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Five kinds of funny

It helps to know what sort of comedy an evening calls for, and most of the films here belong to one of five families. The first is the comedy of character, in which one unforgettable person drives everything: the weatherman of Groundhog Day, the truant of Ferris Bueller's Day Off, the oversized child of Big. The second is the comedy of situation, where ordinary people are dropped into a predicament and must improvise, as in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York or The Terminal.

The third family is the romantic comedy, which adds a promise to the laughter: two people who belong together will take ninety minutes to find it out. The fourth is the family comedy, built so that a seven-year-old and a grandparent can enjoy the same joke for different reasons. The fifth is the comedy of fantasy, in which a wish, a machine or a magic spell bends the rules of the world and the fun lies in the consequences. Many of the best films mix two or three of these, and the shelves on FlixHD overlap for that reason.

What the 175 have in common is good nature. The selection favours wit over cruelty and warmth over shock, so that almost any title can be chosen for a mixed audience with confidence.

Six comedies to begin with

The home page features six titles. Groundhog Day, from 1993, stars Bill Murray as Phil Connors, a television weatherman sent to cover a small-town festival who finds himself living the same February day again and again. Director Harold Ramis lets the idea unfold with the logic of a fable: Phil tries mischief, then despair, then piano lessons, and slowly becomes worth loving. It is among the most quoted and most studied comedies ever made.

Big, from 1988, begins with a boy's wish to be grown up and gives him the body of Tom Hanks, who plays every scene with a twelve-year-old's wonder; the dance on the giant piano in a New York toy store is its happiest moment. Ferris Bueller's Day Off, from 1986, follows Matthew Broderick's charming schemer through one stolen day in Chicago, from an art museum to a parade float, with a school dean in comic pursuit. Both were directed by people who understood young audiences, Penny Marshall and John Hughes.

Elf, from 2003, made Will Ferrell a star as Buddy, a human raised among Santa's helpers who travels to Manhattan to meet his father, and it has become a fixture of every December. Little Miss Sunshine, from 2006, loads a squabbling family into a faded yellow van so that seven-year-old Olive can compete in a pageant; its mixture of sharp humour and tenderness won two Academy Awards. And The Fall Guy, from 2024, casts Ryan Gosling as a stunt performer drawn back to work on a film directed by the woman he still loves, played by Emily Blunt, in a comedy that doubles as a tribute to the stunt trade.

Romantic comedy

Seventy-eight films pair laughter with love. The British school, shaped by the writer Richard Curtis, is represented by Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill, both with Hugh Grant at his most appealingly flustered, and by About a Boy and Music and Lyrics, in which he plays first an idle bachelor and then a faded pop star who needs a lyricist, played by Drew Barrymore.

The American school is broader. Julia Roberts leads My Best Friend's Wedding and Runaway Bride. Will Smith teaches the art of the first date in Hitch. Sandra Bullock is mistaken for a stranger's fiancée in While You Were Sleeping, Jennifer Lopez for a wealthy guest in Maid in Manhattan, and Meg Ryan meets a nineteenth-century duke, played by Hugh Jackman, in Kate & Leopold. Serendipity leaves a couple's future to chance, What Women Want lets Mel Gibson's advertising man hear women's thoughts, and Sweet Home Alabama sends Reese Witherspoon home to settle unfinished business.

Travel is a favourite device. The Holiday swaps a Surrey cottage for a Los Angeles mansion, Crazy Rich Asians flies a New York professor to Singapore, When in Rome and Monte Carlo deliver what their titles promise, and Falling Inn Love hands a San Francisco designer a run-down inn in New Zealand. Love Hard and The Wedding Date play with the gap between a first impression and the truth. The romantic comedy page arranges the shelf by setting.

Family comedy

Sixty-eight films are made to be shared across generations, and many of them are about households under pressure. Steve Martin presides over two: the twelve children of Cheaper by the Dozen and its sequel, and the wedding preparations of Father of the Bride, where a devoted father discovers how much a ceremony can cost. John Candy is the relative every child wants in Uncle Buck, Eddie Murphy opens a nursery in Daddy Day Care, and Dwayne Johnson's football star meets the daughter he had yet to hear about in The Game Plan.

Children run the show in another group. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York gives Kevin McCallister a credit card and the run of a grand hotel. The Sandlot remembers one summer of neighbourhood baseball in 1962 and a ball signed by a legend that lands in the wrong yard. The Little Rascals revives a troupe of pint-sized comedians from the 1930s, and the two Diary of a Wimpy Kid films follow Greg Heffley through the perils of middle school. The Kings of Summer and The Way Way Back look at the same years with a gentler, more wistful humour.

Then there are the storybook comedies. Paddington brings a polite bear from Peru to a London family and fills their house with marmalade and good intentions. Christopher Robin reunites a tired grown-up with the friends of his childhood, Charlotte's Web tells E. B. White's story of a pig and a spider, and The Odd Life of Timothy Green grants a couple the child they imagined. IF, from 2024, lets a girl see the imaginary friends other children have outgrown. The family comedy page suggests titles for different ages.

Teen comedy

Forty-four films are set in the years between childhood and adult life, and the genre as it is known today was largely invented by John Hughes. In The Breakfast Club, five students serving a Saturday detention discover that the labels they wear at school fit loosely. In Ferris Bueller's Day Off, a day of truancy becomes a lesson in paying attention to life. Hughes took teenagers seriously, and filmmakers have been following his lead ever since. Teen Wolf, from the same years, gave Michael J. Fox a secret that turns a quiet student into a basketball star.

The 1990s and 2000s added polish and music. 10 Things I Hate About You reset Shakespeare in a Seattle high school and made stars of Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles. A Cinderella Story and Another Cinderella Story moved the fairy tale to California, What a Girl Wants sent an American teenager to meet her aristocratic English father, and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants followed four friends through one summer apart. The three High School Musical films, The Lizzie McGuire Movie, Hannah Montana: The Movie, Starstruck and Princess Protection Program belong to the golden age of the television musical.

Streaming gave the genre a third life. To All the Boys I've Loved Before and its two sequels follow Lara Jean, whose private love letters are posted by accident. The Kissing Booth trilogy, Tall Girl, The Perfect Date, Sierra Burgess Is a Loser and Work It, in which a determined student builds a dance team from scratch, all found enormous audiences at home. Eighth Grade and Sing Street offer something more personal: one a week in the life of a shy thirteen-year-old, the other a Dublin boy who starts a band to impress a girl. The teen comedy page follows the genre decade by decade.

The comic legends

Forty-five films feature a performer whose name alone is a promise of laughter. Adam Sandler leads the count with eight. His early films, Billy Madison, The Waterboy and Big Daddy, established a character both childish and kind-hearted; The Wedding Singer revealed a gift for romance opposite Drew Barrymore; and Spanglish, directed by James L. Brooks, showed a quieter actor as a chef whose household is changed by a new housekeeper. Anger Management pairs him with Jack Nicholson, and Just Go with It and Jack and Jill are broad crowd-pleasers.

Will Ferrell appears in five films, from Elf to the figure-skating farce Blades of Glory, the two Daddy's Home comedies with Mark Wahlberg, and Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, an affectionate send-up of the song competition set largely in Iceland. Eddie Murphy also has five: The Nutty Professor, in which he plays seven members of one family, Doctor Dolittle and its sequel, Daddy Day Care and A Thousand Words. Jim Carrey's elastic face powers Liar Liar, Yes Man and Mr. Popper's Penguins.

Robin Williams is here in Flubber, Jack, RV and his farewell appearance in Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb. Steve Martin joins Chevy Chase and Martin Short as silent film cowboys mistaken for real heroes in ¡Three Amigos!. Tom Hanks is represented by Big, Splash, in which he falls for a mermaid played by Daryl Hannah, The Terminal and Larry Crowne. Bill Murray, Ben Stiller, Steve Carell, Rowan Atkinson as Bean and Michael J. Fox complete the company. The comic legends page lists each star's films.

Fantasy, time travel and tall tales

Sixty-two comedies bend reality. The wish film is a classic form: after Big came 17 Again, in which a disappointed father becomes his teenage self, Liar Liar, where a boy's birthday wish forces his father to tell the truth for a day, and Jack, Francis Ford Coppola's story of a boy who grows four times faster than his classmates. When We First Met gives a man repeated chances to relive one evening, a cousin of Groundhog Day.

Time machines produce some of the liveliest plots. Back to the Future Part II sends Marty McFly to 2015 and then back into the events of the first film. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure collects historical figures for a school presentation, and Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits lets a boy tumble through history with a band of treasure hunters. In Innerspace, a test pilot played by Dennis Quaid is shrunk and injected by mistake into a nervous supermarket clerk, played by Martin Short, and in Honey, I Blew Up the Kid the machine works in the other direction.

Adventure comedies travel farther. Jumanji: The Next Level returns its players to a video-game jungle in unfamiliar bodies, Jungle Cruise sails up the Amazon with Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, Journey to the Center of the Earth follows Jules Verne's map, and Dora and the Lost City of Gold sends a fearless teenager from high school to a lost Inca city. Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, Gulliver's Travels, Black Knight and Disenchanted play with history, literature and fairy tale. The fantasy and adventure page sorts them by device.

Weddings

Twenty-five comedies lead to an aisle, and the wedding is a gift to the genre because everything that can go wrong arrives on one day. Four Weddings and a Funeral made a whole film from the guest's point of view. 27 Dresses follows a perpetual bridesmaid, The Wedding Planner a professional who meets the perfect man in the role of a client's groom, and Bride Wars two best friends who book the same venue on the same day. In You Again, a bride-to-be turns out to be the heroine's old school rival.

Families take centre stage in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, where a quiet teacher introduces her large and loud relatives, in Father of the Bride and in Mamma Mia!, where a bride on a Greek island invites three men who might each be her father. The Wedding Date hires an escort for a sister's ceremony in England, and The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement gives a future queen thirty days to find a husband. The wedding comedies page covers the shelf from proposal to reception.

Animal comedy

Twenty-four films share the screen with an animal, and a well-timed bark has stolen many a scene. Beethoven introduces an enormous St. Bernard to a father who wanted a quiet house. Marley & Me follows a young couple and a Labrador who fails obedience school with honours. Lady and the Tramp retells the romance of a pampered spaniel and a street-wise mutt with real dogs.

The farmyard has its heroes too. Babe, the story of a piglet who becomes a champion sheepdog, and its bolder sequel Babe: Pig in the City remain wonders of animal performance. Charlotte's Web, Zookeeper, Mr. Popper's Penguins, We Bought a Zoo and the three Dolittle films fill out the menagerie, Stuart Little 2 and MouseHunt give the mouse both a heroic and a mischievous part, and Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties sends the lazy cat to an English castle. The animal comedy page lists them by species.

Christmas comedies

Sixteen films belong to December. Santa is the subject of several: Tim Allen puts on the suit by accident in The Santa Clause and returns in The Santa Clause 2 and The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, Kurt Russell plays a rather cooler Saint Nick in The Christmas Chronicles and The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two, and Elf sees the North Pole through the eyes of its tallest resident.

The family gathering supplies the rest. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation follows Clark Griswold's doomed quest for the perfect holiday, lights and all. Christmas with the Kranks shows what happens when a couple decides to skip the season, Four Christmases sends Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon to four households in one day, and Jingle All the Way turns a toy hunt into an epic. Romance takes over in The Holiday, Love Hard and Just Friends. The Christmas comedies page has the full list.

Comedies about work

Forty-one films find their humour in jobs. Morning Glory puts Rachel McAdams in charge of a failing breakfast show and a grumpy news anchor played by Harrison Ford. Chef follows a cook who trades a fine restaurant for a food truck and rediscovers why he loved the work, and The Hundred-Foot Journey sets an Indian family's restaurant across the road from a grand French establishment run by Helen Mirren.

Second careers are a recurring theme. Tom Hanks goes back to college in Larry Crowne, Jennifer Lopez reinvents herself in Second Act, Kevin Hart returns to the classroom in Night School, and Scarlett Johansson takes a job with a wealthy Manhattan family in The Nanny Diaries. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty turns a magazine's picture archivist into a world traveller, Delivery Man gives a meat-truck driver an unusually large family to look after, and The Upside pairs Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston as a carer and his employer. The workplace comedy page sorts the shelf by trade.

Musical comedy

Twenty-four films sing as well as joke. Mamma Mia! and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again string ABBA's songs along a sunny family story, and Pitch Perfect 2 and Pitch Perfect 3 follow a university vocal group to ever larger stages. The Muppets returned Kermit's troupe to the cinema with new songs, and Cinderella, from 2021, gave the fairy tale a pop score.

Some of the best are about performers who are endearingly short of talent or luck. Florence Foster Jenkins stars Meryl Streep as a New York heiress who loves to sing and Hugh Grant as the husband who protects her from the reviews. The Wedding Singer finds its hero at the microphone of other people's celebrations, Music and Lyrics in the nostalgia circuit, and Sing Street in a school hall. The musical comedy page gives the set list.

Four decades of comedy

The twelve films from the 1980s show a decade in love with a bright idea. Splash, directed by Ron Howard, made a star of Tom Hanks, and Big confirmed it. Joe Dante's Innerspace won an Academy Award for its effects, and Uncle Buck, Teen Wolf and ¡Three Amigos! have been favourites of home viewing ever since. The 1980s page gathers them.

The thirty-two films from the 1990s reflect the era of the family blockbuster and the star vehicle: Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Beethoven, The Flintstones, Flubber, George of the Jungle, Doctor Dolittle and Liar Liar, alongside the great run of romantic comedies. Cool Runnings told the true story of a Jamaican bobsleigh team, and Super Mario Bros. was the first feature made from a video game. The 1990s page lists them all.

The fifty-eight films from the 2000s include Elf, Little Miss Sunshine, The Terminal, Yes Man, Mamma Mia! and Marley & Me, together with many of the teen comedies. The fifty-nine from the 2010s add Paddington, Chef, Crazy Rich Asians, The Peanut Butter Falcon, in which a young man with Down syndrome sets off to become a wrestler with the help of a fisherman on the run, and New Zealand's Hunt for the Wilderpeople. The fourteen from the 2020s are led by The Fall Guy, Jungle Cruise and IF.

Beyond Hollywood

Most of the 175 films are American, but several of the freshest come from elsewhere. Britain supplies the Curtis romances, the wordless misadventures of Rowan Atkinson in Bean and Mr. Bean's Holiday, which sends its hero across France by train, bicycle and borrowed car, and the storybook London of Paddington. Ireland gives Sing Street, with its loving recreation of 1980s pop videos shot on a Dublin back lane.

New Zealand contributes Hunt for the Wilderpeople, directed by Taika Waititi, in which a city boy and his gruff foster uncle, played by Sam Neill, become the subject of a national manhunt simply by going for a long walk. Australia made the two Babe films. The Hundred-Foot Journey was shot in a village in the south of France, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga in Iceland and Scotland, and Crazy Rich Asians in Singapore and Malaysia. Comedy travels well when the people in it are recognisable, and these are.

Great double acts

Comedy loves a pair. Some are sweethearts: Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts in Notting Hill, Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore in The Wedding Singer, Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt in The Fall Guy. Some are rivals who become friends, such as Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg as stepfather and father in Daddy's Home, or Will Ferrell and Jon Heder as figure skaters forced to compete as a pair in Blades of Glory.

Others are mismatched travelling companions. Steve Carell and Paul Rudd share an uncomfortable evening in Dinner for Schmucks. Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart swap temperaments in Jumanji: The Next Level. Owen Wilson moves into a newly married friend's house in You, Me and Dupree, and Zack Gottsagen and Shia LaBeouf drift down the Carolina coast on a raft in The Peanut Butter Falcon. The oldest pairing of all, an adult and a child, drives Uncle Buck, Big Daddy, Jersey Girl and About a Boy.

Behind the camera

A hundred and forty-seven directors made the 175 films. John Hughes heads the list with three as director and several more as writer, including Home Alone 2: Lost in New York and Beethoven. Garry Marshall, a master of the ensemble romance, directed Runaway Bride, Valentine's Day and The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement. Dennis Dugan and Frank Coraci guided many of Adam Sandler's films, Brian Levant specialised in family comedy with Beethoven, The Flintstones and Jingle All the Way, and Kenny Ortega choreographed and directed all three High School Musical films.

Several distinguished filmmakers are represented by a single comedy: Harold Ramis, Penny Marshall, Ron Howard, Joe Dante, Terry Gilliam, John Landis, Francis Ford Coppola, James L. Brooks, Steven Spielberg with The Terminal, Nancy Meyers with The Holiday and What Women Want, George Miller with Babe: Pig in the City, Lasse Hallström with The Hundred-Foot Journey, Stephen Frears with Florence Foster Jenkins, Jon Favreau with Elf and Chef, and Taika Waititi. Good comedy direction is often invisible, which is exactly why it deserves a mention.

A comedy for every mood

The shelves can also be read by mood. For a bad day that needs rescuing, try Elf, Paddington or Mamma Mia!, three films with a remarkable ability to improve the weather. For a quiet evening, The Terminal, Chef and The Way Way Back offer gentle humour and good company. For a crowd, the broad comedies of Adam Sandler and Eddie Murphy, Rat Race with its all-star dash across the desert, and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation are dependable.

For a date, the romantic shelf speaks for itself, with Notting Hill, Serendipity and Crazy Rich Asians at the head of the queue. For children on a rainy afternoon there are Babe, Stuart Little 2 and The Muppets; for teenagers, 10 Things I Hate About You and To All the Boys I've Loved Before. And for anyone who thinks they have seen everything, Time Bandits and Hunt for the Wilderpeople remain delightfully hard to predict.

Second helpings

Comedy sequels have a mixed reputation, and the ones kept here earned their place. Back to the Future Part II is as inventive as its predecessor. Babe: Pig in the City took a pastoral fable to a strange and beautiful metropolis. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again added a prequel storyline and the voice of Cher. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Cheaper by the Dozen 2, Dr. Dolittle 2 and Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules give familiar characters a larger playground.

The streaming trilogies were planned as continuing stories, so To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You and To All the Boys: Always and Forever follow Lara Jean to her graduation, and The Kissing Booth 2 and The Kissing Booth 3 take Elle to the edge of college. Disenchanted returns to a fairy-tale princess ten years into her happily ever after, and the Santa Clause and Christmas Chronicles sequels revisit the North Pole. Each page on FlixHD names the related films, so the first chapter is always close at hand.

The top rated shelf

Twenty-four comedies hold a place on the top rated shelf, which gathers titles with an average of 7.2 or above from at least five hundred viewers. Sing Street stands first, followed by Back to the Future Part II, The Breakfast Club and Little Miss Sunshine. A group of six shares the next score: Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Groundhog Day, The Sandlot, 10 Things I Hate About You, To All the Boys I've Loved Before and Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Further down come Work It, The Peanut Butter Falcon, The Terminal, Christopher Robin, Jungle Cruise, The Hundred-Foot Journey and Notting Hill, with National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and Lady and the Tramp completing the shelf. Teen comedies do especially well, a sign of how loyal their audiences are. The first row on the home page is drawn from this shelf, since it is the quickest route to a film that many people have enjoyed.

Sport for laughs

The sports film has a comic branch all its own, built on the underdog. Cool Runnings follows four Jamaicans and their reluctant coach, played by John Candy, to the bobsleigh track of the 1988 Winter Games, and its closing walk to the finish line still raises a cheer. The Waterboy turns a shy assistant into a fearsome college football tackler, The Game Plan softens a vain quarterback, and Blades of Glory sends two rival skaters onto the ice as the first all-male pair.

Baseball belongs to The Sandlot, basketball to Teen Wolf, motor racing to Herbie Fully Loaded, in which Lindsay Lohan drives the Volkswagen with a mind of its own, and dance to Work It. Tooth Fairy punishes a rough ice hockey player with a pair of wings and a nightly round. In every case the game matters less than the team, which is why these films work so well for a mixed audience.

On the road

A journey is a dependable engine for comedy, because it keeps mismatched people in a small space. Little Miss Sunshine is the model: a van with a failing clutch, six relatives and eight hundred miles to cover. RV puts Robin Williams at the wheel of a rented motorhome bound for Colorado, and Rat Race sets a casino's guests racing across New Mexico toward a locker full of money. National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation stays at home, though its opening drive to find a tree counts as an expedition.

Other trips are longer. Mr. Bean's Holiday crosses France from Paris to Cannes. Monte Carlo and The Lizzie McGuire Movie treat American teenagers to Europe, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga carries two Icelandic hopefuls to Edinburgh, and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty reaches Greenland, Iceland and the Himalayas. The Peanut Butter Falcon floats down the waterways of North Carolina, and Hunt for the Wilderpeople disappears into the bush. A comedy that travels gives its audience two holidays at once.

From the small screen

Many of the faces here learned their craft on television. Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Chevy Chase, Martin Short and Kristen Wiig all came through the same late-night sketch programme in New York, and its house style, quick, a little absurd and fond of a catchphrase, runs through Billy Madison, Elf and ¡Three Amigos!. Steve Carell and John Krasinski, the director of IF, arrived from a celebrated workplace sitcom.

Family television fed the cinema as well. The Flintstones, The Little Rascals and Bean began as series, The Muppets as a variety show, and the teen musicals of the 2000s were first made for a children's channel before their third chapter, High School Musical 3: Senior Year, opened in cinemas. Streaming has since blurred the line completely: The Christmas Chronicles, Love Hard and the To All the Boys films were made for the sofa and found audiences as large as any cinema release.

Familiar faces in smaller parts

Part of the pleasure of watching several comedies in a row is spotting the players who turn up again and again. Steve Zahn steals scenes in Daddy Day Care and the Wimpy Kid films. Toni Collette is the mother in Little Miss Sunshine, About a Boy and The Way Way Back. Bonnie Hunt keeps order in Cheaper by the Dozen and Beethoven, Joan Cusack lights up Runaway Bride, and Eugene Levy brings his raised eyebrows to Splash, Father of the Bride and Cheaper by the Dozen 2.

Younger performers can be followed from film to film too. Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens grow up across the High School Musical trilogy, Noah Centineo is the dependable heart-throb of four streaming comedies, Joey King carries the Kissing Booth films, and Emily Blunt moves from Gulliver's Travels to Mary Poppins Returns, Jungle Cruise and The Fall Guy. The cast lists on each page make this kind of trail easy to follow.

Comedies with a lump in the throat

The films people remember longest often make them laugh and then catch them off guard. Marley & Me is the best-known example, a romp that becomes a portrait of a marriage and a family. Little Miss Sunshine finds grace in a disastrous talent show. The Peanut Butter Falcon and The Upside build friendships across very different lives, Florence Foster Jenkins treats its heroine's dream with respect, and We Bought a Zoo lets a father and his children heal by caring for animals.

Family comedies have the same gift. Christopher Robin is about remembering how to play, The Odd Life of Timothy Green about the brief visit of a remarkable child, Jersey Girl about a father choosing what matters, and Life As We Know It about two people who become parents overnight and a couple more slowly. These titles sit comfortably on a comedy shelf because the laughter in them is real, and so is the feeling that follows.

A calendar of comedies

The catalogue keeps pace with the year. January suits a fresh start with Yes Man or Larry Crowne, and the second of February belongs to Groundhog Day by right. Valentine's Day covers the fourteenth with a dozen interlocking couples in Los Angeles. Spring is wedding season, well served by 27 Dresses, Bride Wars and Father of the Bride, and the end of the school year calls for High School Musical 3: Senior Year and To All the Boys: Always and Forever.

Summer has the richest choice: the water park of The Way Way Back, the woods of The Kings of Summer, the baseball diamond of The Sandlot, the Greek island of Mamma Mia! and the Amazon of Jungle Cruise. Autumn brings everyone back to class with The Breakfast Club, Night School and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Then the lights go up for Elf, The Santa Clause and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, and the year ends as it should, with the whole family in front of the same screen.

Comedies and their cities

Certain cities seem to make people funnier. New York is the stage for Big, Elf, Hitch, Maid in Manhattan, Serendipity, The Nanny Diaries and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, each of which uses a landmark as a punchline, from a toy store piano to a department-store Santa. Chicago belongs to John Hughes, who set Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Uncle Buck and The Breakfast Club in the city and its suburbs. London hosts Notting Hill, About a Boy, Paddington and What a Girl Wants, and Los Angeles the worlds of film and music in The Fall Guy, Music and Lyrics and The Holiday.

Smaller places have their champions too. Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, became famous through Groundhog Day, and the fictional towns of Sweet Home Alabama and Falling Inn Love show the genre's lasting fondness for the big-city heroine who rediscovers a slower pace of life somewhere with one main street and a great many opinions.

The look of FlixHD

FlixHD is bright where most film sites are dark. The page is a very pale grey, the text near black, and across the top runs a bar in a deep green gradient with the name in white beside a mint HD badge. The bar holds a row of links, a rounded white search field and a mint My List button. On the home page a wide still from a featured comedy sits directly under the bar, darkened on the left to carry the title and a green Details button.

Below it, poster rows follow one another under bold headings marked with a short green stroke. The posters have generously rounded corners and a small white rating badge, with the title, year and running time underneath. On a telephone the links fold into a menu behind a three-line button and the posters stand two abreast. Film pages place the poster beside the facts, with the Watch now button and the country selector directly under the title, followed by the cast with photographs, the director and related films. A near-black footer closes each page.

Finding a comedy

There are four ways to reach a title. The search field answers as you type and accepts a title, a name or a word such as wedding, penguin or Chicago. The links in the green bar lead to Movies, Rom-coms, Family, Teen, Comic legends, Top rated and the A to Z list. Each row on the home page carries a View all button showing the size of its shelf. And the A to Z page sets out all 175 comedies in alphabetical order. The finding titles page describes each route.

The seventeen shelves overlap by design. Elf stands under Family comedy, Fantasy and adventure, Christmas and Comic legends; The Wedding Singer under Romantic comedy, Weddings, Music and Comic legends. Whether the starting point is a mood, a decade or a favourite face, a good choice is a few taps away.

My List and Watch now

Every film page has an Add to My List button. Pressing it places the film in a personal queue, which opens from the mint button in the green bar. The queue is kept in your browser on your own device, so it is ready each time you return on that device, and each saved film has a Remove button beside it. The list page can also save the queue as a file, a handy way to move it to another computer or to line up a weekend of John Hughes films. The My List page gives the details.

When a film is chosen, the Watch now button does the rest. Select your country from the fifteen offered and press the button. JustWatch opens on the page for that film and shows which subscription services include it, where it can be rented or bought, and any free services with advertising that carry it. Comedies move between services often, and holiday favourites tend to reappear each winter, which is why FlixHD points to a source that is updated every day.

Where the information comes from

The 175 comedies were chosen by hand, and each summary was read before a title was admitted. Posters, stills, cast lists, running times and summaries come from TMDB, the community film database, and the ratings shown on the posters are TMDB averages; every film in the catalogue has been rated by more than a thousand viewers. The guide you are reading and the help pages were written for FlixHD by its own editorial team.

A short glossary

A few terms recur in this guide. A high-concept comedy can be described in one sentence, such as a boy who wakes up as an adult. A meet-cute is the charming first encounter of a romantic comedy's couple. A fish-out-of-water story places a character in unfamiliar surroundings, as Elf does with Buddy in Manhattan. A running gag is a joke that returns and grows. An ensemble comedy shares its story among many characters, and a straight man is the calm partner who makes the funny one funnier.

A plan for fourteen evenings

For a newcomer, here is one way to spend two weeks. Open with three certainties: Groundhog Day, Big and Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Give the family Paddington and Babe. Fall in love with Notting Hill and The Wedding Singer.

In the second week, visit school with The Breakfast Club and 10 Things I Hate About You, travel with Little Miss Sunshine and Hunt for the Wilderpeople, sing with Mamma Mia! and Sing Street, and finish with Elf, whatever the month. By then you will know which kind of funny is yours, and the queue will fill itself.

Questions and answers

The questions below are those most often asked about FlixHD, with short answers. Fuller help is on the help pages named throughout this guide, including the how to watch page.

Questions