The 5 Best Opening Scenes (& 5 Best Endings) Of Comedies

The beginning scene of a comedy film has to hook the viewer and keep them laughing. The end has to put the button on the movie, like Some Like It Hot.

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The most important moment in a movie is arguably its ending. One could argue that the climax is the most important moment — it’s the peak of the movie, and if done right, it pays off all the story threads in a satisfying way — but the ending is the last thing the audience sees before they leave the theater (unless they’re watching a Marvel movie and there’s a post-credits scene on the way). The second most important moment, if it isn’t the climax, is the opening scene, which has to set the tone and hook viewers into the story.

Opening scenes and endings play very differently in comedies than in movies of any other genre. The opening has to establish the movie’s comic sensibility as well as its plot, while the ending has to act as the punchline to the movie’s central joke.

10 Opening Scene: Team America: World Police

Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s intention with Team America: World Police was to make a Michael Bay action thriller with Thunderbirds-style puppets, with plenty of satire of the Bush administration and U.S. foreign policy along the way.

The opening action scene sees the titular squad arriving in Paris to kill some terrorists — and marionettes aside, it plays exactly like a Bayhem actioner. They accidentally blow up the Eiffel Tower, which then falls onto the Arc de Triomphe.

9 Ending: Dr. Strangelove

Not many comedies end with the destruction of all life on Earth. But at the end of Stanley Kubrick’s masterful political satire Dr. Strangelove, that’s exactly what happens.

Using Vera Lynn’s “We’ll Meet Again” on the soundtrack over a series of devastating nuclear explosions was a stroke of ironic genius (reportedly suggested by Spike Milligan), highlighting how World War II-era optimism had become obsolete in the WMD age.

8 Opening Scene: Pineapple Express

In the opening black-and-white scene of the Seth Rogen/James Franco stoner comedy Pineapple Express, the U.S. government is studying newly discovered weed — or “Item 9” — in a secret underground lab.

A test subject played by Bill Hader is given a joint and observed by scientists. They interview him and after he questions their authority and methods, the government decides to illegalize Item 9 and shoot Hader dead.

7 Ending: Blazing Saddles

Mel Brooks satirized the blatant mythmaking of the western genre with his spot-on parody Blazing Saddles, calling attention to the ugly racial context that’s often ignored by westerns. In the third act, this deconstruction goes to the next level as it plays on the artifice of cinema as a whole.

The final battle continues over onto the next soundstage, followed by the the studio cafeteria, and then onto the streets of Los Angeles. Sheriff Bart and the Waco Kid go to the movies to see how the movie they’re in ends. They gallantly ride off into the sunset, jump off their horses… and slip into a car.

6 Opening Scene: Pulp Fiction

Quentin Tarantino insists that his movies are dramas and not comedies, but they all have a great sense of humor, and in the case of the writer-director’s sophomore feature Pulp Fiction, it feels like a full-blown pitch-black comedy.

The opening scene establishes Tarantino’s unique tone — combining old-timey crime stories with the visuals of an urban spaghetti western — with a diner robbery accompanied by Dick Dale’s “Misirlou.”

5 Ending: The Italian Job

The final scene of the classic 1969 crime caper The Italian Job is one of the most renowned ambiguous endings in film history. After the heist goes off without a hitch, the gang disguises themselves as a coach full of football fans in the Alps.

The movie ends with a cliffhanger in the literal sense as their bus gets stuck teetering on the edge of a cliff and the gold is sliding toward the doors. Michael Caine delivers the iconic final line: “Hang on a minute, lads, I’ve got a great idea.”

4 Opening Scene: Manhattan

The opening montage of Woody Allen’s Manhattan is a near-perfect movie movement. Over black-and-white shots of New York, the lead character’s voiceover narration tries to write the opening paragraph of a novel about a man who loves the city.

This is beautifully paired with the sounds of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” There are no laughs in this sequence, but it sets the stage perfectly.

3 Ending: Some Like It Hot

Hailed as one of the greatest movies of all time and one of the main reasons why the restrictive Hays Code was abolished, Some Like It Hot ends with the perfect punchline. Jerry, dressed as a woman called “Daphne,” has caught the eye of Osgood, who wants to marry him.

He frantically lists off reasons why Osgood can’t marry him, but none of them seem to bother him, so Jerry eventually takes off his wig and says, “I’m a man!” But even that doesn’t faze Osgood, who simply says, “Well, nobody’s perfect.”

2 Opening Scene: The Big Lebowski

From “Tumbling Tumbleweeds” on the soundtrack to the L.A. skyline at night to Sam Elliott’s voiceover narration, the opening of the Coens’ The Big Lebowski perfectly introduces moviegoers to the curious world of their stoner noir.

The Dude buys some milk to make White Russians and returns home, where some hired goons dunk him in his own toilet in a case of mistaken identity. And so, this carefree pothead is swept up in a Chandleresque mystery plot.

1 Ending: Monty Python’s Life Of Brian

After the hilariously anticlimactic ending of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the Pythons managed to top themselves with an even more spectacular final scene in their follow-up film, Life of Brian. Brian is mistaken for the son of God and hoisted up on a cross to be crucified. All the supporting characters come and go without helping him down and it looks inevitable that he’s going to be killed.

And then, a fellow prisoner played by Eric Idle breaks into a delightfully whimsical musical number that’s applicable in almost any situation, including crucifixion: “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.”

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/best-comedy-film-beginning-final-scenes-some-like-hot/