The Tuesday Diversion: Funniest Scene in a Movie

I'm sitting here in southwest Colorado. Mrs. Centerfielder and the little Centerfielders are skiing in a slight drizzle which is supposed to turn to snow soon. The sun is somewhere up in the haze, I'm trying to think of something funny, and I need help.

How about the campfire scene from Blazing Saddles? My wife can't stand it but it gets me every time (ever seen the edited for TV version where the fart sounds are replaced with burps?). Or Monty Python's "The Argument" bit? Anyone recognize the "It's great you make the little model trains so they know how to build the big ones" quote? Or "More intensity!"

So, how about it, what's the funniest scene (and/or movie) you can think of.

•  tip jar

  you can tell, if the bean scene is all i can think of, then i need help...

  by The Centerfielder on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 12:49:05 PM PDT

•  ...and a hard-boiled egg

  Three words: Marx Brothers, stateroom.

  A Night at the Opera

  HONK Make that two hard boiled-eggs.

  by DFWDem on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 12:57:37 PM PDT

  •  "There is no sanity clause"

    I personally prefer the contract scene in "A Night at the Opera".

    by Muwarr90 on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:02:53 PM PDT

  •  Marx Bros.

    I'll take the bridge game in Animal Crackers.

    "Another ace?"

    "That's alright.  He's got thousands of 'em."

    by lennywick on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:49:47 PM PDT

•  National Lampoon Christmas Vacation

  When the aunt comes to the Griswalds' for dinner with her cat wrapped as a present, they let the cat out and it proceeds to crawl under a chair and chew on the electical cord for the christmas tree and turns into a kitty flambe? (sorry to pootie lovers)

  Or, the scene after the dog drinks all the tree water and uncle Bernie (?) goes in to light  up his stoogie and they have christmas tree flambe?

  Or, the scene where the family hears noises in the tree and suddenly a squirrel comes flying out and terroizes the whole family.

  God I love to watch that movie!

  by dansk47 on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 12:58:56 PM PDT

•  Oh, and thanks

  for the lunch time diversion, a 4 to you, I really needed that!

  by dansk47 on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:00:32 PM PDT

•  I'm not sure it's the funniest,

  but off the top of my head, the funniest visual gag I can think of is the car-on-dumpster violence mid-way through Big Lebowski, when the Dude tries to put out the roach in his lap with a beer.

   

  by aurthordenu on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:00:41 PM PDT

  •  I personally prefer....

    .....the scene where Walter is going apeshit and screaming "THIS IS WHAT YOU GET WHEN YOU FUCK A STRANGER IN THE ASS!"

    by metal prophet on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 02:11:16 PM PDT

•  "the Sands has heart!"

  Albert Brooks trying to get his "nest egg" back from the casino in "Lost in America"

  by Muwarr90 on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:01:18 PM PDT

  •  "you lost the egg!!"

    priceless

    by Pondite on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:11:18 PM PDT

    •  $80,000!

      "Why didn't you say so? Let me just check the $80,000 box for you."

      hink

      by MrHinkyDink on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:14:39 PM PDT

•  I can't help loving the golf dancing

  scene in Caddyshack where Rodney Dangerfield and his crew start dancing to Journey.

  Or just about any scene with Judge Smails.

  Or where they take bets as to whether Spaulding will pick his nose.

  Hell, can I nominate the whole movie?

  by YukonJack on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:01:29 PM PDT

•  The "Last Supper" Scene in M*A*S*H

  by The Baculum King on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:02:14 PM PDT

•  Oh, and another one:

  The rabid-bunny creature thing scene in Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail?

  I love watching that little stuffed bunny go flying through the air to attack.  

  Great stuff.

  by YukonJack on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:03:33 PM PDT

  •  Any scene with

    the knigts of neigh, but I especially like the plague scene where they are collecting the dead, and almost dead, and one guy say "he  must be a king" when the second ask how he knows, he says " he ain't got shit all over him." Don't know why, but it makes me laugh each time.

    by dansk47 on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:10:30 PM PDT

•  When Joe Pesci ...

   ... walks into Fred Gwynn's court dressed in a circus Ringmaster's outfit in My Cousin Vinny.

  The exploding fat man in Monty Python's Meaning of Life.

   

  by Needles on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:05:49 PM PDT

•  Chaplin, "Modern Times"

  The scene in the restaurant where Chaplin is going to sing a song and has written a cheat sheet for the lyrics on his (detachable) shirt cuffs. When he makes his opening gesture and the cuffs fly across the room, he has to improvise in a gibberish foreign language. It's the first time audiences heard the actual voice of the "little tramp" character, and also the movie scene I remember making me laugh harder than any other. (Though parts of "Blazing Saddles", "Holy Grail", and "Spinal Tap" have come close.)

  by DavidSewell on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:07:06 PM PDT

•  Monty Python, from The Meaning of Liff

  EVERY SPERM IS SACRED
  (Michael Palin & Terry Jones)
  from Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life"
  There are Jews in the world,
  There are Buddhists,
  There are Hindus and Mormons and then,
  There are those that follow Mohammed,
  But I've never been one of them...

  I'm a Roman Catholic,
  And have been since before I was born,
  And the one thing they say about Catholics,
  Is they'll take you as soon as you're warm...

  You don't have to be a six-footer,
  You don't have to have a great brain,
  You don't have to have any clothes on -
  You're a Catholic the minute Dad came...

  Because...

  Every sperm is sacred,
  Every sperm is great,
  If a sperm is wasted,
  God gets quite irate.

  Children: Every sperm is sacred,
  Every sperm is great,
  If a sperm is wasted,
  God gets quite irate.

  Child: [solo] Let the heathen spill theirs,
  On the dusty ground,
  God shall make them pay for,
  Each sperm that can't be found.

  Children: Every sperm is wanted,
  Every sperm is good,
  Every sperm is needed,
  In your neighbourhood.

  Mum: [solo] Hindu, Taoist, Mormon,
  Spill theirs just anywhere,
  But God loves those who treat their
  Semen with more care.

  Men neighbours: [peering out of toilets]
  Every sperm is sacred,
  Every sperm is great,

  Women neighbours: [on wall]
  If a sperm is wasted,

  Children: God get quite irate.

  Priest: [in church] Every sperm is sacred,

  Bride and Groom: Every sperm is good.

  Nannies: Every sperm is needed.

  Cardinals: [in prams] In your neighbourhood!

  Children: Every sperm is useful,
  Every sperm is fine,

  Funeral Cortege: God needs everybody's,

  First Mourner: Mine!

  Lady Mourner: And mine!

  Corpse: And mine!

  Nun: [solo] Though the pagans spill theirs,
  O'er mountain, hill and plain,

  Various artifacts in a Roman Catholic Souvenir Shop:God shall strike them down for
  Each sperm that's spilt in vain.

  Everybody: Every sperm is sacred,
  Every sperm is good,
  Every sperm is needed,
  In your neighbourhood.

  Even more than everybody, including two fire-eaters, a juggler, a clown at a piano and a stilt-walker riding a bicycle:
  Every sperm is sacred,
  Every sperm is great,
  If a sperm is wasted,
  God gets quite irate.

  [Everybody cheers (including the fire-eaters, the juggler, the clown at the piano and the stilt-walker riding the bicycle). Fireworks go off, a Chinese dragon is brought on and flags of all nations are unfurled overhead.]

  by JoeWPgh on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:11:21 PM PDT

•  Jennifer Coolidge in "A Mighty Wind"

  That scene you cite. Her accent made it that much funnier.

  by jamfan on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:12:01 PM PDT

•  Gotta be Python

  -The Last Supper sketch in "Live at the Hollywood Bowl." ("I want a Last Supper with 12 disciples and one Christ!" "One????!!!")

  if that doesn't count, then

  -the leftist peasant in the Holy Grail. "If I went `round saying I was an emperor, just because some moistened bimp had lugged a scimitar at me, they'd put me away!"

  Honorable mention to the second greatest comedy of all time, The Muppet Movie. "I seem to have lost my way." "Have you tried Krishna?"

  by arquebus on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:12:30 PM PDT

•  lots of scenes in "Blues Brothers"

  but funniest single visual gag is Jake and Elwood pull up in front of Daley center to pay the back taxes, and as they look over shoulder at Bluesmobile, it self-destructs.  Wet my pants in 1981.

  by Pondite on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:12:44 PM PDT

•  The Money Pit

  I love the scene where the electrical in the kitchen starts to go, and you can follow the burning across the walls, popping tiles off, and then eventually it blows the turkey out of the oven and into the trash.

  Probably because I have done too much damn work on an old house....but every time this movie is on TV I get totally sucked in.

  Runner up:
  Fried Green Tomatoes, when Kathy Bates drives her old clunker car into the hot little convertible that stole her spot.  And she says to the bimbos who got out of the car: "Face it girls, I'm older and I have more insurance...."  

  by mem from somerville on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:14:33 PM PDT

•  longest sustained laughs?

  1. Monty Python's Life of Brian, Biggus Dickus scene, with the Roman solder trying not to lose it as a lisping Pontius Polite circles him repeating his friend's name. Michael Palin is priceless in that scene.

  2. Something About Mary, "penis caught in the zipper" scene....yeah, I can joke about it now, but once, hell, many times, it was no laughing matter.

  by kuvasz on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:20:14 PM PDT

•  Jumpin' on the Python bandwagon...

  This scene in Life of Brian:

  STAN:
  I want to be a woman. From now on, I want you all to call me 'Loretta'.
  REG:
  What?!
  LORETTA:
  It's my right as a man.  
  JUDITH:
  Well, why do you want to be Loretta, Stan?
  LORETTA:
  I want to have babies.
  REG:
  You want to have babies?!
  LORETTA:
  It's every man's right to have babies if he wants them.
  REG:
  But... you can't have babies.
  LORETTA:
  Don't you oppress me.
  REG:
  I'm not oppressing you, Stan. You haven't got a womb! Where's the foetus going to gestate?! You going to keep it in a box?!
  

  by vansterdam on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:23:47 PM PDT

•  Young Frankenstein

  The scene where Gene Hackman, as a blind hermit, serves a dinner to Peter Boyle as the monster. At the point where Hackman sets Boyle's thumb on fire, I still lose it every time.

  by jmart on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:27:59 PM PDT

  •  Speaking of Young Frankenstein

    Inga: You haven't even touched your food.

    [Glop glop glop.  Frankenstein gets his hands dirty.]

    Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: There! Now I've touched it! Happy?

    by lazybum on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 02:05:53 PM PDT

•  I'm a sick, twisted freak...

  I've never laughed so hard as I did during the scene in "Team America" when Gary is throwing up in the alley behind the bar.  Apparently I have the sense of humor of a 13 year old boy.

  by fiddlingnero on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:35:09 PM PDT

•  "Romans Go Home"

  from, of course, Life of Brian...

  Brian: It says "Romans go home!"

  Centurion: "No it doesn't..."

  (Helps if you've ever taken Latin in school.)

  or perhaps the crowd scene toward the end of the same movie:

  Brian: "The point is, you're all different!"

  Voice; "I'm not!"

  by LunarEclipse on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:47:54 PM PDT

•  "This.... is the city."

  In the original "Naked Gun" movie, Ricardo Montalban stands looking out his office window and delivering a soliloquy.  He's just finished showing Leslie Nielsen his two most valuable possessions, a rare tropical fish and a priceless keepsake pen.  While Montalban talks, Nielsen accidentally flips the pen into the fish tank, sticks his hand in after it and gets bitten by the fish, and ends up stabbing the pen right through the fish to get it off him.

  by snazzzybird on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 01:57:00 PM PDT

•  The whole movie

  Spinal Tap
  Galaxy Quest
  Better Off Dead

  Of course I have to second all the Python stuff here, but I've now seen Python so many times that it's not that funny any more.  I was mostly disappointed in the Python DVDs where the extra features were very dull documentaries.  Contrast that to Spinal Tap where there is a section of deleted scenes that is longer than (in some cases funnier than) the movie.

  Someone upthread mentioned A Mighty Wind (folk Spinal Tap).  That was great also, less funny than Tap but with better music.  (Not better than "Big Bottom".)

  Hmm, after previewing I realized I forgot to add High Fidelity.

  by just a dad on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 02:11:28 PM PDT

•  Bruce Almighty

  I really, really don't like Jim Carey, though I loved Eternal Sunshine, but there's a scene in Bruce Almighty... I've never laughed so hard. It's when he makes the anchorman spew nonsense; I forget his name, the guy from 40-year-old Virgin. It was relentlessly funny and I was begging for it to stop.

  by DrReason on Tue Feb 28, 2006 at 02:52:01 PM PDT