The best comedy movies to watch on Netflix right now

In terms of plot, is nothing new. In fact, it’s simply the latest in a recent series of films, like and and , about a couple coincidentally caught up in wacky but legitimately dangerous criminal activity. In this case, it’s hipster creatives Jibran (Kumail Nanjiani) and Leilani (Issa Rae) who get pulled into a blackmail ring after they accidentally run over a cyclist with their car in the midst of a relationship-ending fight. Add a New Orleans location that isn’t especially necessary to the story and a dinner party full of judgmental friends (and one hunky coworker), and the Mad Libs card is pretty much filled out. The dialogue is the real star here—that, and the chemistry between the leads, of course. []

doesn’t confine its screen-time observations to metaphors: As a synth-y score builds and the Mitchells embark on a last-ditch road trip to drop Katie off at college, a new line of robo-helpers rebel against their masters, efficiently creating a (bloodless, family-friendly) apocalypse. By sheer luck, the Mitchells evade capture and become humanity’s last long-shot hope. When other humans are shipped off to the “rhombus of infinite subjugation” and rogue comic-relief robots voiced by SNL alumni become crucial to the plot, the Mitchells’ animated lineage becomes more clear: This is the latest work godfathered by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, architects of , , and … []

never wastes a joke-telling opportunity. The opening credits are a rolling snowball of jokes. The songs by Python associate (and future Rutle) Neil Innes are whirligigs of funny rhymes and piercing insults. “Camelot Song” is matched to slapstick choreography—and one key cutaway—mounted in the difficultly lit interior of a castle that had to serve as multiple castles due to uncooperative Scottish officials. As part of the independent spirit of the enterprise, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam stepped up to direct, essentially learning on the job while sharing a vision that sets the postmodern absurdity of Arthur and his knights against a backdrop of moody fantasy and barbaric history. Like the best Python products, Holy Grail speaks in a single voice, but the Terrys’ individual directorial signatures remain evident: Jones’ focus on performance (the Pythons are all in peak form here) and coverage with an eye toward putting the funniest version together in the edit; Gilliam’s animation-bred control-freak tendencies colliding with his flair for visual clutter and chaos. []

Not since has a movie gotten as much mileage out of having its hero fuck up as does. Shane Black’s entertaining but shaggy homage to -era detective series and mid-to-late 1970s cheese finds its offbeat gumshoe in Holland March (Ryan Gosling), a smartass with no sense of smell who tends to make bad guesses, lose guns, misread addresses, drink whatever’s handed to him, and defenestrate himself repeatedly; early on, he tries to break into a window, only to slice his wrist up so badly that he passes out from blood loss. Structured like a TV pilot, the movie partners March with Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe), the Yoo-hoo-loving goon who broke the private eye’s arm just days before, in the search for a missing activist. []

Opening with a diagnosis of cancer that’s soon revealed to be terminal, more or less amounts to an hour and a half of slow-motion assisted suicide. Sound like fun? Remarkably, this low-budget two-hander—arriving on Netflix just a few weeks after its Sundance premiere—manages to generate a fair number of laughs, even as it does full justice to the scenario’s underlying gravity. Written by Alex Lehmann (who also directed) and Mark Duplass (who also plays one of the two lead roles), Paddleton takes its emotional cue from Terms Of Endearment, expanding that film’s final stretch into an entire feature and replacing mother-daughter bonds with the deep but usually unspoken love shared by two male buddies. A bit of cheating is necessary to achieve the stripped-down dynamic that Lehmann and Duplass apparently wanted, but the payoff is an atypically intimate portrait of testosterone-fueled friendship. []

Typing “Pee-wee” into the Netflix search bar brings up a and a Playhouse right alongside . This film—directed by Wonder Showzen’s John Lee, produced by Judd Apatow, and co-written by Paul Reubens with ’s Paul Rust—doesn’t shy from comparisons to Pee-wee’s first, Tim Burton-helmed big-screen outing. The parallels are right there in the title, but the films also follow roughly the same structure, a hero’s journey that breaks Pee-wee out of his idiosyncratic small-town routine and sends him on an epic road trip. Pee-wee’s Big Holiday is a comeback vehicle, but it’s also an attempt to reprise one of the funniest movies ever made. To a large degree, it succeeds. []

The main characters of Tamara Jenkins’ , Rachel (Kathryn Hahn) and Richard (Paul Giamatti), are a fortysomething Manhattan couple who have spent a small fortune trying to have a baby—an obsession that their friends and relations liken to an addiction. She is a novelist who put off having kids for too long so she could focus on her writing; he used to be a theater director, but now sells pickles. They’ve had bad luck with adoption agencies and fertility clinics, but they keep trying. Like compulsive gamblers, they borrow money from Richard’s brother, Charlie (), a successful periodontist who lives outside the city, for treatments with a low-single-digit rate of success. Of all the passed opportunities in their lives, parenthood is the last one they can’t let go. Whether they really want to be parents remains an open question. []

, the surrealist, wildly enjoyable 1993 cartoon created by Joe Murray, has what you might call a “bad boy” reputation. Static Cling maintains the original show’s look, sound, and aesthetic perfectly (although Philbert appears a bit off-model at times). It takes a moment to get reacquainted with the show’s energy and pacing, which is a bit slower and more easygoing than one might remember, but by the time Rocko, Heffer, and Philbert land back in O-Town, you’ll feel right at home. And the more genuine storyline that’s explored is a much more significant piece worthy of consideration, so much so that it’s worth re-evaluating Rocko’s Modern Life as a whole. []

It would be easy and accurate to describe Sausage Party as a parody of contemporary family-friendly animation, particularly of the Pixar-produced variety. It explores the secret life, unseen by humans, of seemingly inanimate objects; it sends its celebrity-voiced lead character on an epic journey that ends in an antic showdown; and in a further nod to Disney heritage, it opens with a song co-written by studio stalwart Alan Menken. Yet this vulgar cartoon from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg doesn’t limit itself to inserting “fuck”s (verbally and otherwise) into the alive-object narrative. Rogen and Goldberg start with spoofery and work their way into something bolder and stranger; it’s as if playing in the Pixar sandbox, or a reasonable approximation thereof, can’t help but inspire creativity. []

Though tagged as the director’s bid for commercial success, School Of Rock is as philosophical in its own way as Slacker or Waking Life. It was made by people who not only know the music well enough to create magnificent flowcharts around it, but also understand how a simple, soul-stirring rock song can seem revolutionary. Beyond Black’s hilarious lessons on power stances, middle-period Pink Floyd, and the all-important G-chord on bass is a design for living (“You’re not hardcore / unless you live hardcore”) that’s more instructive than anything the simps in Dead Poets’ Society ever learned. []

This NYC-set heartbreak story is written and directed by creator Jennifer Kaytin Robinson and stars Gina Rodriguez, Brittany Snow, and DeWanda Wise as three longtime best friends. When Rodriguez’s Jenny gets dumped by her boyfriend of nine years, Nate (LaKeith Stanfield), she suddenly has to take inventory of her life, evaluate what she wants, and reflect on nearly a decade of memories she built with a person who suddenly can’t be a permanent part of her life anymore. is one of the genre’s most gutting and complete portraits of a breakup and its sticky, chaotic aftermath. []

At first glance, is a silly satire of early ’70s blaxploitation flicks like or that adds what writer-director Juel Taylor and writer Tony Rettenmaier call a “… dash of .” Fortunately, the filmmakers here have something more in mind, as they create a meticulously constructed world to tell a tale that uses age-old theories, myths, and conspiracies—some proven to be accurate, like the infamous Tuskegee experiments—to explain the woes of the Hood. As the movie continues, it adds heavy layers of social commentary to a rather nimble and funny genre mashup, tackling the relationship of Black folks to Black folks, both despite and because of the influence of white folks in our communities. Clones notwithstanding, the movie becomes a drama and the “pimp and hoe” schtick becomes the foundation of a more thoughtful commentary. It’s funny and more thoughtful than it looks while still maintaining itself as a trenchant social satire. Also, for the record, there is no character named Tyrone. [Tim Cogshell]

, To All The Boys combines the stylized cinematography of a Wes Anderson movie with the heart of a John Hughes film and the spirit of the best of the 1990s high school rom-coms. Based on the first in Jenny Han’s best-selling trilogy of young adult novels, centers on introverted high school junior Lara Jean Covey (Lana Condor), whose world comes crashing down when her secret stash of love letters accidentally make their way out into the world. To avoid dealing with the fallout from the note sent to her older sister’s ex-boyfriend Josh Sanderson (Israel Broussard), Lara Jean pulls a classic move and impulsively kisses another letter recipient, Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo). Once Peter gets a handle on Lara Jean’s situation, he suggests they start fake dating each other so that Lara Jean can avoid Josh and he can win back his ex-girlfriend by making her jealous. They draw up a contract of ground rules (no to any more kissing, yes to Sixteen Candles-inspired back pocket spins), and set about duping their school—both in person and via social media. Soon enough, however, Lara Jean and Peter’s fake relationship leads to some real feelings. []

brings with it all of the series’ sorely missed cast members, including Kimmy (Ellie Kemper); Titus, the greatest roommate in the history of roommates (Tituss Burgess); Kimmy’s snooty former boss, Jacqueline (Jane Krakowski); and Kimmy’s enterprising former landlady, Lillian (Carol Kane). Jon Hamm—in his hilarious depiction as Kimmy’s captor, Richard Wayne Gary Wayne—showed up all too sporadically in the series’ later seasons (granted, his character was in prison). But as the title suggests, he plays a large part here, as Kimmy finds out that Dick has another bunker of mole women, who she has to save mere days before her wedding, to Prince Frederick (Daniel Radcliffe). Using the same technology seen in Black Mirror’s but with much funnier results, Kimmy Vs. The Reverend tracks the titular eternally optimistic redhead as she heads out on her biggest adventure yet. Intriguing tech options aside, all the one-liner, blink-and-you’ll-miss-them jokes that made Kimmy Schmidt so much fun in the first place are thankfully still intact. []

Even (maybe especially) for , a new Happy Madison picture getting uploaded to Netflix does not inspire much genuine hope for a good time. Imagine my surprise, then, that Adam Sandler enlisted his old pal Robert Smigel to make , his best broad comedy in at least a decade—a funny and sweetly grounded story about a couple of dads hitting assorted bumps in the lead-up to their kids’ wedding. Smigel ditches most of the usual Sandler hangers-on, keeps the best ones (Rock, Dratch, Buscemi), and makes a movie rooted in the specifics of suburban Long Island, rather than the latest Happy Madison-favored resort. []