Go ahead and admit it, there are times in the movies when you feel the need to laugh even if in real life the situation would be anything but funny. There are those moments in non-comedic movies that make us titter, giggle, or roar with laughter since they’re so implausible, so ridiculous, or just so ‘in the moment’ that laughing is about the only thing you can do, as the only other options aren’t all that appealing, meaning you’ll be depressed, anxious, or just want to break down crying. These moments might make some people feel a little guilty for wanting to laugh, but the great thing about comedy is that it’s bound to be found in many facets of a story no matter that it might feel inappropriate.
With that being said, here are a few scenes from several movies that might not have been meant to be funny, but pulled a laugh from us anyway.
10. Die Hard
This is a good example of an adrenaline-fueled and very well deserved bout of laughter since McClane has been through hell at this point and has had to do a number of things just to survive, only to be forced into this confrontation with the worst of the bunch. Hans might be the mastermind, but Karl is by far the deadliest, and yet somehow John keeps spewing bile at the trained killer as he’s doing his best just to survive the fight. Laughing at his tenacity and the idea that Karl, a stone-cold killer, is being beaten down by a regular cop is kind of expected.
9. Brick Mansions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hThaVpNpOmw
What’s so amusing about this is that David Belle, aka Lino, is an actual pioneer of Parkour, and as such there’s not a lot of wire work in the opening of this movie, though there is some but not a lot, it looks as though he’s playing with the thugs that are after him. Obviously in real life things wouldn’t be quite as nicely laid out as this and he might encounter a few snags in his flight from the bad guys. But the hilarity is easy to find since every time it looks like the thugs have him cornered it becomes not unlike a Tom and Jerry cartoon as he evades or slams one or more of them to the ground.
8. Aliens
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJtYFoKeh1I
This might have been meant to be witty but it ended up being a classic scene from this movie since even Hudson whining and crying about the wrecked airship like a child couldn’t top this. Hudson was simply begging Bishop to do his knife trick and Drake thought that Hudson deserved a slightly different experience, and as a result, voila, we have one of the best scenes ever devised in a movie. It’s kind of unfortunate that it’s created a legion of copycats that have either inspired even more people to wound themselves, but it’s still a cool scene.
7. Django Unchained
It was actually kind of hard to find a scene that really worked from this movie since Quentin Tarantino has such a morbid sense of humor that finding one scene out of all of them that could be said to be a favorite was tough. But while lynching has never been funny, watching a lynch mob get their comeuppance is definitely a reason to laugh since it’s something that a lot of us could probably confess that we’d love to see in modern times as well, if such a gathering ever dared to amass near anyone with a loaded firearm.
6. The Dark Knight Rises
According to Rajat Tripathi of Bollywoodlife and many others this scene had to be improvised since the big explosion was supposed to go off right when Heath Ledger pressed the button. The fact that it didn’t was likely a little confusing, but Heath played it off so beautifully that to many people it likely appeared that this was how things were supposed to go. It’s amazing what happens when you really look at some of these scenes, but it’s even more amazing at how well some of the actors can adapt.
5. Tombstone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pRbTBy9spU
Kurt Russell and Michael Biehn were good in this movie, but Val Kilmer was absolute gold. Almost every scene with him in it was great, and while I really wanted to put the Latin scene with Johnny Ringo in, this one just struck me as equally deadly but definitely funnier since Doc was known in western lore as a gambler and a rather deadly individual. What he wasn’t apparently was a drunkard as he appeared in the movie, as Forest Tennant of Practical Pain Management has stated, though he was a dentist at one point, hence the nickname ‘Doc’.
4. Full Metal Jacket
A lot of people might look at me funny for this one since there didn’t appear to be much that was funny about this movie, especially given that there was so much death and misery within the story. But something about Pyle just made it necessary to laugh or break down in despair as the alternative since he’s that one individual in the unit that everyone knows is going to screw up continually no matter how much anyone helps him. Plus, R. Lee Ermy was just way too good at his role thanks to the fact that he actually was a Marine and a staff sergeant in his day. He was definitely convincing enough that it feels as though the actors might have been a little intimidated.
3. The Breakfast Club
Ah yes, when teenage movies were truly edgy and not so filled with unneeded or unwanted angst. True, these students had their own mess of issues and they had it better than some of those in their age group, but this confrontation between Bender and Vernon is still epic because one way or another, a lot of us have been at this crossroads in life when rebellion is the only way forward, no matter what the results end up being.
2. The Godfather
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idP5-vtkhBE
You wouldn’t think that there would be a lot of comedic moments in a drama like The Godfather, but this moment when Vito Corleone grips his godson Johnny Fontaine by the arms and shouts at him to ‘act like a man’ is enough to startle a chuckle from a lot of people since it’s what a lot of us men would like to do to certain people in our lives, not the ‘act like a man’ utterance, but a simple shock to the system to break people out of their funk.
1. Stand By Me
Ah yes, the one that started me on this list in the first place. There’s more comedy in this movie than was likely intended since the guys definitely had enough chemistry to really make it work. But watching Vern trying to shuffle his chubby-cheeked self along the railroad tracks and Gordie yelling at him that they were going to die somehow became morbidly funny since Vern was the whipping boy of the group and as a result was bound to catch a lot of the hell just for being himself. Poor Vern indeed, but he provided a few good and hearty laughs along the way.
Oh yes, laughing is sometimes the better choice.
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