Sweet baby Jesus, we thank you for blessing Will Ferrell and Adam McKay with the talent to create a NASCAR comedy as hilarious as Talladega Nights. The so-called "Ballad of Ricky Bobby" is hardly flawless in fact it's not always firing on all cylinders but with comedy star Ferrell and director McKay still hot from the success of their previous comedy hit Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, most of this 108-minute spoof of oval-track racing is so knee-slappin' funny that you can't help but surrender to the stupidity. Obviously, Ferrell's the shining star, and his portrayal of lead-footed pit-crew-member-turned-#1 NASCAR champion Ricky "I Wanna Go Fast" Bobby (how can you not love that name?) is spot-on perfect, righteously spoofing the entirety of NASCAR culture without insulting its oft-ridiculed roots in redneck bootlegging of a bygone era. You could even argue that Talladega Nights is truer to NASCAR than Tom Cruise's Days of Thunder, and it's certainly more entertaining, especially when you add John C. Reilly as Ricky's life-long pal, teammate, and eventual rival Cal Naughton, Jr. (together they're nicknamed "Shake 'n Bake"), and Sacha Baron Cohen (from Da Ali G Show and Borat) as gay French "Formula Un" driver-turned NASCAR rival Jean Girrard, to a stellar cast including Molly Shannon, Greg Germann, Amy Adams and Michael Clarke Duncan. Sure, it's mostly a showcase for Ferrell's loud, over-the-top antics and nonsensical non sequiturs (like cameo appearances by Elvis Costello and Mos Def), but with Ferrell behind the wheel, Talladega Nights rolls into victory lane with fuel to spare, and there's one final bit of comedy (with a tip of the hat to William Faulkner) for those who sit through the credits. -Jeff Shannon.

Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson give the flat-share sitcom a much needed kick up the Bottom in the show which, alongside Men Behaving Badly (1992-8) injected new life into a legendarily dire genre. With glorious comic gusto they play Richie Rich and Eddie Hitler, a pair of misfits barely surviving unemployment in a Hammersmith hovel. They spend their life in frustration, minus female company or money, in facile schemes to entertain or better themselves, their best intentions always proving the catalyst for hilariously OTT cartoon-style violence. The humour benefits from being rude, crude and surreal, and though happily bereft of subtlety or sense the situations and set-pieces are always superbly constructed, delivered and directed. But that's only to be expected from a show that essentially presents two of The Young Ones a decade down the line. Mayall and Edmondson had earlier perfected their surreal double act as The Dangerous Brothers and these first episodes of Bottom find them in side-splitting form. From a misadventure with pheromone spray and the wrong sort of dogs down the pub in "Smells" to a birthday "Accident", which introduces The Young Ones' Christopher Ryan as a regular guest character, this is BBC comedy at its best. Brace yourself, 'cos this is going to hurt. -Gary S Dalkin.

An unexpected box office hit in the late summer of 2000, Bring It On is a smart, snappy teen comedy that bristles with good cheer (literally) and lively, down-to-earth characters. Sunny, happy Torrance (Kirsten Dunst) is the new leader of the Toros, the cheerleading squad of Rancho Carne, an affluent San Diego high school that has lousy football players but one hell of a cheerleading team. National champions, they're the ones who bring in the bodies to the football games with their award-winning moves and sassy grace, and they're poised to take their sixth national cheer title. Torrance's new reign as cheer queen, though, is cut short when she discovers that her snotty, duplicitous forerunner was regularly stealing routines from the East Compton Clovers, the hip-hop influenced cheerleaders of a poor inner city school, and passing them off as the original work of the Toros. Scrambling to come up with a new routine for the Toros-and do the right thing by giving the Clovers their due-Torrance butts heads with the proud and understandably wary Isis (Gabrielle Union), the leader of the Clovers, who wants nothing to do with a rich blonde white girl, but does want to get her squad to the championships. Problem is, only one team can take home the national title. Who's it gonna be? The story may be fairly predictable (who's going to win the big championship?), but director Peyton Reed and screenwriter Jessica Bendinger have fleshed out their characters with formidable strength and provided them with sharp dialogue. Dunst is a radiant comedienne, projecting warmth, determination, sincerity, and a sublime airheadedness, and Union is an impressive dancer and counterpart to Dunst, matching her admirably despite her limited onscreen time. An excellent young supporting cast rounds out the film, most notably Eliza Dushku (Faith of Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Jesse Bradford (Steven Soderbergh's King of the Hill) as siblings new to Rancho Carne, who become Torrance's best friend and potential new boyfriend, respectively. All in all, a pleasantly surprising and intelligent teen movie. [+]

Plenty of new television series need a season or two to sort themselves out, and as the second season reveals, A Town Called Eureka is still a work in progress-which is not a bad thing, considering that it's one of the more provocative and ambitious shows out there. For the uninitiated, here's the basic premise: Sheriff Jack Carter (Colin Ferguson), accompanied by his teenage daughter Zoe (Jordan Hinson), is stationed in Eureka, a picturesque little burg somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Eureka is hardly Anytown, USA; indeed, this is the place where "the world's greatest thinkers" live and work, most of them at Global Dynamics, "the most advanced scientific facility in the world. " It's also a place where exceedingly strange things happen on a regular basis. In Season Two, those happenings include people spontaneously combusting, becoming invisible, turning into gold, or simply disappearing (and leaving nothing behind-not even a memory that they ever existed); a "personal force field" that's growing so large and so fast that it will soon engulf the whole town, and maybe even the whole world; freaky weather that changes by the moment; and even an experiment to re-create the Big Bang inside a Global Dynamics lab, leading to some unexpected side effects. These developments are all presented with enough cool special effects and scientific techno-babble to make A Town Called Eureka a perfectly viable and sometimes quite dramatic science fiction diversion. But there's more-much more. Sometimes this is a show about relationships: Jack and Zoe (custody becomes an issue when Jack's ex, played by Olivia D'Abo, shows up in the early episodes); Jack and Allison Blake (Salli Richardson), Global Dynamics' new boss (their growing attraction is complicated by the continued presence of her ex, a genius scientist type); Jack and his pal Henry (Joe Morton), who blames Jack for his girlfriend's death but gradually learns there's more to it than that. Much of the time it's a comedy, heavy on the quirks; and, in a change from the first year, it's also a serial, with several story arcs continuing over the course of the season. All of that can make A Town Called Eureka a but convoluted and hard to get a handle on, but this show is a keeper. [+]

Much was written about Will Ferrell's first "dramatic role" as Harold Crick, an IRS auditor who begins hearing a voice narrating his life. But Stranger Than Fiction is hardly a drama. However, what Ferrell does-like Jim Carrey before him in The Truman Show-is handle a toned-down character with genuineness and affection: you believe he is this guy. Crick leads a lonely life filled with numbers and routines. While at first he considers the voice a nuisance, Crick decides more action is needed when it speaks of "his demise. " Enter Professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), who takes on the absurd notion with revelry, trying to find out what kind of book Crick's life is leading. It turns out that the voice Crick is hearing belongs to Kay Eiffel (Emma Thompson), a very real-and troubled-author who is writing a book in which Crick is a fictional character. As usual with these things, the stuffed shirt learns to live a better life-Crick even falls for one of his audits, a brash baker named Ana (Maggie Gyllenhaal). Marc Foster (Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland) has the right tone for the film, using great urban scenes (the unnamed city is Chicago) with interesting visualisations of Crick's world of numbers. He also directs Ferrell, Hoffman, and Gyllenhaal to their most charming performances (plus Linda Hunt and Tom Hulce pop up in two funny scenes). [+]

It's taken a long time for Rowan Atkinson to bring us Mr Bean's Holiday, the sequel to the substantial hit of 1997. But in that time, he's lost none of what made the character so huge in the first place, delivering an effective comedy that's again managed to ignite box offices right across the world. The set-up for Mr Bean's Holiday is in the title: the hapless title character wins a holiday to France, meaning this time it's the French Riviera that's the backdrop for the slapstick humour that has defined the series. And so Mr Bean finds himself in a series of increasingly unlikely situations, causing all manner of havoc in the process. While unlikely to convert anyone who isn't already a fan, Mr Bean's Holiday is nonetheless a comedy that delivers reliable laughs very much in the spirit of what has gone before. Atkinson continues to inhabit the character with great skill, and it's-rightly-his work here that brings the lion's share of the laughs. By most accounts, Mr Bean's Holiday is the swansong for a character that's manage to delight audiences worldwide for over a quarter of a century. And while the film is, truthfully, no classic, at its peak it's a hoot, and offers gentle, enjoyable family entertainment. -Jon Foster.

When Peep Show arrived on our screens back in 2003, we were treated to a unique and original comedy by its partakers David Mitchell and Robert Webb. Now, two series later, Peep Show has become somewhat of a cult hit. Well, here's an opportunity to see where it all began back with series one-possibly the best of the lot. Mitchell and Webb have been performing together for some time and it really shows; their comedic timing and on-screen relationship allowing you to feel for Mark (Mitchell) and Jeremy (Webb) as they plunders through their lives, trying to find love, and sex. But the real joy of the first series is in watching how their idea-to follow the story through the eyes of the two main protagonists, Mark and Jeremy-comes to fruition on screen. It's a marvellous concept that works so well, being both unique and riotously funny at the same time. It's helped by a strong supporting cast-notably Olivia Colman (starring as Mark's lusted after colleague Sophie) who has since gone on to star in series such as the equally successful Green Wing. Peep Show is unique, different and, most importantly of all, a hoot. And with a bunch of decent extras on the disc, this is well worth picking up. -Mark Oakley.

Elf is genuinely good. Not just Saturday Night Live-movie good, when the movie has some funny bits but is basically an insult to humanity; Elf is a smartly written, skillfully directed, and deftly acted story of a human being adopted by Christmas elves who returns to the human world to find his father. And because the writing, directing, and acting are all genuinely good, Elf is also genuinely funny. Will Ferrell, as Buddy the adopted elf, is hysterically sincere. James Caan, as his rediscovered father, executes his surly dumbfoundedness with perfect aplomb. Zooey Deschanel, as a department store worker with whom Buddy falls in love, is adorably sardonic. Director Jon Favreau (Swingers) shepherds the movie through all the obligatory Christmas cliches and focuses on material that's sometimes subtle and consistently surprising. Frankly, Elf feels miraculous. Also featuring Mary Steenburgen, Bob Newhart, Peter Dinklage, and Ed Asner as Santa Claus. -Bret Fetzer.

Striking a balance between raunch and sweetness is a tall order for any film, but the Judd Apatow-produced Superbad manages to serve up both in equal and satisfying portions without undercutting a consistent stream of laugh-out-loud performances and gags. Michael Cera (the sublime George Michael Bluth from Arrested Development) and unstoppable scene-stealer Jonah Hill (Apatow's Knocked Up) are lifelong pals who attempt to make up for years of obscurity by getting into one blow-out party before parting ways for college. An opportunity presents itself in the form of Hill's crush, the lovely Jules (Emma Stone), who wants the boys to bring liquor to her shindig. What follows is a combination road adventure and coming of age story as Cera and Hill tackle crazed party goers, a pair of overeager cops (played by co-scripter and producer Seth Rogen and Saturday Night Live's Bill Hader), and the hard truth about girls and their own emotional bond. The humour is crass and occasionally gross but never mean-spirited, and Cera and Hill offer believable performances as guys wholly unaware of their own potential, yet ready to risk humiliation in order to find out. They're well supported by a cast of Apatow regulars, including Kevin Corrigan, Martin Starr, David Krumholtz, and Carla Gallo (and Stone and Martha MacIsaac are terrific as their love interests), but the film is completely shoplifted by newcomer Christopher Mintz-Plasse as their uber-nerdy pal Fogell, whose fake ID handle is among the film's funniest gags. Classic funk fans should also keep an ear out for the score by Lyle Workman, which features such James Brown and P-Funk veterans as Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worrell, and Clyde Stubblefield. -Paul Gaita Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, Michael Cera, Emma Stone.

In the 1970s the British film industry went through a craze for turning hit TV comedies into big screen features. From On the Buses (1971) to Porridge (1979), Dad's Army was one of the few which made the transition with style. Set in the small south coast town of Walmington-on-Sea in 1940, the film does have the structure of three TV episodes remade and sequenced together. Beginning with the formation of the local Home Guard, the company has a self-contained adventure on military manoeuvres, before a finale which allows for some heroism as three German officers take over the church hall. Dad's Army has all the gentle character comedy of the classic BBC TV series, benefiting enormously by retaining the entire television cast, headed by the incomparable Arthur Lowe as the blustering Captain Mainwaring and supported by the equally wonderful John Le Mesurier and Clive Dunn. The cinema budget allows far superior production values to the original series, with a loving re-creation of 1940's England and some surprisingly beautiful cinematography. Above all, the film is both funny and a nostalgic reminder of a time when ordinary middle-aged and old men could be both real and movie heroes. -Gary S. Dalkin.

Peter Sellers's third go-around as the prideful but bumbling Inspector Jacques Clouseau is funny enough, but this 1975 Blake Edwards revival of the Sellers-Clouseau connection is a little weak in comparison to predecessors The Pink Panther and A Shot in the Dark (both made in 1964). Costar Christopher Plummer actually gets some of the most interesting screen time as a retired cat burglar whom Clouseau accuses of getting back into the business. (If it sounds like there might be a To Catch a Thief vibe mixed in here, you're right. ) Herbert Lom is hilarious as Clouseau's psychologically eroding boss, and Clouseau's ritualistic collisions with valet Cato (Burt Kwouk) are great examples of Edwards's delicious comic timing. -Tom Keogh.