Anna Kendrick’s favourite comedy movie of all time: “I remember laughing my ass off”
What often gets overlooked about Anna Kendrick’s career is that she earned an Academy Award nomination before she’d truly established herself as a hugely popular comedic performer, with Pitch Perfect serving as the springboard in that regard.
The star was only 24 years old when Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air was released. She ultimately earned her Oscars recognition in the ‘Best Supporting Actress’ category, but that wasn’t even her first time being shortlisted for a major trophy, either.
When she was still a teenager, Kendrick landed a Tony nomination for ‘Best Featured Actress in a Musical’ after treading the boards in High Society, so she was already a proven talent long before her involvement in The Twilight Saga raised her profile in the eyes of the general public.
In addition to headlining the Pitch Perfect trilogy, Kendrick has also appeared in Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Jonathan Levine’s 50/50, and Paul Feig’s A Simple Favour, so she knows what it takes to get a laugh out of viewers under various circumstances. When it comes to her own favourite, though, it’s a modern classic from a filmmaker she’s very familiar with.
An ode to the glory days of the buddy cop comedy that both embraces and pokes fun at the genre, Wright’s Hot Fuzz was a masterful middle chapter in the Cornetto trilogy and worthy of being named by Kendrick as the greatest comedy she’d ever seen.
“When I first saw this in the theatre, I remember laughing my ass off and then realising it was also the best action movie I’d seen in a long time,” she told Rotten Tomatoes. “I love that it’s a love letter to action and not a spoof. It also has some of the best and fastest comedic dialogue ever.”
It has it all: a razor-sharp script, inspired chemistry between a sprawling ensemble cast of stars, character actors, and surprise guests, impressively staged action sequences, and clear adoration for movies where people dive through the air in slow motion while dual-wielding firearms. That’s why there’s definitely a case to be made that Hot Fuzz is the strongest of Wright’s three collaborations with Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright.
It’s more accomplished and technically proficient than Shaun of the Dead and a whole lot less unwieldy than The World’s End. However, maybe it’s best not to split hairs when the loosely connected trio is largely viewed as one cohesive unit that serves as a spectacular beacon for 21st-century British big-screen comedy.
It goes without saying that Kendrick is in the Hot Fuzz fan club to the point she’d happily brand it as one of her favourite movies of all time, but rewatching it feels like an incomplete exercise unless it’s sandwiched in between the other two.
