Beloved by many and quoted endlessly to this very day, Superbad is in a unique league of its own. On previous occasions, we’ve briefly covered why the screenplay penned by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg as teenagers is the perfect millennial comedy – which was only taken to new levels of funny when inhabited by the authentic stylings of Jonah Hill, Michael Cera, Emma Stone, and Christopher Mintz-Plasse, under the direction of Greg Mottola. Now, Superbad has claimed the top position amongst funniest movies of all time, courtesy of science. Well… “science.”
While this wasn’t exactly determined by a global population survey nor was the film dissected in a lab, we’re willing to (partially) look the other way from the flawed experimental design for the sake of what you’re about to read. A study published by the white-coated experts at OnBuy Movies analysed the top 125 comedies based on IMDb reviews. Titles with a rating above 6.0 and a certain amount of keywords synonymous with “funny” in their respective reviews made the cut.
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By this very specific metric, Superbad managed to prevail with an aggregate score of 7.6 across 528,021 individual ratings and close to 250 reviews containing keywords similar to “funny.” Deadpool starring Ryan Reynolds came in at a close second with a score of 8.0 across 918,739 individual ratings and 233 reviews.
Elsewhere, and a little further back in the chronology of comedy film-based “scientific” discourse, another statistical breakdown ranked the funniest movies of all time based on a laughs per minute rating. Interestingly enough, while Superbad still ranked among the top ten, it only came in at #4, vacating the throne for the classic 1980 comedy Airplane! starring Leslie Nielsen, Robert Hays, and Julie Hagerty.
Again, while there’s no way the sample size could have possibly been broad enough, nor the data recording kept to the standard of proper experimental design, here are the results just in case you’re curious.
The Funniest Movies Of All Time (Laughs Per Minute Rating)
- Airplane! – 3 laughs/minute
- The Hangover – 2.4 laughs/minute
- Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! – 2.3 laughs/minute
- Superbad – 1.9 laughs/minute
- Borat – 1.7 laughs/minute
- Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy – 1.6 laughs/minute
- American Pie – 1.5 laughs/minute
- Bridesmaids – 1.4 laughs/minute
- Shaun of the Dead – 1.3 laughs/minute
- Life of Brian – 1.2 laughs/minute
