CB Top 5: Raunch Comedies

5.Caddyshack (1980)

MACK RAWDEN: Get your ass off the couch. Pull out your blender from the cabinet and fire that mechanical wiz up. Throw in some booze, a little bit of peanut butter, maybe even some biscuits and gravy. That's it. Now give it a good whirl and wait for the goodness to soak together. You see that orangey concoction? That muddy mixed drink is the recipe Caddyshack producers used to cast the film. Don't believe me? Try and picture the casting session in your mind. I see a bunch of coked out executives throwing random comedic talent into a Kitchen Aide. What about Ted Knight? Yeah, he's funny. How about Chevy Chase? Or Bill Murray? Who cares if they're all psychotic and maybe benefitting from an extra chromosome? A cynic might tell you that slopping random shit into a boozy blender will only make you sick, but if you try enough times, you'll eventually get the best Margarita of your life. Caddyshack is that Margarita. And if that doesn't work, well, you can always talk to Rodney Dangerfield and make fourteen dollars the hard way. It's in the hole!

JD MCNAMARA: When I think of Caddyshack, I always picture the same scene, because it perfectly captures the atmosphere and nature of the movie. Imagine the swimming pool of a quiet and sophisticated Country Club. Now imagine it being taken hostage by a hundred of the raunchiest, slimiest, least likely candidates to be found on the premises of said pretentious Country Club. As hilarious as this sounds, it’s not the film’s defining moment because then, lurking idly in the shallow water, waiting to make its Jaws like attack is a.... FLOOOAATTEERRRRR! The inevitable mad dash to exit the pool leaves a wake of chaos that has me in stitches every single time. But the genius of the sequence comes when a dead-panned Bill Murray, who’s scrubbing every inch of the pool clean, comes across the aforementioned “floater” and promptly takes a bite out of it, because of course, it’s actually a chocolate bar. Classic. There’s also the fact that Caddyshack is the greatest golf movie ever made and has Chevy Chase in his prime, when he was one of the funniest actors around. It saddens me that he’s slipped into the realm of irrelevancy, but at least I can always depend on Ty Webb.

4. Knocked Up (2007)

RAFE TELSCH: Knocked Up has it all in one package. On one hand you have the very complicated journey of a man having to face that ultimate hurdle of adulthood: getting pregnant. Since the pregnancy isn’t intentional, Judd Apatow gets to have more of a man-child as his main character. None of that journey towards maturity even comes close to touching the raunch humor of Ben’s sophomoric friends however. If bongs, mushrooms, and stripper clubs aren’t enough, you have pillow fights involving poo (leading to an outbreak of pink eye), stupid dares and bets, and, of course, the promotion of every stupid sexual myth known to man. In fact, the stupidity is the reason to watch this movie. The rather wise journey to maturity is just bonus.

ED PERKIS: Comedies need to be funny and so many are not. Someone comes up with a funny idea but doesn’t write any funny lines for the actors to say. Knocked-Up starts with a mediocre idea, shlubby stoner gets hot career chick pregnant, and piles on the funniest lines from a movie in the last 20 years. Director Judd Apatow then lets the cast run wild on his basic framework. Part of the fun in watching this movie is hearing the ad-libbed lines that are making not only the audience laugh, but also the cast and sometimes the guy who came up with it. That sort of realistic response separates this movie from many where someone says something funny and nobody reacts.

3. Fast Times At Ridgemont High (1982)

MACK RAWDEN: Most high school sex romps fail because the characters are bloated stereotypes with little to no depth. Fast Times At Ridgemont High succeeds because it's the exact opposite. Made five years before I was even conceived, Amy Heckerling's masterpiece is a collage of fascinating, complex personalities that talk, act, and swear like real people. High and mighty hypocrites like to cast this film off as sophomoric and sex obsessed; but those idiotic, chastising claims ignore one crucial fact: every adolescent I've ever met is sophomoric and sex obsessed. Getting ass is the adhesive that binds every generation together. Without it, we'd all be dead, or worse have nothing to brag about.

ED PERKIS: The movie not only started the careers of Sean Penn, Judge Reinhold, Forest Whittaker, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Anthony Edwards, Eric Stoltz, Nicolas Cage, Cameron Crowe, and Amy Heckerling, but also gave a nice meaty role to the great Ray Walston. His Mr. Hand remains one of the few teenage raunch comedy adults who isn’t a moron or a total dick for no reason. He’s realistic and realism is what makes this movie so great. Stacy’s experiments with teenage sex don’t go well, guys lust after their sister’s unattainable friends, and the nerdy guy doesn’t get the hottest chick in class by winning some stupid competition. There are tons of laughs though, mostly thanks to Penn’s Spicoli, who gets all the great lines and made the surfer-stoner a movie staple for years to come.

2. Animal House (1978)

RAFE TELSCH: How Animal House didn’t wind up in the number one slot on this list is beyond me. Come on people – Bluto and his toga wearing sophomoric fraternity brothers are the great granddaddies of almost every other film on this list. In fact, just about every other movie that has to do with outcast fraternities owes their plot and ideas to the journey of Otter, Flounder, and the rest of the gang working their way into Delta House. Looking at a cast that includes Tim Matheson, Donald Sutherland, Bruce McGill, John Vernon, and (of course) John Belushi, it’s easy to see there will never be another Animal House, just cheep imitators. Remember: fat, drunk, and stupid is the Delta way to go through life.

JARAD WILK: Animal House is the quintessential college movie. It is the movie that all high school or college comedies strive to be, but fail so miserably in their attempts to duplicate. It is the perfect mix of fraternity antics, food fights, drinking, and sex, without any of the books or boring professors getting in the way. The music will make you want to shout, the party scenes will make you want to chug a bottle of Jack like John Belushi and the late John Vernon will make you hate all people in authority with his portrayal of Dean Wormer. It has and will continue to stand the test of time, no matter what year the film was made, and no matter how bad National Lampoon's movies are today. Animal House is a classic film that does not discriminate, even if your GPA is below average. Everybody is welcome, and everyone is bound to have an amazing time.

1. The 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005)

JOSH TYLER: For me, The 40 Year-Old Virgin isn’t just history’s greatest raunch comedy, it’s by far one of my favorite movies, and one that gets enough replay in my house to drive my wife completely nuts. What’s so amazing about the film is the way writer/director Judd Apatow and his cast get away with being raunchy. In other raunch-comedies, sex talk and body humor gets laughs through shock value. Apatow actually manages to make it sweet and endearing. In his hands those hilarious sex jokes come off simply as realistic. His characters talk the way real people talk, and face facts, a lot of us are pretty raunchy when nobody is looking. In particular, the film really gets the way guys relate to one another. Yes, the movie is about a guy losing his virginity, but more than that it’s about the bonds of friendship that form between Andy and the amazing cast who play his friends at work. The 40 Year-Old Virgin isn’t just funny, it’s romantic, it’s sick, it’s sweet, endearing, touching and the moment it hit theaters it became an instant classic. Virgin is first and foremost about all the things that make all of us human. In the end it’s so funny because, well, it’s true. That’s an even better kind of funny, unlike just about any other comedy, raunch or otherwise, you’re likely to encounter.

FRANK TABOURING: The 40 Year-Old Virgin really marked the beginning of the recent Judd Apatow phenomenon, and that alone is reason enough for it to enjoy its secured spot in the top five. For once, the subtle and rare combination of silly slapstick and warm-hearted, thought-provoking comedy worked out really well, which puts the film way above many others of the same genre. With Steve Carell in his best role yet, the movie generates great pleasure and pulls big laughs in following its protagonist on his quest to learn and practice the most diverse and odd flirting techniques, as well as his first steps toward sexual intercourse with a woman. Silly as it may be at times, The 40 Year-Old Virgin cares about both its characters and its audience, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is quite an achievement for Hollywood.

ALEXANDRA CALAMARI: One of the few raunch comedies that also has a tender love story embedded in it, The 40 Year Old Virgin launched Steve Carell as a headlining comedian and marks the first of several Judd Apatow box office hits. On that alone, this film knocks other similarly themed sex comedies out of the park. Countless flicks have featured angst-ridden teens trying to get laid (see American Pie 1-100), but when the protagonist is a forty-year-old stock clerk with an unforgivably hairy chest, it's a whole different level of comedy. But what truly sets the film apart is Steve Carell's endearing performance. He manages to make Andy’s story surprisingly romantic for a movie about losing your virginity. And of course there’s film's endless supply of one-liners, mostly thanks to Seth Rogan and Paul Rudd who will go down in history for introducing the phrase "you know how I know you're gay…" into modern jargon.

Nominated but didn’t make the cut: Bad Santa, Wedding Crashers, Team America: World Police, South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, Old School, American Pie, National Lampoon’s Family Vacation, Superbad, Something About Mary, Risky Business, Meatballs, Kentucky Fried Movie, Harold and Kumar Go to Whitecastle, Borat, Blazing Saddles, The Girl Next Door