With young people increasingly fixated on social media, Youtube and short-form video, 2025 might be the year that studios panicked about the state of the film industry. But despite the palpable fear wafting from Hollywood, filmmakers churned out an impressive mix of laugh-oriented films, including rom-coms and dark, surreal comedies.
‘Adulthood’
A dark comedy that often feels like a thriller, “Adulthood” traces the fallout after adult siblings Megan (Kaya Scodelario) and Noah (Josh Gad) find the body of a long-vanished neighbor in the walls of their parents house when their mother is hospitalized following a stroke. As they grapple with the question of whether their parents were murderers, they face the more immediate problem of the body, and all the mayhem flows from their impulsive decision to try to cover up the crime.
It’s a movie that scratches the “Fargo”-like noir itch while also being a statement of sorts about dealing with aging parents. The movie’s “continuous escalation of malfeasance” gives “Adulthood” its “wicked tempo and disquieting thrills,” said Zachary Lee at Roger Ebert. (Prime)
‘The Ballad of Wallis Island’
Charles Heath (Tim Key) is a two-time lottery jackpot winner (don’t think about the odds on that one) who lives alone in a mansion on isolated, fictional Wallis Island off the coast of the U.K. He pays both members of the deeply estranged former folk duo McGwyer Mortimer (Tom Basden and Carey Mulligan) to come to the island to play a reunion concert that turns out only to be for him.
While this sounds like it could be the set-up of a horror film, it is instead a gentle and goofy story about loneliness, forgiveness and nostalgia, featuring some terrific songs recorded by Basden and Mulligan themselves. “The Ballad of Wallis Island” maintains a “carefully calibrated balance of sweetness and melancholy that never veers into cheap sentimentality” and “finds something new in the familiar,” said Derek Smith at Slant Magazine. (Prime)
‘The Baltimorons’
It feels like there are 10 romantic comedies that focus on an older man and a younger woman, for example “Lost in Translation,” for every exception in which the age gap is reversed. That makes films like director Jay Duplass’ “The Baltimorons” particularly refreshing, funny and poignant.
Cliff (Michael Strassner) is a failed comic with a drinking problem who breaks his tooth on Christmas Eve in Baltimore and ends up in the dental care of Didi (Liz Larsen), an older divorcee who is also having a bad day. The pair hit it off and head from adventure to adventure, including dropping in on a party at Didi’s ex’s house. “The Baltimorons” is a “little zany, a little wild — sometimes shaped like a screwball comedy with similarly uproariously funny energy — and sweet and tender in all the right spots too,” said Rodrigo Perez at The Playlist. (AMC+)
‘Friendship’
Tim Robinson’s empire of cringe comedy about awkward men incapable of reading social cues or letting go of minor slights grew substantially with director Andrew DeYoung’s surreal film about the norms of male bonding. Robinson is Craig Waterman, an awkward and lonely family man. After Craig tries to spark a friendship with his new neighbor, a slick and confident small-time TV weatherman named Austin (Paul Rudd), he is rejected by the local celebrity’s tight-knit circle of male friends.
Craig soon spirals out of control in ways both familiar, like imitating Austin’s lifestyle, and truly bizarre, including a sequence where a drug-fueled hallucination takes him to a Subway restaurant. “Friendship” is “one of those singular movies that epitomizes a comedian’s appeal” and “goes beyond a portrait of post-pandemic desocialization or the toxicity of some male bonding” to create a “wildly funny and twisted movie,” said Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review. (HBO Max)
‘The Naked Gun’
The plot is almost beside the point in director Akiva Schaffer’s uproarious reboot of the iconic comedy franchise. Liam Neeson plays Lt. Frank Drebin, Jr., the son of the Leslie Nielsen character, who also happens to be a genial idiot, tasked with foiling a bank robbery and a billionaire’s shadowy plot for global domination.
The gag-a-minute structure — like Drebin misreading “manslaughter” as “man’s laughter” — is a welcome throwback to the golden age of “Airplane”-style parodies. A “studio movie that exists for no other purpose than to make people laugh,” it “references everything from Elon Musk to racially motivated police violence without letting its virtues get in the way of its laughs,” said David Ehrlich at IndieWire. (Paramount+)
‘A Nice Indian Boy’
When Indian American doctor Naveen (Karan Soni) falls in love with a white photographer named Jay (Jonathan Groff) who was fostered by Indian parents, Naveen struggles to find a way to get his more traditional immigrant parents to accept the relationship. The set up of “A Nice Indian Boy” isn’t exactly groundbreaking in its plot mechanics, but it is executed with unusual tenderness and flair by director Roshan Sethi.
Much like TV series like “Ramy” and “Sort Of,” the film mines the immigrant experience in ways that simultaneously demonstrate Naveen’s exasperation with and love for his parents. Through its “hushed tone and astute window into genuine emotion,” it takes what “easily could have been a by-the-numbers romance” and makes it into a “story of true tenderness,” said Glenn Gaylord at The Queer Review. (Hulu)
‘One of Them Days’
The straightforward pleasures of the buddy comedy are what make “One of Them Days” a kind of “Friday” for the 2020s. Dreux (Keke Palmer) and Alyssa (SZA) are best friends and roommates who face eviction from their Los Angeles apartment after Alyssa’s boyfriend, Keshawn (Joshua David Neal), burns their rent money on a t-shirt venture he dubs “Cucci.”
From there they embark on a series of misadventures that are mostly played for laughs but also highlight things like predatory loan practices, gentrification and the affordability crisis. Instead of pratfalls and body humor gags, the film finds its “best humor on the character level, in clever dialogue and sharp line deliveries from the entire ensemble,” said Natalia Winkelman at The New York Times. (Netflix)
‘Splitsville’
Polyamory is on the rise and growing more visible in popular culture. In “Splitsville,” Ashley (Adria Arjona) dumps her husband, Carey (Kyle Marvin), so she can sleep with other people. When the crestfallen Carey crashes with their best friends, Paul (Michael Angelo Covino, who also directs) and Julie (Dakota Johnson), he discovers that they have an open marriage, and after sleeping with Julie, he returns to Ashley to see if they can succeed in a similar arrangement.
By “delivering material more akin to screwball with an inimitable extra backspin,” the film succeeds as a “rumination on what we want and expect out of our romantic relationships and ourselves” that also may be the “first genuinely funny movie about an open marriage,” said Jesse Hassenger at Paste Magazine. (Prime)
Filmmakers find laughs in both familiar set-ups and hopeless places