Some people have a very low standard for comedy - a stupid Adam Sandler movie like The Waterboy or Happy Gilmore is enough for a few laughs (DISCLAIMER: I happen to be one of these people). Other people may even be able to watch absolutely stupid movies like Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (I am NOT one of those people).

There are lots of types of comedy (other than romantic comedy). You have classic comedy - The Blues Brothers, Animal House, National Lampoon's Vacation (and its successor movies), Stripes, and a whole lot of other 1970s/early 1980s movies that may still be funny (there are earlier comedies, along the lines of Some Like it Hot, that are becoming less and less accessible to younger viewers and are "ultra-classic" comedies, which are an acquired taste).

There are standard 1980s John Hughes (and clones of John Hughes) comedies, most of which have a teen theme (but not always - see Planes, Trains and Automobiles). Some notables from this category are: Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Sixteen Candles, Weird Science, Better off Dead and Fast Times at Ridgemont High (this last one actually predates the Hughes movies on the same subject but is a classic nonetheless). Late 1990s teen movies in the American Pie series mix this teen/Hughes feel with the "gross-out sexual" comedies from the 1990s and 2000s (see below). A notable 1980s movie that is quintessentially 1980s but not in this category is Ghostbusters.

The 1990s saw a brief flash of nostalgia comedies like The Wedding Singer, Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, Grosse Point Blank and Blast from the Past, where much of the comedy has to do with the blatant display of past fashion styles that are no longer current. The nostalgia comedy was revived for the recent mediocre Hot Tub Time Machine (which also had Chevy Chase in it, echoing the Lampoon movies). This genre has mixed success, usually based in part on the plausibility of the scenario for the nostalgia and the accuracy of the past fashion depictions. Ironically, the Back from the Future movies qualify in this category not only due to the 1950s nostalgia when released, but the 1980s nostalgia that one gets upon re-viewing (particularly the 80s Cafe in the "2015 flying car" future scenes in the second installment).

There are also a lot of stoner comedies - Dude, Where's My Car? and Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle come to mind. Their popularity rose in the late 1990s, along with the rise of the "gross-out sexual" movies - American Pie, Road Trip, Euro Trip, Sex Drive and a gazillion others have help these two variants dominate the comedy field these days.

While there are movies that are hard to quantify in any category of comedy, from Raising Arizona and The Big Lebowski to the Ed Norton weirdfest Death to Smoochy, most will usually end up in an identifiable category sooner or later.

Sometimes the category of comedy has more to do with the cast than the type of comedy. Ben Stiller comedies run the gamut: Starsky and Hutch, Meet the Parents and its sequels, Zoolander, There's Something About Mary and Tropic Thunder come to mind. He also appeared in Anchorman, which is properly a Will Ferrell movie (along with Old School, Elf and A Night at the Roxbury ). Mike Myers also has his own genre of varied movies (the Austin Powers movies, the Wayne's World movies and So I Married an Axe Murderer ).

Then there are the Wes Anderson movies (which sometimes star Ben Stiller among a lot of other really talented people), which some people don't find funny but I do - Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Darjeeling Limited and even the more offbeat Bottle Rocket.

There are also Bill Murray movies (Ghostbusters has been mentioned, but there are also earlier movies that fall into the "classic" category like Stripes and later endeavors like Groundhog Day and What About Bob? ).

So just what IS it that you're looking for?