Jack Black names the best comedy films he’s ever seen: “My favourite movie as a kid”
Most of Hollywood’s most famous comedy actors tend to pivot away from the genre eventually to showcase their dramatic chops, open themselves up to a wider range of roles, and prolong their careers once the laughs dry up, even if Jack Black hasn’t shown much interest in joining their number.
Realistically, there’s only so long anyone can keep repeating the same shtick in perpetuity before it grows stale, and now that he’s in his mid-50s, maybe Black should start thinking of the future. After all, when he did knuckle down and discard his signature exuberance, he gave one of his best performances.
Richard Linklater’s Bernie cast Black in the oxymoronic part of a widely beloved murderer, which netted him a Golden Globe nomination for ‘Best Actor – Musical or Comedy’. That was also the last time the actor and musician got serious to a significant extent, and the movie released well over a decade ago.
John Malkovich was his biggest inspiration when he was first starting out, and while he can often be funny, nobody would point to the Academy Award-nominated star as an obvious example of what a comedic performer should be seeking to emulate in order to split audiences at the side.
The same goes for Christopher Walken, another key influence on Black, but another trio of his favourites make a great deal more sense, even if two of them were Oscar nominees. Not only that, but together, they were responsible for the two comedy movies he holds dearest, formative features he’s held close since childhood.
“I loved Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, my favourite movie as a kid was Silver Streak,” Black told Movies. “And I really liked Peter Sellers. I loved Murder by Death.” Wilder and Pryor quickly became one of the most popular pairings in mainstream comedy, but it was Arthur Hiller’s 1976 caper that partnered them up for the first time.
In the romantic comedy thriller, Wilder strikes up a romance on a long-distance train journey, only to end up accused of a murder he witnessed. His would-be love interest gets kidnapped, he gets thrown from the train, and there’s no other option left on the table but partnering up with Pryor’s car thief. The duo made three more movies together, and it’s easy to see why everyone else was so keen to capitalise on such sparkling chemistry.
Murder by Death, meanwhile, riffs on the whodunit with Sellers trying to unravel a murder mystery overflowing with star names like Maggie Smith, David Niven, Alec Guinness, Peter Falk, and even Truman Capote in a rare acting gig. It’s hard to call it one of the chameleonic funnyman’s best go-for-broke displays of improvisational madness, but it was good enough to make a lifelong impression on Black.
