Entertainment
10 Best Disaster Movies That Are Also Comedies, Ranked
Large-scale disasters are usually taken seriously in the world of film, and so too are movies about the end of the world, for obvious reasons. There’s a tremendous amount of drama to mine from depicting a real-life event (like in Titanic), or trying to outline how the end of the world could come about, and what it might look like for anyone unlucky to survive an event that decimates most of the planet’s population (like in Threads).
Then there are other disaster movies that find comedy in terror, or just outright make fun of the disaster genre more generally. The following movies all fall between dramedy and farce, with some being about relatively small disasters (like a potential plane crash), and others dealing with a full-on apocalypse. Having a range of things does mean “disaster movie” is defined quite broadly below, but that was necessary to find enough titles that are simultaneously funny and decent (or better) in quality.
10
‘Miracle Mile’ (1988)
As far as comedies go, Miracle Mile is one of the more intense ones, to the point where chunks of it aren’t really all that funny, but by design. It’s kind of a rom-com about two people who are unlucky enough to fall for each other right on the brink of nuclear war breaking out. And so the movie ends up being about them trying to find each other as chaos erupts all around, knowing that their potential “date” could be the last thing they do on Earth.
It’s offbeat and not particularly well-acted, but Miracle Mile is such an interesting mix of genres – and so confident in its weirdness – that it’s worth checking out if you’re after something different. It’s paranoid, sometimes funny, consistently intense, a little romantic, and quite harrowing, all at once.
9
‘Maximum Overdrive’ (1986)
Yearly Stephen King adaptations are about as inevitable as death and taxes at this stage, but the ever-prolific author has also done a movie himself, like, directing as well as writing. That film was the absolutely bonkers Maximum Overdrive, which is a comedic sci-fi/horror movie about appliances all over the world coming alive and turning murderous because of a passing comet.
And so the main characters have to survive various objects that can sometimes be deadly in accidents, but aren’t usually malicious or, well, sentient. It’s weird, and kind of fun for a while, but Maximum Overdrive does wear out its welcome after a bit. Still, for the novelty factor of it even existing, and for being the one Stephen King-directed movie out there (and it’s stood as the only one for nearly 40 years now), it might be worth a watch for the morbidly curious.
8
‘Don’t Look Up’ (2021)
Even by the standards of broad and in-your-face satire, Don’t Look Up really feels like it’s beating you over the head for a bit over two hours, but it wants to comment on times that it believes are a bit wild, so maybe the approach is necessary. It does make the movie exhausting, since you can tell what it’s trying to say about political division, apathy, and existential threats quite quickly, but at least things stay energetic and admirably stressful.
Don’t Look Up is pretty darkly comedic, and sometimes somber, as a disaster movie, but it more than gets the point across.
There’s a large cast here, and everyone is united by the fact that an approaching comet may wipe out the planet, but other than that, no one is really all that united by anything. Don’t Look Up is pretty darkly comedic, and sometimes somber, as a disaster movie, but it more than gets the point across. Hell, maybe it gets the point across a bit too forcefully, as, for better or worse, it’s one of the more aggressive mainstream films of the decade so far.
7
‘The World Sinks Except Japan’ (2006)
There was a 2006 movie called The Sinking of Japan, which was about Japan “sinking” due to earthquakes and the possible eruption of Mt. Fuji, and it got a parody film that same year hilariously called The World Sinks Except Japan. Well, a more accurate translation of the Japanese title might be Everything Other than Japan Sinks, but either way, it’s a phenomenal name for a movie.
It’s about what you’d expect it to be: disasters striking and impacting everywhere in the world except Japan, and so everyone who survives the problems elsewhere on the planet rushes to Japan as a place to seek refuge, and comedic chaos ensues. The World Sinks Except Japan is undeniably not going to be for everyone, but if you want a lesser-known disaster film that’s also gleefully absurd, you could do worse.
6
‘This Is the End’ (2013)
A movie about various Hollywood actors having to deal with a sudden apocalypse during a house party, This Is the End was made around that time everyone “thought” (or joked about thinking) that the world might end in 2012. There was one other movie that took a darkly comedic look at the end of the world also released in 2013, but that one will be mentioned a few places from now.
With This Is the End, you get a ton of crude humor, over-the-top violence, gross-out comedy, and a surprisingly impressive cast of well-known actors largely playing themselves, or at least exaggerated and usually unlikable versions of themselves. You sort of get the whole joke pretty early on, and things eventually start feeling repetitive, but there is a certain amount of fun to be had here if you want a dopey, broad, and loud comedy about the world ending.
5
‘Night of the Comet’ (1984)
Night of the Comet is an interesting blend of genres, seeing as it’s a post-apocalyptic movie, a comedy, and a zombie film, all at once. Two young women have to contend with all that comes with a heightened end-of-the-world sort of situation, so it’s more of a post-disaster movie than a disaster-focused one, but the plot does play out as a result of a planet-wide catastrophe, so it’s being counted here.
Also, Night of the Comet is sort of a comedy/horror film, but one of the milder ones in terms of horror. It won’t keep you up at night, and it honestly makes surviving the end of the world look kind of fun… well, almost. If you have someone who’s got your back, or are just really good at quipping, Night of the Comet argues that maybe you’ve got a shot at surviving the end times.
4
‘Mars Attacks!’ (1996)
Somehow, Tim Burton got just about everyone in Hollywood to show up and appear in one of the silliest disaster movies ever made, Mars Attacks! Okay, not literally everyone, but the cast here is gigantic, since you get Jack Nicholson in the lead, playing two characters, and then the rest of the ensemble cast features the likes of Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Glenn Close, Martin Short, Michael J. Fox, Natalie Portman, and Danny DeVito, among others.
It’s a very goofy sci-fi movie that does what you’d expect: it has Martians come to Earth, attack it, and then lots of famous actors get killed on-screen in various silly ways. Independence Day was already pretty over-the-top and almost funny, as a result, but then Mars Attacks! takes things to a whole other level, and though its brand of cinematic chaos is exhausting, the movie is, overall, better than some give it credit for.
3
‘The World’s End’ (2013)
A better comedy about the end of the world than the already mentioned (and still fairly good) This Is the End, The World’s End doesn’t really deal with the disaster-related stuff until the end, but it’s also about various other things ending, too. It explores the slow death of a friend group, and the far-too-drawn-out death of youth for one member of that ex-friend group, which is all quite miserable, but there’s a good deal of comedy here, too.
Of all the Edgar Wright movies that make up the Cornetto Trilogy, The World’s End is the most downbeat, and easily the most divisive, but it works as something a bit more mature and maybe even nuanced. It’s well-structured, delivers when it comes to action, has Wright’s signature fast-paced style/humor, and then lunges into the sci-fi genre more as it goes along in ultimately interesting ways.
2
‘Airplane!’ (1980)
As far as classic parody movies go, they don’t get a whole lot better than Airplane! This is one of those rare spoof movies that’s much more well-known than the movie it’s making fun of: 1957’s Zero Hour!, though it also pokes fun at other aviation-related disaster movies, like those in the Airport series. Actually, come to think of it, they’re fairly obscure by today’s standards now, as well, with other disaster movies from the 1970s – like The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure – holding up a little better.
Anyway, Airplane! takes the sort of premise and characters you’d find in a typical disaster movie about a flight going wrong, but makes everything very silly, surreal, and extra over-the-top. You can watch and enjoy it without being too familiar with the movies it parodies, since Airplane! is just non-stop with mostly funny gags, and a real variety of them, too, with the pacing being so relentless that the occasional joke, here or there, missing the mark doesn’t really impact the film too heavily.
1
‘Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb’ (1964)
Maybe stretching the definition of disaster movie a little bit, but Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is a film about averting a disaster (of sorts) that could end the world, so it’s being counted here. And, if it’s able to count as a disaster movie, then it’s pretty easy to crown it the funniest of the bunch, though Airplane! isn’t too far behind, and is admittedly more broadly comedic and silly.
That’s because Dr. Strangelove does get serious at one point, and that serious stuff is all the more effective when the rest of the movie is as farcical as it is. It’s not quite an emotional roller-coaster throughout, but it is impactful with some of the out-there choices it makes. It’s also one of many films that demonstrates why Stanley Kubrick is considered one of the all-time great directors, as getting a movie like this right (balanced tonally and emotionally and all that) would’ve been one hell of an undertaking.
