The funniest movie of all time, according to science
We can all agree that the beauty of art is in its subjectivity. A single brush stroke, a chord on the guitar, a line from a book, or a still from a movie can spark an infinite and perpetually blossoming array of responses, interpretations and feelings. Depending on the day, mood, or even what you’ve had for your breakfast, the same artwork may yield a drastically different opinion from the one you had earlier.
When it comes to movies, there is no genre or type of film more subjective than comedy. What makes one viewer howl with laughter can cause another to cringe at the lameness of it all. A certain joke that went over your head in your youth might hit you like a (funny) tonne of bricks upon reaching a mature and worldly age.
The best thing about comedy is that, unlike other genres, there’s no specific template or rules to follow. That is until science came along and sapped all the fun out of it. They’ve already worked out the greatest song of all time, and now, as it turns out, there is a rule when it comes to comedy, and a bunch of white-coat boffins at OnBuy Movies made it their mission to use science to determine what the funniest movie of all time was.
By using ratings of above 6.0 and keywords such as “funny” to compile a list of the top 125 comedies based on IMDb reviews, the OnBuy gang created a very specific but solid metric upon which to find the answer. One film, above all else, managed to rise to the top with an aggregate score of 7.6 across 528,021 individual ratings and close to 250 reviews containing keywords similar to “funny.” The movie? 2007’s Superbad.
Thankfully, Superbad is indeed a fantastic comedy. Written by then-15-year-olds Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, this hilarious coming-of-age stands as one of the most cherished and oft-quoted movies of the 21st century. Unlike several other films released around the same time, Superbad remains a culturally relevant and instantly relatable movie, and it gains legions of new teenage fans with every year passing.
Following Michael Cera and Jonah Hill as Evan and Seth, respectively, Superbad told the story of two high-schoolers who make it their mission to score some booze, go to a proper party and get laid before they start college, lest they enter the new and all-important chapter of their lives as absolute losers. Interestingly, coming close behind in second place was 2016’s Deadpool, which secured a score of 8.0 across 918,739 individual ratings and 233 reviews.
So there you have it. We’d put money on the reader already valuing Superbad as one of their favourite comedies because we genuinely haven’t encountered anyone who doesn’t. However, if you’re among the few who weren’t tickled by McLuvin’ or by discovering “how many foods are shaped like dicks”, let this be your lesson: science has told you that you’re wrong.
