The best films for a group don't flatten the experience - they create one. You want something that generates opinions, debates, a reason to stay up later than planned.
Comedy at its best doesn't ask you to laugh. It creates situations so specific and so true that laughter is the only honest response.
In 1927 Hollywood, a silent film star falls for a chorus girl just as he and his paranoid screen partner struggle to make the difficult transition to talking pictures.
After the insane General Jack D. Ripper initiates a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, a war room full of politicians, generals and a Russian diplomat all frantically try to stop it.
Four inseparable friends try to face their midlife crisis with daytrips and pranks at the expense of their families and the people around them.
A card shark and his unwillingly-enlisted friends need to make a lot of cash quick after losing a sketchy poker match. To do this they decide to pull a heist on a small-time gang who happen to be operating out of the flat next door.
Best friends Peppe and Mario are thieves, but they're not very good at it. Still, Peppe thinks that he's finally devised a master heist that will make them rich. With the help of some fellow criminals, he plans to dig a tunnel from a rented apartment to the pawnshop next door, where they can rob the safe. But his plan is far from foolproof, and the fact that no one in the group has any experience digging tunnels proves to be the least of their problems.
The comedies that age well are the ones built on character. Jokes change. Human behaviour doesn't. These films are about people, not punchlines.
In Prohibition-era Chicago, musicians Joe and Jerry witness a mob hit, and flee the state in an all-female band disguised as Josephine and Daphne, but further complications set in.
In postwar Rome, a working-class woman dreams of a better future for herself and her daughter while facing abuse at the hands of her domineering husband. When a mysterious letter arrives, she discovers the courage to change the circumstances of her life.
Two employees at a gift shop can barely stand one another, without realising that they are falling in love through the post as each other's anonymous pen pal.
A film projectionist longs to be a detective, and puts his meager skills to work when he is framed by a rival for stealing his girlfriend's father's pocketwatch.
Episodic journey of journalist Marcello who struggles to find his place in the world, torn between the allure of Rome's elite social scene and the stifling domesticity offered by his girlfriend, all the while searching for a way to become a serious writer.
A film earns your tears by making you believe in its characters first. These films do that work thoroughly, then use it.
These films hold up because they were never just funny. They were precise, human, and true. The laughter was always a byproduct of that.