Laughing matters. It always has. But laughing may matter even more in modern times. Does anyone think that during the Middle Ages, or even in the late 19th century, ordinary citizens spent as much time laughing at the popular culture of the day as they have during the past 110 years? No way. And that’s because that gift from the gods known as movie comedy made laughing matter more than ever before. The first global celebrity was Charlie Chaplin, the master silent-movie comedian. It was he who established that going to the movies would be an act wired, in a primal and essential way, to the G-spot of hilarity. And once Hollywood got audiences laughing, no one wanted to stop. The slapstick genius of the silent clowns; the joyful lunacy of the Marx Brothers; the riotous repartee of screwball comedy; the sick-joke revolution of “Dr. Strangelove”; the prankster surrealism of Mel Brooks and Woody Allen; the midnight madness of John Waters; the unleashed anarchy of the “Saturday Night Live” generation; the barely controlled chaos of Jim Carrey … in compiling our list of the all-time greatest screen comedies, we thought long and hard about what makes a classic. But mostly we heeded the call of our funny bones. We hope these movies tickle yours as much as they do ours.

Bridget Jones’s Diary (2001)

Image Credit: Courtesy of Universal Pictures

It will often be said of a movie, “They could never make that today.” In the case of “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” it’s closer to: They wouldn’t make that today. And that’s a damn shame, since the cathartic thing about Renée Zellweger’s Bridget Jones is precisely what a bad role model she is. She’s an effusive mess of a London publishing PR assistant who drinks and smokes too much, binges on junk food and sleeps with her cad of a boss — and if you want to see the film try to justify that, just know that he’s played by Hugh Grant at his most dreamboat smarmy. What makes this adaptation of Helen Fielding’s 1996 novel