Hulu’s corporate ownership continues to tighten. Initially launched in 2007 as a partnership between NBCUniversal and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. (the then-owners of Fox), Disney joined the fold as a partner two years later. In late 2023 Disney bought out the stake still owned by NBC owners Comcast, making Hulu a fully-owned arm of the Disney empire. How will that impact its TV and movie offerings? Time will tell.
If you still think Hulu is just a place to watch sitcoms the day after the networks broadcast them, though, it must’ve been a few years since you last logged in. The streaming site has long been a full-service rival to Netflix, and arguably has a deeper and stronger lineup of films. With not just comedy, but all genres, Hulu tends to offer a more diverse set of films than Netflix, with something for all tastes and ages.
Before we jump in, let me include the standard disclaimer that I always start our Netflix comedy list with. I’m a comedy editor. When compiling a list of the best comedies on Hulu, or any streaming service, I’m mostly looking at how much a movie makes me laugh, more than the quality of filmmaking on display. So if you feel the need to go all Margaret Dumont about the sheer impropriety of these rankings, maybe go check out some of our more tasteful overall movie rankings, instead.
Here are the best comedies on Hulu today as of December 2024, listed in alphabetical order.
Big
Year: 1988
Director: Penny Marshall
Stars: Tom Hanks, Elizabeth Perkins, Robert Loggia, John Heard, Jared Rushton
Rating: PG
If you ignore the problematic issues inherent in a man with a 13-year-old’s mind entering into a relationship with a thirtyish woman, Big remains as charming as it was at the time of its release. Tom Hanks is an absolute joy to watch as the central boy-man and the iconic scene where he and Robert Loggia perform “Heart and Soul” and “Chopsticks” on a foot-operated keyboard is enough to warm the cockles of even the most cynical viewers’ hearts. —Mark Rozeman
Billy MadisonYear: 1995
Director: Tamra Davis
Stars: Adam Sandler, Darren McGavin, Bridgette Wilson-Sampras, Bradley Whitford, Norm MacDonald
Rating: PG-13
There’s a strong case to be made that Billy Madison is the best Adan Sandler movie. Sure, it’s not as human as The Wedding Singer, and it’s hard to vote against Happy Gilmore, but Madison so thoroughly exceeded the abominably low expectations I had for it in 1995 that it wound up being one of the most memorable movies of the decade. It’s still hilarious today, a perfect vehicle for Sandler’s man-child persona, and one that surrounds him with a fantastic supporting cast, including Bradley Whitford, Darren McGavin, Norm Macdonald, Chris Farley, and a giant penguin, among others. It’s not the story or even the jokes that make Billy Madison so funny–it’s the surreal flourishes, the way lines are delivered, how Tamra Davis (both a woman and an outsider to the small circle of men who have directed most of Sandler’s movies since) is able to contrast Sandler’s weirdness with a world that feels recognizable in its everyday mundanity. Later Sandler movies feel lazy and untethered from the real world, but Madison doesn’t suffer from either flaw. It’s dumb comedy done with enough weirdness and intelligence to become a true classic.–Garrett Martin
Elf
Year: 2003
Director: Jon Favreau
Stars: Will Ferrell, James Caan, Bob Newhart, Zooey Deschanel, Mary Steenburgen, Ed Asner
Rating: PG
In a sense, making Christmas “funny” can be as easy as responding to something meant to be sincere and joyful with cynicism and darkness. Is there any comedic Christmas character that embodies a genuine love of Christmas? Thankfully, we have Will Ferrell’s fearlessly committed performance as the titular elf to answer this question with a resounding yes. Nothing represents Christmas cheer better than Will Ferrell in yellow tights, a green parka and cone-shaped cap. He wrings a ton of comedy out of responding to everything with wide-eyed, childlike wonder. Arguably our generation’s classic Christmas movie, watching Buddy the Elf makes you laugh, makes you smile and, to paraphrase from the Grinch, makes your heart grow three sizes bigger. Even if the movie devolves into a formulaic, race-against-the-clock flick in the last 30 minutes, its myriad gifts outweigh its problems. From endlessly quotable nuggets like “cotton-headed ninnymuggins”; the hysterical fruit spray scene; Zooey Deschanel showcasing her pre-She & Him singing chops; Mr. Narhwal and the arctic puppets (a band name if I ever heard one); to, finally, Ferrell’s infectious enthusiasm, Elf is instant holiday merriment. —Greg Smith & Jeremy Medina
Fire Island
Year: 2022
Director: Andrew Ahn
Stars: Joel Kim Booster, Bowen Yang, Margaret Cho, Conrad Ricamora, James Scully
Rating: R
Fire Island is, for the most part, exceptionally well-done. Noah is a fascinating lead character, one who toes the line between acknowledging the unfair beauty standards gay Asian men are expected to conform to while simultaneously conforming to those standards. Booster brings an effortless and surprising blend of confidence and insecurity, but despite his powerhouse performance, it’s Yang who steals the show. Comedian and SNL alum Yang is funny as hell, but he plays Howie with such breathtaking vulnerability that it’s impossible not to empathize with his idealistic romantic yearnings. Other highlights include Margaret Cho as the boys’ house-mom figure, an unsurprising scene-stealer who bursts into every room with a healthy dose of hijinks and shock. Ricamora enacts a wonderful refurbish of the iconic Darcy character: Will is at once likable and unlikable, cold-blooded and sensitive.—Aurora Amidon
Happiest Season
Year: 2020
Director: Clea Duvall
Stars: Kristen Stewart, Mackenzie Davis, Mary Steenburgen, Victor Garber, Alison Brie, Mary Holland, Dan Levy, Burl Moseley, Aubrey Plaza
Rating: R
The grounded sobriety of Happiest Season, one of the best comedies on Hulu, lasts long enough for a reprieve from the still-present cornball Christmas melodrama, which director/co-writer Clea Duvall stages with the relish of someone who appreciates that melodrama in spite of themselves. But frankly, if every Hallmark movie was this over-the-top hilarious, they’d all at least be watchable as background noise, but then we’d have less reason to appreciate Duvall’s appropriation of their core components in Happiest Season.
Kristen Stewart, continuing to prove wrong all the smug remarks about her one-dimensional dourness starting around 2008, remains a treasure. She’s lively, lovely, and having a wonderful time vibing with Mackenzie Davis. The latter ends up shouldering juicier theatrical speeches and breakdowns as her character, Harper, unravels under the dual pressure of being the daughter she thinks her parents want and being the girlfriend she wants to be to Stewart’s Abby. The ensemble keeps things fresh throughout these conventional plot beats, with Mary Holland coming out ahead as Duvall’s friction-seeking SRBM. Anytime the atmosphere chafes, Holland flies into the room and annihilates it with adorable, well-meaning awkwardness. She’s a gift, but the whole cast glitters in this holiday fare. Everyone’s tuned to Duvall’s wavelength, playing their human sides while keeping the mood appropriately hammy and saccharine—just sweet enough without killing the pancreas. And that’s the film’s secondary message: It’s okay to like Christmas schmaltz. The greater message, of course, is that it’s okay to struggle with the sometimes-bruising process of coming out. Duvall dovetails the seasonal pap with her characters’ pain, treating it like ointment for their mellowing emotional stings. The message isn’t just about liking Christmas. The message is that everybody deserves a Christmas movie.—Andy Crump
Happy Gilmore
Year: 1996
Director: Dennis Dugan
Stars: Adam Sandler, Christopher McDonald, Julie Bowen, Frances Bay, Carl Weathers
Rating: PG-13
Adam Sandler could’ve retired in 1998, after his first three movies, and his comedy legacy would’ve been secured. (He maybe should’ve retired then, but let’s not get into that.) It’s hard to pick between The Wedding Singer, Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore, but let’s talk about that last one right now. The tale of a failed hockey player becoming a champion golfer is an ideal vehicle for Sandler’s inchoate frat boy rage, and the absurd streak that elevated Madison above most Hollywood comedies of the day is even more visible here. It has some of the same problems as most Sandler movies–an underwritten, unbelievable love interest (here played by Modern Family‘s Julie Bowen), a bare bones story that’s little more than a launching pad for jokes–but Gilmore is an ideal character for Sandler, and a great supporting cast (including Carl Weathers, Ben Stiller, Richard Kiel, Joe Flaherty, and Christopher McDonald as the iconic villain Shooter McGavin) help turn this into a legitimate classic. Also there’s a great chance this is the main thing younger people know Bob Barker from, which is actually kind of sad.–Garrett Martin
My Cousin Vinny
Year: 1992
Director: Jonathan Lynn
Stars: Joe Pesci, Marisa Tomei, Ralph Macchio
Rating: PG-13
It’s easy to make fun of the stuffy middlebrow respectability that somehow eliminated the possibility of a legitimate Marisa Tomei Oscar win. But the truth is, it’s exactly that sense of propriety that makes Tomei’s Oscar one of the most satisfying on record, alongside Kevin Kline’s Best Supporting Actor win for A Fish Called Wanda four years earlier. Though My Cousin Vinny isn’t as expertly tuned, satirically inclined or flat-out as uproarious as A Fish Called Wanda, it’s fueled by similar cross-pond cooperation: British-born Jonathan Lynn directs a fish-out-of-water comedy about a New York personal-injury attorney attempting to defend his cousin (Ralph Macchio) falsely accused of murder. Like Wanda, the movie establishes a crime story in an opening that avoids big gags in favor of clearly, cleanly laid-out set-up, leaving the rest of the movie plenty of room for character comedy. And while Pesci is very funny—it’s his best outright comic performance—it’s Tomei who really makes music out of her profane, Noo Yawk-accented dialogue.–Jesse Hassenger
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
Year: 1989
Director: Jeremiah S. Chechik
Stars: Chevy Chase, Beverly D’Angelo, Randy Quaid, Diane Ladd, Juliette Lewis, Johnny Galecki, Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Rating: PG-13
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation is not the most appropriate film for children, but then again, what are you really expecting? Written by the king of ’80s film himself, John Hughes, the holiday adventures of the Griswold family are led by Clark (Chevy Chase) through farce after farce as the family tries their damnedest to have a traditional Christmas. Of course, tradition isn’t in the Griswold family repertoire, much thanks to Cousin Eddie (Randy Quaid), and the Griswold kids, Audrey and Rusty (played, respectively, by Juliette Lewis and Johnny Galecki) aren’t much help either. Christmas Vacation gets funnier and funnier every time you watch, even if it’s only once a year. —Annie Black
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Year: 2000
Director: Joel Coen
Stars: George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, Holly Hunter, Chris Thomas King, Charles Durning, Del Pentecost, Michael Badalucco, Stephen Root,
Rating: PG-13
T-Bone Burnett’s soundtrack got most the attention, but this twist on Homer’s Odyssey—set in Depression Era Mississippi—had all the effortless storytelling, imaginative characters and quotable lines we’ve come to love from the Coen Brothers’ best comedies, with George Clooney joining a celebrated list of Coen comic leads. Holly Hunter and John Goodman basically reprise their hilarious _Raising Arizona_ roles, only with more kids. And an eye-patch. —Josh Jackson
Office Space
Year: 1999
Directors: Mike Judge
Stars: Peter Gallagher, Jennifer Aniston, Gary Cole, David Herman, Ajay Naidu, Diedrich Bader, Stephen Root, Richard Riehle, John C. McGinley, Paul Willson
Rating: R
Great comedy almost always has a dark heart. (The flipside is also true of great horror: It almost always teeters on the edge of farce). But this makes sense: Laughter is our response to absurd and unexpected contradictions; comedy needs its darkness to fully flourish. Mike Judge, the writer/director of Office Space, knows this well. His humor concerns the lowest, saddest schmucks on the corporate ladder (thus 99% of us can relate) who mostly feel dead inside, turning to Kung Fu films and cheap beer to escape. It’s a subject as old as capitalism itself: Most of us are unhappy, not doing what we want, feeling our dreams escaping us more and more with each passing day. For protagonist Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston), his goal is a subversive joy: Independently, from no wellspring of societal angst (unlike, say, The Graduate’s Benjamin Braddock), he wants to do nothing. And besides being a hilarious antidote to scores of predictable, cookie-cutter hyperactive hero-protagonists, his needs feel absolutely real, and is what the corporate rat race deserves in an anti-hero. The do-gooder replaced by the do-nothing. It also helps that Judge has a cast perfectly on board with his tone. Together, they turn caricature into depth, a cartoon into vivid life. —Harold Brodie
Palm Springs
Year: 2020
Director: Max Barbakow
Stars: Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti, J.K. Simmons, Peter Gallagher, Meredith Hagner, Camila Mendes, June Squib, Conner O’Malley, Jena Friedman
Rating: R
Imagine living the same day of your life over and over, stuck within an hour and a half of Los Angeles but so closely nestled in paradise’s bosom that the drive isn’t worth the fuel. Now imagine that “over and over” extends beyond a number the human mind is capable of appreciating. Paradise becomes a sun-soaked Hell, a place endured and never escaped, where pizza pool floats are enervating torture devices and crippling alcoholism is a boon instead of a disease. So goes Max Barbakow’s Palm Springs, one of the best comedies on Hulu.
The film never stops being funny, even when the mood takes a downturn from zany good times to dejection. This is key. Even when the party ends and the reality of the scenario sinks in for its characters, Palm Springs continues to fire jokes at a steady clip, only now they are weighted with appropriate gravity for a movie about two people doomed to maintain a holding pattern on somebody else’s happiest day. Nothing like a good ol’ fashioned time loop to force folks trapped in neutral to get retrospective on their personal statuses.—Andy Crump
Poor Things
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Stars: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Jerrod Carmichael
Rating: R
Yorgos Lanthimos’ off-kilter, pastel-drenched Poor Things opens with static shots of silken embroidery. It is hard to ascertain the images themselves, threaded so neatly in a near-identical gray. But the slippery, elusive texture is integral to the film, which weaves together something thick and rich with detail. What follows is narrow in its focus and big and engulfing in its scale: The story of a young woman who must overcome the experiments enacted against her while embracing her changing body and irrepressible urges. As such, this adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s book of the same name is difficult to summarize, loosely following Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) as she grows to embrace adulthood despite the overbearing tutelage of her de facto father God (Willem Dafoe). Once introduced to the dashing and cocky Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), Bella recognizes the pitfalls of her sheltered life and endeavors to travel around the world, experiencing life anew before marrying her father’s sweet and bumbling assistant Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef). Lying in the genre gulf between science fiction and straightforward drama, Poor Things also finds time to unleash Stone’s ability as a physical comedian, building a sticky, entrancing bodily language that lives somewhere between twitchy, childlike enthusiasm and mystical knowingness. She wanders through their eclectic family home with an unsteady gait, crashing into delicately hung porcelain displays and cackling rather than cowering at the destruction which follows. It is a deliciously amoral journey, the kind that has already secured Lanthimos ample praise over the course of his career. But this is perhaps the filmmaker’s most garish and confident endeavor, using Bella’s naive perspective to design a world so heightened that it exists somewhere between a nightmare and a dream. Somewhat surprisingly, Poor Things feels like it is in conversation with Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, right down to Stone’s robotic, doll-like physique. Where Barbie feels shallow and tentative in its understanding of what it means to physically grow up, Poor Things is bold and radically (at times uncomfortably) honest. It will satisfy fans of Lanthimos’ previous work and perhaps win over new viewers who are desperate to engage in the kind of coming-of-age stories that propel the genre forward. —Anna McKibbin
Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion
Year: 1997
Director: David Mirkin
Stars: Mira Sorvino, Lisa Kudrow, Janeane Garofalo, Alan Cumming
Rating: R
K, it’s not the hardest-hitting comedy in the world, but it is the film that canonized “I invented Post Its” as a rejoinder at my house. Romy and Michele (Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow) are two not-especially-ambitious young women who have been best friends since high school and live together in Los Angeles. When they get a high school reunion invite, they realize they desperately want to descend on their hometown in Arizona and lay waste to the bitchy “A-List” girls who made their high school lives miserable, so they borrow a Jaguar, don pin-striped suits and concoct a pile of lies about their accomplishments as Serious Businesswomen. Of course they get into a huge fight on the way there and have to find their way back to each other as well as themselves, as it becomes clear that they are not the only ones at the reunion trying to deal with their high school unfinished business. Light to the point of near-self-parody and sometimes not quite funny enough to justify itself, the film nonetheless has tons of laughs for anyone in the mood to find something funny, and Kudrow and Sorvino are both hysterically deadpan-though the stealth comedic missile is Jeanane Garofalo as a foulmouthed, chain-smoking misanthrope classmate who has her own revelation at the event. If the Reagan administration was rough on you and you have mixed feelings about pastels, this is a film with some potential feel-good value.–Amy Glynn
The Waterboy
Year: 1998
Director: Frank Coraci
Stars: Adam Sandler, Kathy Bates, Fairuza Balk, Jerry Reed, Henry Winkler, Paul Wight
Rating: PG-13
I saw The Waterboy in the theater on opening night and I’m still not sure if it’s the last of the classic Adam Sandler films or the first of the not-so-classic Adam Sandler films. It’s clearly a step below Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore and The Wedding Singer, but it’s not quite as obnoxious or depressing as pretty much every other comedy he’s made since The Waterboy. His manchild antics didn’t feel redundant yet, and here he has the help of a great supporting cast that includes Kathy Bates, Jerry Reed, Henry Winkler and Blake Clark. (And, uh, the Giant from WCW, aka the Big Show, also has a ton of charisma in his brief cameo.) If you’ve always hated Sandler, you should avoid this one; if you recognize those first three films as the classics that they are, you’ll probably enjoy The Waterboy enough to not feel like you’re wasting your time.—Garrett Martin
The Worst Person in the WorldYear: 2022
Director: Joachim Trier
Stars: Tanya Chowdary, Anders Danielsen Lie, Herbert Nordrum
Rating: R
Millennials were born into a world that no longer demands much of young people, yet somehow expects even more of us. Not as long ago as we might think, it was the norm for adults in their 20s and 30s to have it all figured out. A spouse, a career, a gaggle of children—at least one of these things and even better if all three. Young people now are caught in this strange purgatory between child and adult. We are afforded more time to become who we want to be and there is more pressure than ever to do so. Enter Julie (Renate Reinsve, Dakota Johnson’s long-lost twin), a fickle Norwegian who has never stayed committed to one thing in her entire life. A teenaged overachiever, she dabbled in medicine before she discovered that she was more interested in matters of the soul than the body. So, she cuts and dyes her hair, dumps her med school lover and pivots to psychology pursuits before burning that all down too, shifting once again—this time to photography. But unsurprisingly, photography manages to bore Julie as well, and soon enough she’s off to the next new thing, next new hairstyle, next new guy in the adult coming-of-age film that is Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World, the director’s follow-up to the 2017 supernatural thriller Thelma and his fifth film overall. Prior to this breakneck, whimsically-scored narrated montage of Julie’s life so far (edited with precision by Olivier Bugge Coutté and scored by Ola Fløttum), the narrator explains what’s going to happen: This is a film in twelve chapters, complete with a prologue and an epilogue. Thus, The Worst Person in the World functions like a fractured collection of moments in one person’s life as they strive for self-actualization. The chapters are never consistently timed, some lasting only a few minutes and others lasting the length of a television episode, creating an atmosphere in which we never know how much time has passed, and yet time is passing all the same—and quickly—for Julie. When we’ve finally caught up to her present, she’s entered into a long-term relationship with a successful, 44-year-old graphic novelist named Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie), whose prosperous career has given her the stability to work a day job at a bookstore while she decides what she wants to set her sights on next. Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World is as indecisive as its endlessly curious heroine, but it is an invigorating, exceedingly kind portrait conveying that the journey is just as—if not more—crucial as the place we end up.—Brianna Zigler