If you hunt down a ranking of the best epic movies of all time, you’re probably going to find far more dramatic films than comedic ones. It’s not too hard to see why, as epic movies tend to be made about real-life stories or people, and noteworthy historical events are oftentimes heavy or emotionally stirring, when looked at from the ground level, or through the eyes of a small number of characters.
You’ve got the likes of Seven Samurai and Lawrence of Arabia, of course, which are set in historical times (with the latter being about a real person), and then The Lord of the Rings trilogy shows how fantasy epics can also succeed while taking things (mostly) seriously. But there are also the following movies, which can be labeled as epics while also being – at least in part – definable as comedies.
10
‘Love Exposure’ (2008)
It’s a bit hard to know where to start with Love Exposure, as it’s kind of about romance, but then it’s also willing to be a ton of other things at once, certainly having enough room to branch out genre-wise because the whole thing’s almost four hours long. The main character works as an up-skirt photographer, for one thing, and then the unusual love story he finds himself part of also involves martial arts, criminals, and lots of religious imagery/themes, too.
Love Exposure is, naturally, bonkers, but there is also something thrilling about watching it and wondering where the hell it could possibly go next, on a scene-to-scene basis. It’s probably not one for the faint of heart, but it is one for anyone who’s okay with something weird, alarming, and absolutely singular. If that’s you, then maybe go ahead and expose yourself to it.
9
‘Underground’ (1995)
Plenty of epic movies are about war, but less common are the ones like Underground that cover multiple wars. The narrative here plays out over many decades, though with a fairly manageable number of characters, with the length of time covered enabling the movie to be about World War II, the Cold War (if you want to count that), and then the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s.
That probably sounds ambitious enough, but Underground is also a comedy on top of being a war epic, albeit it’s a dark one, and it’s also very surreal/unsettling at times. There’s a version that runs for nearly three hours, as well as a miniseries cut that’s closer to five hours, but either way, it’s undoubtedly grand in scale and pretty daring in terms of genres and emotions explored.
8
‘Short Cuts’ (1993)
Maybe one of the funniest parts of Short Cuts is the fact that it goes for about three hours and yet it has the word “Short” in its title. But also, you could re-edit the film to be a series of short films, since there are so many characters and the various stories they’re wrapped up in only sometimes intersect, with the structure of the movie still cutting between them anyway (which does technically stop it from being an anthology movie).
Short Cuts feels pretty honest about life in general, being a series of snapshots into how various people get by (or don’t get by) with some of it being funny, some of it being a little slow, and some of it being serious, just like life itself. It’s unusual, but also quite striking and memorable, not to mention one of the best films Robert Altman ever made.
7
‘Southland Tales’ (2006)
Dwayne Johnson was recently in The Smashing Machine, which demonstrated his dramatic range, to some extent, but you can go back further in time to see the actor (best known for his action roles) taking even wilder risks. Case in point, Southland Tales, which is a movie that can’t really be summarized in terms of its plot, seeing as it’s utterly chaotic, borderline-nonsensical, but also maybe kind of good?
It’s an acquired taste. Some of it seems intentionally funny, and though goofy, it is ambitious and done on a large enough scale to feel somewhat like an epic, or at least there are an epic-level number of moving pieces here. Southland Tales collapses in on itself, rebuilds things to some degree, collapses again, gets brought back to life, explodes, disintegrates, becomes reanimated, implodes, and so on for about 2.5 mind-bending hours. It is a movie that feels deeply unwell, but you should watch it anyway.
6
‘Beau Is Afraid’ (2023)
After Hereditary and Midsommar, Ari Aster went big, bold, and particularly weird for Beau Is Afraid, which doesn’t lean into horror nearly as much as his first two feature films. There are unsettling sequences in this one for sure, and it’s also very downbeat in its own strange way, but Beau Is Afraid is predominantly a very dark comedy, as well as a surreal/somewhat fantastical adventure movie.
Kind of. Describing it that way doesn’t feel entirely right, but also, there is no way to properly describe Beau Is Afraid; no way that does feel entirely right. It’s like a colorful three-hour panic attack that’s only funny if you’re on its wavelength, and it’s not an easy wavelength to get on, nor one you’d probably want to be on. It’s there, it does unusual things, it’s risky, and maybe you can’t help but admire it, even if it’s also hard to enjoy.
5
‘La Dolce Vita’ (1960)
La Dolce Vita is forward-thinking as a satirical film, or maybe it’s more just the case that things surrounding celebrity, fame, the media, and the overall confusion in finding a purpose in life are still relevant nowadays. It’s about a journalist going around Rome trying to find a good story and some kind of connection with the people he meets, and experiencing that search continually get more and more difficult.
Beyond its length, La Dolce Vita is also something of an endurance test because of how dizzying and increasingly serious it becomes, with the comedy giving way to tragedy further with every new sequence. It’s breezy and fun at times, but also emotionally intense at other points, and there’s still not much else like it out there (even among Federico Fellini’s distinctive and bold filmography).
4
‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ (2013)
Martin Scorsese hasn’t directed many comedies, but he tackled the genre exceptionally well with The Wolf of Wall Street, which is also one of his biggest and most energetic movies. It’s about Jordan Belfort, who became rich through fraudulent means while working on Wall Street, with the film covering his rise and fall in the style of various other gangster movies, but The Wolf of Wall Street isn’t itself a gangster movie.
It has the look and feel of one, and shows some destructive and harmful acts, but the stakes aren’t as life or death, and the wrongful acts committed are purposefully shown not to be as harshly punished. That becomes clear by the end, and it’s also close to the end that The Wolf of Wall Street reveals itself to be a bit more than just a comedy, but it still fits within that genre, and it’s certainly sprawling and long enough to count itself as an epic, too.
3
‘One Battle After Another’ (2025)
A movie well-paced enough so that you don’t really feel its length, One Battle After Another has a narrative that spans close to two decades, albeit there’s a big time jump between the extended prologue and then the bulk of the movie. Its narrative concerns first revolutionaries who, in time, become ex-revolutionaries and more fractured, but things from the past get reignited, mainly thanks to a very odd and antagonistic military officer.
The hype around One Battle After Another was deserved, and the film’s also exciting while being surprisingly funny and decently action-packed.
Breaking down what happens, why, and how wouldn’t really do One Battle After Another justice, since you kind of have to see it for yourself to get what all the hype is about. But the hype was deserved, is the main thing, and the film’s also exciting while being surprisingly funny and decently action-packed. There’s a lot going on here, and it all comes together well, being perhaps the most approachable and grand-scale Paul Thomas Anderson movie yet.
2
‘Babylon’ (2022)
Easily the biggest (and messiest) film Damien Chazelle has directed to date, Babylon is also potentially the most exciting and interesting title in his filmography. It has the structure of Boogie Nights, but focuses on the main film industry rather than the world of adult films, since there’s a rise and fall on a massive scale, and a first half that’s, by necessity, a good deal more fun and vibrant than the bleaker second half.
That’s all to say that Babylon is a comedy until it isn’t, but the approach works in the sense that it showcases why movies are great, why making them can feel rewarding, and also how the industry can use people and potentially ruin their lives. It’s the same dilemma explored in Whiplash and La La Land, but on a grander scale, with a longer runtime, and with more raunchy humor (the last of those turning some people off, but they’re missing out, in all honesty).
1
‘It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World’ (1963)
The title doesn’t lie, because there’s a lot of madness and chaos (particularly of the slapstick variety) in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The narrative of this one involves a dying man telling a large group of strangers about a hidden fortune that’s buried a great distance away, and so they all end up essentially racing each other to that destination, trying to get rich before anyone else can.
It’s pretty grim in terms of what it has to say about greed and human nature, or it would be grim if it weren’t also incredibly funny and exceedingly silly throughout. It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is kind of an action/adventure movie, but one where everyone is clumsy and willing to destroy anything that gets in their way. Maybe calling it underrated would be a stretch, but it is honestly just as impressive (albeit not nearly as serious or weighty) as many of the other iconic and well-remembered epic movies from the 1960s.
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