The 20 Greatest Political Comedies of All Time
Of all the comedy subgenres, the political comedy is probably the hardest to nail down. What, exactly, constitutes a political comedy? Is it a movie set in the world of politics? It is just a movie that has political commentary? And what’s the difference between a political comedy and a political satire? Is one meaner in its humor than the other?
In order to make a list of the 20 best political comedies, I had to figure out answers to these questions. And that meant making some tough choices, like any good elected official. And what I decided was to be pretty strict in my definition of what counts. There are so many good films that are often called political comedies — Four Lions, Borat, numerous war movies — but for my purposes, a film had to feature politicians, world leaders or at the very least some folks who were running for something, even if that’s just class president. (The one exception I made was a great international film in which the characters are clearly meant to be a stand-in for that particular country’s ruling class.)
This might seem too narrow of a definition for this subgenre but, honestly, otherwise it would have been too unwieldy a list. And, for what it’s worth, I think my choices actually offer many varied perspectives on politics, some of them lighthearted while others are satirical, but all of them touching on what it feels like to be in a world that’s filled with corruption, hypocrisy, stupidity, misplaced patriotism and, very occasionally, decency and kindness. And they demonstrate just how universal these sentiments are — whether the movie is set in America, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union or Freedonia.
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My picks span nearly 100 years, proof that the best political comedy transcends its era — or, worse, just means that the problems we faced back in the early 20th century haven’t changed all that much over time. Mostly, though, I wanted to highlight films that are downright funny — whether they’re celebrating the best of ourselves or, more often, lamenting the cheats, phonies and psychopaths whose decisions impact us on a daily basis. These 20 movies get my vote as the best of the bunch.
Idiocracy (2006)
Mike Judge’s subversive comedy, which was buried by its studio, becoming a cult classic over time, has always been a tough one for me. Its tone often smug and its plotting frankly a mess, Idiocracy is often given credit for its satirical ideas, with fans ignoring the thin characters and strained running time. And yet, there’s no denying how dead-on Judge was about an America teetering toward implosion thanks to an uneducated population hooked on sensation and superficiality. Terry Crews’ U.S. president, a former porn actor and wrestler, is a perfect metaphor for our deeply unserious politics, and the characters’ complete disregard for the environment, their health and each other feels too close to home when we consider the casual cruelty and cynicism of modern life. I wish Idiocracy was a better film, but as a receptacle for worst-case scenarios for our country, it’s a sick, prescient joke.
Dave (1993)
Very much a throwback to Frank Capra-style comedy, Dave is a sweet, idealistic portrait of a regular guy named Dave (Kevin Kline) who is recruited to fill in for the U.S. president (also Kline) after the leader of the free world slips into a coma. (By the way, the prez got that way from having a stroke while having sex with his mistress.) Pretty soon, though, Dave doesn’t just imitate the man but, rather, starts to bring a more progressive, sane approach to Washington politics. A Hollywood fantasy? Of course. But Kline has rarely been so charming, and he’s perfectly paired with Sigourney Weaver as the actual president’s disillusioned wife. Real-world politics don’t work like this at all, but Dave makes you wish they could.
Primary Colors (1998)
For obvious reasons, when this dark comedy opened in the spring of 1998, most viewers assumed that John Travolta’s polished governor Jack Stanton, who’s making a bid for the White House, was meant to be Bill Clinton. After all, the book on which the movie was based, written by political columnist Joe Klein, was inspired by Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. But although Travolta copied Slick Willie’s speaking style and hair, the actor always insisted he wanted his performance to be a composite of several then-recent presidents, including aspects of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Nevertheless, Primary Colors spoke to the misgivings even Hollywood had about Clinton, giving audiences a portrait of a charismatic idealist who was hiding a lot of troublesome flaws. It’s a biting movie about the hard truth that no politician is perfect — and that, if you still believe in such a fantasy, maybe that’s more your problem than the politician’s.
Dick (1999)
What if Richard Nixon resigned the presidency thanks to two not-very-bright teenagers? That’s the funny premise behind director and co-writer Andrew Fleming’s comedy starring then-newcomers Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams as best friends who, through convoluted circumstances, end up becoming part of Tricky Dick’s inner circle, utterly unaware that he’s responsible for the Watergate break-in. It can be tricky to make light of a serious subject, but Dick hits the right tone, essentially reimagining All the President’s Men with two goofy adolescents in place of Woodward and Bernstein. Dunst and Williams would go on to make more serious, acclaimed work, but they’d rarely be as endearingly clueless as they were here.
The American President (1995)
The last great film of director Rob Reiner’s terrific 10-year run, The American President saw him reuniting with A Few Good Men writer Aaron Sorkin for the story of Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas), a widower who occupies the Oval Office, and Sydney Ellen Wade (Annette Bening), a lobbyist who wins his heart. This liberal-minded romantic comedy, which took a close look at the inner workings of the White House, signaled Sorkin’s interest in U.S. politics, which would come to the fore even more so with The West Wing. (Martin Sheen actually plays Douglas’ chief of staff here.) Back when Hollywood consistently made films for grown-ups, The American President was the sort of sophisticated, delightful love story we’d take for granted. Nowadays, it’s an endangered species.
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
To be sure, Michael Moore is an acquired taste, and a little of his shtick can go a long way. But it’s hard to resist the anger and hilarity that mark Fahrenheit 9/11, an uneven but undeniably cathartic documentary about the George W. Bush years. Ostensibly an investigation into the Bush family’s connections to the Middle East, the film furiously churns through a number of topics — the 9/11 attacks, the 2003 Iraq invasion — as Moore tries to land as many barbs as possible at the expense of the Bush administration and the complicit national media. At the following year’s Oscars, host Chris Rock joked that Moore essentially made a film whose sole purpose was to deny W. a second term. That strategy failed — Bush defeated John Kerry handily in the 2004 election — but Fahrenheit 9/11 remains a bruising reminder of a maddening age.
The Great Dictator (1940)
Although not as well-regarded as some of his other films — and, to be fair, movies like The Gold Rush and City Lights are superior — The Great Dictator found Charlie Chaplin in an uncharacteristically angry state of mind. Who could blame him: At the time, the United States wasn’t yet involved in World War II, but the writer-director-star correctly perceived Adolf Hitler as such a threat that he decided he had to base his next film on satirizing the evil he represented. If it wasn’t clear how dramatic the stakes were for Chaplin, he broke with his tradition of working primarily in silent cinema, allowing himself the opportunity to give an impassioned speech about the dangers of fascism. But perhaps even more effective was a balletic sequence in which his Hitler-esque tyrant bounces the globe around like a child’s plaything — a cutting metaphor for a dictator with designs on world domination.
Bananas (1971)
Revolutions are often terrible, bloody affairs — unless they’re in a Woody Allen movie. Bananas is one of his earliest films, back when he was still transitioning from stand-up sensation to full-fledged director, and it stars him as Fielding Mellish, a nobody who, in order to impress a woman, heads off to a fictional Latin America country, where a violent coup has just taken place. This was a period in which Allen was a first-rate comic nebbish, and his cowardly, wisecracking Fielding is constantly being put in all types of ridiculous circumstances for which he is ill-equipped. That Fielding ends up becoming the fractious country’s dictator — complete with a goofy beard — makes no sense but is utterly hilarious. With an inspired cameo by Howard Cosell, who proves to be an excellent reporter during both assassination attempts and marriage consummations, Bananas finds the humor in global unrest, suicidal love interests and J. Edgar Hoover.
The Candidate (1972)
Being disillusioned by our political process is hardly anything new. More than 50 years ago, director Michael Ritchie and star Robert Redford joined forces to tell the story of an idealistic lawyer who runs for office, figuring he has no chance of winning. Emboldened, he decides to say exactly what he feels about the state of the world, which leads to unexpected results. I don’t want to ruin the twists in The Candidate, but if you’re assuming an outcome like Network or The Producers, guess again. Perfectly in keeping with an era in which the counterculture’s distrust of the system was finding its way into Hollywood movies, The Candidate is both funny and dispiriting, lamenting how Americans vote and why they vote for the people they do.
The Death of Stalin (2017)
It’s 1953, and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin has unexpectedly died. A tragedy? Not if you’re one of the many people in his inner circle seeking to fill that power vacuum. Working from a French graphic novel, director and co-writer Armando Iannucci skewers the totalitarian regime by revealing just how craven those closest to the dead dictator are, each of them jockeying to seize control even though Stalin’s body isn’t yet cold. The Death of Stalin features a wealth of great actors, including Steve Buscemi, Simon Russell Beale, Jason Isaacs and Michael Palin, with Iannucci cleverly insisting that they don’t use Russian accents. Instead, this dark comedy is a melting pot of nationalities, which underlines the larger point that ego, self-interest and megalomania transcend borders.
The Great McGinty (1940)
Preston Sturges was one of the great writer-directors of the 1940s, and The Great McGinty was his cracking debut, a comedy that subverted the feel-good narrative trope of the corrupt individual who eventually redeems himself by becoming a good person. Nope, instead we get the cautionary tale of Daniel McGinty (Brian Donlevy), a vagrant recruited by a local political operative (Akim Tamiroff) to run for office, seeing in McGinty the sort of candidate the public will love — and whom he can use to forward his crooked agenda. The filmmaker behind The Lady Eve and Sullivan’s Travels here examines just how easy it is to be seduced by power and lose your soul. McGinty isn’t an inspirational figure but, rather, a nobody who happily goes along with the operative’s scheme, rationalizing his shamelessness all the way to the governor’s mansion. The Great McGinty gets its considerable laughs from how wise Sturges is about the conmen and manipulators running American politics — both then and now.
Bob Roberts (1992)
It started as a Saturday Night Live short, with Tim Robbins playing an evil businessman. But for his feature directorial debut, the Bull Durham actor changed the character to a folk-singing right-wing politician, a slickster who merges telegenic charisma with callous Wall Street values to become an unstoppable candidate for the U.S. senate. This is arguably Robbins’ finest performance, conveying so much monstrousness underneath that smiling, deceptively bland exterior. The movie also introduced us to a very young Jack Black as one of Roberts’ frightening followers. Bob Roberts may be funny, but it’s also very scary: Bob Roberts would probably still be welcome in today’s Republican Party.
Shampoo (1975)
Politics are in the background of this consummate New Hollywood comedy, which stars Warren Beatty as George, a womanizing hairdresser in Beverly Hills in 1968, just as Richard Nixon is about to win the presidency. Shampoo concerns George’s attempt to secure financing to open his own salon — all he has to do is escort a rich man’s (Jack Warden) mistress (Julie Christie) to an election-night party. The problem? George used to go out with the mistress — and may still be in love with her. (Also: George has a girlfriend, played by Goldie Hawn, who’s friends with the mistress. Oh, right, and he’s also sleeping with the rich man’s wife, played by Lee Grant.) The film’s sexual shenanigans are hysterical on their own — Beatty is such a fun himbo — but Nixon’s looming victory adds a melancholy undercurrent to all the giddy bed-hopping, suggesting that these characters are so wrapped up in their petty desires that they don’t realize the chilling effect Nixon will have on the country. In Shampoo, the good times are coming to an end for George — and America on the whole.
Duck Soup (1933)
A war movie from the Marx Brothers? Sorta, but naturally it’s a very silly one, with Groucho playing Rufus T. Firefly, who is installed as leader of the incompetently-run nation of Freedonia. Soon, though, the country is ready to take up arms against its enemy, Sylvania. In terms of jokes per minute, Duck Soup probably is the brothers’ densest feature, but the one-liners and hijinks all serve a purpose, casting a harsh light on the ugly nationalism sweeping the globe and the politicians who seek to capitalize on that sentiment. Sadly, none of those gags feel out of date when viewed by modern eyes.
Wag the Dog (1997)
Sometimes, a movie’s conceit can seem too ridiculous — that is, until real life catches up with it. Adapted from the novel American Hero, director Barry Levinson’s dark satire concerns a fictional president who’s embroiled in a sex scandal mere weeks before the election. Enter Robert De Niro’s savvy political operative, who suggests a radical idea to draw attention away from the controversy: What if they create a fake war? With Dustin Hoffman playing a Robert Evans-like Hollywood mover and shaker who helps “produce” this fake war, Wag the Dog opened not long before the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky affair hit the news, creating all kinds of upsetting parallels. (At least Clinton’s sex scandal didn’t involve someone underage, like in the movie.) These eerie coincidences bolstered Wag the Dog’s notoriety, but years later, the film remains a trenchant takedown of the unreality both politicians and Hollywood happily peddle.
The Firemen’s Ball (1967)
Before the late, great director Miloš Forman moved to America to make films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Amadeus and Man on the Moon, he satirized his Czech homeland, taking aim at the country’s stifling communist system. The titular event, set in a small town, is meant to be a joyous affair, but over the course of this comedy’s 73 minutes, one thing after another goes wrong. (For instance, the ball’s prizes keep getting swiped, and the women recruited for the beauty pageant want nothing to do with this sexist contest.) Although The Fireman’s Ball was a commercial success in Czechoslovakia, the film would be banned once Russia invaded the country. It’s always a good sign when a comedy about incompetence offends the very higher-ups it’s meant to mock.
Election (1999)
Based on Tom Perrotta’s 1998 novel, director Alexander Payne’s second feature crystallized for a generation what the American political system feels like — as seen through the eyes of the students and teachers at a Nebraska high school. Before she was Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, Reese Witherspoon was Tracy Flick, a driven junior determined to be voted class president, incurring the anger and envy of milquetoast history instructor Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick), who has decided she needs to lose to teach her a little humility. Popularity, sexism, ambition, privilege and the mystery of “likability” are at the core of Election, which is caustically funny about our country’s class system, in which people are often stepping on others in order to climb the ladder.
Nashville (1975)
In the late 1980s, Robert Altman dissected the world of politics imaginatively with his acclaimed miniseries Tanner ‘88, in which Michael Murphy’s fictional candidate Jack Tanner crosses paths with real-life politicians, like Gary Hart and Bob Dole, on the campaign trail. But Nashville’s kaleidoscopic look at the titular Tennessee town was the first time he spent time pondering the slick men seeking our vote. This 1975 comedy consists of more than 20 characters, many of them involved in one way or another with country music, and the director encouraged his actors to write songs in character. But what brings together this sprawling epic isn’t just the music industry but politics in the form of Hal Phillip Walker (voiced by Thomas Hal Phillips), who’s running for president as a third-party candidate. We never meet Walker, but we hear him throughout Nashville: His voice blares from a van that drives around town, his inane talking points a constant background noise. Fittingly, Murphy plays John, an oily operative who wants to recruit country singers to campaign for Walker. Maybe no movie has more overtly drawn the line between politics and showbiz, resulting in one of the definitive cinematic snapshots of our weird, unraveling nation.
In the Loop (2009)
This was many American viewers’ introduction to Armando Iannucci, the brilliant Scottish satirist who created the BBC series The Thick of It, which was a merciless look at the British government from the inside. In the Loop was the big-screen adaptation/extension of that acclaimed program, allowing Peter Capaldi’s ruthless, vulgar Malcolm Tucker the opportunity to lock horns with American politicians and military leaders as the two nations consider military intervention in the Middle East. James Gandolfini was never funnier than he was here, and Anna Chlumsky (at that point still best known for her role in Macaulay Culkin’s My Girl) permanently shed her child-star status, paving the way for her being cast in Iannucci’s next series, Veep.
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
In 1962, a novel was published called Fail-Safe, which detailed a grim future scenario in which the U.S. accidentally gets involved in a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. (The book would later be adapted into a drama directed by Sidney Lumet.) But Stanley Kubrick found that very real possibility so terrifying that the only way he could imagine making a movie about the subject matter was to treat it as a comedy. And so the world was introduced to Dr. Strangelove, a deadpan classic in which just about every character you meet is some variation on a nincompoop — which is troubling, considering that many of them are in positions of incredible power.
Peter Sellers famously played three roles — his Dr. Strangelove is probably the most iconic, but I’ll always be partial to his prim and proper U.S. President Merkin Muffley — but don’t sleep on the film’s other great performances. George C. Scott is an absolute riot as the gum-smacking, bloodthirsty General Buck Turgidson. And Sterling Hayden is chilling perfection as the psychotic Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper. Dr. Strangelove is so funny but also so right about the arrogance and incompetence of our spineless leaders. The movie feels less and less farfetched every day — seriously, it’s a wonder we haven’t blown ourselves up already.