Bravo's 100 Funniest Movies

I'm back from my annual Memorial Day pilgrimage to the NC mountains for the college fraternity get together that one of the wives has now dubbed "Brokeback Weekend." Thanks Ang Lee. Semi-rugged, high-altitude, alcohol-fueled male bonding will never be the same again. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Some of these lads needed the ego tweak. Not the Tenacious one, of course. But maybe my friend who greeted every new arrival with a barrage of semi-automatic bb gun fire (not in the air either--last year he almost put out an eye (not mine), evoking memories of A Christmas Story, so we're at least making progress on the safety front). Or the one teaching his five year old to shoot a '22. We'll be ready if Osama sends his kinderbombers on a suicide mission to Eric Robert Rudolph country. As always, the stories, the hiking, and the food were excellent. Good times, fellahs!

So until last night, I'd been in a media blackout all weekend. But I did get to catch a little of Bravo's "100 Funniest Movies." Being the list junkie that I am, I had to look up the entire thing. A couple of obvious comments. First, this list is clearly skewed toward the recent. It is really the historical memory of the twenty-, thirty-, and forty-somethings who are Bravo's likely audience. No surprise then that Animal House finished first and Caddyshack second. Some of the picks, however, were bizarre. #3 was Shrek. Shrek!!! OK, I haven't actually seen it, but I guarantee you it is not the third funniest movie of all time. Is it the favorite movie of anyone older than 12? I think not. Now, any list will have some element of the arbitrary and stupid. Acknowledging that, here are my votes for most overrated and underrated on their list:

Acks!: Shrek (3), Ace Ventura (7), Wedding Singer (8), Arthur (10), Meet the Fockers (25!?), Dodgeball (37), Mrs. Doubtfire (39), Police Academy series (59), Three Amigos (79), Zoolander (86), and Happy Gilmore (97).

Underrateds: MP's Holy Grail (40), Raising Arizona (45), Princess Bride (50), Meet the Parents (52), Bull Durham (55), Young Frankenstein (56), This is Spinal Tap (64), and Trading Places (74). Four movies that didn't even make the list: Austin Powers: the Spy Who Shagged Me (the best of the three AP movies); Waking Ned Devine; Happy, Texas; and MP's Life of Brian.

Take a look and judge for yourselves.

Postscript: Some good suggestions about what got left of that list in comments. Aside from A Christmas Story, which should have gotten good ranking, I now think the biggest omission may be O Brother, Where Art Thou? That movie gets funnier every time I see it. Now, I guess, I'll r-u-n-n-o-f-t.