The 15 Best Buddy Comedies to Watch Right Now

With the new installment in the Will Smith (55) and Martin Lawrence (59) franchise Bad Boys: Ride or Die, hitting theaters, it's a good time to dive deeper into the surprisingly resilient buddy-comedy genre. A few basic ingredients are essential: The two leads need to be opposites; they need to drive each other more than a little crazy; and they eventually need to put all of that aside to overcome whatever obstacle they face. And a little magic is required, that indescribable push-pull chemistry that’s as rare as Halley’s Comet. Here are 15 big-screen buddy comedies — from the late-1950s classic Some Like It Hot to the underrated 2016 gem The Nice Guys — that nailed it.

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Some Like It Hot (1959)

Sure, there had been buddy comedies before (Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello). But Billy Wilder’s absolutely perfect caper took the genre to dizzying new heights. Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis play Chicago musicians running from the Mob after witnessing the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, hiding out as Josephine and Daphne, two new “gals” in an all-female band. As they fight off handsy male suitors and their own urges for breathy bandmate Marilyn Monroe, posing as women becomes hilariously challenging. But hey, nobody’s perfect.

Watch it: on Prime Video

The Odd Couple (1968)

Has the opposites-attract formula ever been deployed better than this? Jack Lemmon is pure gold as neat freak Felix Unger and Walter Matthau is hangdog perfection as the put-upon slob Oscar Madison. Booted out by his wife, Felix moves in with Oscar and tidies up his pigpen to the point of exasperation. One of the decade’s best bits of physical comedy is hypochondriacal Felix as he hilariously tries to clear his sinuses in a diner. But it’s not just laughs. The Odd Couple is a surprisingly poignant movie about two guys who love each other dearly despite hating one another.

Watch it: on Prime Video

48 Hrs. (1982)

By the early 1980s, Eddie Murphy was SNL’s latest breakout sensation, making his movie debut in Walter Hill’s action comedy about a short-fused cop (Nick Nolte) and the convict he springs from jail to help him track down a killer. Murphy’s first 15 minutes show why superstardom was inevitable. His charisma, comic timing and command of the big screen are immediate. And don’t sleep on Nolte: His one-of-a-kind rock-tumbler voice sounds like a dive bar at closing time.

Watch it: on Paramount+, Prime Video

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Planes, Trains and Automobiles (1987)

John Hughes’ hysterical cross-country odyssey stars Steve Martin, 78, as a Chicago advertising exec trying to get home to his family in time for Thanksgiving. Problem is, a blizzard has canceled every flight and he can’t seem to shake John Candy’s oafish shower-curtain-ring salesman. It’s one of life’s great tragedies that these two men didn’t get the chance to make a hundred movies together. If you’re looking for a comedy that will make you laugh until you cry (and maybe even cry until you laugh), this heartwarmer is your ticket.

Watch it: on Paramount+, Prime Video

Midnight Run (1988)

In the single best buddy comedy of the 1980s, Robert De Niro plays a gruff bounty hunter tasked with delivering a bail-jumping accountant for the Mafia (Charles Grodin) from New York to Los Angeles. An FBI agent (Yaphet Kotto), a rival tracker (John Ashton, 76) and a mob boss (Dennis Farina) all want Grodin too. De Niro, in his greatest comic performance ever, is superb as a grump with a soft chewy center, and Grodin turns complaining into a form of art.

Watch it: on Prime Video