What Comedy Movies to watch on Criterion Channel

Barry Egan hates himself and hates his life. The only male among eight siblings, Barry is treated poorly by his overbearing sisters. Despite owning his own business, he has gotten nowhere in life largely because of his insecurities. He leads a solitary life, which allows him to hide his violent outbursts that occur when he's frustrated. His solitude however allows him to think, he stumbling upon a scheme to travel the world on a pittance, travel which he has never done. Concurrently, he meets two people who pull him in two different directions. The first is Lena Leonard, a friend of his sister Elizabeth. Barry is slow to realize that Lena is attracted to him, he making her make all the first moves. Lena is eventually able to get Barry out of his shell, she who sticks around despite his obvious problems. His burgeoning relationship and thus new life with Lena is threatened by the second, "Georgia", who he contacted in an effort to alleviate his loneliness. Georgia and her "band of brothers" do whatever they can get get out of Barry what they want, no matter the price to Barry.

Having left New Hampshire over excessive demands by the locals, the cast and crew of "The Old Mill" moves their movie shoot to a small town in Vermont. However, they soon discover that The Old Mill burned down in 1960, the star can't keep his pants zipped, the starlet won't take her top off, and the locals aren't quite as easily conned as they appear.

A successful but stressed mathematics professor goes to her father's wedding and falls in love with her father's bride's son, a prematurely retired pro baseball player. She must choose between him and her current boyfriend, between Chicago and New York, and between research and administration.

Mark Hunter is an intelligent but shy teenager who has just moved to Phoenix, Arizona from the East Coast. His parents give him a short-wave radio so he can talk to his friends, but instead he sets up shop as pirate deejay Hard Harry, who becomes a hero to his peers while inspiring the wrath of the high school principal. When one of Harry's listeners commits suicide, inspired chaos breaks out at the school and the authorities are called into put a stop to Harry's broadcasts. Meanwhile, the corrupt school principal weeds out underachieving students to keep the school's SAT scores high as false testimony to her competence.

Hotel manicurist Regi Allen is a cynical golddigger who meets her match in Theodore 'Ted' Drew III. After a date with Ted, she lets him sleep on her couch when he's too drunk to go further; but what is she to think when he wants to extend the arrangement?

Frances lives in New York, but she doesn't really have an apartment. Frances is an apprentice for a dance company, but she's not really a dancer. Frances has a best friend named Sophie, but they aren't really speaking anymore. Frances throws herself headlong into her dreams, even as their possible reality dwindles. Frances wants so much more than she has but lives her life with unaccountable joy and lightness.

Following through on a promise to his mother, William Canfield Jr. goes to River Junction to meet his father who has not seen him since he was a child. The younger Canfield isn't quite what the elder was expecting but the old man has bigger problems. He's being put out of business by J.J. King, who not only owns the local hotel and bank, but has recently introduced a new paddle wheel steamer that puts Canfield's older boat, the Stonewall Jackson, to shame. Bill Jr. and Kitty King take a liking to each other much to the dismay of both of their fathers. When a fierce storm hits River Junction, Bill Jr. is forced to save Kitty, her father and his father.

A small and insignificant bookkeeper, Kleinman, is awoken one night by his neighbors who wants his help to track down a strangler who has been killing people all over town. The citizens form vigilance committees, but when Kleinman has dressed, his neighbors have disappeared. Meanwhile a circus has come to town. Irmy and Paul are two of the artists. After a fight, Irmy leaves the circus in the middle of the night. Eventually she meets Kleinman, scared and alone.

Small town Sweden, in the 1950s. This slice-of-life story is also a coming-of-age tale narrated by a young boy with an almost unconscious sense of irony. His single mother is terminally ill, his older brother isn't the warmest person in his life, and twice he is sent to relatives in a supportive, loving village with interesting characters and adventures.

The devil has a stye in his eye, caused by the purity of a vicar's daughter. To get rid of it, he sends Don Juan up from hell to seduce the 20 year old Britt-Marie and to rob her of her virginity and her belief in love. She however can resist him and things get even turned around when Don Juan falls in love with her. The fact that he feels love for the first time now, makes him even less attractive to her and Don Juan returns to hell.

Ellie Andrews has just tied the knot with society aviator King Westley when she is whisked away to her father's yacht and out of King's clutches. Ellie jumps ship and eventually winds up on a bus headed back to her husband. Reluctantly she must accept the help of out-of- work reporter Peter Warne. Actually, Warne doesn't give her any choice: either she sticks with him until he gets her back to her husband, or he'll blow the whistle on Ellie to her father. Either way, Peter gets what (he thinks!) he wants .... a really juicy newspaper story.

A down-and-dirty musical love story set in the world of the working class. Nick (Gandolfini) is an ironworker who builds and repairs bridges. He’s married to Kitty (Sarandon) and is carrying on a torrid affair with Tula (Winslet).

Frederic (Bernard Verley), deeply in love with his wife Helene (Francoise Verley), lives a monotonous and repetitive life, splitting his time between home and the office, where he always encounters the same people: his partner Gerard (Daniel Ceccaldi) and his two secretaries, Fabienne (Malvina Penne) and Martine (Elisabeth Ferrier). Suddenly, a breath of fresh air arrives in his life: his old friend Chloe (Zouzou), slowly begins to question everything he's ever believed, including his marriage.

An ex-convict (Robert Burke) works for a Long Island garage owner (Christopher Cooke) who has a restless daughter (Adrienne Shelly) bound for Harvard.

Incredibly, only moments after arriving in Rome for their honeymoon, pure young bride Wanda sneaks out of her room, leaving her fastidious groom Ivan all alone. Obsessed with the very masculine Fernando Rivoli--the hero of her favorite romantic photo-novel, The White Sheik--Wanda plucks up the courage to meet him in person, only to be seduced by the arrogant protagonist, so far away from the hotel and her husband. As a result--perplexed by Wanda's strange disappearance, and unable to disclose the news to his family--Ivan meanders through the ill-lit Roman streets in search of his wife, on pins and needles, waiting for their 11:00 appointment with his uncle and the Papal Audience at the Vatican. What does the new day have in store for the separated newlyweds?

Several bourgeois friends planning to get together for dinner experience a succession of highly unusual occurrences that interfere with their expected dining enjoyment.

Ricky is released from a mental hospital, and knows exactly what he wants to do. He hunts down Marina, a porn film star he once had sex with, and tries to convince her to be his wife. She is a bit reluctant, so he ties her up. Will this approach endear him to her?

An insane independent film director and his renegade group of teenage filmmakers kidnap an A-list Hollywood actress and force her to star in their underground film.

The lives of a set of identical twins, one an Ivy League philosophy professor, the other a small-time and brilliant marijuana grower, intertwine when the professor is lured back to his Oklahoma hometown for a doomed scheme against a local drug lord.

This merry farce depicts a satirical view of the French society: Ten-year-old Zazie has to stay two days with her relatives in Paris, so that her mother can spend some time with her lover. However Zazie escapes her uncle's custody and sets out to explore Paris on her own.

A young man falls in love with a beautiful blonde. When he sees her being forced onto a luxury liner, he decides to follow and rescue her. However, he discovers that she is an English heiress who ran away from home and is now being returned to England. He also discovers that his boss is on the ship. To avoid discovery, he disguises himself as the gangster accomplice of a minister, who is actually a gangster on the run from the law.

Monsieur Verdoux is a bluebeard, he marries women and kills them after the marriage to get the money he needs for his family. But with two ladies he has bad luck.

There is a garage in downtown New York City on the ground floor of an eight-story building, with a winding ramp, that serves as a cache for stolen automobiles. The second floor is the repair shop, with the third, fourth and fifth as storage rooms and the sixth is the paint shop, where the hot cars are quickly changed via new paint, fenders and windshields and license plates. The seventh has a speakeasy, and the eighth is the penthouse where the supposed-gang leader,Jenkins, resides in comfort, while the real head of the gang rambles about posing as a deaf-mute known as 'The Dummy." All of this goes undetected by NYC's Finest, and might have continued to do so if the ground-floor-garage manager and "front-man", "Beef" Evans , hadn't been sent on a one-way ride down the ramp, and his widow, Nancy, asked her brother, "Gabby" Denton, to investigate. Or, if Jenkins' sweetie, "Silver," hadn't gotten the sweets for "Gabby."

A hilarious comedy in which Buster and his sweetheart are cast adrift on a deserted ocean liner. The ship runs aground on a desert island, where the two unfortunates are chased by cannibals.