Paunches Pilot

Pontius Pilate was a Roman citizen, a prelate appointed by the emperor to oversee the province of Judea. He was responsible for releasing Jesus to be crucified. Between the Pilate of the New.

Two mismatched partners — maybe one\'s a cop and the other\'s a Fed, or a cop and a crook, or a by-the-book detective and the precinct\'s resident loose cannon— have to work together to solve a crime. Two friends see their close bond tested by misadventures, misunderstandings and one-crazy-night obstacles. Two folks embark on a road trip — maybe they\'re running from the Mob, or maybe they\'re just in search of White Castle burgers — and encounter wacky and/or dangerous characters along the way. The specific details differ (and mileage may vary) for each story, but you could tack on the same three-word-phrase to the end of each description: \'with hilarious results.\' They call \'em buddy comedies, and with the Channing Tatum-Jonah Hill double act 22 Jump Street hitting theaters, we\'ve taken the opportunity to rank the 25 best buddy-comedy movies. There were a few ground rules: The films had to qualify as comedies, which meant a few great buddy-cop movies didn\'t make the cut (no, Mel Gibson\'s Moe-from-the-Three-Stooges mugging does not make Lethal Weapon a comedy); and we narrowed the field down to movies focused primarily on a pair of buddies (very sorry, The 40-Year-Old Virgin). So grab a friend — or someone who you can\'t stand but, by the time you get to the end of this list, will have forged a begrudging mutual respect for — and see what made the cut.

What, you thought the greatest cop-meets-dog comedy of all time (no offense, Chuck Norris and Top Dog) was not going to make this list? Tom Hanks is a neatfreak police officer who takes in a witness to a murder case — a French Mastiff named Hooch. Yes, there are beaucoup canine shenanigans, as well as numerous one-sided dialogue scenes involving a slobbery mutt and a future Oscar-winner. No, we have not spent far too many evenings arguing that Hooch and Hanks should have capitalized off the film and done Neil Simon\'s The Odd Couple on Broadway right after its release, so far as you are concerned.— DAVID FEAR. It\'s been said that the best of Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin\'s movie work pales in comparison to their nightclub act and the Colgate Comedy Hour bits they did on TV — but this Frank Tashlin-directed comedy about a painter and his comic book-obsessed best friend is a great example of how their schtick worked wonders onscreen. The digs at mid-Fifties pop culture and drolling over va-va-voom starlets have dated badly; the way that Martin\'s smooth-talker and Lewis\' manic manchild turn the \'Bat Lady/Fat Lady\' banter and a slapstick massage-therapist sequence into comic gold, however, still seems timeless.— DAVID FEAR. Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor had teamed up before, in the Hitchcockian thriller-comedy Silver Streak (1976); this tale of two actors who get framed for a bank robbery and thrown in the slammer, however, didn\'t make the duo play second banana to romances, intrigue and a runaway train.

You could argue that the comedy relies a lot on a) seeing Wilder and Pryor in bird suits and b) seeing Wilder and Pryor scared shitless about prison life, but that would be missing the point. Watching what these two pros do with that second situation — from establishing their tough-guy bona fides on the first day in the joint to faking craziness — is what makes this a gem, at least until a breakout plan hijacks the third act. Until then: — DAVID FEAR. Trash-talking has always been a part of sports, if not always a part of sports movies; Ron Shelton\'s athletic bromance about two SoCal basketball hustlers bucks that trend, to say the least. Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson demonstrate they have the skills to pay the bills on the court (the film\'s b-ball advisor, former Detroit Piston Bill Lanier, suggested the both could have played college-level hoops), but it\'s their salty trading of creative insults and yo-momma snaps (\'It would take your mother two hours to watch 60 Minutes\') that proves they\'re comedic equals. These guys bond over the ability to turn bad-mouthing somebody into an art form — the start of a beautiful friendship on- and off-screen.— DAVID FEAR.

Hell, she could even turn out to be a. No matter what dampens the flame, an exit plan should always be in the back of your mind in case you have to abandon ship. A teary confession or an accidental slip of her ex-boyfriend’s name ruins the mood quickly. One night stand simulator kinmoku.

It\'s their last night to party as high-school seniors, and best buds Michael Cera and Jonah Hill are going to make the most of it: drinking, getting up the courage to make a move on their long-time crushes, indulging in the sort of gonzo teen-movie craziness that would make John Hughes vomit. At its core, however, this Judd Apatow-produced raunch-com is really about the friendship between Cera and Hill\'s beta bros, two guys on the verge of leaving childish things — and thanks to college, each other — behind.

The key scene doesn\'t involve puking or sex; it\'s just Hill and Cera telling each other they love each other and riffing off their mutual sensitive-male geekiness.— DAVID FEAR. Question: How are you supposed to endure the hell of a 10-year high school reunion if you\'ve done nothing with your life since graduating? Answer: You go with your fellow \'loser\' of a best friend and tell everybody you invented Post-It notes.

This 1997 comedy might have been marketed like a female Bill & Ted romp (minus the literal time-traveling, naturally), but credit Lisa Kudrow and Mira Sorvino for giving these so-called airheads heart; you laugh at their self-obsessed cluelessness and you cringe when they let all their insecurities and school-day wounds turn them against each other. Mostly, you wish that Kudrow and Sorvino had found more projects to do together.— DAVID FEAR. Having conquered MTV and the hearts and minds of fellow juvenille-delinquent metalheads everywhere, Mike Judge\'s dimwitted animated duo were now ready to move on to the final frontier: a feature-length movie. The boys\' TV is stolen.

Gasp A road trip is taken. Misunderstandings lead to vulgarities, jokes about scoring, an extended Cornholio cameo, Butthead getting thrown out a White House window by Chelsea Clinton, and much chuckling. If the B&B banter works better in 10 minute snippets than it does in an 80-minute movie, Beavis and Butthead Do America still reminds you that these cartoon dumbasses deserved their moment in the pop-cultural spotlight. Heh heh, heh heh. We said \'dumbasses.\' — DAVID FEAR. A frustrated writer named Miles (Paul Giamatti) and a semi-successful actor pal Jack (Thomas Hayden Church) don\'t have much in common but disappointment; rather than serve as a crash course in bachelor bonding, the guys\' wine-country weekend before Jack\'s wedding serves as a primer in just how far they\'ve drifted apart.

Alexander Payne\'s intoxicating road movie/vino-soaked tale of late-age romance may be best known for blowing up the Merlot market and reminding everybody that Giamatti is an American treasure, but it\'s really an incredible portrait of a frayed friendship. Jack is a big part of the life that Miles needs to close the door on — and by Sideways\' open-ended final shot, the writer finally seems ready to do just that.— SAM ADAMS. There are plenty of buddy comedies where the main characters don\'t start out liking each other — but not many where they finish the same way. Actors Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon (playing metafictional versions of themselves) have a shared history, enough that when Coogan\'s girlfriend drops out of a food tour of Northern England, he taps Brydon to take her place. But as they move from one lavishly photographed meal to the next, their perpetually barbed interactions never soften into congeniality (although their duet on Kate Bush\'s \'Wuthering Heights\' is kinda sweet). The movie\'s iconic scene — one duly replicated in the forthcoming sequel — finds them swapping Michael Caine impressions, a playful competition that quickly turns into a pistols-at-dawn duel. Only the fact that Coogan and Brydon are friends in real life keeps it from coming off as the story of two people who (amusingly) hate each other.— SAM ADAMS. Bound together by an intimate knowledge of the New Jersey Turnpike, a shared history as the offspring of neighboring nations, and their common desire for gnarly but undeniably seductive hamburgers, Harold Lee (John Cho) and Kumar Patel (Kal Penn) spend an increasingly insane night getting baked and nearly cooked by a rampaging Neil Patrick Harris.

Over the course of two successive movies, the two have grown farther apart as Harold gets his life together and Kumar keeps hitting the bong, but the little things — like a greasy sack of piping-hot sliders — still keep them together.— SAM ADAMS. You could have put any of the films that British director Edgar Wright and actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost have done together on this list — but we have a particular soft spot for the trio\'s pitch-perfect parody of buddy cop flicks. When London\'s most badass police officer is reassigned to a sleepy English hamlet, he\'s partnered with a hopeless, action-film-fanatic constable who\'s main goal in life is to fire two guns whilst jumping through the air. If this were nothing but a send-up of Lethal Weapon, Stallone movies et al, it would still be impressive; the pairing of Pegg and Frost, as dynamic a comedic double act as any duo working today, is what makes this work like gangbusters even if you\'ve never seen a single movie they\'re referencing.— DAVID FEAR.

...'>Paunches Pilot(12.03.2020)