21 of the Best Wordless Gags in Comedy History
You know what? We’ve become too reliant on sound in movies. We used to not even have any, and we managed just fine, but now we depend on music, dialogue and a library of sound effects to make us feel what skilled silent directors could pull off with body language and title cards. Now, the art of the wordless gag is all but dead.
Yeah, we said it. Come at us, pro-soundies.
Not entirely, however. For example, Redditor SeaEmergency7911 says it “cracks me up every time” in Office Space when “Peter asks Lawrence what he’d do if he had a million dollars and Lawrence replies ‘two chicks at the same time’ and Peter kinds of laughs it off… and then looks at Lawrence and sees he has a deadly serious expression on his face like this is the most important thing in the world to him.”
They then asked r/Movies, “What’s the funniest nonverbal thing you’ve seen in a film?” and silently waded through all the responses below.
Ratatouille
Tremors
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
Shaun of the Dead
The Big Lebowski
Airplane!
The Other Guys
The Royal Tenenbaums
Borat
Beetlejuice
Dr. Strangelove
Trading Places
Zoolander
Monsters, Inc.
Napoleon Dynamite
Burn After Reading
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
The Hangover
Back to the Future
The Nice Guys
Crazy, Stupid, Love
