The Funniest Movie Scene Every Year Since 1990

If there's one thing that shows up in almost every movie, it's comedy. There are entirely comedic films, of course — mockumentaries and buddy movies and rom-coms, movies made by Mel Brooks and Edgar Wright and Taika Waititi. But you also find comedy in crime films, science fiction features, action movies, and horror flicks. Even the stodgiest drama ever made probably contains at least one joke. We'll never forget the scenes that scared us or awed us or made us cry, but we'll especially remember the ones that made us double over laughing, occasionally while doing all those other things at the same time.

And so, when we think about the history of comedy in modern cinema — in the comedic genre itself and otherwise — we must ask the question: What was the funniest scene, the one that defined movie humor in every given year? The answers lie ahead, going back to 1990, but be wary: We are definitely going to spoil several of these films.

"Gremlins 2: The New Batch" might not be the best movie to come out in 1990, or even the funniest. But there wasn't a single funnier character that year than the Brain Gremlin, and the scene in which he first appears makes "Gremlins 2" worth watching solely for its own sake.

Upping the stakes from the original "Gremlins" movie, this one has the titular monsters acquire special individual powers, most notably when one of them consumes "the brain hormone" and becomes extraordinarily intelligent — as demonstrated by his sudden acquisition of horn-rimmed glasses and voice actor Tony Randall's adoption of a delightfully terrible British (or possibly Australian) accent. The Brain Gremlin becomes the leader of his people and is the undisputed highlight of the film going forward, but it doesn't get better than him eruditely explaining the gremlins' mutation process to a baffled and horrified Christopher Lee.

"Hot Shots!" is Jim Abrahams' classic "Top Gun" parody, a film that delights in playing with military movie tropes. Nowhere is this more evident than the scene in which one of the pilots, appropriately named Dead Meat, says goodbye to his wife before getting in his plane. We learn that the couple are about to move into their dream house ("I've got the kids stripping the asbestos off the pipes right now") as black cats run by and mirrors break around them. Dead Meat also claims to have a solution to global warming and the truth about the JFK assassination, but figures there will surely be plenty of time to publicize the information (and sign his life insurance paperwork) when he gets back.

He crashes, of course, but walks away unscathed — only to get hit by the ambulance sent to rescue him.

Some of the funniest scenes in cinema come from horror films — though it's questionable whether "Army of Darkness," the third of Sam Raimi's beloved "Evil Dead" movies, is even trying to be anything but a comedy. Several scenes have resonated throughout history, but none more so than when the protagonist, Ash, finally locates the legendary Necronomicon. After a brief but hilarious gag in which Ash is tormented by a pair of decoy Necronomicons (one of them stretches out Ash's face while the other attacks him like a bat), he prepares to say the three words he's been told he must say before claiming the book: klaatu, barada, nikto.

Unfortunately, Ash can't remember the last one, so (in an iconic bit of acting by Bruce Campbell) he tries to cover by coughing loudly and pretending he said it. When no immediate repercussions occur, Ash smirks and takes the book, which, naturally, is when the dead rise.

The great Mel Brooks' unflinchingly irreverent career was largely behind him by the time the '90s came around, but he still had at least one cinematic gem to offer the world. "Robin Hood: Men in Tights" is exactly what it says on the tin: a Robin Hood parody film that looks at the popular legend through distinctly modern eyes.

Specifically, "Men in Tights" utilizes anachronism and absurdity to create its comedic moments, and the ultimate expression of this comes when Robin attempts to inspire the people of Sherwood. He starts by quoting Shakespeare, asking the crowd to "lend me your ears" — to which the crowd responds by literally pelting him with their ears. Actor Cary Elwes' subsequent speech quickly turns into a Winston Churchill impersonation before Dave Chappelle takes over with a Malcolm X impression. This finally wins the people over.

When filmmaker Kevin Smith burst onto the scene in 1994 with "Clerks," a low-budget, black-and-white customer service comedy, every nerd and geek in the audience had the same thought: "This is how I talk with my friends." Smith is a master of dialogue, and his characters engage in the kinds of conversations that would later form the backbone of internet culture.

Case in point: the scene in "Clerks" when Randall and Dante discuss the possibility that a bunch of innocent construction contractors are killed when the second Death Star is blown up in "Return of the Jedi." This is exactly the kind of fan theory that litters the web today. It's not just funny, it's prescient — and it's also bizarrely heartwarming when an actual roofer joins them to counter that those contractors should have known better than to take work from the Empire. "A roofer listens to this," he says, tapping his heart. "Not his wallet."

Speaking of backbones of internet culture, the funniest film scene of 1995 also gave the online community one of its most enduring catchphrases. In F. Gary Gray's stoner buddy comedy "Friday," Ice Cube's Craig Jones has just lost his job on his day off, and his friend Smokey convinces him to get high. The height of the comedy comes from Craig's first time smoking weed: He develops a sudden obsession with his own heartbeat and abruptly runs inside when he thinks he hears his phone. Plus, the rapid-fire patter of Chris Tucker in his breakout role as Smokey is a treat in this scene and throughout the film (his closing line in the last scene is similarly well-remembered).

When Felisha arrives wanting to borrow either Smokey's car or a joint, her immediate dismissal is almost incidental. But that offhand "Bye, Felisha" accidentally made "Friday" one of the most regularly quoted movies of all time.

You knew there was going to be at least one Adam Sandler scene on this list, and for our money, there was nothing funnier in 1996 than watching Sandler get his teeth kicked in by "The Price is Right" game show host Bob Barker. Barker appears as himself in "Happy Gilmore," the story of a former hockey player who finds himself becoming an unlikely golfing superstar despite his tremendous anger management issues. When Gilmore's biggest rival hires a heckler to get into his head during a celebrity pro-am event, it causes him to play terribly. Barker gets increasingly frustrated with Happy until he finally snaps, leveling his elderly partner with a haymaker.

The slapstick humor comes when Barker gets back up and beats the younger man into unconsciousness, at one point responding to Happy's headbutt with a white-gloved choke-hold and a hilarious expression of crazy-eyed rage.

"Men In Black" remains one of the most beloved sci-fi franchises of all time. The original film is particularly untouchable, with a brilliant script, eye-popping alien designs, and top-notch performances by Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. These elements blend together when Smith's Agent J gets his first look at MIB headquarters — a breathtaking tour that culminates in him accidentally setting loose a destructive alien ball.

That ball bounces around the building, taking out employees and smashing expensive objects as Smith hollers things like "Somebody get him some ice!" Smith's fish-out-of-water bafflement contrasts wonderfully with Jones' unflappable calmness as he explains that the ball was a "practical joke by the Great Attractor." The Great Attractor is a real-life gravitational anomaly whose true nature remains unknown to this day, but who is apparently sentient in the "Men in Black" world: Jones says the anomaly thought the prank was "funny as hell."

In the Coen Brothers' 1998 comedy masterpiece "The Big Lebowski," there are almost too many classic scenes to choose from. In the end, we have to go with Walter Sobchak pulling a gun on his bowling opponent, Smokey, demanding that Smokey's latest bowl be marked as zero due to a minor rules infraction. He might not be the title character, but Walter is the engine that makes the movie run (it arguably falls off whenever John Goodman is offscreen).

This scene contains several of his most quotable lines, from "Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling, there are rules" to "You're entering a world of pain." It's the sheer absurdity of Goodman's character that makes the whole thing so funny, particularly after a terrified Smokey finally relents — at which point Walter puts the gun away and almost apologetically mutters, "It's a league game, Smokey."

Mike Judge's "Office Space" could only have come out in 1999, directly satirizing the corporate culture taking over workplaces during that era. The whole movie is hilarious, beginning when lazy corporate drone Peter Gibbons accidentally undergoes permanent hypnosis and begins seeing life from a new perspective. But the peak of comedy that year came in the form of a wordless, gang-style execution scene in which the victim is the office printer.

The malfunctioning machine has frustrated the protagonists throughout the film, so in an iconic sequence, they take it to an empty field and destroy it to the unmistakable sounds of the Geto Boys' "Still." Highlights include Peter, whose recent promotion enabled them to take the printer, facilitating the violence like a Mafia don, and Michael, who bears a particularly strong grudge, punching it with his bare fists and having to be dragged away.

Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy, the co-writers of the 2000 mockumentary "Best in Show," both make hilarious appearances in their own film. The year 2000 was a loaded one for comedies, however: The competition included classics like "Snatch," "High Fidelity," "Almost Famous," and "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" To beat that slate, "Best in Show" needed something special, and this came in the form of the legendary Fred Willard, who absolutely steals the film as color commentator Buck Laughlin.

Completely oblivious to the rules of dog shows and willing to say pretty much anything that comes to mind, Laughlin remarks tactlessly on the judge examining a dog's testicles, asks if the dogs are allowed to wear costumes, and makes hopeless football references, much to the confused dismay of his fellow commentator. (That unfortunate companion is Jim Piddock, playing the stuffy British straight man to Willard's increasingly ridiculous dialogue.)

In an alternate universe, the premise of "Legally Blonde" — a blonde sorority girl gets admitted to Harvard Law — resulted in just another cheap comedy. In our universe, thankfully, it evolved into a funny, intelligent, and inspirational touchstone for an entire generation.

Nothing encapsulates the humor of "Legally Blonde" better than the scene in which Elle Woods, played phenomenally by Reese Witherspoon, makes her first legal argument. Weighing in on a classroom hypothetical about a habitual sperm donor seeking child visitation rights, Elle points out that there's no clear reason why the donor should claim ownership over this particular child. Instead, she notes, under the donor's own logic, "all masturbatory emissions where his sperm was clearly not seeking an egg could be termed reckless abandonment." The instructor subsequently invites Elle to apply for his upcoming internship. Ever prepared, she hands him a pink, scented copy of her resume.

"Barbershop" is such a legendary comedy that it spawned two sequels, a spin-off, and a television series. In its premiere year of 2002, Cedric the Entertainer was the funniest person on the silver screen. As the cantankerous Eddie Walker, Cedric owns a film whose cast includes Ice Cube, Anthony Anderson, Keith David, and Eve, with the best example being his rant taking down Rosa Parks.

Beyond Cedric's delivery, by far the funniest aspect of the scene is the way Eddie plays on the outraged responses of his audience, slowly escalating his critiques as the other men in the room get increasingly angry. As well as being intensely funny, the scene also plays into the themes of the film as Eddie defends his words on the grounds that a barbershop is a space for speaking freely. Best of all, it ends with a customer happily proclaiming, "Man, I love this place."

"Bad Boys II" has by far the worst Rotten Tomatoes critical rating on this list, coming in at 23% (though its audience score is 78%). Not many would dare to call it a good movie. It is, however, undoubtedly a funny movie, as exemplified by 2003's funniest scene.

Marcus and Mike are a cop duo investigating the flow of ecstasy in Miami, and at one point, Marcus accidentally ingests some just before they arrive at their captain's home seeking a crucial warrant. The result is an utterly hilarious sequence in which Mike vainly tries to conceal what's happening from the captain while Marcus wanders around his house fondling statues, complementing the fish, and drinking from a flower vase. Will Smith rightfully gets a lot of attention for his role in the "Bad Boys" films, but in this case, Martin Lawrence is the star of the show.

If you're looking for the funniest zombie movie parody ever made, look no further than Edgar Wright's directorial debut, 2004's "Shaun of the Dead." This was another stacked year for comedy: "Mean Girls," "Napoleon Dynamite," and "Anchorman," among others, all came out in 2004. However, none of those movies feature anything quite as hysterical as Simon Pegg and Nick Frost trying to kill zombies with vinyl records.

Wright stays true to the time-honored concept of zombies as a metaphor for consumerism, as demonstrated by the fact that Pegg and Frost actually go through the records individually. They take the time to decide which ones to keep and which ones to throw at the zombies despite the life-or-death stakes at play. The ultimate punchline, of course, is that the records are entirely ineffectual as weapons, and the whole idea was stupid in the first place.

Since its release in 2005, "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" has slowly earned its deserved appreciation. The darkly hilarious crime comedy is among the most quotable movies ever made, and nothing in 2005 could possibly be funnier than the scene in which ex-magician and criminal Harry Lockhart (a recently-released-from-rehab Robert Downey Jr. in the role that would eventually get him cast in "Iron Man") and private detective Perry van Shrike (Val Kilmer in probably his greatest performance) perform an interrogation.

As a scare tactic, Lockhart puts a single bullet in a revolver, spins the cylinder, and fires, obviously expecting to land on an empty chamber. Instead, to his surprise and horror, he shoots the victim in the head. Harry weakly protests that he thought "there was like an eight percent chance," to which Kilmer delivers the perfectly exasperated response, "Who taught you math?"

It's always nice when a comedy film's climax is also its funniest scene. In this case, it's also the funniest scene of 2006. "Little Miss Sunshine" is the story of a dysfunctional family coming together to support its youngest member, Olive (a 9-year-old Abigail Breslin), in her quest to compete in a beauty pageant, despite not looking like a typical child beauty queen. It's a scathing critique of the institutionalized application of traditional female beauty standards to children.

This dynamic comes to a head when Olive begins performing, revealing that the dance taught to her by her grandfather (who died en route to the pageant) is a burlesque striptease. Audience members — who have been fine with the hyper-sexualization of young girls until Olive's act — leave in disgust, but Olive's family dances alongside her in a moment that will make you laugh and cry at the same time.

How do you choose one scene from a movie that's basically perfect? Answer: You cheat a little. "Hot Fuzz," Edgar Wright's follow-up to "Shaun of the Dead," is the best comedy of 2007 and possibly the best comedy ever made. In the buddy cop murder mystery where every acting choice, camera angle, and line of dialogue feeds into and enhances every other like a piece of intricate clockwork, there's no single scene that rises above the film as a whole. But if anything comes close, it's the third-act action sequence.

The sequence involves several different scenes, each hilarious in their own way. And to top it all off, the fact that "Hot Fuzz" in pop culture has become the exact sort of over-the-top action movie that Danny Butterman taught Nicholas Angel to love is the final ingredient in a nearly flawless piece of comedic cinema.

"Forgetting Sarah Marshall" is one of the great modern romantic comedies, with an all-star cast that includes Jason Segel, Kristen Bell, Mila Kunis, Russell Brand, and Jonah Hill. Each of them has their moments: Segel's protagonist, Peter Bretter, encounters all manner of strange people during his post-breakup trip to Hawaii. None of them, however, steals the show like Paul Rudd, whose turn as oddball surfing instructor Kunu is the most memorable part of the movie, particularly the scene where he teaches Peter to pop up on a surfboard.

He repeatedly insists that Peter is "doing too much," at one point telling him, "Remember, don't do anything. Nothing." When Peter obliges and just lies facedown on the surfboard, Kunu replies, "Well, you ... No, you gotta do more than that." It's such a delightfully weird scene, such simple but effective comedy, that we can't imagine anything else from 2008 topping it.

The concept of the cameo appearance wasn't a new one in 2009, but there might never be a better cameo than the one from Ruben Fleischer's debut film "Zombieland." When the central zombie survivors arrive in Hollywood and seek out the mansion of famous comedy actor Bill Murray, two of them find themselves accosted by a zombie version of Murray himself. Only he's not a zombie — Murray is alive and well, he just puts on zombie makeup to move freely around town.

The three humans smoke some weed and re-enact a "Ghostbusters" scene, then decide to prank the paranoid Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) by having Murray pretend to be a zombie again. Unfortunately, Columbus responds by shooting Murray instantly, not realizing he is actually human. Murray's death scene, in which he names "Garfield" as his one regret and goes out with an exaggerated death rattle, is the stuff of legend.

"Hot Tub Time Machine" sees three friends (Adam, Nick, and Lou, played respectively by John Cusack, Craig Robinson, and Rob Corddry) accidentally go back in time and inhabit the bodies of their younger selves. In order to get back to the present, they have to retrieve a Russian energy drink called Chernobly. Unfortunately, it's fallen into the hands of Lou's old nemesis, a bully named Blaine (played by a bizarrely young-looking, pre-MCU Sebastian Stan).

The highlight of the confrontation between Lou and Blaine is Adam's totally ineffective motivational speech. "He's humiliated you," Adam says. "Emasculated you! The wheel of fate has stopped and dumped you here again, utterly defeated!" When Lou tells Adam this isn't helping, he replies, "I know, I know, it's coming, it's coming right now," and Nick hilariously whispers "Patience." The rest of the speech doesn't work, either, but it's an amazingly funny scene.

A decade after its release, there has still never been a movie quite like "Bridesmaids." Produced by Judd Apatow and tonally similar to his other work, it was written by Annie Mumolo and star Kristen Wiig. The film was touted from the very beginning as "The Hangover" for women, a vulgar, raunchy comedy that allows its female cast to engage in the same kind of gross-out antics that men perform in similar films. This decision is encapsulated in the infamous food poisoning scene.

Having achieved entry into a high-class bridal shop, Lillian (Maya Rudolph) and her bridesmaids have all gotten themselves into fancy dresses when the sickness hits, forcing most of them to hit the bathroom with a vengeance. Lillian herself runs out in search of another bathroom, but ultimately, horrifically, finds herself taking a dump in the middle of a busy street — while still wearing a borrowed wedding dress.

The reasons why Drew Goddard's "Cabin in the Woods" is brilliant could fill their own article: It's the funniest horror movie and the scariest comedy you're ever likely to see. Goddard's seamless blend of laughter and fear, along with his skill at subverting horror tropes for comedic purposes, is on display in 2012's funniest scene, in which the operators of the mysterious control room speak on the phone with Mordecai, whom they call "The Harbinger."

Mordecai's role in the movie is funny enough on its own: The control room essentially orchestrates real-life horror stories, whose tropes require a weird old guy — Mordecai — to tell the ignorant kids they should turn back. But Mordecai's dislike of being on speakerphone, combined with the operators' total unwillingness to take him seriously, provides a truly hilarious moment while feeding beautifully into the film's central conflict of traditionalism vs. modernity.

If anyone doubts the funniest scene in any year could come from a Martin Scorsese crime movie, those people have probably never seen "The Wolf of Wall Street." Scorsese's tale of corporate corruption, based on the memoirs of felonious stockbroker Jordan Belfort, contains several amazingly funny scenes. By far the funniest, though, occurs when Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his friend Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill) ingest a pile of 15-year-old quaaludes, which kick in just after Belfort learns that the FBI is tapping his phone.

DiCaprio's physical comedy is off the charts in this scene as he crawls and rolls to his car, returns home to find Donnie on the phone, feebly attacks him, and then has to save him from choking to death — all while both men are unable to speak or move properly due to the drugs. It's a truly next-level performance.

2014 kicked off a new era in top-shelf comedy: the era of Taika Waititi. The New Zealand comedian introduced himself to international audiences, alongside longtime collaborator Jemaine Clement, with "What We Do in the Shadows," a mockumentary about four vampires living together in Wellington (which was recently spun off into a popular series on Hulu).

The film's sketch comedy nature lends itself well to entertaining individual scenes, but the first is the funniest. It opens on the image of a hand reaching out of a coffin to hit the snooze button and moves on to a flat meeting called by Waititi's fastidious vampire, Viago, who wants everyone to keep up on their chores. The flat meeting introduces us to the main characters and sets the general tone of the movie, which starts in a place of insane ridiculousness and never leaves.

By the mid-2010s, Marvel and Disney were fully in the midst of their cinematic takeover, which had announced its widening scope in 2012 with the ensemble film "The Avengers." It was 2015, however, that would mark the takeover of superhero comedy specifically, beginning with "Ant-Man."

Marvel films had featured comedic elements before, but they had never made a movie intended to be funny from start to finish. "Ant-Man" changed that, and while the script is fantastic and Paul Rudd is great in the lead role, the film truly belongs to Michael Peña as Luis, whose voiceover storytelling interludes resonate in pop culture to this day.

The best one is the last, highlights of which include Luis visiting an abstract expressionism exhibit despite being "more like a Neo-Cubist kind of guy," a delayed and hilariously mundane punchline, and Peña's voice seeming to come out of the mouths of Anna Akana and Stan Lee.

Not to be outdone in the realm of superhero comedy, 20th Century Fox decided to one-up Marvel in 2016 with the distinctly R-rated "Deadpool," an "X-Men" spin-off featuring Ryan Reynolds in the role he was born to play. It's probably still the funniest comic book movie ever made (with the only competition being its own sequel), and it's hard to choose a single funniest scene when even the opening credits are a contender.

With the understanding that Deadpool himself would certainly want us to bend the rules a bit, we're going to go with the entire highway scene. This jam-packed sequence includes the bit where Deadpool forgets his ammo bag and has to count his bullets; his first interactions with Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead; and lines like "This guy's got the right idea, he wore the brown pants," "All the dinosaurs feared the T-rex," and of course, "You ever see 127 Hours?"

The rise of the comic book comedy and that of Taika Waititi came together in beautiful fashion in 2017, when Waititi was tapped by Marvel to direct "Thor: Ragnarok." The first two installments of the "Thor" franchise were more Shakespearean than comedic, but "Ragnarok" is the Asgardian's funniest film in the MCU and one of the overall best.

Waititi didn't just direct, either: He also voices the character of Korg, the alien revolutionary with the suspiciously heavy New Zealand accent. Korg's introduction in the cell where Sakaar's gladiators are kept is hands-down the funniest moment in the funniest movie of the year. You can't top the unvarnished lunacy of a giant pile of rocks explaining that his revolution failed because he didn't print enough pamphlets, that the cell is a circle ("But not like a real circle. More like a freaky circle"), and that Doug is dead (long live New Doug).

Words can't fully express our feelings about Boots Riley's "Sorry to Bother You," one of the strangest, darkest, and funniest films in cinematic history. Starring Lakeith Stanfield as Cassius Green, a telemarketer who finds success through his use of an affected "white voice," the movie initially appears to be a character piece about a man torn between selling out for his career and keeping his friends and relationships.

As the film continues, however, it becomes clear that something else is going on. The funniest, weirdest part of the film — and the funniest, weirdest moment of 2018 — is when Cassius accidentally discovers that his company is turning people into human-horse hybrids to increase their profits. The jaw-dropping reveal is enhanced by Armie Hammer's turn as the company's laid-back but clearly insane CEO. Whether you're laughing because it's actually funny or because you just don't know how what else to do, you're definitely laughing.

Taika Waititi's third and final appearance on this list is the ultimate example of how to make a joke out of the least funny subject in history. "Jojo Rabbit" pulls no punches in terms of its concept. Jojo is a young German boy during World War II whose imaginary friend is Hitler himself (caricaturized by a disturbingly zany Waititi), which gets complicated when Jojo befriends and shelters a Jewish girl in his home.

Waititi doesn't shy away from the horrors of Nazi Germany: The scene in which Jojo's home is visited by the Gestapo, led by Stephen Merchant, is tense and terrifying. But he also manages to skewer these horrors with uproariously cutting comedy, such as the Gestapo's insistence on exchanging "Heil, Hitler" with each and every person in a room, or Merchant's perfect line, "You and your friends may have heard a rumor that Hitler only has one ball; this is nonsense. He has four."

2020 was a weird year for movies, since the coronavirus pandemic shut down Hollywood for most of the year. Fortunately, prior to the pandemic, Cathy Yan gifted us with "Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)," one of the best DC movies ever and absolutely the funniest film of the year.

After breaking up with the Joker, Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) finds herself targeted by everyone she's ever wronged, many of whom show up during the scene in which the cops chase Harley down after she spends the last of her money on an egg sandwich. Tragically, after dodging numerous would-be killers, Harley is knocked down by Detective Renee Montoya, and the sandwich splatters across the pavement.

The image of Harley crying out in slow-motion grief for her lost sandwich amid a swell of dramatic, mournful music would have made this the funniest scene even in a normal year. In 2020, it was just the comic relief we needed.