Well, let’s see. First the earth cooled. And then the dinosaurs came, but they got too big and fat, so they all died and they turned into oil. And then the Arabs came and they bought Mercedes Benzes. And Prince Charles started wearing all of Lady Di’s clothes. I couldn’t believe it.
That was Jacob’s reply to his boss, the Air Traffic Controller in Airplane II.
This is one of the best gags I have seen / heard ever. Till today, whenever I watch Airplane series, I get totally plastered and every inch of body ache’s with laughter.
Many serious movie lovers call this kind of cinema as mundane or ordinary. They feel that you don’t need much of brains to come up with movies like Airplane, Spaceballs, History of the world etc. But let me tell you something, you need to have real crazy funny bones in your body to come up with such gags.
Watching Charlie Chaplin or Three Stooges when I was 8 or 10 years of age, I thought the characters are real dumb assed morons that have ever walked the planet. But as I grew, I realized that you need to be real serious at writing a comedy. Infact, I find it comedies to be much tougher that doing a tragedy. The writers have to really think out of the box, be illogical but also have logic attached to the characters dialogues and the actors need to have a real sense of timing to give audience a great laughter moment.
Listed below are my favourite slapstick / spoof comedy movies and some of amazing gags they had.
Return of the Pink Panther
The original stuff by the Great Clouseau. Steve Martin should have never tried his hand at this one, left a real bad taste.
Inspector Jacques Clouseau: [in Dreyfus' office, after Clouseau's apartment has been bombed] I tell you, infamous powers are at work! The instant you assign me to a case, the Underworld hears about it and I am set upon! It is amazing that I am still alive!
Dreyfus: [forcing himself not to giggle] “Amazing” is the polite term.
Inspector Jacques Clouseau: Do I detect something in your voice that says I am in disfavor with you?
Dreyfus: YES! I wish you were DEAD!
Inspector Jacques Clouseau: Well, of course, you are entitled to your opinion.
Blind beggar: I am a musician and the monkey is a businessman. He doesn’t tell me what to play, and I don’t tell him what to do with his money.
History of the World
Mel Brookes sure know how to make you laugh in every situation. Take for instance the painting of Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci.
Judas: No. No. Leave us alone!
Comicus: All right, all right! Jesus!
Jesus: Yes.
Comicus: What?
Jesus: What?
Comicus: What?
Jesus: Yes.
Comicus: Jesus!
Jesus: Yes.
Comicus: What?
Jesus: What?
Comicus: You said what.
Jesus: Yes.
Comicus: Nothing.
Roman Officer: Do you know the penalty for a slave that strikes a Roman citizen?
[People in the crowd raise hands enthusiastically]
Roman Officer: Ok, you. You had your hand up first.
Man in crowd: Death by torture!
Roman Officer: No. You.
Man in crowd: Crucifixion!
Roman Officer: No. You.
Man in crowd: They shove a living snake up your ass!
Roman Officer: Ah, no… But that’s very creative
Andaz Apna Apna
What should one write about the greatest comedy movie ever made in Bollywood? I have seen it about 20 times till date but still manage to find something new. The movie was filled with some many comical situations / dialogues that it hard to choose a favorite.
Bhalla: Ye Vasco De Gamma ki gun hai
Teja: Kiske mama ki gun hai?
Bhalla: Aaj Robert ka birthday hai
Robert: Boss, apne bataya nahin ke aaj mera birthday hai.
Robert: Boss, chini dalne ka time hogaya?
Crime master Gogo: Ye Teja, Teja kya hai?
Spaceballs
How does one come up with a plot that requires a massive space ship to be converted to a maid with a vacuum cleaner which will suck all oxygen from planet Drudia to save planet Spaceballs.
Rick Moranis was great a Dark Helmet (on line of Darth Vader) while Bill Pullman played Lone Star
The climax scene between Lone Star and Dark Helmet
Dark Helmet: Before you die there is something you should know about us, Lone Star.
Lone Starr: What?
Dark Helmet: I am your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate.
Lone Starr: What’s that make us?
Dark Helmet: Absolutely nothing! Which is what you are about to become
Dark Helmet watching the video of Spaceballs 1987
Dark Helmet: What the hell am I looking at? When does this happen in the movie?
Colonel Sandurz: Now. You’re looking at now sir. Everything that happens now is happening now.
Dark Helmet: What happened to then?
Colonel Sandurz: We passed then.
Dark Helmet: When?
Colonel Sandurz: Just now. We’re at now, now.
Dark Helmet: Go back to then!
Colonel Sandurz: When?
Dark Helmet: Now.
Colonel Sandurz: Now?
Dark Helmet: Now!
Colonel Sandurz: I can’t.
Dark Helmet: Why?
Colonel Sandurz: We missed it.
Dark Helmet: When?
Colonel Sandurz: Just now.
Dark Helmet: When will then be now?
Colonel Sandurz: Soon.
Dark Helmet: How soon?
Padosan
Great Mehmood and Nutty Kishore Kumar gave a really whacky movie. One of the best roles Sunil Dutt did in his career.
While teaching Bhola (Sunil Dutt) to sing on a lower scale Vidyapathi (Kishore Kumar) says’ “Bhola neeche se.” Bhola get ups from the cushion he is sitting on and squats on the ground and starts singing.
Keshto reciting Laila Majnu “Zungaal, zoongal mein Laila pane Moznu ko pokarta, A Gaaaas”
Naked Gun
I rate Leslie Nielsen as one of the best comedy actors. He accidentally landed in such movies but it was all good for the jaw muscle of millions around the globe.
In Naked Gun Leslies plays Inspector Frank Drebin who is the biggest idiot on force but manages to solve every crime that is assigned to him
[Frank Drebin is emptying out his files after being kicked off the force]
Frank: Hey! The missing evidence in the Kelner case! My God, he really was innocent!
Ed: He went to the chair two years ago, Frank.
Frank: Well, uh…
[Frank Drebin quickly shoves the evidence back into the file cabinet]
Jaane bhi do yaaro
An ensemble of great actors’ writer and a fantastic director that gave one of the rare hilarious Hindi comedy movies.
No other had presented Mahabharata play is such a cultural mess as this movie has done. Within a span 5 minutes the play moves from the ancient Vedic time to Mogul and to the current times when Ahuja (Om Puri) declares that all are shareholders of Draupadi (Satish Shah).
Blazing Saddles
Must be the first movie that showed a black man as the Sherriff.
The townfolks aren’t happy to find out that their new sheriff is black. They begin to load their guns and point them at him. Bart then points his own pistol at his head.
Bart: Hold it! Next man makes a move, the nigger gets it!
Olson Johnson: Hold it, men. He’s not bluffing.
Dr. Sam Johnson: Listen to him, men, he’s just crazy enough to do it!
Bart: Drop it! Or I swear I’ll blow this nigger’s head all over this town!
Bart: Oh, lo’dy, lo’d, he’s despit! Do what he sayyyy, do what he sayyyy…
[the townfolk drop their guns. Bart jams the gun into his neck and drags himself through the crowd and towards the station]
Harriett Van Johnson: Isn’t anybody going to help that poor man?
Dr. Sam Johnson: Hush, Harriet, that’s a sure way to get him killed!
Bart: Oooh! He’p me, he’p me! Somebody he’p me! He’p me! He’p me! He’p me!
Bart: Shut up!
[places his hand over his mouth, drags himself through the door into his office]
Bart: Ooh, baby, you are so talented! And they are so DUMB!
I can go on but don’t want my post to look like intro of Star Wars movies. Witing about these movies has given a real itch to watch them all again. Will start a movie marathon this week that will also include movies like national Lampoon, Sadhu aur Shaitaan (Mehmood starrer), Pushpak, Monty Pythos – Life of Brian,
It was with immense help of IMBD that I was able to write the gags as they were in the movies.
Closing off the post with the most funniest movie of all time
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
It just the takes the opening scene of King Arthur running (as if he was riding a horse)for you to fall in love with this movie.
Soldier: Who goes there?
King Arthur: It is I, Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, from the castle of Camelot. King of the Britons, defeater of the Saxons, Sovereign of all England! and this is my trusty servant Patsy. We have ridden the length and breadth of the land in search of knights who will join me in my court at Camelot. I must speak with your lord and master.
Soldier: What? Ridden on a horse?
King Arthur: Yes!
Soldier: You’re using coconuts!
King Arthur: What?
Soldier: You’ve got two empty halves of coconut and you’re bangin’ ‘em together.
King Arthur: So? We have ridden since the snows of winter covered this land, through the kingdom of Mercia, through…
Soldier: Where’d you get the coconuts?
King Arthur: We found them
Soldier: Found them? In Mercia? The coconut’s tropical!
King Arthur: What do you mean?
Soldier: Well, this is a temperate zone
King Arthur: The swallow may fly south with the sun or the house martin or the plover may seek warmer climes in winter, yet these are not strangers to our land?
Soldier: Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?
King Arthur: Not at all. They could be carried.
Soldier: What? A swallow carrying a coconut?
King Arthur: It could grip it by the husk!
Soldier: It’s not a question of where he grips it! It’s a simple question of weight ratios! A five ounce bird could not carry a one pound coconut.
King Arthur: Well, it doesn’t matter. Will you go and tell your master that Arthur from the Court of Camelot is here?
Soldier: Listen. In order to maintain air-speed velocity, a swallow needs to beat its wings forty-three times every second, right?
King Arthur: Please!
Soldier: Am I right?
French Soldier: I don’t want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.
King Arthur: I am your king.
Woman: Well I didn’t vote for you.
King Arthur: You don’t vote for kings.
Woman: Well how’d you become king then?
King Arthur: The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering Semite held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. THAT is why I am your king.
Dennis: [interrupting] Listen, strange women lyin’ in ponds distributin’ swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
CLASS ACT ^:)^
muzzy, awesome post.. i love spoofs and slapsticks! if i were to ever make a feature one day, it’ll most definitely be a spoof. i also wanted to add the “hot shots” series to the above list you have going on.. i absolutely loved those, and they were in fact, my first introduction to this genre.. will have to check out some of the others you mentioned as well.. thanks!
Nice post, Muzzy.
I loved Airplane I. Hilarious! I have seen it so many times, although it’s been ages since I last saw it.
Other classics for me are Top secret and Life of Brian.
I agree with Muzzy. Everytime you watch AAA you find something new. Jaane bhi do yaaron is another classic. They should make more like those.
What about all the talk on AAA 2 being made? Any takes on where the story would go or how you would ideally want it to go?
As a writer, I’m sure many would have tried writing their own secret version of AAA 2.
Spoofs are gourmet – one needs a hedonistic obsession to relish them. Thanks Muzzy for the Airline write up. My fav spoof – besides all the Nielsens – is “Robin Hood – Men in Tights”.
Some favorite lines:
“We’re men, we’re men in tights… We roam around the forest looking for fights… Watch what you say or else we’ll punch out your lights…” – Merry men anthem
“Unlike other Robin Hoods, I can speak with an English accent.” – Cary Elwes (of Kevin Costner).
“I hope someone is making a video of this” – Dave Chappelle being roughed up by the royal guard.