Bill Murray’s five favourite Bill Murray movies: “I’m partial on ones that weren’t as popular”
With a film career dating back to 1979’s Meatballs and a back catalogue of classics under his belt, everyone has their favourite Bill Murray movie. The actor has been in his fair share of hits, cult favourites, and unsung gems over the years, whether it’s drama, comedy, or a combination of the two.
Murray has cornered the market on deadpan delivery and sardonic stylings since first rising to prominence as a Saturday Night Live cast member: He can do the whole quiet, introverted, and conflicted thing when he needs to, but for the most part, his most memorable features are the ones where his personality is on full display.
He quipped his way through Ghostbusters, lent his unmistakable presence to every Wes Anderson film since Bottle Rocket after deciding that was the one he would avoid like the plague, and carried his baggage towards an Academy Award nomination in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation.
Murray is also the guy who famously agreed to voice the title character in Garfield because he thought it was written by one of the Coen brothers, which became a key part of his idiosyncratic mythology without explaining why he still returned for the sequel, although the answer is almost certainly cold, hard cash.
The prickly star who seems to be adored and abhorred in equal measure, depending on who he’s working with and how he’s treating them, but what’s interesting is that when Murray was asked to name the four best movies he’d ever made, he didn’t pick the one that features his self-proclaimed greatest performance.
Frank Oz’s 1991 effort, What About Bob?, occupies the unique position of being the star’s outstanding candidate for the pinnacle of his on-camera career without factoring into his quartet of all-timers. Maybe it’s because he hated Richard Dreyfuss and threw a producer into a lake, but that’s just guesswork.
When The Spokesman Recorder put him on the spot, Murray suggested that he preferred the pictures that flew under the radar, as opposed to the ones that made the most money. “I’m partial on ones that weren’t as popular,” he said. “I’d say there are three.” This being Hollywood’s preeminent veteran oddball, though, he went ahead and named five.
His sole directorial outing, 1990’s Quick Change, was first on the list, with the comedic crime caper receiving decent notices from critics despite failing to recoup its budget at the box office. Jon Amiel’s 1997 spy farce The Man Who Knew Too Little also made the cut, even though it was a critcal and commercial disaster that nobody remembered a thing about by the time the credits rolled.
Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers makes a lot more sense because it genuinely is one of Murray’s finest hours and boasts what might be his best-ever performance, but Rock the Kasbah does not. Barry Levinson’s star-studded affront to comedy tanked horrendously and ranks as one of his very worst movies, something anyone unfortunate enough to see it would agree with.
Last, but by no means least, a genuine great: “Groundhog Day was one of America’s great movies,” he declared. “It’s in the Library of Congress. The writing of the movie was incredible.” At least everyone can agree on that.
Bill Murray’s favourite Bill Murray movies:
- Quick Change (Howard Franklin and Bill Murray, 1990)
- The Man Who Knew Too Little (Jon Amiel, 1997)
- Broken Flowers (Jim Jarmusch, 2005)
- Rock the Kasbah (Barry Levinson, 2015)
- Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis, 1993)
