Funniest Film Poll; Hulot, Hulot, Hulot!

To Mark the recent re-release of Jacques Tati's classic comedy Jour de Fete, we asked IoS readers to nominate their funniest films of all time. The 112 films mentioned at least once certainly reflected the diversity of what makes us laugh, but the one that topped the poll did so by a huge margin: Tati's Mr Hulot's Holiday, which, under our scoring system, gained twice as many points as the runner-up, Some Like It Hot.

Perhaps that was not surprising given the context of the poll, and the offer of a set of Tati videos to the three readers whose entries were first to be drawn out of the hat. Readers were asked to nominate their top five films in order. With five points awarded to films in first place, four to films in second place, and so on, the top 20 came out as follows:

1 Mr Hulot's Holiday

2 Some Like It Hot

3 The Producers

4 Duck Soup

= 5 Life of Brian; Oh, Mr Porter!

7 Way Out West

= 8 Hellzapoppin'; A Night at the Opera

= 10 The Odd Couple; Sleeper

= 12 Play It Again, Sam; Withnail & I; Groundhog Day

15 To Be or Not To Be

= 16 La Cage aux Folles; Annie Hall; The Ladykillers; Blazing Saddles

20 The General

The list seems to confirm that they indeed don't make 'em like that any more. Only Groundhog Day dates from the 1990s. The comic genius of Woody Allen (Sleeper; Play it Again, Sam; and Annie Hall), the Marx Brothers (Duck Soup, A Night at the Opera) and Mel Brooks (The Producers and Blazing Saddles) is confirmed. Laurel and Hardy (Way Out West) come out better than Buster Keaton (The General), while British cinema (Oh, Mr Porter!, The Ladykillers, Life of Brian, and Withnail & I) has every right to smile.

The readers who, courtesy of Connoisseur Video, will receive copies of Mr Hulot's Holiday, Jour de Fete and Mon Oncle, are: Steve Wilkinson of Cambridge; George Crisp of London W12; and John Dee of Bristol.