Comedy movies that are actually good

When Clark Griswold puts his mind to something, we soon realize he hasn't got one. Still, nothing stops him when the vacation bug hits. This time, he's chosen Las Vegas, the new family entertainment capital of America! Chevy Chase returns as bubbly, bumbling Clark in Vegas Vacation, a jokers-are-wild laugh fest including two other stars from past Vacations. Beverly D'Angelo is back as wife Ellen, doting on the guy she calls "Sparky," and Randy Quaid again delights as grubby goof ball Cousin Eddie. Ethan Embry (That Thing You Do!) and screen-debuting Marisol Nichols are Griswold teens who love the round-the-clock nightlife - as long as they don't share it with Mom and Dad! From Seigfried and Roy's extravaganza to a Hoover Dam tour, from cruising to losing (Wallace Shawn as a shifty blackjack dealer) to amorous crooning (Wayne Newton falls for Ellen): watch Clark try to keep family and wallet together!

Injured while risking his life to save an angry German shepherd, Chicago Firefighter Jack Moniker retires and moves to a small Caribbean island named St. Nicholas. There, he is befriended by Ernest Reed, the owner of a run-down resort. Greedy developers are scheming to wrest Reed's coveted beachfront property from him for non-payment of taxes. Jack comes to Ernest's rescue, and together they renovate and reopen the resort catering to affluent Americans. The film follows the zany exploits of the proprietors, guests and various colorful island denizens, as they break in the new "Club Paradise".

Dr. Leo Marvin, an egotistical psychotherapist in New York City, is looking forward to his upcoming appearance on a "Good Morning America" telecast, during which he plans to brag about "Baby Steps," his new book about emotional disorder theories in which he details his philosophy of treating patients and their phobias. Meanwhile, Bob Wiley is a recluse who is so afraid to leave his own apartment that he has to talk himself out the door. When he is pawned off on Leo by a psychotherapist colleague, he becomes attached to him. Leo finds Bob extremely annoying. When Leo accompanies his wife, Faye, his daughter, Anna, and his son, Sigmund, to a peaceful New Hampshire lakeside cottage for a month-long vacation, he thinks he's been freed from Bob. Leo expects to mesmerize his family with his prowess as a brilliant husband and remarkable father who knows all there is to know about instructing Faye and raising Anna and Sigmund. But Bob isn't going to let him enjoy a quiet summer by the lake. By cleverly tricking the telephone operator at Leo's exchange, Bob discovers the whereabouts of him and his family. Despite his phobia about traveling alone, Bob somehow manages to talk himself onto a bus, and he arrives in New Hampshire. Leo's vacation comes to a screeching halt the moment he sees him. With his witty personality, his ability to manipulate people, and his good sense of humor, he quickly becomes an annoyance to Leo, but not to Faye, Anna, and Sigmund, because they think he is fun while Leo is dull. Fearing that he's losing his family to him, Leo frantically tries to find a way to make him go back to New York City, and it's not as easy as he had hoped. He finds himself stepping outside the law to try to get Bob to stay away from Faye, Anna, and Sigmund--he slowly goes berserk, and makes plans to kill Bob.

Having it all planned down to the last detail, the American, well-meaning paterfamilias, Clark Griswold, and his supportive wife, Ellen, take their two teenage children, Rusty and Audrey, on a cross-country trip from the suburbs of Chicago, all the way to sunny California's Walley World amusement park. However, anything that can go wrong will go wrong, and before long, Ellen's cousin, Catherine, and her husband, Eddie, enter the picture, and Clark is on the verge of blowing a gasket. Now, Roy Walley's wonderful park seems so far away, and even though the prospect of a clandestine meeting with the alluring blonde in a fast, 1981 Ferrari 308 GTSi sounds tempting, Clark must do the right thing, and find the promised land. How hard can it be to have the perfect vacation?

All that Neal Page wants to do is to get home for Thanksgiving. His flight has been cancelled due to bad weather, so he decides on other means of transport. As well as bad luck, Neal is blessed with the presence of Del Griffith, shower curtain ring salesman and all-around blabbermouth who is never short of advice, conversation, bad jokes, or company. And when he decides that he is going the same direction as Neal....

In desperate need of a fresh batch of police officers, the newly appointed Lady Mayoress of a crime-plagued metropolis lowers the bar for the recruitment process. As a result, all types of misfits start flocking into Commandant Eric Lassard's prestigious Police Academy, and the leader of this assortment of pariahs is Carey Mahoney: a light-hearted, devil-may-care young rebel. But now, there is no turning back, and to make matters worse, the autocratic martinet, Lieutenant Harris, can't wait to see them quit. Then, a full-scale riot breaks out, and the inexperienced but dauntless cadets will have to put their training to good use. Do they have what it takes to be law-enforcement officers?

Jack Chester, an overworked air traffic controller, takes his family on vacation to the beach. Things immediately start to go wrong for the Chesters, and steadily get worse. Jack ends up in a feud with a local yachtsman, and has to race him to regain his pride and family's respect.

When Andy and Elizabeth buy a farm in Vermont, they can't imagine the trouble that awaits them. Andy has quit his job as a sports journalist and is planning to use the peace and quiet of the country to write the Great American Novel. From the moment the movers' truck gets lost with their furniture, though, there's little peace and less quiet. From a manical mailman to a dead body buried in the garden, Andy is distracted by the town and its wacky inhabitants. His effort at a novel is mediocre, at best, and he's threatened by Elizabeth's foray into writing when she attempts a children's book. Can the Farmers survive the townsfolk and each other?

Brewster is a minor league baseball player. Unknown to him, he had a (recently deceased) rich relative. In order to test if Brewster knows the value of money, he is given the task of disposing of $30m in 30 days. Brewster isn't allowed to have any assets to show for the $30m or waste the money in any way. If successful, Brewster gets to inherit $300m. The biggest problem of all however, is that Brewster can't tell anyone what he's doing, so everyone thinks he's crazy. Add to this the fact that if he fails, two scheming trustees will get their hands on the money, Brewster's task is not an easy one.

Nostalgic about the good old days in the honeymoon cabin, the patriarch Chet and the Ripley family set off to the idyllic woods of Wisconsin for the summer vacation. However, their plans for a peaceful family bonding in the heart of the untamed nature will be thwarted, when the high-rolling brother-in-law Roman and the snotty Craig family decide to crash the party. Eventually, as the two families try to have a good time together, a seemingly endless series of misfortunes and mini-disasters with thirsty leeches, cunning racoons and a mythical wild bear, threaten to ruin the vacation. What will it take to salvage the weekend?

Walter Fielding and Anna Crowley must start looking for a new house--but they can't afford much. This changes when they meet a lonely con artist who sells the a beautiful mansion at a ridiculously-low price. The catch: the second they move into the house, it falls apart, starting with the stairway collapsing, to the bathtub falling through the floor, to the chimney eventually falling into the house. Finally, they must renovate the house before the frame collapses, but the renovations also prove disastrous.

Rudy goes to summer camp full of rowdy teenagers. The head counselor is Tripper Harrison, the prank pulling, girl seducing, fun lover, teasing both his boss and the counselors at the nearby rich kids camp. He and everyone else are sick and tired of always losing the Camp Olympics every year, and Tripper must encourage all campers to try their hardest, and even convince young Rudy that this may be his chance to feel better about himself.

Forty-nine year old Bobby Bowfinger is the owner/president of a Hollywood-based production company, Bowfinger International Pictures. The company has yet to produce a film, Bobby's personal net worth is virtually zero, and the company only has $2,184 to its name, $1 invested into it personally by Bobby every week since he first decided he wanted to make a movie when he was a child. Bobby believes his fortunes will change when his accountant Afrim changes hats and writes a science-fiction alien invasion screenplay that Bobby thinks all studios will clamor for and has Oscar written all over it. He has a small stable of followers who support his vision in being part of this movie, which eventually includes Daisy as the lead actress, she a stereotypical small town girl looking to make it big in Hollywood. Having just arrived in town, she does not know her way around the Hollywood system,... except on her proverbial back. Bobby is not averse to telling bald-faced lies in his singular focus in getting the picture made and distributed all on this $2,184 as a starting point. It is using several of those lies that he is able to get a verbal confirmation from big studio executive Jerry Renfro to distribute the movie *if* it stars Kit Ramsey, arguably the biggest action star in the world. Using similar lies, Bobby, however, is unable to convince Kit to star in the movie. Kit, who has a weakness for the Laker Girls, is a self-absorbed and paranoid movie star whose life and thus career is largely directed behind the scenes by Terry Stricter, the head of a new age religion called MindHead. Bobby comes up with a scheme that he believes will get around Kit not agreeing to star: film Kit without him knowing that he is being filmed. The only person who knows of the scheme is Dave, Bobby's lowest of low level inside man turned cinematographer who has unofficial (i.e. technically stolen and thus free) access to studio camera equipment and general knowledge of Kit's general day-to-day movements through the studio system. Bobby is able to convince all the other actors that Kit's acting process involves him not interacting with them outside of filming the specific scenes he has with them. Part of Bobby's scheme involves using Kit's general paranoia that aliens truly are invading the planet to get his gut reactions to what is happening within the context of the script. But Bobby knows he has to get Kit to scream the closing lines of the movie "gotcha suckas" for the movie to be a success. Complications ensue when another of the the actors, Carol, tries to go against Bobby's policy of not making contact with Kit outside of filming, and when Bobby is required to hire a production assistant cum stunt double cum acting double, whose job in part is to stand-in for the requisite Kit Ramsey naked ass shot. Through it all, Bobby will know if he has made it in Hollywood if he gets a specific sign specifically from the heavens in the form of FedEx.

Carl and James are two pleasant but unambitious garbage men. Carl has a telescope with which he observes his neighbors. One evening he sees a man giving a female neighbor a hard time. As she leaves he shoots the man with a pellet gun. Hiding, he and James miss two men strangling the man and leaving with the body. When he appears in a can on their route they are afraid and hide the body, fearing that they may be implicated in the death. Trying to crack the case, they spy on the woman, join up with a slightly to majorly crazed Vietnam vet, kidnap a pizza man and help to protect the ecology.

Set in the 1930s, an honest, goodhearted man is forced to turn to a life of crime to finance his neurotic mother's skyrocketing medical bills.

Young Danny is following his rich girlfriend's family to the Caribbean. But suddenly he simply must take a chemistry test and cannot go with them. After they have left, he gets a leave from his professor and takes a plane to find them. But he is not quite sure where they are, and meets smugglers, crazy captains and murderers.

When lovable nerds Gilbert and Lewis embark on their freshman year at Adams College, little do they realize the dangers that await them. They are beset by taunting from the jocks of Alpha Beta fraternity, which only worsens when the jocks accidentally burn down their house and toss the freshmen out of the freshmen dorm. To make matters more problematic, Lewis develops a crush on pretty Betty Childs, popular sorority sister and quarterback's girlfriend. Joined by the aptly named Booger and the violin-playing Poindexter, the nerds soon realize they must form their own fraternity in self-defense. Soon the tables are turned as the nerds employ high-tech warfare against the jocks.... but can they really succeed and make a difference?

It's Christmas time and the Griswolds are preparing for a family seasonal celebration, but things never run smoothly for Clark, his wife Ellen and their two kids. Clark's continual bad luck is worsened by his obnoxious family guests, but he manages to keep going knowing that his Christmas bonus is due soon.