“Why so serious?”

The Joker’s catchphrase was the most common response to BBC Culture’s poll of 177 critics last year to determine the 100 greatest films of the 21st Century. Very few comedies made that list, apart from Wes Anderson’s confections and a few Pixar romps. That canon of modern classics showed how very often ‘what makes us laugh’ is neglected when assessing cinematic greatness. Is shedding a tear while watching a film a more valuable emotional response than a chuckle?

It’s certainly true that the Academy Awards have routinely overlooked comedy. Of the 89 winners for best picture, only seven can really be called comedies: It Happened One Night, You Can’t Take It With You, Around the World in 80 Days, The Apartment, Tom Jones, Annie Hall, and Birdman.

Read more about BBC Culture’s 100 greatest comedies of all time:

What the critics had to say about the top 25

The full list of critics who participated – and how they voted

Why Some Like It Hot is number one

Does comedy differ from region to region?

Do men and women find different films funny?

So this year BBC Culture decided to get serious about comedy. We asked 253 film critics – 118 women and 135 men – from 52 countries and six continents a simple: “What do you think are the 10 best comedies of all time?” Films from any country made since cinema was invented were eligible, and BBC Culture did nothing to define in advance what a comedy is; we left that to each of the critics to decide. As always, we urged the experts to go with their heart and pick personal favourites, films that are part of their lives, not just the ones that meet some ideal of greatness.

And guess what? Only three of those best picture-winning comedies made the top 100. But, in a surprise, quite a few comedies made since 2000 made the cut, even if they had been overlooked in our 100 greatest films of the 21st Century list last year. The highest-ranked film of this century is Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy at number 33. Toni Erdmann is the most recent film to make the top 100, while Safety Last! is the oldest.

The results are illuminating in other ways. They show that men and women have very similar comedic tastes, with a few key points of divergence – women were much more inclined to vote for Clueless while guys stumped for Animal House. And there’s evidence that comedy is not universal, that what’s considered a joke in English dialogue may not survive translation, and certain regions of the world find some films funnier than critics in other regions do. In fact, if the results had just been confined to critics from the US and Canada an entirely different film would have topped the list. It was largely because of the critics from Europe, East Asia and Latin America that Some Like It Hot was ultimately crowned number one. But as Nicholas Barber writes, Billy Wilder’s sparking diamond of a comedy about role-playing and the fluidity of gender and identity could not be more relevant today. And we have all 253 individual critics’ ballots for you to examine here, plus 25 critics making the case for the top 25.

We hope this list will help comedy receive the artistic consideration it deserves. Or at the very least, that it will inspire you to discover films to put a smile on your face. – Christian Blauvelt, Deputy Editor

100. (tie) The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese, 1982)

100. The Ladies Man (Jerry Lewis, 1961)

99. The Jerk (Carl Reiner, 1979)

98. The Hangover (Todd Phillips, 2009)

97. The Music Box (James Parrott, 1932)

96. Born Yesterday (George Cukor, 1950)

95. Ghostbusters (Ivan Reitman, 1984)

94. Rushmore (Wes Anderson, 1998)

93. South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (Trey Parker, 1999)

92. The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, 1962)

91. What’s Up, Doc? (Peter Bogdanovich, 1972)

90. A New Leaf (Elaine May, 1971)

89. Daisies (Vera Chytilová, 1966)

88. Zoolander (Ben Stiller, 2001)

87. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks, 1953)

86. Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949)