By David Young · April 10, 2023
It all comes down to a high-stakes moment where everyone has tensed up in their seat. Right when there should be fear, desperation, or a badass minute of turning tables, someone cracks a joke. You’ve fallen victim to one of the most pervasive — and, at times, inventive — genres in film today. You’re watching action comedy movies.
Whether it’s a cop thriller, an alien invasion, or a heist, any archetypal plot in action can transform into a laughing fit. You just have to have the right writers behind it. Coming up with ways to make high-octane situations hilarious is not easy, but there are quite a few films that have earned recognition for doing exactly that. No matter how silly or intense, the combination of laughter and high stakes makes for an extremely good experience in these action comedy movies.
Scripts from this Article
21 Jump Street
Beverly Hills Cop
Men In Black
The Blues Brothers
Baby Driver
Hot Fuzz
Lethal Weapon
The Other Guys
A drug bust in a high school can go wrong in so many ways, but a buddy comedy can truly expound on those various options. When you watch this reimagining of the original TV concept, 21 Jump Street teaches you a lot about undercover policework — and about the ethical dilemmas that it creates in certain environments. But more than that, this film is about finding a sense of belonging, and a buddy cop comedy tackles that with jokes and uncomfortable ideas you couldn’t use in any other genre.
One of the most classic examples of an action comedy comes in the form of a timeless Eddie Murphy flick, Beverly Hills Cop. This fish-out-of-water story puts a hardened cop from Detroit on the streets of Beverly Hills as he investigates the murder of Axel’s (Eddie Murphy) best friend. This story was one of the original buddy cop comedies and an exploration of high-stakes situations in a comedic way that hadn’t been too prevalent before the 1980s — even setting the stage for other iconic movies like Lethal Weapon along the way.
If you ever wondered how an action comedy formula could be co-opted into a sci-fi world, your answer came into the world in 1997. Men In Black features a New York cop’s real-world sensibilities thrown into a setting of intergalactic proportions. From its recognizable absurdity to the high-stakes situations that evolve parallel to the fish-out-of-water story, this ’90s comedy learned from and perfected the action comedy elements from the decade before it. To this day, it’s one of the most poignant and well-timed action comedy films of all time, and it has a whole decade or more of movies to thank for that.
Not every action comedy features cop figures as the main characters. One prime example is The Blues Brothers, a film where a couple of musicians down on their luck try to turn things around by rebuilding their musical legacy. This narrative actively has the protagonists run afoul of various people — including the cops and some neo-Nazis — in their pursuit of a solution to their biggest problems. Anyone who’s a fan of having a laugh and some musical numbers in their film experience would do well to watch this “oldie but a goodie.”
Okay, if you’re saying, “Wait, Baby Driver is not an action comedy movie,” you’d be right. Technically, Cornetto Trilogy director Edgar Wright described it to Vulture as “an action-thriller that is funny throughout.” That’s good enough for me because Baby Driver has some truly hilarious moments sprinkled throughout its runtime, making the more serious parts of the film all the darker.
Read More: 3 Screenwriting Tips for Action that Sizzles
And here’s another action comedy movie from action comedy expert Edgar Wright. Fish-out-of-water comedies often fit the bill for creating a laughable situation for cop stories, and Hot Fuzz is no exception. What happens when you take a seasoned law enforcement officer and put them in a sleepy little village? In Hot Fuzz, that officer is Nicholas Angel (Simon Pegg), and he’ll jump at the chance to fix a problem and get some excitement. Things start to go wrong in his new home, and he has to sniff out the trouble — making some big, uncharacteristic waves for this tiny little town when he does!
Read More: 100 Comedies Edgar Wright Absolutely Loves
One of the most iconic action comedies known to the world is the Lethal Weapon franchise. With enough of the high-octane action that the 1980s audiences craved, the first Lethal Weapon film, written and directed by two action flick superstars, Shane Black and Richard Donner respectively, took big stakes and had a lot of dangerous fun with them — making it easier than ever to see why the “buddy cop” formula was so effective. The two protagonists are not fumbling through their jobs, but struggling to see eye to eye, and the playfulness with which the film does it makes this movie a comedy just as much as it is an action flick. More than anything, it’s an icon of the ’80s, when action comedy first became a popular type of movie.
Read More: Screenwriting Tips for Action Movie Screenwriter Shane Black: Part 1
You know when you watch an action comedy and the heroes know what they’re doing? You know when you’re seeing a story where the characters are competent, but the odds are ridiculously stacked against them? That’s not The Other Guys. Instead, this film is about the desk jockeys who get roped into dealing with actual crime by accident. When they do, they fumble through it more than you could possibly imagine. In addition to being a buddy cop movie, this action comedy showcases the ineptitude of the two main characters in a way that can’t be understated. These other guys are not at all prepared to stop criminals in their tracks — and maybe that’s why you can’t look away.
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Whether it’s high-octane with a few joke-cracking moments here and there, or whether hilarity comes first, action comedy is a unique film genre that has dozens of iterations, none of them completely the same. While some focus on aliens and planetary demise, others make fun of the genre itself. It’s up to you how you use it, but be willing to try it out for various types of stories. Be it a buddy film, a fish-out-of-water comedy, or a sci-fi epic, you can bring the action comedy elements into that narrative for a fresh feel to a time-tested format!
Read More: Hasta La Vista, Baby: The Best ’90s Action Movies
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