You may recall a couple of weeks ago when I wrote about John Scalzi’s canon of the 50 most significant science-fiction films, which he compiled for his new book, The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies. It turns out that three other Rough Guide movie books have just been released along with Scalzi’s, covering the comedy, horror, and gangster genres, and each of them has its own canon section. Scalzi suggests turning them into the same kind of meme that his list of sci-fi movies became, starting with The Comedy Canon from Bob McCabe’s Rough Guide to Comedy Movies. The drill is similar to last time: you’re supposed to bold the titles you’ve seen and put an asterisk next to the ones you own on DVD or VHS. So, without further ado, here’s my list:

Airplane!
All About Eve
Amelie
Annie Hall
The Apartment
Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
Blazing Saddles
Bringing Up Baby
Broadcast News
*Caddyshack
Le diner de con
Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
Duck Soup
*Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Four Weddings and a Funeral
*The General
*Ghostbusters
*The Gold Rush
*Good Morning Vietnam
*The Graduate
Groundhog Day
A Hard Day’s Night
His Girl Friday
Kind Hearts and Coronets
The Lady Killers
Local Hero
Manhattan
M*A*S*H
Monty Python’s Life of Brian
*National Lampoon’s Animal House
The Odd Couple
The Producers
Raising Arizona
*Roxanne
Rushmore
*Shaun of the Dead
*A Shot in the Dark
*Some Like it Hot
Strictly Ballroom
Sullivan’s Travels
There’s Something About Mary
This is Spinal Tap
To Be or Not to Be
*Tootsie
*Toy Story
Les vacances de M. Hulot
*When Harry Met Sally…
Withnail and I

Now for a few thoughts:

The first thing you’ll probably notice is that I’ve seen fewer of these films than I have of those on the sci-fi list. There is, as they say, no accounting for taste, and the truth is that my tastes tend to run more to the serious side of the entertainment spectrum. I don’t see a lot of comedies, not because I don’t like comedies in principle but because so few of them appeal to me, plot- and character-wise. Unlike my father, whose only criterion when selecting a movie is that it be something “outrageously funny.” Of course his definition of “outrageously funny” and my own are usually pretty divergent. But that’s a tangent I won’t take at this time.

There are three films on this list — Le diner de con, Les vacances de M. Hulot, and Withnail and I — that I’ve never heard of. That surprises me, because even though I don’t see many foreign films (two of these are French, obviously, and the IMDB proclaims Withnail to be British), I am usually familiar with at least the titles of the acclaimed or popular imports. These three slipped below my radar, I guess.

Of the remaining titles that I’ve heard of but not seen, I am interested in seeing all of them except for Dodgeball, which just looks stupid to me, and Manhattan, because it’s Woody Allen. I’ve never understood the fuss made over Woody Allen movies. No big rant here, I just don’t think they’re funny. And for the record, I’ve always thought Star Wars should’ve won the Oscar for Best Picture in ’77, not Annie Hall; certainly SW has proven to be more influential and more enduring than Allen’s whiny ode to flaky East Coast urbanites.

A couple of other issues: I personally would have placed Monty Python and the Holy Grail on the list instead of Life of Brian, not because I’ve anything against LoB, but just because Holy Grail seems to be more enduring, more widely known, and more consistently funny throughout the length of the film (and probably also because I haven’t seen Brian in years and don’t remember it as well as Grail). I also think it’s stretching your genre definitions to call Shaun of the Dead a comedy, although it is definitely very funny in places. Most of the film’s humor comes in its first half, though; aside from the side-splitting epilogue, the last 30 minutes or so are pure horror flick. If the compiler of this canon wanted to include a horror-comedy hybrid — and there are plenty of those around, oddly enough — I would’ve gone with Young Frankenstein, which is unequivocally a comedy but one which so faithfully recreates the atmosphere of classic horror movies that if you come in partway through, you could easily mistake it for the real Frankenstein, at least until someone opens their mouth. But there are already several Mel Brooks films on this list and I would guess that Bob McCabe didn’t want to overrepresent any one writer or director. Fair enough.

One category of comedy movie that this list omits entirely is the stand-up concert film. These days, “live” comedy performances are largely relegated to cable television and direct-to-video DVDs, but in the ’70s and early ’80s, there were a number of big theatrical releases of this type, including Richard Pryor Live on the Sunset Strip, Eddie Murphy Raw, and Bill Cosby: Himself. At least one of these, probably the Pryor film because it was earlier and more influential than the other two, ought to be in the canon. And what about animated shorts like the Looney Tunes or Tom & Jerry, or even the Mickey Mouse cartoons? They should count as “movies,” since they were originally theatrical releases and, unlike the longer-form animated films of Disney and others, they were unequivocally meant to generate laughter and nothing else.

And finally, I’ve got to agree with Scalzi on one point: why isn’t A Fish Called Wanda on this list? Or The Full Monty? Or Harold and Maude, The Thin Man, or anything by Harold Lloyd, Abbott and Costello, or Laurel and Hardy? And although I don’t like them myself, I’m sure a lot of folks would include The Three Stooges in their own personal comedy canons. And what of the mid-80s sex comedies, wihtout which several entries on this canon list might not have happened? Surely a movie like Porky’s, while not exactly ennobling, was significant to a generation of film-fans and film-makers…