Happiness For Blessing

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story

Dodge, Duck, Dip, Dive, and...Dodge.

Thanks to all who voted.

The final list, from 1-64 (ties broken using a combination of voting results and original seeding):

1. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
2. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
3. Zoolander
4. Hot Fuzz
5. The Hangover
6. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
7. Elf
8. The Simpsons Movie
9. Shaun of the Dead
10. The School of Rock
11. Wedding Crashers
12. Napoleon Dynamite
13. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby
14. Meet the Parents
15. Knocked Up
16. Kung Fu Panda
17. Stranger Than Fiction
18. Shrek
19. Super Troopers
20. Old School
21. The 40 Year Old Virgin
22. Hitch
23. Thank You for Smoking
24. 50 First Dates
25. Bruce Almighty
26. Little Miss Sunshine
27. The Royal Tenenbaums
28. Juno
29. The Replacements
30. Starsky & Hutch
31. The Emperor's New Groove
32. Shanghai Noon
33. Step Brothers
34. Get Smart
35. Tropic Thunder
36. Role Models
37. Monsters, Inc.
38. Accepted
39. I Love You, Man
40. Anger Management
41. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
42. Superbad
43. Click
44. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
45. Dan in Real Life
46. The Longest Yard
47. Ratatouille
48. Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story
49. Blades of Glory
50. Meet the Fockers
51. Be Cool
52. You, Me, and Dupree
53. Mr. and Mrs. Smith
54. Fun with Dick and Jane
55. Analyze That
56. Sideways
57. My Big Fat Greek Wedding
58. Finding Nemo
59. Pineapple Express
60. The Benchwarmers
61. Jackass Number Two
62. Orange County
63. Clerks II
64. Shanghai Knights

The Entire Bracket

Round 1

Round 2

Sweet 16

Elite 8

Final 4

Championship Round

It comes down to this: two hyphenated titles that were released three weeks apart in 2004. Your finalists:

Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story

Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy



The Entire Bracket

Round 1

Round 2

Sweet 16

Elite 8

Final 4

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the Final Four:












The Entire Bracket

Round 1

Round 2

Sweet 16

Elite 8

My apologies for waiting so long to get this up. We're in the middle of a longer-than-we-ever-imagined move, so it's been kind of tough to get around to this. If you've missed any of this, here's a quick review:

Round 1

Round 2

Sweet 16

Here are the results from the last round of voting. This is your Elite Eight bracket (click to enlarge):



Finally, the new poll. Deadline is next weekend-ish - unless I'm actually moving stuff into our new house, in which case it will take longer.

Due to embarassingly low voter "turnout" this week, I am extending the voting period for the Sweet 16 round by an entire week. You may vote right here. I emphasize once again that you may vote as many times as you want.

In case you missed it:

Round 1

Round 2

The results for Round 2 are in. Check out the bracket.

For the second week in a row, we had one unanimous decision. In Round 1, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy took home the honors, while Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story came away with the prize in Round 2. We sure do love those hyphenated movies.

We have one double-digit seed still alive, and that Cinderella is one Kung Fu Panda. It faces a tough opponent this week, going against #1 seed Anchorman. Just about every matchup this time around has some sort of intrigue, but there are 3 that particularly catch my eye. Two films that feature Will Ferrell, Wedding Crashers and Elf, face off against each other, while Simon Pegg fans will have to choose between Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. Meanwhile, Zoolander and Napoleon Dynamite come together in a battle of mentally challenged lead characters.

This week, I've asked two other committee members to list their favorite moments from each of the remaining movies. I haven't received their submissions yet, but once I do, I'll update the post, so check back. For now, I'll just include my own. Note: I've included links to video clips when available. Some clips may contain language you find unsuitable.

(1)Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
RB:Dodgeball is packed with memorable scenes and quotable quotes, but the best part for my money is the scene in the bar where Average Joe’s celebrates after defeating the Girl Scout Troop to qualify for the national tournament. The full scene isn’t on the internet as far as I can tell, but here’s a partial.

(5)Talladega Nights
RB:I don’t think anybody really prayed to Baby Jesus before Ricky Bobby came out. Now, I imagine there may be one or two people that actually do.

(3)The Simpsons Movie
RB:Don’t tell me you don’t know this song.

(7)Meet the Parents
RB:Sorry if this seems obvious, but the funniest part of MTP is when Gaylord first meets the parents – and then they share dinner. Greg’s prayer alone makes the movie, but there’s also a hilarious exchange about milking a cat…

(1)Shaun of the Dead
RB:Listen, I love zombie movies (no, really), but anything that spoofs one is automatically funny. Probably the best part, though, is when Shaun and Ed finally figure out what’s going on, then go about learning how to actually kill the zombies. Couldn’t find the clip, sorry.

(4)Hot Fuzz
RB:This clip contains major spoilers. The death at 3:10, in context, made me laugh so hard I had to pause the movie.

(3)Wedding Crashers
RB:Vince Vaughn’s delivery in this scene is spot-on: “I felt like Jodie Foster in ‘The Accused’ last night.”

(2)Elf
RB:Every time I pass “Santa” in the mall, I get the itch to expose him a la Buddy the Elf.

(1)Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
RB:I don’t like this movie as much as a lot of people I know, but Jack Black’s cameo will always be hilarious to me.

(13)Kung Fu Panda
RB:The Kung Fu Panda is awesome – and attractive. Lucky for us, there’s no charge for such things.

(6)Knocked Up
RB:Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen do mushrooms in Vegas and talk about chairs in a hotel room. Hilarity ensues. Unfortunately, I could not find a clip anywhere.

(2)The Hangover
RB:There’s a lot of good material to choose from here, from Stu’s song about Mike Tyson's tiger to the tazing in the police station to the naked man jumping out the trunk, but when I think of The Hangover, the scene that immediately comes to mind is Alan’s speech on the rooftop.

(1)Zoolander
RB:The walk-off.

(5)Napoleon Dynamite
RB:Even if you haven’t seen this movie, you probably know it because everybody (myself included) does a really bad impression of the title character. All of that quotable quote stuff is great, but Napoleon Dynamite is not the same without the dance scene.

(3)The School of Rock
RB:TSOR is about the songs, and this is the best one.

(2)Forgetting Sarah Marshall
RB:Russell Brand’s ludicrous portrayal of a douchebag rocker takes the cake in this one. Sodomize intolerance!

EDIT: I just figured out that you could embed the poll. Happy voting!



Deadline is Sunday, August 16 at 11:59 pm.

In case you missed it, here is the Introduction & Round 1.

Let's get to it.

The results for Round 1 are published. You can see the bracket here:

Best Comedy Movies of the 2000's

Out of the 32 first round matchups, there were only 5 upsets, two of them being 9 seeds. The lower-seeded movies moving on are Starsky & Hutch, Shanghai Noon, The Emperor's New Groove, Kung Fu Panda, and Juno. I find several interesting matchups in Round 2. In the Vince Vaughn Region, Dodgeball and Starsky & Hutch face off in a battle of Ben Stiller movies that were released in the Summer of 2004. The 2-7 matchup features one movie that is already considered a classic in The Royal Tenenbaums going against recent success The Hangover. Meanwhile, there's a chance that Owen Wilson movies Shanghai Noon and Meet the Parents could meet in the Sweet 16. In any case, there are some good movies that will not advance to the next round. Which will survive? Vote here:

Round 2

Voting ends on Sunday, August 9 at 11:59 pm.

I know it's been awhile since I've last posted, and I'm sor - you know what? I'm not apologizing. Since my last post on April 27, a lot has happened in our lives. Most importantly for myself, I interviewed for (3 times!), accepted, and started a new job. I'm now a bona fide youth minister. Hooray for using my degree! To be honest with you, a lot of what I was doing for a while was for my sanity. I needed to know that I did indeed still have a brain and was capable of using it for more than customer service and kitchen know-how. I don't have that problem anymore! Anyway, I say all that to tell you that things will be different around here. The Weekly Links feature, which I had just gotten the way I wanted it, is no more. It was very time-consuming, and I don't need those kind of pursuits to distract me.

Having said that, however, I would like to introduce to you a project that, yes, took me some time to put together. I have set out to determine the best comedy movie of the last decade. I don't remember anymore how this whole thing started, but I do remember how I decided to settle it. There's a new local radio show in Dallas called "The Ben & Skin Show." It's a sports show, but they actually spend at least half of their time shooting the bull, and it's their opinion that any open-ended debate is best settled using a 64-team bracket, NCAA tournament style. I happen to agree. I think you know where this is going.

Before I reveal the bracket to you, I think it's important that you know that a lot of hard work and serious thought went into this. To start, I formed a rather large committee that was eventually whittled down to four people because of the amount of work involved. Each person created their own Top 75 list, which was averaged to determine the seeding in the bracket. The only requirements for candidacy were that it was a full-length feature released from January 1, 2000 until now. The original ballot had almost 200 movies to choose from, and even though there were only 4 lists of 75 movies submitted, a total of 137 movies were listed. (Fun fact: The movie ranked #137 was "Dude, Where's My Car?") From there, the bracket was created. This is where you come in: Each round will be determined by popular vote, and anybody who wants to vote is welcome to do so. There are some weaknesses to the system: admittedly, the committee is a pretty homogeneous group. We're all middle-class white males who have a lot of the same tastes in movies (although the submitted ballots varied widely). So if your movie is left off, it's probably not you, it's us. You're more than welcome to go make your own bracket. But as far as I'm concerned, this will settle the question, "What is the best comedy movie of the 2000's?"

I tried to take an image of the bracket, but it's too big to fit on this page, so here's the link:

Best Comedy Movies of the 2000's

You'll notice that if you click on each movie's name, you will be taken to its IMDB page.

And here's how you vote:

Round 1 Ballot

Round 1 voting ends on Sunday, August 1 at 11:59 pm. Vote as often as you want, discuss it in the comments, and please tell other people. Happy voting!