When pot pals Dale (Seth Rogen) and Saul (James Franco) witness the murder of a Korean gangster, they quickly leave the scene of the crime in the hopes the killers, a drug kingpin and a corrupt LAPD cop, didn’t see them. But when their identities are discovered by a left-behind roach containing a rare strain of marijuana, the stoned duo must team up with Saul’s untrustworthy drug supplier, Red (Danny McBride), to figure a way out of this mess without getting themselves or their loved ones killed.

A sleeper hit in 2008, Pineapple Express briefly revived the studio stoner comedy and made McBride a minor league comedy star. Rogen playing a pothead isn’t anything new, but Franco’s frequently sky-high Saul is hilarious and easily the film’s best asset. Directed by David Gordon Green, who was then known as an indie wunderkind before making the rebooted Halloween trilogy, the film has some unusual touches that make it different enough to stand out from other Judd Apatow-produced comedies around the time. 

Struggling indie rock musician Dewey (Jack Black) is desperate for cash, which is why he impersonates his best friend Ned (Mike White) and is hired as a substitute music teacher at a fancy prep school for young kids. At first, the kids don’t really like him, but gradually, they come to love Dewey’s idiosyncratic teaching style and his talent for teaching them how to play music. Dewey’s class is so good, he thinks they can compete in an upcoming Battle of the Bands contest. But can Dewey’s impersonation act hold up long enough for that to happen?

Directed by Richard Linklater, School of Rock is a big-hearted mainstream comedy with a rebel’s heart. While it has a solid supporting cast of adolescent newcomers and pros like Joan Cusack as an overworked principal who has a fondness for rock music (and Dewey), the film is a great showcase for the lead star’s Black considerable comedic and musical talents. His manic energy can be grating in other films, like A Minecraft Movie, but here it’s just right.

The American Samoa football team is the worst in the entire world. A change is desperately needed, so out-of-work Thomas Rongen (Michael Fassbender) is hired to coach a team that’s not only bad but barely there, too. With the help of transgender team defender Jaiyah (Kaimana), Rongen recruits enough new players to form a functioning team. But with an all-important game against Tonga coming up, can Rongen train them to be a winning team in time?

Even though it’s based on a true story, Next Goal Wins’ plot is a pretty routine underdog sports story. Writer/director Taika Waititi infuses enough wild comic energy to make the film’s cliches seem brand new and exciting, and Fassbender is always entertaining as a reluctant coach who gradually becomes his team’s biggest cheerleader. The supporting cast includes Elisabeth Moss, Kaitlin Dever and Will Arnett. 

Having married off his only daughter, Annie (Kimberly Williams), four years ago, perpetually uptight father George (Steve Martin) thinks he can finally relax and think about retirement. He’s proven to be wrong when Annie reveals she’s pregnant with her first child. If that’s traumatic enough, his wife Nina (Diane Keaton) discovers she’s pregnant, too. With another daughter and a grandson set to be born around the same time, George will have to balance taking care of the two women he loves the most with maintaining what’s left of his sanity.

1991’s Father of the Bride was the rare remake that proved to be better than the original, and the same holds true for Father of the Bride Part II. While not as funny as its 1991 predecessor, the sequel still generates plenty of laughs as it forces Martin’s character to face the twin horrors of becoming a parent again and being old enough to be a grandfather. Martin Short returns as the barely intelligible wedding planner Franck, who spends way too much time with the family planning a double baby shower, and Eugene Levy appears as a potential buyer of George’s Pasadena home. Even though it suffers from sequelitis, Father of the Bride Part II is worth a return trip down the aisle — or, in this case, the delivery room.

Saturday Night Live is over 50 years old, and it’s firmly established as a TV and cultural institution. But when it debuted on October 11, 1975, it was just another show struggling to survive. The origin story of how SNL’s first broadcast happened, and the overwhelming odds creator and producer Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) had to overcome to make it happen, is at the heart of Saturday Night, a mostly fact-based account that chronicles the chaotic hours leading up to the sketch comedy’s first show.

Along with writer and girlfriend Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott), Michaels tries to help his Not Ready for Primetime Players, which include the hot-tempered Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith), Gilda Radner (Ella Hunt), Dan Ackroyd (Dylan O’Brien), and Andy Kaufman (Nicholas Braun), focus and get ready for the series’ launch. But Michael already has his hands full dealing with disapproving execs and a nagging fear that Saturday Night Live will fall apart before it ever airs. Little does he know he’ll make history that night and be associated with SNL forever.

Even though they’ve known each other for most of their lives, cousins David and Benji Kaplan (Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) are strangers to each other. When their grandmother leaves them money to travel to Poland for a Jewish heritage tour, they decide to try to connect with each other while finding out more about their family’s history. But Benji’s impulsiveness gets on David’s nerves, and as they visit various Holocaust sites with a tour group, their trip threatens to drive them further apart. 

A Real Pain is equal parts funny and sad – it’s a movie that tackles depression and suicide with a self-deprecating humor that makes its sometimes painful observations go down easy. Eisenberg and Culkin are completely convincing as two relatives who love each other even though they can’t stand one another. Culkin won almost every critical award, including the Oscar, for his deeply moving and very funny portrayal of a man lost in life with nowhere to go. 

James King (Will Ferrell) is a hedge fund manager with a beautiful fiancée, Alissa (Alison Brie), and a tough boss, Martin (Craig T. Nelson), who just happens to be Alissa’s father. When James is arrested for fraud, his entire life implodes – Martin fires him, Alissa leaves him and he faces a 10-year stint in San Quentin. He has 30 days until he starts his prison sentence, so he hires Darnell Lewis (Kevin Hart) to help him prepare for life behind bars. Darnell doesn’t have a clue what it’s like to be a criminal, but he’ll have to fake it until he makes it or else he’ll lose $30,000 – and a shot at improving his daughter’s life.

Although it was made only 11 years ago, Get Hard wouldn’t get made today. Big-screen comedies are a rare breed, and the film’s tasteless jokes about race and homophobia aren’t that marketable or appealing in the post-woke era. Maybe that’s why Get Hard is better now than it was then. Some of its gags are so wrong, they’re right, and Ferrell and Hart have a good comedic chemistry with each other.

In 2008, North Meadows High School students Sunny (John Reynolds), Katie (Sofia Black-D’Elia) and the rest of their small class never finished senior year. They had a good reason – a massive tornado shut down their school. Eighteen years later, they’re asked to complete the final two weeks of their high school careers, or else they won’t be considered graduates. Now they’ll have to relive some of the worst adolescent nightmares, like overbearing teachers, toxic gossip and bitter rivals. I guess some things never change.

Never Change! takes everyone’s worst nightmare – going back to school as an adult – and wrings some pretty good jokes out of it. It’s not unlike Wet Hot American Summer, another comedy about grown adults behaving like children, and Never Change! shares that film’s oddball, envelope-pushing humor.

Thanks to Stranger Things, 1980s nostalgia is here to stay. If you’re a fan of the decade that brought the world the Brat Pack, shoulder pads and big hair, then you’ll get a kick out of Take Me Home Tonight, a retro comedy that dials up the Reagan-era references and isn’t afraid to get down and dirty with its humor.

That ‘70s Show’s Topher Grace stars as Matt, a recent college graduate still figuring out what to do with his life. He hates his current job at a video store, but things perk up when he sees his high school crush, Tori (Teresa Palmer). Wanting to impress her, he lies to Tori and says he’s an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. Impressed, Tori invites him to a Labor Day party to cement their romance. With his twin sister Wendy’s help (Anna Faris), Matt thinks he can win Tori’s heart. But how long can he keep the truth from her?

Legal comedies are pretty rare, much less Oscar-winning legal comedies. My Cousin Vinny‘s greatest claim to fame is that Marisa Tomei won Best Supporting Actress for her fiery turn as Mona Lisa Vito. As much as she deserved it, this is also Joe Pesci‘s movie. He plays Vinny Gambini, an inexperienced personal injury lawyer who is forced to take up his first criminal defense case.

Vinny’s cousin, Bill Gambini (Ralph Macchio), and his friend, Stan Rothenstein (Mitchell Whitfield), are on trial for a murder they didn’t commit. In this environment, Vinny’s a fish out of water and a constant source of irritation to Judge Chamberlain Haller (Fred Gwynne). The film gets a lot of humor out of that relationship, but it’s also fairly accurate with its depiction of trials and laws. Lawyers love this movie, and so will you.

My Cousin Vinny is streaming on Hulu.

Code 3 is a very funny movie, but it’s got some serious dramatic moments as well. The Office‘s Rainn Wilson stars as Randy, a paramedic who is at the end of his rope after years of treating patients in the back of an ambulance alongside his driver, Mike (Lil Rel Howery).

On his final 24-hour shift, Randy is forced to let a medical student, Jessica (Aimee Carrero), join him in the back and get a first-hand look at what he dealt with every night on the job. There are times when the paramedics genuinely save lives and make a difference. But other moments test their resolve and sanity in the face of tragedy and despair.

Code 3 is streaming on Hulu.

Bullet Train is one of the few action comedies that equally excels at both parts of the equation. Brad Pitt stars as an assassin codenamed Ladybug who is rethinking his life choices. Ladybug’s assignment in Japan was supposed to be an easy job, and all he had to do was get on a high-speed bullet train and get off with a suitcase full of cash.

Much to Ladybug’s chagrin, the train is filled with other assassins who have their own agendas. Some of them want Ladybug dead. There’s a mysterious woman pulling the strings of these killers, and there’s nothing but trouble waiting for all of them at the end of the line.

Bullet Train is streaming on Hulu.

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