Just Joking: Comedies in June

This month, laugh a little louder with Kanopy’s Just Joking collection- featuring a delightful mix of classic comedies, witty indie films, and laugh-out-loud international gems.

The laughs start here on Kanopy, but before you go, check out some highlights and maybe a few lesser-known titles below from the collection that you might not be aware of and are worth a few of your monthly Kanopy tickets. From subtle satire to outrageous laughs, these films are guaranteed to bring the funny. Best of all? They’re completely free to watch with your Clark County Public Library card. Just create your account and start streaming better with Kanopy.

Dinner in America (Adam Rehmeier, 2020) 

Dinner in America is the brash and punk rock comedic love story your parents probably warned you about. It’s crude and offensive and filled with deplorable characters yet somewhere along the way the hard exterior of the movie starts to melt and becomes… kind of sweet?

Patty (Emily Skeggs) is totally obsessed with the band PSYOPS and their masked lead singer John Q, who she calls “her music boyfriend,” and writes him fan letters every week. John Q, aka Simon (Kyle Gallner), unaware of Patty's existence, is on the lam, not only from the police, but all of life’s responsibilities. Their paths converge in a back alley after Patty quits her job at a pet store and Simon hides from a police foot chase. From there, an idiosyncratic love story grows between the concrete slabs of a cartoonish Middle America and DIY punk life.

With writer/director Adam Rehmeier’s whip smart and trashy dialogue, some powerhouse acting from the main duo of Gallner and Skeggs, and a quirky storyline where you never know where you or the characters may end up, Dinner in America is the anarchistic love story that sticks it to the man.    

Hunt for the Wilderpeople (Taika Watiti, 2016) 

Nestled between the goofy mockumentary goodness of What We Do in the Shadows and the goofy, superhero heroics of Thor: Ragnarok of Taika Watiti’s filmography is this charmer about the unlikely relationship between two odd ducks - a troublemaking teen Ricky (Julian Dennison) and Uncle Hec (a grizzled Sam Neill) as they make their way through the rough New Zealand wilderness. Like Dinner in America, it’s a story of a mistaken duo on the lam, but here we have Ricky, who has been bounced from foster home to foster home, finding a bit of something with Uncle Hec. Stability? A father figure? An odd couple for sure. 

Watiti’s good at the balance between serious and silly and there’s some good silly in Hunt for the Wilderpeople. It can be both poignant and sad at points but the comedy does shine through.

If you're in the mood for some more of Watiti's work, Kanopy has two more of his earlier films, the comedy drama of Boy and the offbeat romance Eagle vs Shark. 

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (Eric Appel, 2022)- 

If you’re around a certain age, "Weird Al" Yankovic has always been omnipresent in your entire life. From songs played on Dr. Demento’s radio show to music videos on MTV, movies and television appearances, and voice work for animated works, Yankovic has been part of our pop culture fabric for close to fifty (!!!) years now.

You will most definitely not get a straightforward biopic with Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, but you will get Daniel Radcliffe playing Yankovic with a manic glee as we watch an attempt at a conventional story. It does a good attempt at trying to stick the usual musical biopic narrative but decides to zig instead of zag with Yankovic’s life taking wild and satiric diversions that include action packed rescue missions, pool parties packed with out there celebs, and assassination attempts? It’s wild and weird and wonderful just like our hero.

If you want some more “Weird Al” to add to your Kanopy Watchlist, make sure to check out the "Weird Al" cult classic UHF, which is in the comedy collection here, as well as a music documentary Weird Al: Never Off Beat.