The 13 Funniest Movies Of 2018: Sex, Death, Racism, Drugs, And Superpowers

Every awards season, there are a lot of comedies that get swept under the rug simply because they're trying to make people laugh. Most comedies aren't "good enough" to be considered for Oscars, and even the Golden Globes ignore many of the real comedies in favor of movies pretending to be comedies, like The Martian or Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.

This past year brought us a wide array of comedies, but rather than merely classifying them as your average comedy, we wanted to just count down The 13 Funniest Movies of 2018. No two of these movies are alike, and each of them brings a different brand of comedy, sometimes making you furious, other times making you uncomfortable, but always making you laugh. So let's get down to it.

This list is no particular order, because there's no point in trying to determine which of these movies is funnier than the other. They all deserve recognition for different reasons. So without further adieu, here are The 13 Funniest Movies of 2018.

The mysterious trailers for A Simple Favor didn't try to portray the Paul Feig movie as a comedy. If anything, they tried to convince viewers that this movie was anything but a comedy, especially touted as being from the "darker side" of his mind. But the truth is that this thriller about a confident, secretive and abrasive young woman going missing is full of twisted comedy, especially when the ludicrous nature of the mystery starts to unfold.

Blake Lively plays the missing matriarch and businesswoman in question while Anna Kendrick plays a young, bubbly mother who recently befriended her after their kids bonded at school. As the two strike up an uncomfortable friendship, their interaction makes for some truly amusing banter, especially as Anna Kendrick's character slowly begins to come out of her shell and give into her own darker side. While much of the comedy comes from the interaction of these characters, the hilarity reaches a new level when the real, unbelievable game is given away. No spoilers here, just see it for yourself and enjoy.

You know those moments when you're laughing to keep from crying? That's pretty much the entirety of Vice in a nutshell. Most of the laughs in this movie come from the sheer audacity and brazenness of the actions of Vice President Dick Cheney (played by Christian Bale). The lengths to which this man went to obtain and execute power in the name of freedom and the United States of America is scary, but you can't help but laugh at the confidence and nonchalant attitude that Cheney has the entire way through.

However, much of the comedy comes from the satirical angle that director Adam McKay brings to the table, much like he did with the financial crisis dramatization of The Big Short. Some elements of Vice border on parody, especially when it comes to breaking the fourth wall, but it's no more ridiculous than the things that actually happened behind the scenes of Washington DC to get us into a number of messes that we still haven't recovered from.

If you were flummoxed by the simultaneous laughter and anger brought on by Vice, director Spike Lee takes it to a whole new level with BlacKkKlansman. While the unflinching racism of the Ku Klux Klan will have you shaking your head in dismay and disbelief, the brashness and confidence of such blind and often stupid racism also brings a surprising amount of laughter, simply because you know that these people are the worst, most ignorant people on the face of the Earth.. These people are so hateful that it's laughable, especially when it comes to the dimwitted, redneck played by Paul Walter Hauser.

But this is a Spike Lee movie, so the biggest laughs come from black detective Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) laying down the law, literally and figuratively, on these hicks by being a black man who manages to be welcomed warmly into the Ku Klux Klan via a series of phone calls. Aside from the snark and snide remarks thrown at Klan members by Washington and his partner (Adam Driver playing the "face" of Ron Stallworth) by being smug right to their face, all while lying to them, the real victory comes from the hysterical reveal of Ron Stallworth's real identity to the one and only David Duke (Topher Grace), which results in one the biggest fits of clapping and satisfied laughter all year.

Hopefully by now someone has forced you to sit down and enjoy one of the most surprisingly satisfying and stylish studios comedies of the decade. Game Night has an outstanding ensemble cast that includes Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, Kyle Chandler, Lamorne Morris, Kylie Bunbury, Billy Magnussen, Sharon Horgan and scene stealer Jesse Plemons, but what makes them all shine is a suspenseful story that lets them all perfectly bring to life the comedy of disbelief and panic in the face of danger.

Throughout this night of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the twists and turns of Game Night add more and more layers to the complex proceedings. But on top of that, there are these great tangents, such as a little relationship tiff between Lamorne Morris and Kylie Bunbury involving Denzel Washington, or the divorce of unnerving and odd neighbor and police officer Gary. Elements like that combined with all the fast-paced banter only elevates the movie into being an unforgettable comedy.

While Vice takes shots at Dick Cheney and his phantom presidency under the watch of George W. Bush through the lens of satire, director Armando Iannucci (Veep and In the Loop) takes the political and historical comedy to an entirely different level with The Death of Stalin. Here's another comedy that borders on spoof, but in a much more subtle way that chooses to play scenes straight rather than merely trying to go for laughs.

As if the title didn't make it clear, The Death of Stalin focuses on the death of tyrannical dictator Joseph Stalin in 1953 and the aftermath as his underlings have a foul-mouthed, double crossing face-off to determine who will take control over the Soviet Union. But what's great about this movie is that Armando Iannucci doesn't have real-life figures such as Georgy Malenkov, Nikita Khrushchev and Lavrenti Beria played true to their Russian roots. Instead, he lets Jeffrey Tambor, Steve Buscemi and Simon Russell Beale play them in the actors' native dialects, and it makes all this unrest in Soviet Russia that much more comical. They play their roles so deadly serious that you can't help but laugh at their intensity and misfortune. It's the kind of political satire that only the creator of Veep and In the Loop could deliver.

Most of the time, when you see a period movie like The Favourite, you're not expecting there to be many laughs. But this film from The Lobster director Yorgos Lanthimos brings with it a hefty amount of dark comedy as 18th century's Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) of England finds herself ill-tempered, ill-mannered and, well, just ill all around. Helping her sort through governing problems is her friend and right-hand woman Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz), but a recently arrived servant named Abigail (Emma Stone) weasels her way into the queen's trust and the two begin a cutthroat competition for her favor.

The Favourite is twisted and mean, but it's also hilarious in its ruthlessness as these two royal confidantes duke it out. Not only is the battle of words these two share full of humor, but the queen's behavior is often childish and worth some laughs too. On top of that, there are a couple buggers of men sniffing around that our two competitors continue to dispatch with rather rudely and nonchalantly, and that's quite amusing too.