The comedy movies Quentin Tarantino calls “perfect”
Throughout his career, Quentin Tarantino has always strived for creative perfection, an aim that, for the most part, he’s persistently achieved. Whether weaving non-linear criminal narratives together in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown or bringing his love of Asian and western cinema to life in Kill Bill and Django Unchained, the iconic filmmaker has consistently delivered quality of the highest order.
Tarantino is one of those artists who sticks true to his vision, leading to an aesthetic that is unmistakably his own. It’s a direction that comes from his profound and undying passion for the cinematic medium, the likes of which were expressed when he named the movies that he considers truly perfect pieces of work.
“Well, there’s not many of them – that just bemoans that the film art form is hard,” the director once told Jimmy Kimmel. “And look, when you say perfect movies you’re talking about any individual person’s aesthetic but even trying to account for all aesthetics… perfect movies kind of crosses all aesthetics to one degree or another.”
“It might not be your cup of tea, but there’s nothing you can say to bring it down,” he added. Hard-pressed, Tarantino went on to state his list of perfect movies, including Jaws, The Exorcist and The Wild Bunch, which makes sense considering the iconic director’s taste in movies, most notably for the horror and western film genres.
While there are several humorous moments in Tarantino’s films, the comedy genre is not exactly what we associate with the director, but even he seems to have a soft spot for a funny film or two. On his list of perfect efforts, Tarantino named two comedy movies that he considers to be perfect from beginning to end.
The first is the 1974 Mel Brooks-directed comedy horror Young Frankenstein, starring Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle. Wilder plays a medical school student descendant of the infamous Dr. Victor Frankenstein, who reluctantly takes over his family’s estate in Transylvania after the death of his great-grandfather.
Tarantino followed up with Woody Allen’s 1977 romantic comedy-drama Annie Hall, in which the director also stars as a comedian trying to come to terms and understand the reasons why he broke up with his titular girlfriend, played by Diane Keaton, for whom Allen had specifically written the role for.
So Tarantino certainly feels that Annie Hall is a perfect movie, but Allen himself did not agree, once noting, “When Annie Hall started out, that film was not supposed to be what I wound up with. The film was supposed to be what happens in a guy’s mind. Nobody understood anything that went on. The relationship between myself and Diane Keaton was all anyone cared about. That was not what I cared about. In the end, I had to reduce the film to just me and Diane Keaton, and that relationship, so I was quite disappointed in that movie”.
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