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I can’t help but feel that they don’t make comedies like they used to.

When last did you get stomach cramps from laughing at a gem like that scene from Bridesmaids or Tropic Thunder or Pineapple Express?

Those are just a few of the standouts that come to mind from the past 20 or so years and is far from an exhaustive list.

For that, we head to Rolling Stone for the 70th greatest comedies of the 21st century. As is to be expected, compiling such a list led to clashes:

After a number of heated arguments and lots of name-calling and the occasional chaotic pie fight, we’ve narrowed down our choices for the greatest comedies of the 21st century. Culling this down was a tough call; humor is a seriously subjective topic, and every one of our 19 writers weighing in had their own idea of what constitutes “hilarious.”

But this list represents the best cross-section of screen comedy of our millennium, a collection that runs the gamut from droll to bladder-loosening.

Fresh off their greatest TV show of all time list, which should have helped you load up on new material, we’ll head for the top seven comedies of the past two decades.

In seventh is 2002’s Punch Drunk Love starring Adam Sandler and Emily Watson, sixth is 2007’s Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (yes, great choice), and fifth is 2006’s Idiocracy. It’s both astonishing and sad how prescient that film has proven itself to be.

In fourth, the classic duo of Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly (that’s two of the top seven for him) in 2008’s Step Brothers:

…the duo play stunted adults forced into the same family when their single parents (Richard Jenkins, Mary Steenburgen) remarry… [and] it’s their back-and-forth idiocy that makes this a modern classic.

And once you’ve fully absorbed the brilliance of their interplay, be sure to spend a little time marveling at the movie’s murderers’ row of ensemble players, including a perfectly repugnant Adam Scott and Kathryn Hahn as a horribly horny wife

10 points if you instantly thought of the words ‘Catalina wine mixer’:

2011’s Bridesmaids is third:

Proudly feminine and patently successful, this ensemble raunch-com celebrates the inner paranoia and outer politeness of best frenemies, all hugs with fingernails filed to a shiv…

Every studio wanted to copy it. None of them dared, which gave director Paul Feig years to dominate the no-fuck’s-given female blockbuster lane. Thanks to the seed Bridesmaids planted, now that turf is more crowded.

I linked to the famous food poisoning scene right up top so we’re doing the trailer here:

Number two is a title that may surprise you – 2009’s In The Loop:

Armando Ianucci’s bitter, foul-mouthed political satire about the Byzantine backroom back-and-forth between the U.S. and the U.K. in the run-up to a new war had a bitter ring of truth about it when it was released: The conflicts in both Iraq and Afghanistan were raging; [and] the Bush administration was sword-rattling about Iran…

Seen now, this portrait of bureaucracy and institutional loyalty seems almost quaint – and yet, somewhere in there, amid the madness and nonstop motormouthed insults, Ianucci also gets at a powerful, prophetic truth: That in a world of rampant spinelessness, the cruelest man is king.

It gets bonus points for starring James Gandolfini, also known as Tony Soprano himself:

I’m pretty sure the average reader would not have picked the above in second, or the below as the funniest of the century thus far.

I know my pick wouldn’t have been 2000’s Best in Show:

The greatest comedy of the 21st century directly descended from one of the best of the 20th. Some 16 years after co-writing and starring in This Is Spinal Tap, Christopher Guest made this other milestone mockumentary — a flawless and deliriously executed work that transforms spoofery into something sublime…

No matter how ridiculous it all was, you walk away from Best in Show feeling that you’ve spent 90 minutes watching real people — and that comedy can carry the weight of our truly absurd lives.

It’s telling that the best comedy of the century should date that far:

The highest movie released this decade is Palm Springs at number 39.

It is the only movie from the past two years to feature in the top 62, before Shiva Baby appears at 63.

Give the full list a gander here and you should find a few gems to stockpile when you’re in need of a chuckle.

[source:rollingstone]