Five Terrible Comedies Containing One Hilarious, Redeeming Joke
It’s no secret that Hollywood routinely churns out some tremendously god-awful comedies, thereby keeping Rob Schneider off the streets and away from the poor people he vocally despises. While one might assume that these bottom-of-the-barrel movies are total write-offs, there are some singular nuggets of comedic gold to be found in these giant cinematic turds, such as…
Click right here to get the best of Cracked sent to your inbox.
‘The Love Guru’: ‘You’re Back on Drugs, Aren’t You?’
“Like Austin Powers, but with more casual racism and scenes featuring Justin Timberlake as a French Canadian hockey player named Jacques ‘Le Coq’ Grandé,” is presumably how Mike Myers pitched The Love Guru, a movie enjoyed by precisely no one. That being said, there are a few funny scenes featuring a pair of hockey commentators played by Stephen Colbert and Jim Gaffigan — the best being Colbert’s random, ill-timed drug trip (“I like the Christmas babies, Trent!”).
‘Holmes & Watson’: Billy Zane Randomly Shows Up
Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly’s Sherlock Holmes parody sucked so phenomenally hard even Netflix, the same platform that gave us Lindsay Lohan’s Christmasy brain-damage movie, didn’t want to touch it with a 10-foot magnifying glass. But we’d be lying if we didn’t admit that it’s kind of funny that the movie boasts a gleefully anachronistic climax involving Queen Victoria and the Titanic (the “safest ship to sail”). Best of all, the villain of James Cameron’s Titanic, the “breathtaking” Billy Zane, shows up in the film’s final moments as… himself?
‘Jack & Jill’: Jill Goes on ‘The Price Is Right’
Adam Sandler starring in a movie in which he plays his own twin sister (who hooks up with a horned-up Al Pacino) feels like a throwaway joke from 30 Rock, but it is, in fact, an honest-to-goodness motion picture. Jack and Jill is notoriously terrible, but it has one moment that somehow makes us laugh — when Jill appears on The Price Is Right, she gets a chance to spin the big wheel and immediately knocks herself out cold. And really, how is this not constantly happening in real life?
‘Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj’: ‘You Want to Exploit Me Economically?’
Not letting Ryan Reynolds’ absence deter them, the producers of Van Wilder went ahead and made a sequel without Van Wilder. Which would be like making a John Wick sequel without John Wick. Or a Bourne movie about some rando played by Jeremy Renner. The story pivots to focus on Taj (played by Kal Penn), who does at least land one A+ zinger. After the snobby British antagonist wants to turn their fencing match into a first-blood duel, declaring, “Let’s settle this like my ancestors did, shall we?” a confused Taj responds, “You want to exploit me economically?”
‘Bio-Dome’: ‘Back and to the Left’
Pairing the grating comedy of Pauly Shore with the non-existent comedy of Stephen Baldwin, Bio-Dome was one of the most mind-numbing buddy movies of the 1990s, but it did feature one gloriously bizarre (and dark) joke. We briefly see the local TV channel’s obsession over the Zapruder film-like footage of a sniper taking out a clown. The news anchor solemnly uttering the words “a clown” while shaking his head in disbelief is by far the funniest thing in this movie.
You (yes, you) should follow JM on Twitter (if it still exists by the time you’re reading this).
