The best and worst movies starring standup comedians

Jerry Seinfeld is one of the most successful stand-ups ever, and he starred in a titular sitcom that is one of the most successful sitcoms ever. However, Seinfeld has never been much of an actor, or much for acting, so his movie work has been limited. Famously, he made the oft-memed “Bee Movie,” but that film is kind of neither good nor bad. His parody of the weird subgenre of brand-based biopics, “Unfrosted,” though, is quite poor. It’s a riff on the creation of Pop-Tarts, and it has a stacked cast, but it falls flat.

Rock is one of those stand-ups who got a chance to be on “Saturday Night Live,” where he showed more acting chops than Seinfeld, if limited acting chops. Rock starred in several perfectly fine comedy movies at the peak of his career, but the movie of his that stands out came later and was smaller in scope. “Top Five” stars Rock, but it was also written and directed by him. It’s a well-considered dramedy, and Rock wisely didn’t stretch himself too much, as in the film he plays a comedian-turned-actor.

With Ellen DeGeneres, we should note “Finding Dory,” wherein she reprised her role as the forgetful fish. That movie was a huge hit, and for a Pixar sequel, it is fairly good. Ellen never really had much success as a live-action actor, though, especially on film. Even her sitcom “Ellen” was pretty mediocre and only remembered because they decided to have her character be gay as Ellen herself came out. Early in the run of that show, she also got to star in “Mr. Wrong.” The film was such a failure that DeGeneres never led another film, and even she would make fun of “Mr. Wrong” on her talk show.

The best movie that Richard Pryor had a real role in is “Blue Collar,” but that is an ensemble drama and not a Pryor showcase. It wasn’t about Richard Pryor the stand-up comedian turned actor. We’re going a bit later into his career because we’re a little lower on the Pryor pairings with Gene Wilder than many. “Brewster’s Millions” is one of several films based on the story of the same name, but this is the most famous of those.

Yes, once upon a time Jay Leno tried his hand at acting. That’s something David Letterman never really did, but Leno did in his days before becoming a talk show host. This is your classic movie about mismatched cops. Leno plays one of the cops, and the other is played by another former stand-up, Pat Morita. That’s right, if you were not aware, Morita also got his start doing stand-up, though by 1989 he was primarily known as an actor.

Steve Martin became the biggest stand-up in the world, one of the first massive, stadium-filling stand-ups. He got to star in his first movie in 1979, and it successfully captured the essence of Martin’s comedy style in a film. “The Jerk,” directed by Carl Reiner, is silly, absurd, and oh-so clever in its stupidity. It’s about a man named Navin R. Johnson, but it’s also kind of about nothing. For a debut film, from a stand-up at that, “The Jerk” is a big success.

Kevin Hart has some solid movies wherein he is part of an ensemble, but when he is a lead or co-lead, it tends to go less well. “Ride Along” is an example of that. It’s a generic comedy with a generic plot and two leads, Hart and Ice Cube, giving performances on rails. Hart is a security guard at a high school. He must “prove” to Ice Cube’s no-nonsense cop that he is “worthy” of marrying Cube’s sister. Stuff happens. Shrug.

Bob Newhart is one of the most successful stand-ups ever. He won a Grammy for Album of the Year. Note that we did not say he won for Best Comedy Album. “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart” won the Grammy for Album of the Year. He had sitcom success galore, but never really did much in the world of film. He did, though, lend his voice to Bernard, one of the lead mice in “The Rescuers,” and then would return for the sequel “The Rescuers Down Under.”

We can only blame Amy Schumer so much for “Trainwreck” being mediocre, since it was directed by Judd Apatow. That was Schumer’s big swing at movie stardom after finding success as a stand-up and with her sketch show “Inside Amy Schumer.” The end of the line came a few years later with “I Feel Pretty.” Schumer stars as a woman who becomes very self-confident after a head injury, and somehow the film is even lighter than that premise would indicate.

Yes, “Ghost” stars Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore. Whoopi Goldberg won Best Supporting Actor for the movie. That’s one of the reasons she has an EGOT. The movie was a smash success, and Goldberg deserves as much success for that as the pottery scenes and the rest. We will also shout out another stand-up turned Oscar winner, Robin Williams, but by the time of “Good Will Hunting,” he was only really seen as an actor by most.

The least-talented member of the “Blue Collar Comedy Tour” is also the one who found the most success off of it. Dan Whitney’s Larry the Cable Guy character broke through into the mainstream in a major way. He was the new millennium’s answer to Ernest, only Dan Whitney isn’t as talented as the late Jim Varney. Also, while it is well-worn to note this, the title of this movie is insane. Larry the Cable Guy is now a health inspector? Shouldn’t it have been called “Larry the Health Inspector?” It still would have been profoundly unfunny.

Yes, there are a lot of people who probably don’t know Jim Carrey started out as a stand-up. Most people were introduced to him in 1994, when he starred in three hit films. There were some who knew him as a cast member on “In Living Color.” However, Carrey was a stand-up, and “Dumb and Dumber” is one of the most successful, most popular comedy movies of all time. More than “Ace Ventura” or “The Mask,” this was Carrey’s proper, clear star turn.

“Tales from the Crypt” carved out a niche for itself on HBO as an anthology horror series with plenty of dark humor in the mix. We mean, the Cryptkeeper is always good for a laugh. The brand branched out into film with “Demon Knight,” which was a success, but was also directed by Ernest Dickerson. “Bordello of Blood” was quickly thrown together as a follow-up, with a producer making his first-and-only film as a director. Also, Dennis Miller starred. He basically played Dennis Miller, but apparently that also included improvising so much that it created continuity problems, and it was a film that turned out to be a disaster.

Rodney Dangerfield always played Rodney Dangerfield, but in the right context, that worked. “Back to School,” for example, is fully a vehicle for Dangerfield to do his thing. What if a boorish but well-meaning rich guy went to college to spend time with his son? You cast Dangerfield in that role to do his thing, and then you get “Back to School.”

Post-peak, Andrew Dice Clay showed he could act. The thing is, in 1990 Clay was still seen as being one and the same with his “Diceman” character, a brash, uncouth lout that was tongue-in-cheek but also likely a way for Clay to have his cake and eat it too when it came to questionable material. As such, having Clay play a private eye while sort of also playing the Diceman was likely never going to work. On top of that, though, “Ford Fairlane” is directed by King of the Hacks Renny Harlin, which was another strike against it at the time.

The comedic epic “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is filled with legends. Guys who started in vaudeville! Borscht Belt comedians! Some of the innovators of comedy on television! Jonathan Winters, Milton Berle, Buddy Hackett, and on and on. Plus, of course, Dick Shawn, who famously died of a heart attack on stage.