The Best Medicine

I don’t generally consider myself a laugh out loud person. It has been known to happen but it is not exactly the norm for me. Some people I know are laugh out loud people, to the point where it seems as if they are laughing not because they think something is funny, but rather because they want you to know that they think it is funny. That’s probably unfair but what can you do?

The best thing about laughter is when you find something so unrelentingly hilarious that the out loud laughter suddenly goes silent and you begin to struggle for breath. Tears start to come and no matter how hard you try you just can’t seem to stop. During that moment you seem to forget everything else going on in your life. It may be as close to bliss as human beings can get.

Maybe.

Anyway, here are 5 scenes from movies, television and stand-up comedy that put me into this most welcome of states every single time:

1. “You wrote a bad song Petey.”

Fantastic Mr. Fox is probably my 2nd favourite Wes Anderson and it features a handful of laugh out loud moments alongside the more usual gentle Anderson humour. This is the one that lad me rofl-ing. (is that right???)

 

2. “You’re in love with your own brother?”

The standard episode of Arrested Development featured so many, and so many different types of jokes that it was easy to miss a ton of them on 1st viewing. The ‘on next week’s Arrested Development…’ segment was always a particular favourite of mine and this was the cut of the bunch. It’s not decidedly clever but it sums up the Gob Bluth character pretty darn well.

 

3. “What if it’s a shark?”

The Inbetweeners was usually a bit more cringeworthy than laugh out loud funny but when it did incite a belly laugh it was a good one. Every one of the four lads contributes in this riotous clip.

 

4. “72 unforced errors.

The Royal Tenenbaums may not have the hipster cool of more recent Wes Anderson films but it is my number 1 and this brief scene showing the end of Richie Tenenbaums’s once promising tennis career has the just the right combination of sadness surrealism to provoke fits of laughter.

 

5. ‘Jeff Vader”

Eddie Izzard is one of my all time favourite comedians and I can’t find fault with the reasoning behind his penchant for transvestism (women get to wear what they want so why shouldn’t he?). This is one of my favourite bits of his, it is even better within the context of his full show (as are most of his bits) but it is still down right hilarious on it’s own.