We spent the last few episodes on some heavy emotional (Bleep).

Tugging hearts, jerking tears, but now we think it's time to slap some knees.

These are our picks for the top ten funniest movie moments of all time.

(Music)

How do you break down humor?

It's something we all experience,

but most of us probably couldn't explain it if our life depended on it.

I mean give it a try.

What makes something funny?

E.B. White probably put it best when he said that analyzing humour is

like dissecting a frog.

Few people are interested and the frog dies.

But we're in the business of frog murder here at Cinefix,

so get your lab gloves on.

Because we're going in.

The first of three prominent theories of humor is called relief theory, and

it comes to us mostly by way of our favorite phallic symbol smoking German

psychoanalyst, Sigmund Freud.

In it he slots humor into his existing theories of repression and

psychic energy as a release valve.

According to Freud and his ilk we've got all this pent up energy from clenching out

buttholes, repressing our sexual and aggressive urges, and humor lets us

blow off some much needed steam about it without letting go of those defenses.

A joke then is something that looks like it's going to take even more

energy to repress our urges, maintaining our emotional or cognitive stasis.

But it veers away at the last second and we laugh at the relief.

Think 'Blazing Saddles'' sheriffs Self hostage situation.

- The next man makes a move, the (Sound) gets it.

- Where a clever back dooring theoretically allows us to revel

in racial aggression in a scenario where the actual social stakes are rendered

artificially low.

Or Dr. Strangelove's famous outburst,

where the psychological tension involved with having to explain why the Doctor has

suddenly stood up out of his chair is instead quickly waved off as a miracle.

- What a relief, we don't have to

resolve that conflict it's Buster Keaton and Steamboat Bill Jr. miracousley

threading the needle through a window as the house falls sparing him from harm.

And our emotional shock that might have had to go with it.

And it's little Ms. Sunshine when Olive's family get's on the stage with her and

spares us the immense discomfort of her embarrassment.

But for our first pick,

we're going with the infamous diner scene reveal from 'When Harry Met Sally'.

- Most women, at one time or another, have faked it.

- Well, they haven't faked it with me.

- How do you know? - Because I know.

- It's just that all men are sure it never happened to them.

And most women, at one time or another have done it, so you do the math.

- You don't think that I could tell the difference?

- No.

- Get out of here.

- Are you okay?

- (Sound) God.

(Sound) God.

- Now the most famous part of this scene is obviously the end.

- I'll have what she's having.

- And that seems to function as a social awkwardness relief too.

But we want to talk about the moment when Harry first realizes what's going on,

because it's pretty perfectly Freudian.

We're already laughing and having a good time from Harry and

Sally's fake orgasm banter, where there's clearly some awkwardness and

repression that goes unreleased.

- How do you know that they're really - And released.

- What are you saying that they fake orgasm.

- When "Sally" starts acting strange.

And here he is first concerned about her health.

Is she okay, is she choking?

He doesn't quite know what's going on and we don't either.

But then it becomes clear, no, she's not choking.

She's faking an orgasm.

It's a near miss.

It looks like we're heading towards danger until we veer off towards sex land.

And this back doors Harry and us into a sexual experience.

In this context, the whole scene is really a release valve for their sexual tension.

They get to use humor to express the feelings they're repressing without

committing to them.

It's funny because it allows us to get our metaphorical rocks off without the actual

stakes, which sounds a whole a whole lot like flirting to me.

Of course, the relief theory isn't exactly perfect.

It's pretty obvious that everything relieving doesn't end in laughter, and

it doesn't seem like it's capable of explaining all jokes either.

Enter 'Superiority Theory', the idea behind the 'Superiority Theory' of humor

originating all the way back with "Plato" and "Aristotle" is that we laugh because

we get an opportunity to experience our own superiority over another.

This is the classic pratfall, why tripping can be funny.

Our superiority can be physical, intellectual, certainly social or

even emotional.

We see someone else behaving like a fool, and

our laughter is joy at our own not foolness.

Think the can scene from The Jerk.

- Stay away from the cans!

- The cinema line from Annie Hall.

- What I wouldn't give for a large sock with horse manure in it.

- Most of the discreet charm of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.

- (Foreign) - It's schadenfreude on screen like

Jackass' golf course 'Pineapple Express'" chase and 'Something About Mary's' zipper.

A superiority theorist would say 'When Harry Met Sally' is actually funny because

we know what's happening before Harry does and we're identifying with Sally by

the time she proves she's more orgasmically knowledgable than he is.

But for our number nine pick, we think that The Princess Bride's

battle of the wits is an example as perfect and hilarious as they come.

- You've beaten my giant, which means you're exceptionally strong.

So, you could've put the poison in your own goblet,

trusting on your strength to save you.

So, I could clearly not choose the wine in front of you.

But you've also bested my Spaniard, which means you must have studied.

And in studying you must have learned that man is mortal, so

you would have put the poison as far from yourself as possible.

So I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.

- Your trying to trick me into giving away something.

It won't work.

- It has worked, you've given everything away.

I know where the poison is.

- Then make your choice.

- I will, and I choose, what in the world could that be?

- What? Where?

I don't see anything - I could have sworn I saw something.

No matter.

- What's so funny?

- I'll tell you in a minute.

First, let's drink.

Me from my glass and you from yours.

(Music)

- You guessed wrong.

- You only think I guessed wrong.

That's what's so funny.

I switched glasses when your back was turned.

(Laugh) - So

the big punchline is pretty obvious here.

Vizzini is convinced he's outsmarted Westley, our hero,

until he falls over dead.

Pretty obviously wrong.

And who doesn't want to feel superior to the blithering, bragging,

boasting, self-proclaimed genius?

We just want Westley to shove his own words back down his smug throat.

So when he does boy, is that a big kick of superiority humor.

And sure, it's also a relief.

But it gets even better for superiority.

What is he doing right before he croaks?

Laughing, and why is he laughing?

Because he think he's bested "Wesley".

That's right, we got some meta superiority humor up in this (Bleep), classic.

(Music)

Superiority isn't quite a catch all, either.

Who were we feeling superior to with this joke?

- The Supremes were to hit the top of the charts with this really

big one in the 60's.

- we're not sure.

And why are we laughing at this poor, sad sap?

Not sure either.

So next up we got incongruity theory, the reigning humor theory king,

championed by those famous comedians Kant, Schopenhauer, and Hagel.

It suggests that humor comes from the realization of incongruity,

a mismatch between our expectations and reality.

In comic terms,

the setup creates in us an expectation while the punchline subverts it.

And the humor lies in the moment of realization.

The instant of collapse between the imagined and the actual.

This is Young Frankenstein's, "Putting on the Ritz."

- If you're blue and

you don't know where to go to, why don't you go to where fashion sits?

- Putting on the Ritz.

- Or in "Glorious Bastards," Italian where the infiltrating bastards are far worse

than the german they are trying to fool.

(Foreign).

- It's puppet sex, or an accidental "Hitler" speech.

Or an awkward skinny, dorky boy named "Mclovin".

Incongruity theory would tell you that 'The Princess Bride' moment is funny

more because of "Vissini's" proclamations of his own intelligence are so wildly out

of whack with reality, than because we like how smart he makes us feel.

It's almost every single joke that you'd look at and call ridiculous or absurd.

However, for our number eight pick,

there's no incongruity more delightful than the 'Black Knight's' refusal to

acknowledge his obvious defeat from 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'.

- (Sound) - "Victory is mine"!

"We thank thee Lord that in thy-" - (Sound)

- "Come on, then".

- "What"?

- "Have at you".

- "You are indeed brave, sir knight, but the fight is mine".

- " had enough, ey"?

- "Look, you stupid bastard, you've got no arms left".

- "Yes, I have, look, just a flesh wound".

- (Sound) As the duel proceeds,

we are continuously confronted with the 'Black Knight's' denial.

Each time he gets a limb chopped off, he downplays its importance.

But each time he has one less limb, so the incongruence is much worse and

the laughs much better.

So it heightens and it heightens the absurdity of the bit,

turning what was a possible comeback into a hilarious farce.

And yet he persists, and

we love it all the more because it's such a human kind of denial with machismo and

pride so tragically misplaced as to be hysterical rather than grating.

It's a brilliant, shameless inconsistency between his reality and his proclamations.

And for that very reason, it's impossible not to love him.

(Sound) But we're a bit in the weeds here with the theory.

We've got seven more slots and we want to spend them looking more at

the technique of humor than the philosophy of it.

And the good news is that cinema has a ton of different ways to tell a joke.

And probably the best one to start off with is dialogue.

In a nutshell, it's word play where the text, itself, contains the humor.

The relief, the superiority, the incongruity,

they're imbedded in the language.

Think 'Life of Brian's- Biggus Dickus'.

- Wait till "Biggus Dickus" hears of this.

- Or 'Ghostbusters' dickless.

- Yes, it's true.

This man has no dick.

- 'Airplane's' jive.

- "What it is big momma, my momma didn't raise no dummies.

I dug her rap".

- 'Blazing Saddle's' harumph, 'Naked Gun's' fireworks, and

how could we not mention the all time class, 'Who's on First'.

But, if it's clever verbal banter you want our preference goes to the now and

then insanity of 'Spaceballs' video review.

- What the hell am I looking at?

When does this happen in the movie?

- Now, you're looking at now,

sir everything that happens now is happening now.

- What happened to then?

- We passed it.

- When? - Just now.

We're at now, now.

- Go back to then.

- When? - Now.

- Now? - Now.

- I can't. - Why?

- We missed it. - When?

- Just now.

- And the same way that a pun is funny because it's a word used for