FunTube: sixteen channels of comedy

Turn on, tune in, laugh

Comedy is the oldest trick in cinema and the hardest to explain. A pie in the face, a misunderstanding at a wedding, a man who lives the same day again and again, a satire of a dictator: all of them make people laugh, and each of them works in its own way. FunTube is a guide to the many kinds of laugh the cinema has invented. It gathers 192 comedies, from Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr., of 1924, to the comedies of 2024, and tunes them into sixteen channels, one for each kind of laugh.

The channels are grouped in four families. Classic laughs holds screwball, slapstick, farce and sketch, and spoof and parody. High concept holds the comedies built on one big idea: body swaps, time loops, mockumentaries and road trips. Comedy and… mixes comedy with horror, action, romance and the buddy film. Sharp laughs holds satire, dark comedy, teen comedy and the Christmas comedy.

Every channel is a small television screen on the wall at the top of the home page, and every card carries the name of its channel, so you always know what kind of laugh to expect. Every film has an English synopsis, its cast, its director and a Watch now button that opens it on JustWatch.

How the channels were tuned

Thirteen channels of FunTube come from the keywords that TMDB, the open film database, gives to comedies: screwball comedy, slapstick, farce and sketch comedy, spoof and parody, body swap, time loop, mockumentary, road movie, buddy comedy, satire, dark comedy, teen comedy and Christmas. The other three come from pairs of genres: comedy with horror, comedy with action and comedy with romance.

Each channel holds its twelve most voted films rated 6.0 or more, and each film sits on one channel only. The channels were filled from the rarest kind of laugh to the most common, so a film tagged both screwball and romantic sits on the screwball channel, and a film tagged both satire and dark comedy sits with the satires.

Keywords on TMDB are added by its users, so a few films sit on channels that may surprise you: the Indian college comedy 3 Idiots is tagged slapstick, Despicable Me and Ted are tagged satire, and Guy Ritchie's Snatch is tagged farce. FunTube keeps the tags as they are, so the channels show how audiences themselves describe their comedies.

The look of FunTube

The only pages the Wayback Machine holds at funtube.com are domain-for-sale pages, so the design of FunTube starts from scratch, from the name: a fun television tube, the kind of set a family would gather round on a Saturday night.

The page is a warm cream. The header is midnight blue, with a candy stripe of red, yellow, teal and violet along its lower edge, and the logo is a red television set with an antenna and a smiling face on its screen. The intro sits in a speech bubble with a thick outline, and headings are set in a rounded typeface.

The sixteen channels sit on a midnight-blue wall at the top of the home page, each one a rounded television screen with a coloured frame and a channel number from CH 1 to CH 16. The four families have four colours: red for classic laughs, yellow for high concept, teal for comedy and…, and violet for sharp laughs. Each row of posters sits on a white card with a thick border and a teal shadow.

1. Screwball

The first channel is screwball comedy, the fast-talking romantic comedy born in Hollywood in the 1930s, where a couple fights its way to love. Twelve films from 1934 to 2024, average rating 7.15. The oldest is Frank Capra's It Happened One Night, 1934, 7.8, in which a runaway heiress and a reporter share a long bus journey. Howard Hawks' Bringing Up Baby, 1938, with a leopard on the loose, and George Cukor's The Philadelphia Story, 1940, follow, both 7.5.

The best rated film of the channel is Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot, 1959, 8.1, in which two musicians hide from gangsters in a women's band. Stanley Donen's Charade, 1963, 7.7, mixes screwball with a thriller in Paris, and the Coen brothers' The Hudsucker Proxy, 1994, is a love letter to the old studio comedies.

The most voted films are modern: 50 First Dates, 2004, There's Something About Mary, 1998, and Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, 2004. Runaway Bride reunites Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. Two films of 2024 are the newest: Sean Baker's Anora, 7.1, and Richard Linklater's Hit Man, 6.8.

2. Slapstick

The second channel is slapstick, the comedy of the body: falls, chases and faces pulled at the camera. Twelve films from 1936 to 2012, average rating 6.96. The oldest and best rated is Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, 1936, 8.3, in which the tramp is swallowed by the gears of a factory, one of the best rated films of the guide.

Jim Carrey is the king of the channel, with three films: The Mask, 1994, 7.0, and both Ace Ventura films, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, 1994, and Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, 1995. Leslie Nielsen has two: The Naked Gun, 1988, 7.3, and The Naked Gun 2½, 1991. Rowan Atkinson's Johnny English, 2003, is a spy comedy of pratfalls.

Animation fills the rest of the channel: the three Madagascar films of 2005, 2008 and 2012, and Space Jam, 1996, with Michael Jordan and the Looney Tunes. The Indian college comedy 3 Idiots, 2009, rated 8.0, is tagged slapstick too, and at 171 minutes it is the longest film of the guide.

3. Farce and sketch

The third channel is farce and sketch comedy: doors slamming, mistaken identities and gags that come one after another. Twelve films from 1924 to 2014, average rating 7.15. The oldest film of the guide is here: Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr., 1924, rated 8.0, in which a cinema projectionist dreams himself into a detective film. At 45 minutes it is also the shortest film of the guide.

The best rated film of the channel is Billy Wilder's The Apartment, 1960, 8.2, about an office clerk who lends his flat to his bosses. Mel Brooks has two films: Young Frankenstein, 1974, 7.9, and Spaceballs, 1987, his parody of Star Wars. The Zucker brothers' Airplane!, 1980, 7.3, is the most famous gag comedy ever made.

Farce comes in all shapes here: the murder-mystery parody Murder by Death, 1976, John Waters' Serial Mom, 1994, Frank Oz's What About Bob?, 1991, and Spies Like Us, 1985. Guy Ritchie's Snatch, 2000, 7.8, the most voted film of the channel, is tagged farce, and so is the Christmas chase Jingle All the Way and the Spanish comedy Spanish Affair, 2014.

4. Spoof and parody

The fourth channel is spoof and parody, comedy that makes fun of other films. Twelve films from 1975 to 2018, average rating 6.86. The most voted is DreamWorks' Shrek, 2001, 7.8, a parody of fairy tales and of Disney itself. Monty Python has two films on the channel, both by Terry Jones and both rated 7.8: Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 1975, the oldest film of the channel, and Life of Brian, 1979.

Mike Myers' Austin Powers has three films, all by Jay Roach: Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, 1997, The Spy Who Shagged Me, 1999, and Goldmember, 2002, the lowest rated film of the channel, 6.0. Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder, 2008, makes fun of war films and of Hollywood itself.

The rest of the channel is Scary Movie, 2000, a spoof of horror films, Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator, 2012, Tim Burton's Mars Attacks!, 1996, a parody of 1950s science fiction, and the Coen brothers' Western anthology The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, 2018, 7.1. Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, 2005, is a clay-animation parody of old horror films.

5. Body swap

The fifth channel opens the family of high concept with the body swap, the comedy in which two people wake up in each other's skin, or a child wakes up in an adult's. Twelve films from 1984 to 2024, average rating 6.55. The most voted is Jumanji: The Next Level, 2019, in which the players swap avatars inside a video game, followed by Freaky Friday, 2003, with Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as mother and daughter.

The best rated film of the channel is Penny Marshall's Big, 1988, 7.2, with Tom Hanks as a boy who wakes up as a grown man. The oldest is Carl Reiner's All of Me, 1984, in which Steve Martin shares his body with the soul of a dead heiress.

The rest of the channel shows how many ways the idea can turn: The Change-Up, 2011, swaps two friends, The Hot Chick a teenager and a thief, Freaky, 2020, a schoolgirl and a serial killer, and Family Switch, 2023, a whole family. Two films come from other countries: If I Were You, 2006, from Brazil, and Husband & Wife, 2017, from Italy. It's a Boy Girl Thing and the party thriller It's What's Inside, 2024, the newest film of the channel, complete it.

6. Time loop

The sixth channel is the time loop, the comedy in which the same day comes back again and again. Twelve films from 1993 to 2023, average rating 6.83. The most voted and best known is Harold Ramis' Groundhog Day, 1993, 7.6, the oldest film of the channel, in which Bill Murray relives one winter day in a small town until he gets it right.

Christopher Landon has two films on the channel: Happy Death Day, 2017, a horror comedy in which a student relives the day of her own murder, and its sequel Happy Death Day 2U, 2019. Max Barbakow's Palm Springs, 2020, 7.3, traps two wedding guests in the desert, and When We First Met and Long Story Short loop through love stories.

Japan has three of the most inventive films here, all small and all clever: Junta Yamaguchi's Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, 2020, 7.3, about a café whose television shows the future two minutes ahead, and his River, 2023, the newest film of the channel, set in a two-minute loop at a riverside inn, and Ryo Takebayashi's Mondays, 2022, about an office stuck in the same week. The French La Colle, Disney's Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas and Happy Accidents complete the channel.

7. Mockumentary

The seventh channel is the mockumentary, the fake documentary that films nonsense with a straight face. Twelve films from 1964 to 2022, average rating 7.05. The most voted is Project X, 2012, a party filmed as found footage, followed by Sacha Baron Cohen's two Borat films of 2006 and 2020, in which a fake Kazakh reporter travels across America.

The best rated film of the channel is Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, 2022, 7.6, the story of a tiny talking shell filmed as a documentary. Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement's What We Do in the Shadows, 2014, 7.5, films vampires sharing a flat in Wellington. Rob Reiner's This Is Spinal Tap, 1984, 7.4, and Woody Allen's Zelig, 1983, 7.4, are two classics of the form.

The oldest film of the channel is Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night, 1964, which follows the Beatles through a day of fans and concerts. The Belgian Man Bites Dog, 1992, is a dark mockumentary about a killer, Christopher Guest's Best in Show, 2000, follows a dog show, and the animated Surf's Up and Death to 2020 complete the channel.

8. Road trip

The eighth channel is the road trip, comedy on four wheels. Twelve films from 1962 to 2018, average rating 7.17, with three films rated 8.0 or more. Two share the best rating, 8.2: Peter Farrelly's Green Book, 2018, about a pianist and his driver across the American South, and Dino Risi's Il Sorpasso, 1962, the oldest film of the channel, an Italian classic of a summer drive along the coast.

Italy has two more films here: Three Men and a Leg, 1997, 8.0, a comedy trio's trip across the country with a wooden leg, and That's Life, 1998, by the same trio. Little Miss Sunshine, 2006, 7.7, sends a family in a yellow van to a beauty pageant, and Ice Age, 2002, the most voted film of the channel, sends three animals across the frozen world with a human baby.

The rest of the channel is a long road: Mr. Bean's Holiday across France, Tim Burton's Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Smokey and the Bandit with Burt Reynolds, Bird on a Wire, the French Full Speed and the strange Wristcutters: A Love Story.

9. Horror comedy

The ninth channel opens the family of comedy and… with horror comedy, where the screams and the laughs come together. Twelve films from 1990 to 2022, average rating 6.77. The most voted is Ruben Fleischer's Zombieland, 2009, 7.3, and its sequel Zombieland: Double Tap, 2019. The best rated is Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead, 2004, 7.5, in which a London shop worker deals with the zombie apocalypse from his favourite pub.

Drew Goddard's The Cabin in the Woods, 2012, takes apart every rule of the horror film, and Mark Mylod's The Menu, 2022, the newest film of the channel, serves a deadly dinner at an island restaurant. Warm Bodies, 2013, is a zombie romance, and Jennifer's Body, 2009, a teenage horror satire.

The oldest film of the channel is Tremors, 1990, 7.0, in which giant worms attack a desert town. For younger viewers there are three gentler scares: the animated Monster House, 2006, Tim Burton's stop-motion Frankenweenie, 2012, about a boy who brings his dog back to life, and Goosebumps, 2015. McG's The Babysitter, 2017, completes the channel.

10. Action comedy

The tenth channel is action comedy, where every explosion comes with a joke. Twelve films from 1997 to 2020, average rating 7.20, with the most votes of any channel, 195,955 in all. The most voted is Tim Miller's Deadpool, 2016, 33,529 votes, the most voted film of the guide, followed by Taika Waititi's Thor: Ragnarok, 2017, and Deadpool 2, 2018, all rated about 7.5.

The best rated film of the channel is Disney's animated Big Hero 6, 2014, 7.7. Matthew Vaughn has two films: Kingsman: The Secret Service, 2015, 7.6, and Kingsman: The Golden Circle, 2017. Barry Sonnenfeld has all three Men in Black films, from 1997, the oldest film of the channel, to 2012.

The rest of the channel is Kung Fu Panda, 2008, 7.3, Doug Liman's Mr. & Mrs. Smith, 2005, with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie as married assassins, and Sonic the Hedgehog, 2020, the newest film here.

11. Romantic comedy

The eleventh channel is romantic comedy, the oldest marriage in cinema. Twelve films from 1990 to 2018, average rating 7.45, the second best of the sixteen channels. The most voted and best rated is Robert Zemeckis' Forrest Gump, 1994, 8.5, one of the three best rated films of the guide, the life of a simple man who keeps finding his way back to the girl he loves.

Damien Chazelle's La La Land, 2016, 7.9, sings and dances its love story in Los Angeles, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amélie, 2001, 7.9, the only French film of the channel, sets it in Montmartre. Pretty Woman, 1990, with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere, is the oldest film of the channel. David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook, 2012, pairs two damaged people and a dance contest.

Love goes in many directions here: (500) Days of Summer counts down the days of a romance, Crazy, Stupid, Love. mixes three love stories, Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs. the World makes a hero fight seven evil exes, and To All the Boys I've Loved Before, 2018, the newest film here, starts with a box of secret letters. Shrek 2, Friends with Benefits and Focus complete the channel.

12. Buddy comedy

The twelfth channel is the buddy comedy, two mismatched partners who learn to work together. Twelve films from 1984 to 2024, average rating 6.85. The most voted are the two Jump Street films by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, 21 Jump Street, 2012, and 22 Jump Street, 2014, with Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum as police officers back at school.

The best rated film of the channel is Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz, 2007, 7.6, in which a London police officer is sent to a sleepy village. The oldest is Martin Brest's Beverly Hills Cop, 1984, 7.2, with Eddie Murphy, and the newest Bad Boys: Ride or Die, 2024, 7.3, with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence.

The rest of the channel pairs the most unlikely people: Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham in Hobbs & Shaw, Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson in The Hitman's Bodyguard, Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg in The Other Guys, Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy in The Heat, and Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson in Shanghai Noon. Grown Ups gathers five old friends, and Swiss Army Man pairs a stranded man with a corpse.

13. Satire

The thirteenth channel opens the family of sharp laughs with satire, comedy with a target. Twelve films from 1940 to 2023, average rating 7.26, three rated 8.0 or more. The oldest and best rated is Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator, 1940, 8.3, in which Chaplin plays both a Jewish barber and a dictator modelled on Hitler. Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove, 1964, 8.1, laughs at the bomb, and Taika Waititi's Jojo Rabbit, 2019, 8.0, at a boy whose imaginary friend is Hitler.

Terry Gilliam's Brazil, 1985, 7.7, satirises a world of paperwork, Mike Judge's Office Space, 1999, 7.4, the cubicle, and Ruben Östlund's Triangle of Sadness, 2022, the very rich on a luxury cruise. Kevin Smith's Dogma, 1999, takes on religion, and Rian Johnson's Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, 2022, a tech billionaire.

A few films are tagged satire in a broader sense: Greta Gerwig's Barbie, 2023, the newest film of the channel, the animated Despicable Me, 2010, the most voted, Seth MacFarlane's Ted, 2012, and This Is the End, 2013, in which a group of actors face the end of the world.

14. Dark comedy

The fourteenth channel is dark comedy, laughter at crime, death and despair. Twelve films from 1994 to 2020, with the best average rating of the sixteen channels, 7.54, and four films rated 8.0 or more. Two share the best rating, 8.5: Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, 1994, the oldest film of the channel, and Bong Joon Ho's Parasite, 2019, in which a poor family slips into the house of a rich one.

Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful, 1997, 8.4, finds comedy in the darkest place of all, a concentration camp, and Peter Weir's The Truman Show, 1998, 8.2, follows a man whose whole life is a television show. Alejandro G. Iñárritu's Birdman, 2014, follows an actor on the edge of a breakdown.

Crime runs through the rest of the channel: Guy Ritchie's The Gentlemen, 2020, the newest film here, 7.7, Martin McDonagh's In Bruges, 2008, 7.5, about two hitmen hiding in Belgium, the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading, 2008, Game Night, 2018, and Paul Feig's A Simple Favor, 2018. Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory complete it.

15. Teen comedy

The fifteenth channel is the teen comedy, high school with the volume turned up. Twelve films from 1982 to 2018, average rating 6.90. The most voted is Mark Waters' Mean Girls, 2004, 7.2, and the best rated is John Hughes' The Breakfast Club, 1985, 7.7, in which five students spend a Saturday in detention.

The oldest film of the channel is Amy Heckerling's Fast Times at Ridgemont High, 1982, and Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused, 1993, 7.3, follows the last day of school in 1976. Two films turn Shakespeare into a teen comedy: 10 Things I Hate About You, 1999, 7.6, from The Taming of the Shrew, and She's the Man, 2006, from Twelfth Night. Will Gluck's Easy A, 2010, plays with The Scarlet Letter.

The rest of the channel is American Pie, 1999, The DUFF, 2015, What a Girl Wants, 2003, and two films of 2018, the newest of the channel: Blockers, in which three parents try to stop their daughters' prom-night plans, and Alex Strangelove, about a high-school senior working out who he loves.

16. Christmas comedy

The last channel is the Christmas comedy, the laughs of December. Twelve films from 1983 to 2024, average rating 7.09. The most voted is Chris Columbus' Home Alone, 1990, 7.5, in which a boy left behind by his family defends the house against two burglars, and its sequel Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, 1992, follows.

The best rated film of the channel is the animated Klaus, 2019, 8.2, a tale of how a lazy postman and a lonely toymaker started the legend of Santa Claus. The Grinch appears twice: Ron Howard's How the Grinch Stole Christmas, 2000, with Jim Carrey, and the animated The Grinch, 2018. Jon Favreau's Elf, 2003, sends Will Ferrell from the North Pole to New York.

Love comes with the snow in Richard Curtis' Love Actually, 2003, Nancy Meyers' The Holiday, 2006, and Nora Ephron's You've Got Mail, 1998. The oldest film of the channel is John Landis' Trading Places, 1983, with Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy, and Joe Dante's Gremlins, 1984, mixes Christmas with monsters. Red One, 2024, the newest, completes the channel.

Before 1970

The collection Before 1970 gathers the twelve oldest comedies of FunTube, oldest first, with an average rating of 7.92, the best of all the lists of the guide. It is a short history of film comedy in twelve titles. It opens with Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. of 1924 and Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times of 1936, the two great silent clowns, and goes on with the screwball comedies of the 1930s: It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby and The Philadelphia Story.

Chaplin returns with The Great Dictator, 1940, his first true talking film, and Billy Wilder has two films: Some Like It Hot, 1959, and The Apartment, 1960, both rated above 8.0. The 1960s bring Dino Risi's Il Sorpasso, Stanley Donen's Charade, Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and Richard Lester's A Hard Day's Night with the Beatles.

Eight of the twelve films are rated 7.8 or more. If you want to see where every kind of laugh on FunTube began, this list is the place to start.

Animated comedy

The collection Animated comedy gathers the eighteen animated films of the guide, most voted first, with an average rating of 7.17. They are spread across the channels: Shrek sits with the spoofs, Shrek 2 with the romantic comedies, the three Madagascar films and Space Jam with the slapstick, and Ice Age with the road trips.

Disney's Big Hero 6 and DreamWorks' Kung Fu Panda sit with the action comedies, Despicable Me with the satires, and Monster House and Tim Burton's Frankenweenie with the horror comedies. Christmas has two animated films, Klaus, rated 8.2, the best rated animated film of the guide, and The Grinch of 2018, and the time-loop channel has Disney's Mickey's Once Upon a Christmas.

Clay and puppet animation is here too: Aardman's Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, a parody of horror films, and Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, a stop-motion mockumentary. Sony's Surf's Up, a mockumentary about surfing penguins, completes the list.

The figures

FunTube holds 192 comedies, from Sherlock Jr. of 1924 to the films of 2024, with an average rating of 7.05 and 1,247,268 votes on TMDB in all. 176 are in English. By decade there is one film from the 1920s, three from the 1930s, two from the 1940s, one from the 1950s, five from the 1960s, five from the 1970s, fifteen from the 1980s, 36 from the 1990s, 46 from the 2000s, 57 from the 2010s and 21 from the 2020s.

The most voted comedies are Deadpool, 33,529 votes, Pulp Fiction, 31,179, Forrest Gump, 30,742, Thor: Ragnarok, Parasite and The Truman Show. The best rated are Forrest Gump, Parasite and Pulp Fiction, all at 8.5, Life Is Beautiful, 8.4, Modern Times and The Great Dictator, 8.3, and The Apartment, The Truman Show, Il Sorpasso and Klaus, 8.2.

Comedies are short: the average film runs 104 minutes, and the whole guide runs 19,879 minutes, about two weeks. The shortest is Sherlock Jr., 45 minutes; the longest are 3 Idiots, 171 minutes, Pulp Fiction, 154, and Triangle of Sadness, 147.

The faces of comedy

Jim Carrey and Emma Stone lead more comedies of the guide than anyone else, six each. Carrey's are spread across four channels: The Mask and both Ace Ventura films on slapstick, The Truman Show on dark comedy, How the Grinch Stole Christmas on Christmas and Sonic the Hedgehog on action comedy. Emma Stone's are on four channels too: La La Land and Crazy, Stupid, Love. on romantic comedy, both Zombieland films on horror comedy, Easy A on teen comedy and Birdman on dark comedy.

Mike Myers, Will Smith, Jack Black and Ben Stiller lead five each. Myers is the voice of Shrek in two films and Austin Powers in three. Smith leads the three Men in Black films, Focus and Bad Boys: Ride or Die. Jack Black is the voice of Kung Fu Panda and the star of Tropic Thunder, Goosebumps, The Holiday and Jumanji: The Next Level. Stiller is the voice of the lion in the three Madagascar films, and stars in Tropic Thunder and There's Something About Mary.

Behind the camera, Tim Burton has four films on four channels, and Edgar Wright, Barry Sonnenfeld, Christopher Landon and Jay Roach three each. Billy Wilder and Charlie Chaplin have two each, all four of them among the best rated films of the guide.

Comedy around the world

Sixteen comedies of FunTube are in languages other than English, and several of them are among the best rated films of the guide. Italy has five: Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful, 8.4, Dino Risi's Il Sorpasso, 8.2, the two comedies of the trio Aldo, Giovanni and Giacomo, Three Men and a Leg, 8.0, and That's Life, and Simone Godano's Husband & Wife.

France and Belgium have four: Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amélie, 7.9, the time-loop comedy La Colle, the road comedy Full Speed and the Belgian mockumentary Man Bites Dog. Japan has three time-loop films: Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, River and Mondays. Korea has Bong Joon Ho's Parasite, 8.5, India Rajkumar Hirani's 3 Idiots, 8.0, Spain Spanish Affair and Brazil If I Were You.

These films sit on the same channels as the Hollywood comedies, so a single channel can take you from Groundhog Day to a Japanese café, or from Little Miss Sunshine to an Italian summer road. Search for a country's comedies by their titles, or browse the channels and look for the films with titles from other languages.

Double bills

The channels of FunTube make it easy to plan a double bill. Pair Groundhog Day with Palm Springs, two time loops made 27 years apart. Pair Some Like It Hot with Tootsie, two comedies of men dressed as women, from 1959 and 1982. Pair The Great Dictator with Jojo Rabbit, two satires of Hitler made almost eighty years apart.

Pair Shaun of the Dead with Hot Fuzz, Edgar Wright's two comedies with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. Pair Airplane! with The Naked Gun, the gag comedies of the Zucker brothers and Leslie Nielsen. Pair This Is Spinal Tap with What We Do in the Shadows, a rock band and a household of vampires, both filmed as fake documentaries.

For Christmas, pair Home Alone with Elf; for a teen night, pair The Breakfast Club with Mean Girls; and for a dark night, pair Pulp Fiction with In Bruges. For the oldest laughs of all, pair Sherlock Jr. with Modern Times and watch Keaton and Chaplin, the two great clowns of the silent screen, side by side.

A channel for every evening

The channels also work as a remote control for your mood. For a cosy evening, switch to romantic comedy or Christmas comedy. For a big, loud evening with friends, switch to action comedy or buddy comedy, where Deadpool, Kingsman, Hot Fuzz and the Jump Street films sit. For a family evening, switch to slapstick or to the animated comedies, with Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda and Klaus.

For a clever evening, switch to the high-concept channels: body swaps, time loops and mockumentaries, comedies that play with one idea until it pays off. For an evening with an edge, switch to satire or dark comedy, where Dr. Strangelove, Brazil, Parasite and The Truman Show make you laugh and think at the same time.

For a nostalgic evening, switch to screwball or to the Before 1970 list, where It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby and Charade still sparkle. And if you only want the best, open Rated 7.5 or more, where 48 of the guide's comedies wait, the dark comedies, road trips, screwball comedies, romantic comedies and action comedies first among them.

How to use the television wall

The television wall at the top of the home page is the heart of FunTube. It holds sixteen rounded screens in four rows, one row for each family, with red frames for classic laughs, yellow for high concept, teal for comedy and… and violet for sharp laughs. Each screen shows its family in small red capitals, the name of the channel, the number of films it holds and a channel number from CH 1 to CH 16.

Press a screen to watch the whole channel. The channel page lists its twelve comedies from the most voted to the least voted, and every card shows the name of the channel, the year, the rating on TMDB and the running time. Press a poster to open the film page, with its synopsis, cast, director and the Watch now button.

The menu at the top leads to the four families, each a list of 48 comedies. The footer leads to Before 1970, Animated comedy, Rated 7.5 or more, the A to Z list of all 192 films and the About page. On a phone the wall folds into one or two columns of screens, and the menu opens from the red button in the corner.

The guide pages

FunTube has sixteen help pages. Start with Start with FunTube, which suggests one comedy from each family, and read The channel guide for the idea behind the guide. How the channels work explains how the films were chosen, and The look of FunTube describes the design.

One page covers each family: Classic laughs, High concept, Comedy and… and Sharp laughs. Shorter pages cover Chaplin and Keaton, time loops, Christmas comedies and the directors.

For the counts and records of all 192 comedies, open The figures. If a title is on the tip of your tongue, Search tips shows the quickest ways to find it; My list explains how to save a comedy for another night, and The Watch now button shows how to reach the legal services that offer it.

The Watch now button and My list

Every film page of FunTube has a Watch now button. It opens the film on JustWatch for the country you choose, where you can see which services offer it to stream, to rent or to buy. FunTube is a guide: it points you to the places where each comedy is available legally.

A film page also shows the English synopsis, the year, the country, the genres, the running time, the TMDB rating and the number of votes, the director and the leading cast. It shows the channel the film belongs to, so you can go back and find the comedies of the same kind.

The My list button keeps a film for later. The list lives in your browser, on your device. It is a good way to plan a season of laughs: one comedy from each channel, sixteen evenings and sixteen kinds of laugh.

Search and the A to Z list

The search box sits in the header on every page. Type the start of a title, such as Groundhog Day, Elf or Airplane, and the results appear as you type. Capital letters and accents make little difference: amelie finds Amélie.

Search also knows the directors and the leading cast of every film. Type Wilder for the two films of Billy Wilder, Carrey for the six comedies of Jim Carrey, or Pegg for the films with Simon Pegg.

To see the whole guide at once, open the A to Z list from the footer. It lists all 192 comedies in alphabetical order, and it is the quickest way to check whether a comedy you have in mind is on one of the channels.

Questions and answers

A century of laughs

The channels of FunTube can also be read as a history of comedy. The silent years belong to the clowns: Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. and Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, comedies told with the body. The 1930s and 1940s bring the talkies and the fast-talking screwball couples of It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby and The Philadelphia Story, and Chaplin's first real talking film, The Great Dictator.

The 1950s and 1960s belong to Billy Wilder, Stanley Donen and Stanley Kubrick, with Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Charade and Dr. Strangelove. The 1970s bring Mel Brooks and Monty Python, with Young Frankenstein, the Holy Grail and Life of Brian. The 1980s are the decade of the gag comedy and the teen comedy: Airplane!, The Naked Gun, The Breakfast Club, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Beverly Hills Cop.

The 1990s belong to Jim Carrey, the Farrelly brothers and Austin Powers, and to Groundhog Day, the most famous time loop of all. The 2000s and 2010s bring Edgar Wright, Pixar-era animation, Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat and the superhero comedies of Deadpool and Thor: Ragnarok, and the 2020s so far bring Palm Springs, The Menu, Triangle of Sadness and Anora.

The makers of laughter

Some of the greatest names of film comedy return on several channels. Mel Brooks directed Young Frankenstein, his parody of the old horror films, and Spaceballs, his parody of Star Wars, both on farce and sketch. Terry Jones directed both Monty Python films on the spoof channel. Billy Wilder directed Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, two of the best rated comedies of the guide.

Edgar Wright has three films on three channels: Shaun of the Dead on horror comedy, Hot Fuzz on buddy comedy and Scott Pilgrim vs. the World on romantic comedy. Christopher Landon has three, all with a twist of horror: Happy Death Day and its sequel on the time-loop channel and Freaky on body swap. Jay Roach directed the three Austin Powers films, and Barry Sonnenfeld the three Men in Black films.

The Coen brothers appear three times: Joel Coen's The Hudsucker Proxy on screwball and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs on spoof and parody, and Burn After Reading, credited to Ethan Coen, on dark comedy. Taika Waititi has two films, Thor: Ragnarok and Jojo Rabbit, and co-directed a third, What We Do in the Shadows.

Comedies for the whole family

Many of the 192 comedies of FunTube are made for every age. The animated comedies are the easiest choice: Shrek, Ice Age, Kung Fu Panda, Big Hero 6, the Madagascar films, Despicable Me and Klaus. Live-action family comedies sit on several channels: Home Alone and Elf on Christmas, Freaky Friday and Big on body swap, Jumanji: The Next Level and Sonic the Hedgehog on body swap and action comedy.

For older children there are the Men in Black films, Little Miss Sunshine on the road-trip channel, Goosebumps and Monster House for a gentle fright, and the classic silent comedies of Keaton and Chaplin, whose jokes work through gesture alone.

For a teenage audience, the teen-comedy channel offers Mean Girls, 10 Things I Hate About You, The Breakfast Club and Easy A. Some comedies of the guide are made for adults only, so check the details on each film page before you press Watch now with younger viewers in the room.

Why sort comedy by kind of laugh

Most film guides sort comedy by year, by star or by rating. FunTube sorts it by the kind of laugh, because that is the first thing most people know about the evening they want. Someone who wants a screwball comedy wants quick talk and a couple who argue their way to love; someone who wants slapstick wants falls and chases; someone who wants satire wants a target. The sixteen channels put those wishes first.

The channels also show how comedy keeps borrowing from other genres. The horror comedy borrows the monsters of the horror film, the action comedy borrows its explosions from the blockbuster, and the romantic comedy borrows its heart from the love story. Even the mockumentary borrows the look of the documentary, and the time loop the rules of science fiction.

Seen side by side, the channels make a map of a century of comedy, from Sherlock Jr. to Anora. Pick a channel you already love, then try its neighbour: the laughs of the next screen may surprise you.

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