: 1993
Director: Harold Ramis
Stars: Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell, Chris Elliott, Stephen Tobolowsky
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 96%
Rating: PG
Runtime: 102 minutes
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Bill Murray, director/co-writer Harold Ramis and screenwriter Danny Rubin take a Twilight Zone-esque comedic premise—a self-centered weatherman gets stuck experiencing February 2 again and again—and find unexpected profundity. A more conventional film would have love resolve the chronological predicament, but instead, it falls to TV personality Phil (Murray) to become the best version of himself he can possibly be. Whether it’s a Hollywood comedy challenging middle-class Americans to shake themselves from their middle-class torpor, or a meditation on our unattainable ideas of perfection, Groundhog Day doesn’t just elicit laughs, but leaves audiences more deeply moved than they ever expected—even inspiring some obsessive fans, including one fellow who calculated, down to the day, the number of decades Murray spent in February 2. —Curt Holman
Happiest Season
Year: 2020
Director: Clea Duvall
Stars: Kristen Stewart, Mackenzie Davis, Mary Steenburgen, Victor Garber, Alison Brie, Mary Holland, Dan Levy, Burl Moseley, Aubrey Plaza
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 83%
Rating: R
Runtime: 102 minutes
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The grounded sobriety of Happiest Season lasts long enough for a reprieve from the still-present cornball Christmas melodrama, which director/co-writer Clea Duvall stages with the relish of someone who appreciates that melodrama in spite of themselves. But frankly, if every Hallmark movie was this over-the-top hilarious, they’d all at least be watchable as background noise, but then we’d have less reason to appreciate Duvall’s appropriation of their core components in Happiest Season.
Kristen Stewart, continuing to prove wrong all the smug remarks about her one-dimensional dourness starting around 2008, remains a treasure. She’s lively, lovely, and having a wonderful time vibing with Mackenzie Davis. The latter ends up shouldering juicier theatrical speeches and breakdowns as her character, Harper, unravels under the dual pressure of being the daughter she thinks her parents want and being the girlfriend she wants to be to Stewart’s Abby. The ensemble keeps things fresh throughout these conventional plot beats, with Mary Holland coming out ahead as Duvall’s friction-seeking SRBM. Anytime the atmosphere chafes, Holland flies into the room and annihilates it with adorable, well-meaning awkwardness. She’s a gift, but the whole cast glitters in this holiday fare. Everyone’s tuned to Duvall’s wavelength, playing their human sides while keeping the mood appropriately hammy and saccharine—just sweet enough without killing the pancreas. And that’s the film’s secondary message: It’s okay to like Christmas schmaltz. The greater message, of course, is that it’s okay to struggle with the sometimes-bruising process of coming out. Duvall dovetails the seasonal pap with her characters’ pain, treating it like ointment for their mellowing emotional stings. The message isn’t just about liking Christmas. The message is that everybody deserves a Christmas movie.—Andy Crump
I, Tonya
Year: 2017
Director: Craig Gillespie
Stars: Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney, Caitlin Carver, Bobby Cannavale, Paul Walter Hauser
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 89%
Rating: R
Runtime: 119 minutes
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The triple axel was Tonya Harding’s greatest trick—and making an audience think that it’s a comedy of some sort is I, Tonya’s. Craig Gillespie’s infuriating and entrancingly brilliant biopic gives its subject control, and with fury, glibness, regret and a smirk, Tonya (Margot Robbie) and the many others in her life spin her story, detailing the ways that trauma (and class marginality) has affected and shaped her. Scenes of abuse—in which Tonya is often pummeled by both her mom (Allison Janney) and her husband, Jeff (Sebastian Stan)—are bracingly uncomfortable but cut with snark, and the film then has the gall to ask why you could possibly be laughing at such a horrible thing. I, Tonya dares to embody a camp aesthetic and immediately rebuke it, making sure that everything about it, from its skating scenes—dizzingly filmed as if her skill should be admired, but without actually detailing the technical aspects of what she’s doing, as if to mimic white queer men and how they talk about character actresses—to its genre packaging (part wannabe gangster film, part confessional documentary), smears the ironic quotation marks of its framework with blood, sweat and tears: a roar and a snarl and a declaration of defiance. —Kyle Turner
Meet the Parents
Year: 2000
Director: Jay Roach
Stars: Ben Stiller, Robert De Niro, Teri Polo, Blythe Danner, James Rebhorn,
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 84%
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 108 minutes
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Robert De Niro’s comedy chops were never more perfectly suited than with his role as Jack Byrnes, the over-protective father who brings out the absolute worst in his son-in-law to be, male nurse Gaylord Focker (Ben Stiller). Every boyfriend’s nightmare about making a good impression comes to pass as Focker makes every wrong-headed decision that you’d expect from a Stiller character at this point. Plenty of laugh-out-loud moments make this now-classic slapstick comedy of errors a fun, popcorn movie night.—Josh Jackson
Mister America
Year: 2019
Director: Eric Notarnicola
Stars: Tim Heidecker, Gregg Turkington
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 66%
Rating: R
Runtime: 86 minutes
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Is On Cinema the greatest comedy epic of the 21st century? Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington’s sprawling network of web shows, podcasts, Oscar specials, Adult Swim spinoffs, and live trial coverage started as a bone dry parody of podcasting and has somehow grown into a self-contained comedic universe as detailed as Scharpling and Wurster’s town of Newbridge, New Jersey. It even spawned a feature film, Mister America, a mockumentary account of Heidecker’s campaign to be the district attorney of San Bernardino County. You don’t need to have seen the preceding decade or so of On Cinema to get the movie—it quickly recaps this version of Heidecker’s legal troubles, and establishes his psychopathic arrogance and talk radio-informed ideology in broad strokes—but it will hit a lot stronger if you have. It’s Heidecker’s film, but Turkington might be the MVP, with his perfect depiction of a proud film buff with zero taste and an endless thirst for movie trivia.—Garrett Martin
Palm Springs
Year: 2020
Director: Max Barbakow
Stars: Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti, J.K. Simmons, Peter Gallagher, Meredith Hagner, Camila Mendes, June Squib, Conner O’Malley, Jena Friedman
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%
Rating: R
Runtime: 87 minutes
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Imagine living the same day of your life over and over, stuck within an hour and a half of Los Angeles but so closely nestled in paradise’s bosom that the drive isn’t worth the fuel. Now imagine that “over and over” extends beyond a number the human mind is capable of appreciating. Paradise becomes a sun-soaked Hell, a place endured and never escaped, where pizza pool floats are enervating torture devices and crippling alcoholism is a boon instead of a disease. So goes Max Barbakow’s Palm Springs.
The film never stops being funny, even when the mood takes a downturn from zany good times to dejection. This is key. Even when the party ends and the reality of the scenario sinks in for its characters, Palm Springs continues to fire jokes at a steady clip, only now they are weighted with appropriate gravity for a movie about two people doomed to maintain a holding pattern on somebody else’s happiest day. Nothing like a good ol’ fashioned time loop to force folks trapped in neutral to get retrospective on their personal statuses.—Andy Crump
Superbad
Year: 2007
Director: Greg Mottola
Stars: Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Bill Hader, Seth Rogen, Emma Stone, Martha MacIsaac
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 88%
Rating: R
Runtime: 113 minutes
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Every generation of teens has its generation of teen movies, and Greg Mottola’s Superbad is the epitome of mine. In Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera), my friends and I had a mirror for our own insecurity and awkwardness—they were our modern-day Anthony Michael Halls. In Fogell/McLovin (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), we had an icon of weird who somehow ended up a winner, a sort of photonegative of Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick). And in Superbad’s constant dick jokes (care of a script by namesakes Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg), we had an accurate representation of the way we all talked, maturity be damned. The film would join the pantheon of mid-2000s comedies—most notably Anchorman and Step Brothers—that created a white-adolescent-boy language made up entirely of lewd, absurd references. It’s a rom-com in many respects, but unlike its predecessors, Superbad is a romance between two buddies, a story wherein the ostensible sex drive is secondary to Platonic need. Most of John Hughes’ ’80s oeuvre centers on the cringe-worthy struggle of X character getting Y other character to notice their existence in order to have Y inevitably fall for X. No matter what else Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink have to say, their endgame remains Molly Ringwald getting with the correct Good Guy. Ditto Amy Heckerling’s iconic contributions to the genre, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Clueless, and the literary reimaginings (Ten Things I Hate About You, et. al.) that followed in the latter’s wake. In Superbad, Seth and Evan’s versions of the Good Guy aren’t Jules (a precocious Emma Stone) and Becca (Martha MacIsaac): they’re each other. In the film’s denouement, with the two leads snuggled up close in sleeping bags, Seth literally says, “I just wanna go to the rooftops and scream, ‘I love my best friend, Evan.’” For teenage boys struggling with anxiety over the seeming hopelessness of losing their virginity, Superbad provides a welcome respite, an acknowledgement that focusing your entire life upon your dick is pointless when there’s fulfillment to be had by your side the entire time. —Zach Blumenfeld
Together Together
Year: 2021
Directors: Nikole Beckwith
Stars: Patti Harrison, Ed Helms, Rosalind Chao, Tig Notaro, Fred Melamed, Julio Torres
Rating: R
Runtime: 90 minutes
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Together Together is an amiable, successfully awkward surrogacy dramedy that also has the respectable distinction of being a TERF’s worst nightmare. That’s only one of the tiny aspects of writer/director Nikole Beckwith’s second feature, but the gentle tapestry of intimacy among strangers who, for a short time, desperately need each other certainly benefits from the meta-text of comedian and internet terror Patti Harrison’s multi-layered starring performance. Stuffed with bombastic bit parts from a roster of recent television’s greatest comedic talents and casually incisive dialogue that lays waste to media empires and preconceptions of women’s autonomy alike, the film is an unexpected, welcome antidote to emotional isolation and toxic masculinity that meanders in and out of life lessons at a pleasingly inefficient clip. That the tale of fatherhood and friendship is told through the sparkling chemistry of a rising trans star and her entrenched, anxious straight man (an endearing Ed Helms) only adds to Together Together’s slight magic.—Shayna Maci Warner
The Trip to Greece
Year: 2020
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Stars: Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Claire Keelan
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 87%
Rating: NR
Runtime: 112 minutes
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All four of Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon and Michael Winterbottom’s comedy travelogues were once streaming on Hulu, but now you’ll have to make do with just the fourth and final one. Coogan and Brydon’s Greek sojourn might be the least memorable of their journeys, but that’s only because the formula as so well-developed by that point. Their Michael Caine impressions aren’t as fun as they once were, and their relationship is thornier and more bitter; their sniping at each other feels less like good friends teasing each other, and more like two middle-aged men who are no longer quite sure where they stand with each other, or even with themselves. That’s the point, of course—these movies always got a little heavy (and sometimes heavy-handed) beneath the comedy—but it’s a little more obvious, a little less delicate this time around. Still, watching two middle-aged men eat their way through scenic European vistas might not sound like a great recipe for laughs, but Coogan and Brydon are both brilliant comic minds, and together they have an easy and irresistible charm that makes their impression-heavy banter deeply enjoyable.—Garrett Martin
The Waterboy
Year: 1998
Director: Frank Coraci
Stars: Adam Sandler, Kathy Bates, Fairuza Balk, Jerry Reed, Henry Winkler, Paul Wight
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 34%
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 88 minutes
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I saw The Waterboy in the theater on opening night and I’m still not sure if it’s the last of the classic Adam Sandler films or the first of the not-so-classic Adam Sandler films. It’s clearly a step below Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore and The Wedding Singer, but it’s not quite as obnoxious or depressing as pretty much every other comedy he’s made since The Waterboy. His manchild antics didn’t feel redundant yet, and here he has the help of a great supporting cast that includes Kathy Bates, Jerry Reed, Henry Winkler and Blake Clark. (And, uh, the Giant from WCW, aka the Big Show, also has a ton of charisma in his brief cameo.) If you’ve always hated Sandler, you should avoid this one; if you recognize those first three films as the classics that they are, you’ll probably enjoy The Waterboy enough to not feel like you’re wasting your time.—Garrett Martin