It’s a timely week to be writing this because after this past weekend’s domestic box office take, we have a new number-one movie on this list. Comedies are not usually as big a box office draw as an action/adventure or superhero/fantasy film, but due to a minimal amount of money spent on casting, sets and costumes, and usually no special effects, they are one of the most affordable risks for a studio. However, an R-rating severely limits mainstream potential. The films on this list are rare beasts indeed. They all rode some sort of cultural wave to become the top-grossing R-rated comedies in America. If you have a list you’d like to contribute to Top 10 Tuesday, email me at eric@scene-stealers.com.

10. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) - $128,505,958

Sacha Baron Cohen’s first reality-based prank movie debuted on only 837 screens in 2006, but grossed a wholly unexpected $26.5 million. “Da Ali G Show” was a mild hit on HBO, but it had a huge buzz and people were talking about this movie. Uninitiated moviegoers were intrigued by these strange ads and TV appearances by Cohen in character as Borat. Many people, in a funny parallel with “The Blair Witch Project,” thought this Borat guy was for real. The mix of real situations and a fictional plot made it hard for audiences to tell what was “real” and what wasn’t. They told their friends, and “Borat” did something few movies do. It grossed more in its second weekend. Expanding to 2,566 theaters, “Borat” made $28.3 million in its second week. “Brüno” opened this weekend with a bigger “30.4” million, but it was on 3,400 screens and—even though its material is more outrageous than “Borat”—it suffers from feeling a little too familiar following the groundbreaking status of its predecessor.

9. National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) - $141,600,000

Besides entering the words “toga party” and “food fight” into the popular lexicon, “Animal House” also one of the most profitable movies of all time. This John Landis-directed comedy featured John Belushi (from the still-new late night “Saturday Night Live”), Donald Sutherland, and a cast of then-unknowns (including Kevin Bacon, Karen Allen, Thomas Hulce, and Tim Matheson). It only cost $2.7 million to make, and $50,000 of that was spent on Sutherland alone. (He was actually offered a lower salary at one point and percentage points, which he turned down—assuming the film would go nowhere—and costing him millions of dollars.) This was released back in a time when there were fewer prints and they remained in theaters for a longer time, making it the most impressive box office run on the list. Its opening weekend? A mere $276,538 in 12 theaters. Regardless, it ended up being the third biggest movie of 1978 and stayed in theaters even longer than that.

8. American Pie 2 (2001) - $145,103,595

1999’s “American Pie” was credited with bringing the R-rated teen comedy (a genre popularized by “Animal House”) back into vogue. Ads showing star Jason Biggs putting his—ahem—member into a warm pie were enough to stir curiosity and good reviews earned the movie positive word of mouth. While its sequel wasn’t so lucky in that area, “American Pie 2” falls into the category of films that benefitted from their predecessor greatly. The first “American Pie” was a $102,000 smash, but it only opened at $18 million. Two months later, it was still earning a million a week. The 2001 sequel scored a huge opening weekend of $45 million off of the first movie’s good name, but posted a bigger drop-off. Two months later, it was earning only $300,000.

7. Knocked Up (2007) - $148,768,917

The same might be said about Judd Apatow’s follow-up to “The 40-Year-Old Virgin,” an unexpected 2005 smash that launched the career of then-unknown Steve Carell. The posters for “Knocked Up” even featured Seth Rogen with a nerdy look—similar to Carell’s “Virgin” poster—and the tagline “What if this guy got you pregnant?” The difference between “Knocked Up” and American Pie 2,” however, was lots of critical acclaim and great audience response. It made several critics’ best-of-2007 lists (including the AFI Top 10, and lists from the New York Times, Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, The Onion’s AV Club, Associated Press, Rolling Stone, and mine(!)). Like Carell before him, it made Rogen (a supporting player in “Virgin”) a star and began the onslaught of Apatow Frat Pack ‘Junior Varsity’ player movies—a stupid term used to denote anything starring, written by, or produced by Apatow or his friends. “Knocked Up” spent eight weeks in the box office top 10, the longest streak amongst May-June openers in 2007.

6. Sex and the City (2008) - $152,647,258

Really? Wow. Who woulda thunk it? Never underestimate the power of women. The magnitude of this 6-season HBO show spinoff’s box office take can only be described one way: Women like raunchy movies too, especially when they’re told from a woman’s perspective. The film was set three years after the series finale, and like “American Pie 2,” it benefitted from a huge opening weekend ($57 million), due mostly to a built-in audience from the popular show. Despite middling reviews, “Sex and the City” recorded the biggest opening ever for an R-rated comedy and for a romantic comedy. You know what this means: All four actresses (Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Nixon, and Kristin Davis), as well as writer-director Michael Patrick King, are set to return for “Sex and the City 2,” due in theaters May 28, 2010.

5. Scary Movie (2000) - $157,019,771

This Keenan Ivory Wayans-directed parody film struck a chord with viewers who had been big fans of the late 90’s rebirth of teen horror flicks—due mainly to the “Scream” trilogy that began in 1996. It was co-written by, and starred, his brothers Shawn and Marlon and it also launched the career of current go-to funnygirl Anna Faris. Unfortunately, it also launched the careers of low-budget parody hacks Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, who wrote and directed “Date Movie,” “Epic Movie,” “Meet the Spartans,” and “Disaster Movie” (which all also star the equally talented Carmen Electra and are hugely profitable affairs). The first “Scary Movie,” however, was actually very funny—a raunchy, no-holds-barred spoof that was also smart enough to make fun of non-horror flicks like “The Usual Suspects” and “The Matrix.” In addition to the Friedberg/Seltzer movies, “Scary Movie” spawned three sequels of diminishing returns, with David Zucker (“The Naked Gun,” “Airplane!”) taking over for Ivory Wayans in 2003 on “Scary Movie 3.”

4. Pretty Woman (1990) - $178,406,268

Is it weird to have never seen the movie that catapulted Julia Roberts into the spotlight? I missed out on this little $14 million romantic comedy in the theaters and by the time it turned into this big deal, I wasn’t really interested. Richard Gere was the name star at the time, but Roberts went on to become one of the most bankable stars of the 90s following the success of “Pretty Woman.” She even won a Golden Globe and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress (losing to Kathy Bates in “Misery”) for her star-making turn. “Pretty Woman” was initially intended to be a dark drama about prostitution in Los Angeles called “Three-Thousand,” but was reconceptualized somewhere along the line by screenwriter J.F. Lawton as a romantic comedy. Maybe if it would have stayed a drama Roberts would have had a better chance at that Oscar. Ha!

3. There’s Something About Mary (1998) - $176,484,651

First: The stats. By combining over-the-top gross-out humor with a dash of romantic comedy, the Farrelly brothers struck paydirt and made Ben Stiller a bankable comedy star. This movie absolutely exemplifies a word-of-mouth success. It opened in July, but didn’t hit the number-one spot on the box office chart until its eighth week of wide release in September! Second: The sad personal story. This movie cost me a chance at $250,000. Click here to read the story of how I lost an easy, easy question about “Mary” on VH1’s “World Series of Pop Culture.” (Hint: It involves me not answering the words “hair gel” correctly and an explicit second-by-second recounting of the thoughts in my head at that moment.) Third, an epilogue to this tragedy: I moved last year and discovered something awful in the bottom of a box—an official “There’s Something About Mary” promo item. What could it have been? You guessed it. It was a packet of hair gel with the movie logo plastered all over it. If only I had unpacked since the last time I moved. So lame.

2. Wedding Crashers (2005) - $209,255,921

Sure, it followed the success of “American Pie,” but the record-breaking gross of “Wedding Crashers” was only just eclipsed this past weekend, which is pretty amazing. Over $200 million for an R-rated comedy was unheard of. The high-concept “Wedding Crashers” really paved the way for “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and lots of modern comedies’ willingness to “go there.” The movie feels about a half hour too long, but features a winning combination of raunchy sex humor and sweetness, anchored by Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn’s natural rapport. This movie also waited for a while—three weeks—to hit number one at the box office. It was held back by Tim Burton’s “Charlie and the Chocolate factory,” which would gross a little more than half as much by the end of its run. This was one of the first movies Scene-Stealers.com reviewed, as evidenced by the clip we used in our Scene-Stealers trailer/parody of KISS’ “Lick it Up” video.

1. The Hangover (2009) - $222,442,000 (as of July 13,2009)

Here it is, folks—your new number-one R-rated comedy champ. Todd Phillips’ sloppy-but-funny “The Hangover” follows the same pattern as a lot of movies on this list: It combines raunchy, male-oriented humor with a cast of on-the-cusp stars and an easy-to-describe high concept. (“Oh, did you see the movie about the guys who wake up in Vegas with after a bachelor party and they’ve lost the groom?” It’s just like: “Did you see the movie about the 40-year-old virgin?” or “Did you see the movie about the guys who crash weddings to get unattached chicks?”) One big difference is that its producers saw its impending success before it was even released, ordering a sequel, which is already in the works. It remains to be seen whether Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, and Zach Galifianakis are able to capitalize on their newfound fame like Carell or Rogen or Stiller did, but right now let’s just marvel that a movie as dirty as this IS the mainstream. “Brüno” certainly pushed the raunch factor further this week, but Cohen’s movie is too confrontational to be a $200 million hit. In the end, “The Hangover” has that “Wedding Crashers” sweetness, which gives it a much wider audience potential. It has only been out for 6 weeks, and last weekend’s $9 million take proves that it’s still got some legs.

Tags: 10, adult, best, biggest, comedies, dirty, funny, gross, grossing, highest, Highest Grossing R-Rated Comedies, list, rated, rated-r, raunchy, restricted, ten, top, Top 10 Lists, top ten

The box office performance of “Observe and Report” this past weekend proves that subversive comedies usually have a way harder time finding an audience than a nice, family-friendly picture, even when that movie stars Seth Rogen. Funny thing is, subversive comedies often make a bigger impact and have a longer shelf life. To make this list, the movie has to challenge some culturally accepted notions or possess a generally rude rebellious streak. Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers,” for example, doesn’t make the list because for all of its posturing and flashiness, it’s completely obvious and says nothing new about the media. If you have a Top 10 list of your own you’d like to contribute, email me at eric@scene-stealers.com. Enjoy!

Runners-up: Obviously, I like subversive comedy. I’ve already written about “Borat,” “Harold and Maude,” “Office Space,” “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut,”  “Series 7,” the original “Dawn of the Dead,” “Bulworth,” “Happiness,” “The Graduate,” “Brazil,” and “Dr. Strangelove” on other lists, so I’ll make them runners-up (even though “Dr. Strangelove” should probably be #1 here—I can’t have it on every list!) and include links to the other Top 10s they appear on here. Click on the title to see the original post.

10. Nurse Betty (2000)

On the surface, Neil LaBute’s black comedy is about a sweet little soap-opera-obsessed waitress from a diner in Kansas (Renée Zellweger) who travels to Los Angeles to meet her favorite actor (Greg Kinnear). What actually happens, though, is that the innocent Betty goes into shock, entering a psychological fugue state after watching her drug-dealing, cheating husband (Aaron Eckhart) get scalped(!) by two hitmen (Chris Rock and Morgan Freeman). These killers chase Betty—who has broken from reality so hard that she thinks she’s actually a part of the fictional soap opera—as she drives west to find Kinnear’s fictional doctor. Soon everybody starts playing by her rules, as Betty sucks Kinnear’s actor character into her reality and he thinks she’s a struggling method actor. In uniquely bizarre climactic scene, he gambles on her never-breaking-character routine and puts her on live TV. Lost you yet? While this is all happening, Freeman falls in love with his prey, and two bumbling cops rush cross-country to try and protect her. Like “Observe and Report,” “Nurse Betty” switches its tone on a dime and is a juggling act that doesn’t always work. Like “Observe and Report,” it’s also alternately ugly and charming—an absurd look at identity and societal roles where everyone falls under the spell of an ordinary woman who radiates goodness and purity.

9. Putney Swope (1969)

Directed by Robert Downey Sr. (yes, it’s his Dad), this spotty but inspired black-and-white B-movie was a sensation when it came out but is somehow nearly forgotten today. A black man named Putney Swope (Arnold Johnson, voice dubbed uncomfortably by Downey himself) becomes the head of an otherwise all-white New York ad agency after all the other executives vote for him to be the new boss thinking that no one else will. Re-dubbed “Truth and Soul, Inc.”, Swope hires militant blacks and gets to work making outrageous attack-style anti-consumerist ads right away. His new motto for Truth and Soul is: “Rockin’ the boat’s a drag. You gotta sink the boat!” He refuses to make commercials for cigarettes, war toys, and liquor, instead making ludicrously shocking commercials (in color even) like the interracial duet for Face-Off Acne Cream (“Pimples are simple”) and the ad for Dinkleberry Frozen Chicken Pot Pies (“Miss Redneck, N.J. is a social worker and her favorite hobby is emasculation”). Not enough for ya? There’s an Abraham Lincoln dartboard in the boardroom and the President of the United States is played by a pot-smoking German midget. This low-budget curiosity is all over the place, but every moment thumbs its nose at conventional society.

8. They Live (1988)

Since I’ve already covered Terry Gilliam’s brilliant and disturbing dystopian future in “Brazil” on my Top 10 Movies That Prove the Future Will Suck list, I’ve decided to shine the spotlight on that film’s looser, shaggier stepchild. John Carpenter’s “They Live” takes place in an America in economic crisis (sound familiar?) and when unemployed construction worker Nada (pro wrestler “Rowdy” Roddy Piper) puts on a pair of sunglasses, he is the only one who can see that all the bankers and politicians in power are actually aliens with metallic skull faces. Laughing yet? You will be. Nada also notices subliminal messages on billboards that read “OBEY” and “CONSUME,” while our currency reads “THIS IS YOUR GOD.” Carpenter’s movie falls too often into action/thriller cliché, but its central theme—that upper-class greed is taking over the world like an alien invasion—is even more relevant today than it was in 1988. Add in some hilarious dialogue (“I’m here to chew bubblegum and kick ass, and I’m all out of bubblegum!”) and a seemingly neverending fight scene over a refusal to put on the special sunglasses, and you’ve got an erratic but nevertheless subversive comedy classic. Oh yeah, and—a remake is in the works. Hurm.

7. Pink Flamingos (1972)

Trying to summarize the plot of this filthy little film in one paragraph is futile, so let’s just say it involves a couple who kidnap and impregnate young women to sell their babies to lesbians, which, in turn, finances an elementary school heroin trade. The film’s tagline is truth in advertising: “An exercise in poor taste.” Despite being filmed for only $10,000, “Pink Flamingos” immediately launched its star (drag queen extraordinaire Divine) and its director (John Waters) into the collective consciousness of film fans across the globe. Waters narrates the film in—what had to have been a last minute attempt to make some kind of sense out of it—an annoying shout that matches the film’s campy tone and exaggerated “acting” style. It’s not a good film by any normal standards, but who can apply a value-driven checklist to a movie that revels in its lack of technical know-how, happy as a pig in shit? You can’t. What even the most jaded film fan will find, however, are a large number of “huh?”moments that are kind of liberating. How else would I be able to describe a movie where a mother gives her son oral sex and enthusiastically eats dog feces as “fun”?

6. Citizen Ruth (1996)

What’s funnier than abortion? Well, almost everything, but that didn’t stop writer/director Alexander Payne from making this subversive comedy starring Laura Dern as a paint-huffing pregnant woman who finds herself in the middle of a raging political debate. This comedy could have been a dismal wreck. After Dern pukes on the hood of his car, a policeman actually says to his partner about her: “I’ll drive her by the pound on the way to the station and get her spayed.” The question you have to ask through all of this, though, is who’s crazier—the cash-strapped, pregnant drug user (who’s had and lost four children already) or the zealots on either side of the pro-life/pro-choice debate? Payne skewers both in equal measure and his screenplay (co-authored with Jim Taylor) manages to say some bleakly funny things that a drama about the same subject would never be able to approach. One particularly inspired bit of casting comes in the form of Burt Reynolds as a pious, over-the-top televangelist. Like “Dr. Strangelove” parodied the military-industrial complex, “Citizen Ruth” mercilessly lampoons the abortion debate and Ruth becomes a political tool for extremists on both sides.

5. M*A*S*H (1970)

Although it is set in Korea, Robert Altman’s anti-establishment comedy was actually a not-so-thinly veiled and pointed attack on the then-raging Vietnam War. Donald Sutherland and Elliott Gould are two military surgeons struggling to maintain their sanity through boozing, sex, and an utter contempt for authority in this cultural watershed movie. Altman’s almost complete disregard for Ring Larder Jr.’s script and his improvisatory style of shooting scared not only the studio, but also the film’s stars. “Donald and Elliott went in about a quarter of the way through the picture and tried to have me fired because they said I was going to ruin their careers,” Altman said. Struggles with the studio finally ceased after a wildly successful preview screening and the movie went on to gross $80 million and signal a new era of filmmaking in Hollywood. Not everyone agrees it’s a classic, though, as one of our user-contributed Top 10 lists had this film at #3 of the Most Overrated Movies.

4. Heathers (1989)

Question: When is teen suicide funny? Answer: When it actually turns out to be murder! What? Yeah, you read that correctly.  In addition, “Heathers” plays it all for laughs. This hilarious and shocking movie is still the nastiest and most bizarre of all teen comedies even after 20 years. Winona Ryder and Christian Slater are a high school Bonnie and Clyde making their way through the popular clique. Armed with a battery of surreal dream sequences, its own biting vocabulary (“Well, f*ck me gently with a chainsaw.”), and a sympathetic Ryder who manically expunges her demons and explores her conscience in her diary (giving us her outrage and sympathy), “Heathers” gave every teenaged outsider a screaming voice of discontent and a healthy amount of violent wish fulfillment at the same time. It’s really too bad that director Michael Lehmann (“Hudson Hawk,” “40 Days and 40 Nights,” “My Giant”) and writer Daniel Waters (“Batman Returns,” “Happy Campers,” “Sex and Death 101”) haven’t even come close to the dizzying highs of their first movie project.

3. The Great Dictator (1940)

Charlie Chaplin’s “Monsieur Verdoux” was certainly subversive in that Chaplin broke from his Tramp character completely and portrayed a cold-blooded serial killer, but it was this movie that took on Adolf Hitler and the entire Nazi movement before America was even at war with them. This was also Chaplin’s first feature-length “talkie,” and it saw him taking the dual role of a tyrannical dictator named Adenoid Hynkel (guess who?) and a lowly barber. Chaplin portrays Hynkel and his followers as stupid bullies and arrogant buffoons, including one famous scene that has the dictator dancing with a globe to a Wagner overture. The movie was a great success and became Chaplin’s highest-grossing film ever. As more details of Nazi war atrocities were made public, however, Chaplin admitted that had he known the extent of their crimes, he wouldn’t have been able to portray the stormtroopers in the movie in such a slapstick manner. The final scene, where the barber delivers a message of hope in disguise as the dictator (and many in the audience felt Chaplin himself was making the plea), may seem a little schmaltzy now, but in the context of World War II, it definitely resonated with audiences.

2. Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979)

I don’t think this will be on the Heartland list of Truly Moving Pictures anytime soon, but what better way to engage with the absurdities of the Bible than with a side-splitting satire of the New Testament? Before the idea had even been hatched really, Monty Python troupe member Eric Idle offhandedly remarked to the press that their next film (following the hugely successful “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”) would be titled “Jesus Christ: Lust for Glory.” That sparked the idea of Brian—a man (Graham Chapman) who is mistaken for the Messiah, tries to evade worshippers and enemies alike, and is eventually crucified to the tune of a catchy little ditty called “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.” The movie mercilessly criticizes those pesky antithetical side effects of organized religion, and even director Terry Jones admits that the movie is “heretical.” However, he also believes that “it’s not blasphemous.” Even though most of the pointed satire is delivered through the story of the decidedly non-Messianic Brian (thereby avoiding blasphemy - kind of a technicality), the rampant fanaticism and hypocrisy that the Pythons poke fun at is universal.

1. Starship Troopers (1997)

This is the most subversive comedy ever made because it’s possible—if you close your eyes to its overtly fascist ideology and all the Nazi-like military dress—to think that “Starship Troopers” is simply a dumb action movie with bad acting and giant bugs. In fact, director Paul Verhoeven’s film is subversive  in more ways than one.

It also deserves the top spot here because the movie purposely does something that few films actually do on purpose: It subverts the entire message of the Robert Heinlein sci-fi novel on which it’s based. Ouch.

The book—which envisions a society where the government only gives the right to vote to youths who fulfill their “terms of service,” which was usually in the military—was criticized as fascist when it was published in 1959. Verhoeven keeps Heinlein’s ideas intact, but pokes fun at them mercilessly throughout the movie with hilarious mini-propaganda films (one featuring soldiers giving guns to little kids), tons of Nazi iconography, and cruel military training that includes public flogging and “friendly” fire.

Moreover, he uses an enthusiastic young cast and has them act as if they just stepped out of the latest “Saved by the Bell” episode. They begin the war a bunch of idealized lemmings and come out changed by the horrors of war. It’s never explicitly said who started the war (though the humans are the ones invading the “bug” planets), but to anyone in military service, it doesn’t matter. Graphic depictions of said actors getting ripped in half by giant bugs underscore the consequences of a jingoistic worldview. You may be thinking, “Wait one minute—this was supposed to be a list of comedies!” “Starship Troopers” is a comedy. From the cheesy, naïve dialogue and acting (again, this was on purpose, to achieve an effect) to the laugh-out-loud absurdity of the Federation’s slanted news shorts (Fox News, anyone?), “Starship Troopers” is the funniest movie to have such scary foresight into what would become post-9/11 extreme patriotism. Plus, you get to see Neil Patrick Harris mature into Joseph Mengele. How is that not funny?

I Twittered/Facebooked yesterday while I was writing this list and got tons of great suggestions. Here’s a sampling to get the comments started:

@TreyHock: It’s a Wonderful Life is basically a treatise for communism wrapped in a christmas movie. Pretty awesome.
@ToServeMan: Does THEY LIVE qualify as a comedy?
@worleygirl: One fave is the much overlooked Parents, from ‘89. Bonus: the kid in it looks just like Ron Hayes. http://bit.ly/1LuNrr
@danielc: An old roommate of mine had a soft spot for Cry-Baby. I’d say Election is up there. (I would too, but I didn’t want to put two Alexander Payne movies on the list and I’d already included “Citizen Ruth.”—Eric)
@ManMadeMoon (or Duncan Jones, director of the upcoming film “Moon,” starring Sam Rockwell) retweeted @jpgardner’s suggestions: Robert Altman’s MASH to @SceneStealrEric for subversive comedies. Also, The Graduate, Catch 22 & Dr. Strangelove
@softreeds: Tapeheads.
@BeckIreland: And the original of The Out-of-Towners and Fun With Dick and Jane
@kcklo63: I think every Michael Moore movie fits into that category. Super Size Me? Born on the Fourth of July? 9 1/2 Weeks?
@dumbwhore: Brazil or Office Space. can’t decide

Sorcha Father Ted
Tim M. Neighbors
Tim V. heathers, hudsucker proxy, high school high, they live
Laura Oh. Okay. Monty Python’s Life of Brian, Brazil, Dead Alive, Dawn of the Dead (1978), The Big Lebowski
Sara Dr. Strangelove of course. I also second Life of Brian and Brazil. Harold and Maude, Desperate Living (since John Waters was mentioned), Series 7.
Dustin the dudesons.
Richard Hot Rod. Definitely Hot Rod.
Scott Bunuel movies like The Milky Way, Viridiana, or even Discreet Charm. Oh, don’t get me started!
Colin “Josie and the Pussycats,” now and forever.
Brad nurse betty, citizen ruth
Adam M. I vote Man Bites Dog or Tromeo and Juliet
Adam S. hank and mike. its very funny, and subversive, and even from canada.
Jeremy putney swope!

Tags: 10, best, biggest, films, funniest, funny, Hilarious, list, most, movies, shocking, subversive, ten, top, Top 10 Subversive Comedies, Top ten Subversive Comedies