Light and funny movie, please.

I cannot believe these were left out:
Monkey Business (Cary Grant, Marilyn Monroe and Ginger Roger, and the Marx Brothers!), Bringing Up Baby (Cary Grant and A young beautiful Katherine Hepburn), His Gal Friday, (Cary and Rosalind Russell), People will Talk ( Cary and Jean Crain), My favorite Wife (Cary and Irene Dunne) and Topper (Cary and Constance Bennett) I have been a Cary Grant fan my entire life. These are just some of his comedies. There are many more and some dramas.

joane27: I don't like when I have to make notes to do anything. Once, my DD's setup was so complicated that she had to make notes for the babysitters (and me) too. (You had to use three remotes). Never, never, never. Can't even remember how to PVR the odd program on my setup and it's easy-peasy. Oh well. :(

joanne27, I know what you mean about making the DVD player work with the TV... I haven't used my DVD player there must be 2" of dust on it, it's been years. I know I wrote down notes on how to get it to work, there was just so many steps that I just gave up.

Oh how I liked my old VHS player, pop in the tape and up it came onto the TV. So very simple :)

jinglebts- yes, I mentioned Young Frankenstein. I'm not a fan of too many Mel Brooks movies but loved this one! Another fabulous cast - Gene Wilder was soo talented. The Puttin on the Ritz scene is wonderful but my favorite scene is when the monster is having dinner with the blind monk - played by Gene Hackman. Too funny!

You are all angels!!! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Now if I can only figure out how to get the DVD player to come through on the TV :) !!! Thank you! Again and again!!!!!

And TV Mash and WKRP in Cincinnati, with Howard Hesseman as Johnny Fever and I'll never forget Les Nessman's mispronunciation of Chi Chi Rodriguez the baseball player's name as "Chy Chy Rod-ri-gweeze".

Ah, those were the days (All in the Family?) ...

Mama Mia!

I like the original Father of the Bride, with Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor (good lord, she was beautiful then). Laughed my head off. Has Young Frankenstein been mentioned? Madeleine Kahn was in that too -- she died early, I think, but she was wonderful. Gene Wilder's version on Puttin' on the Ritz (with the monster -- Peter Boyle, I think?) was hilarious.

Love Astaire and Rogers. I have DVDs of all their movies. Gay Divorce is one of my faves of theirs.

Churchmouse- the Steve Martin/Lily Tomlin movie was All of Me. I like Steve Martin in some things - not so much in others. He was wonderful in the remake of Father of the Bride - which isn't terribly funny, I don't think but is very, very sweet.

Oo! And what was that film with Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin doing a double act? (literally) - that was gorgeous, I loved it.

'What's Up Doc?' - Ryan O'Neal and Barbra Streisand made a great couple, too. Plus you get the underrated Madeleine Khan (sp?).

Definitely Best in Show. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (with Steve Martin). The original of The Producers. Bridesmaids. The SNL skit of The first debate!

I love 'Some Like It Hot' -- think it's my fave funny movie of all time, and then there's 'Fargo' too, and 'Birdcage', which might also be my fave movie.

Boy, I have my work cut out for me now! I was not on my computer much today (trying to take advantage of the last few nice days to finish outside stuff), but I will start searching for some of these titles. Most of them were familiar, but I had forgotten about them. Thanks everyone!

If you want a current funny Brit - I adore John Oliver. He has a show on HBO called Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. He focuses a lot on politics and government in general and is so sharp, smart and laugh out loud funny. If you don't get HBO you can watch him on YouTube.

Ohmygod I feel so old!

Back in the late 1970s, The Times went on strike. How can I explain..? It felt as though Big Ben had fallen down. The *Times*??? On *strike*??? No Times????? Aaaarrrgggh the end of the world is nigh etc etc etc.

It was first published in 1785. The idea of not having The Times to read over breakfast was unthinkable.

The strike dragged on. The nation despaired, but then got resigned and read something else instead (though that still left the problem of whom to write to when you needed to protest about a public issue).

After many weeks? Months? Anyway. After some considerable time, some journalists got together and put out a spoof edition called "⁁Not The Times" with the Not inserted as superscript above the masthead.

A couple of seasons after that, four young comedians - Rowan Atkinson, Pamela Stephenson, Griff Rhys-Jones and Mel Smith - came out with a sketch show called Not The Nine O' Clock News.

Mel Smith is sadly no longer with us. Pamela Stephenson is a respected psychotherapist who is married to Billy Connolly. The memory of her version of Olivia Newton-John's hit song "Physical" - retitled "Typical" - still makes me snicker and I haven't seen it for over thirty years.

And The Times, which started the fashion, was bought by Rupert Murdoch and that was when the UK realised that our handcart had at last reached H*ll.

If you can find "Alien Warning broadcast on TV' or the sketch about welcome to the afterlife, you'll see Rowan Atkinson in his salad days and probably laugh quite a lot.

Churchmouse,
Counting on you to keep this conversation going, because I have NO IDEA what you are talking about.
"NOT the Nine O'clock news" -just the title sounds like something I would have liked., but I never heard of it.

Rowan Atkinson is a terrific writer! Some of the sketches on 'Not The Nine O' Clock News' still shine after nearly forty years (some really don't, of course); and he was great in 'Keeping Mum' too. I suppose it's just that genre of comedy that some people love and others squirm over, then?

Well instead of clearing up the mystery you've deepened it.

I was trying to sound neutral, but I give up: who the heck are the millions who are paying to see Mr Bean? I find it uniformly, embarrassingly dreadful - but the records show that it is a global success. I can only assume they adore it in countries where they have absolutely nothing to laugh about. Kyrgyzstan and Malawi, maybe?

I hope I'm not about to get posts from offended Malawian and Kyrgyzstani forum members...

loved Blackadder and some of Mr. Bean is funny

Love the TV shows "Frasier" and "The Big Bang Theory". Both are on almost daily on the reruns. There isn't one ho-hum episode in either.

anything with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers! Pure fluff, fantasy and fun.

My Cousin Vinny
When Harry met Sally
The Devil Wears Prada
and double that for Birdcage ( either version)
Also any episode of the TV situation comedy Frasier.

Ummm - Mr. Bean. I'm with cwillie, no thank you. The only time I found him even the slightest bit funny was his small role as a store clerk in Love Actually. Hubby is a huge South Park fan - I consider it to be one of his few character flaws. Although, I have to admit the episode with Tom Cruise in the closet was pretty funny.

The British TV series "Keeping up Appearances", never went away without a lot of laughing. It's a about a woman, Hyacinth who wants to keep a high social standing in the community. She has two sisters, Rose & Daisy, who aren't into the social standing and their Daddy lives with them but runs away every now and then. The neighbors, delivery people, and even the mailman prefer not to run into Hyacinth. And the church ladies will run and hide if they see her coming into the building.

The above show is on reruns.

a) yes
b) no, please no
c) groaned more than laughed, not my kind of humour I'm afraid

Oo! I wonder if you can all help me with a mystery.

Thinking about Mr Bean, have you

a) heard of him
b) intentionally watched him
c) laughed much?

My MIL asked my children to explain South Park to her, CW, when she saw Daughter 2 wearing a Mr Garrison t-shirt. They've never in all their lives gone so quiet, before or since.

I'm afraid I can still be heard in changing rooms telling myself "Ai'm not fath, Ai'm big-boned."

What ever happened to family entertainment, it seems television and movies today are all either specifically for children or full of violence and/or sex. When I revisit older offerings I realize many of the the cleverest old movies and even televised comedy were full of double entendres that totally went over my head when I was a child.

Akdaughter, A few more:

The SEVEN LITTLE FOYS from 1958. It's a musical with Bob Hope and a lot of singing kids.

How The West Was Won.

The Music Man

Hello Dolly

My parents loved Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In (in my Dad's case, I strongly suspect that had a lot to do with Goldie Hawn mind you). They were also big Bob Hope fans (oh God he isn't one of the people who've since been horribly discredited is he..? Please say no!).

I just spent ten minutes looking for a well-founded list of top ten musicals of all time - hopeless. If you go by box office returns, with the exception of Grease, they're all from the last decade or two purely because of inflation and population increase. It is of course difficult to get data for how many people have actually seen something, ever. And all of the pundits' recommendations are either terribly partisan, or are then challenged by hundreds of pages of protests from followers.

You could go back to the Oscar winners and nominees from the decades in question - forties, fifties, sixties, seventies.

Do watch out for odd reactions, by the way. My mother got horribly distressed by not only West Side Story (which she loved so much she dragged me to see it on stage when I was about twelve) but also Bugsy Malone, for crying out loud. But she used to sit in perfect content watching Midsomer Murders reruns day after day. Maybe nothing can be really scary if it's got John Nettles in it.