The 8 Most Fun Movies of the 21st Century, Ranked

1 week ago 14

Published Sep 4, 2026, 12:05 AM EDT

Ryan Heffernan is a Senior Writer at Collider. Storytelling has been one of his interests since an early age, with his appreciation for film and television becoming a particular interest of his during his teenage years.

This passion saw Ryan graduate from the University of Canberra in 2020 with an Honours Degree in Film Production. In the years since, he has found freelance work as a videographer and editor in the Canberra region while also becoming entrenched in the city's film-making community.

In addition to cinema and writing, Ryan's other major interest is sport, with him having a particular love for Australian Rules football, Formula 1, and cricket. He also has casual interests in reading, gaming, and history.

Why do people watch movies? It is a question with no shortage of answers. We watch movies to experience everything from exciting escapism to cultural enlightenment, to educate ourselves on the world, on human behavior, and even to learn more about how we as individuals navigate emotions and empathy. Then again, sometimes we all just want to watch a movie to have fun, to be enraptured in a sense of glee that we feel with every ounce of our being.

The first quarter of the 21st century has seen an abundance of movies that allow viewers to revel in this air of joy. As one may expect, this list features many masterpieces of modern comedy that had audiences laughing aloud throughout, but everything from swashbuckling fantasy adventures to propulsive spectacles of action awe have defined cinematic fun over the past 26 years, creating viewing experiences that, even after multiple rewatches, leave viewers grinning from ear to ear.

8 'Hunt for the Wilderpeople' (2016)

Charming, charismatic, and endlessly enjoyable, Hunt for the Wilderpeople is a feat of quirky comedy magnificence underlined with a sense of pathos that exhibits all of director Taika Waititi’s defining qualities at their very best. It centers on the bond between rebellious youth Ricky Baker (Julian Dennison) and his cantankerous foster father, Hector (Sam Neill). When Ricky goes on the run to avoid returning to the foster care system, he and Hector are thrust on a marvelously messy adventure and find themselves at the heart of a growing media frenzy.

Dennison and Neill are exceptional in their roles, conjuring a rich, heartwarming chemistry that carries the movie’s beautiful emotional core while allowing for all the absurdist fun to maintain a sense of depth and poignancy. Presenting a perfect odd-couple dynamic while exuding warm wit and a penchant for lovable adventure, Hunt for the Wilderpeople is 105 minutes of wholesome fun that absolutely anyone in the world can enjoy.

7 'The Nice Guys' (2016)

Holland and Jackson drive around in a convertible at night looking for clues.

When handled with a sense of propulsive momentum and charm, mystery cinema can offer intoxicating fun as its story of suspense and intrigue unfurls. The Knives Out movies are a prime example of this in recent years, but the most outlandishly enjoyable of the 21st century is undeniably 2016’s criminally underrated buddy-cop film, The Nice Guys. It follows a bumbling private eye and an enforcer-for-hire as they team-up to scour 1970s L.A. investigating a missing girl, a dead porn star, and an underlying government conspiracy behind it all.

The chemistry between Ryan Gosling’s Holland March and Russell Crowe’s Jackson Healy is a treat that holds up on multiple rewatches, while the movie around them strikes a perfect balance between masterful mystery plotting, ridiculous comedy eccentricity, and engrossing high-stakes suspense to make for a relentlessly exciting picture that also offers a plethora of laughs. Also featuring razor-sharp writing and an immersive period setting, The Nice Guys is an endlessly rewatchable buddy comedy that is one of the most fun mystery movies of all time.

6 'Tropic Thunder' (2008)

Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr and Ben Stiller dressed as soldiers walk through tall grass in Tropic Thunder.

A brutal satire of the egomaniacal excess of movie stars, the nature of Hollywood war films, and the process of filmmaking at large, Tropic Thunder is a bold deconstruction of blockbuster cinema that pulls no punches in its pursuit of barbed and bruising hilarity. Its entertaining fervor is only strengthened by its incredible ensemble cast and its ability to combine unflinching shock comedy with piercing precision as it follows the shambolic production of a Vietnam War movie that sees the self-centered lead actors dropped into Southeast Asia to capture a sense of authenticity only for the stars to find themselves in a fight for survival when they encounter a drug dealing syndicate.

Tropic Thunder is not afraid of leaning into all-out absurdism, be it in regard to its comedic wrath or its action bombast. Both of these qualities conspire to make for one of the most relentlessly enjoyable movies ever made. It is uncompromising in its endeavor to lampoon the self-serious entitlement many war dramas have occupied over the years, and its purposefully over-the-top performances parodying everything from Hollywood producers to method acting only add to this scorching critique of major studio filmmaking.

5 'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl' (2003)

Captain Jack Sparrow stands at the helm of the Black Pearl, gazing out as he holds his compass

Combining classical swashbuckling romantic adventure with high-fantasy ideas, a litany of memorable performances, and action sequences that are stunning in both conception and realization, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl delivers cinematic escapism at its most immersive and enjoyable. The crux of the story is blacksmith Will Turner’s (Orlando Bloom) efforts to rescue the governor’s daughter from the pirates that abducted her, but the movie finds its lifeblood in everything from Johnny Depp’s iconic portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow to its inflections of supernatural horror and brilliant comedic timing.

Complimented by an astonishing score, masterful fight choreography, and the ageless beauty of its practical filmmaking and physical, real-world locations, The Curse of the Black Pearl holds a transfixing quality that is both hypnotically engrossing and ceaselessly entertaining. It is the pinnacle of adventure fun in the 21st century, as are its two immediate sequels, with all three movies making for a descent into magic and mania that, in addition to being a sensation of modern filmmaking, stands as one of the most viscerally enthusing viewing experiences in the history of blockbuster cinema.

4 'The Grand Budapest Hotel' (2014)

Ralph Fiennes as M. Gustave in a purple tuxedo stands behind the front desk in The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Wes Anderson’s unique visual style is always a catalyst for unbridled cinematic fun, especially as his eye-catching aesthetic is almost always combined with charming stories of humanity and stunning ensemble casts. The Grand Budapest Hotel is the finest example of this, with the 2014 comedy adventure film revolving around the journey of the framed concierge of the illustrious titular hotel, M. Gustav (Ralph Fiennes), and his loyal lobby boy, Zero (Tony Revolori), as they strive to prove Gustav did not commit murder.

The film is ultimately defined by its underlying heart, especially as its story-within-a-story approach imbues it with a slight degree of pathos to compliment the vibrant adventurous joy of the story and the spellbinding majesty of the set design and cinematography. The Grand Budapest Hotel marks one of the greatest triumphs of cinema this century, a wonderfully constructed tale of friendship, wild adventure, and loss that ensnares viewers from the opening minute and immerses them in what is a soaring glory of style, substance, and sensational fun.

Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture
Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country

Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.

🪜Parasite

🌀Everything Everywhere

☢️Oppenheimer

🐦Birdman

🪙No Country for Old Men

FIND YOUR FILM →

What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don't just entertain — they leave something behind.

ASomething that pulls the rug out — that makes me think I'm watching one kind of film and then reveals I'm watching another entirely. BSomething overwhelming — funny, sad, absurd, and genuinely moving, all at once. CSomething grand and weighty — a film that makes me feel the full scale of what I'm watching. DSomething formally daring — a film that pushes what cinema can even do. ESomething lean and relentless — pure tension with no wasted frame.

NEXT QUESTION →

Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What's yours?

AClass, inequality, and what people are willing to do when desperation meets opportunity. BIdentity, family, and the chaos of trying to hold your life together when everything is falling apart. CGenius, moral responsibility, and the catastrophic weight of a decision you can never take back. DEgo, legacy, and the terror of becoming irrelevant while you're still alive to watch it happen. EEvil, chance, and whether moral order actually exists or if we just tell ourselves it does.

NEXT QUESTION →

How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.

AGenre-twisting — I want it to start in one lane and migrate into something completely different. BMaximalist and genre-blending — comedy, action, drama, sci-fi, all in one ride. CEpic and non-linear — cutting between timelines, building a mosaic of cause and consequence. DA single unbroken flow — I want to feel like I'm living it in real time, no cuts to safety. ESpare and precise — every scene doing exactly what it needs to do and nothing more.

NEXT QUESTION →

What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?

AA system — invisible, structural, and almost impossible to fight because it has no single face. BThe self — the ways we sabotage, abandon, and fail the people we love most. CHistory — the unstoppable momentum of events that no single person can stop or redirect. DThe industry — the machinery of culture that chews up talent and spits out irrelevance. EPure, implacable evil — a force so certain of itself it becomes almost philosophical.

NEXT QUESTION →

What do you want from a film's ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?

AShock and inevitability — a conclusion that recontextualises everything that came before it. BEarned emotion — I want to cry, laugh, and feel genuinely hopeful, even if the world is a mess. CDevastation and grandeur — an ending that makes me sit in silence for a few minutes after. DAmbiguity — something that leaves enough open that I'm still thinking about it days later. EBleakness — an honest refusal to pretend the world is tidier than it actually is.

NEXT QUESTION →

Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what's even possible.

AA gleaming modern city with a hidden underside — beauty masking rot, wealth masking desperation. BA collapsing suburban life that opens onto something infinite — the multiverse of a single ordinary person. CThe corridors of power and science at a world-historical turning point — where decisions echo for decades. DThe grimy, alive chaos of New York and Hollywood — fame as both destination and trap. EVast, indifferent landscape — desert and highway where violence arrives without warning or reason.

NEXT QUESTION →

What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.

AProduction design and mise-en-scène — every frame composed to carry meaning beneath the surface. BEditing and tonal control — the ability to move between registers without losing the audience. CScore and sound design — music that becomes inseparable from the dread and awe of what you're watching. DCinematography as performance — the camera not recording events but participating in them. ESilence and restraint — what's left unsaid and unshown doing more work than any dialogue could.

NEXT QUESTION →

What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.

ASomeone smart and resourceful who makes increasingly dangerous decisions under pressure. BSomeone overwhelmed and ordinary who turns out to be capable of something extraordinary. CA brilliant, tortured figure whose gifts and flaws are inseparable from each other. DA self-destructive artist whose ego is both their superpower and their undoing. EA quiet, principled person trying to make sense of a world that has stopped making sense.

NEXT QUESTION →

How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.

AI love a slow build when I know the payoff is going to be seismic — patience for a devastating reveal. BGive me relentless momentum — I want to feel breathless and emotionally spent by the end. CEpic runtime doesn't scare me — if the material demands three hours, give me three hours. DI want it to feel propulsive even when nothing is technically happening — restless energy throughout. EDeliberate and unhurried — I want dread to accumulate in the spaces between the action.

NEXT QUESTION →

What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?

AUnsettled — like I've just seen something I can't fully explain but can't stop thinking about. BMoved and energised — like the film reminded me what actually matters and gave me something to hold onto. CHumbled — like I've been in the presence of something genuinely important and overwhelming. DExhilarated — like I've just seen cinema doing something it's never quite done before. EHaunted — like a cold, quiet dread that stays with me for days.

REVEAL MY FILM →

The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…

Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.

Parasite

You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho's Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it's ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.

Everything Everywhere All at Once

You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels' Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn't want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it's about.

Oppenheimer

You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.

Birdman

You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it's about. Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor's ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn't be possible. Michael Keaton's performance and Emmanuel Lubezki's restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.

No Country for Old Men

You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

3 'Shrek' (2001)

Shrek and Donkey looking confused in Shrek (2001).

Whether it be puerile or piercing, parody has always been a great outlet for hysterics and hilarity when handled well. Serving as a send-up of classic Disney animated movies, as well as a lampooning of the fairy tale format at large, Shrek is a sublime example of spoof comedy as it follows the titular ogre in his endeavor to rescue a princess in exchange for being left alone in his swamp.

From its opening minute, the 2001 DreamWorks Animation classic flips the tropes of the genre on their head. The tales of gallantry, heroism, and beauty are replaced by a crude ogre, fun-loving vulgarity, and Smash Mouth’s “All Star”. As the movie unfurls, it only grows more enjoyable, especially as it combines its appetite for laugh-out-loud lunacy with razor-sharp messaging about self-worth and true love. In many respects, what makes Shrek so fun isn’t just that it mocks fairy tale storytelling, but that it improves it. Shrek 2 is also worthy of an honorable mention for how it achieves a similar feat, with both movies sprucing up the traditional ideas of the form with accessible family fun, unforgettable and beloved characters, and rollicking adventure stories accentuated with a lively soundtrack and plenty of joyous jabs at modern pop-culture.

2 'Hot Fuzz' (2007)

Simon Pegg as Nicholas and Nick Frost as Danny wearing police vests and sunglasses, holding weapons in 'Hot Fuzz'.

Driven by the brilliant comedic chemistry of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, and powered by the kinetic filmmaking of director Edgar Wright, Hot Fuzz stands as one of the most addictively entertaining movies ever made. Blending the quiet serenity of the English countryside with outstanding satire of Hollywood blockbuster action excess, it follows a renowned London cop as he is dispatched to a quiet remote village where he begins to suspect a series of grisly accidents may be part of a larger conspiracy.

More than just a punchy parody, Hot Fuzz showcases Wright’s tremendous love for cinematic history as it mocks the action bombast of the ‘80s and ‘90s with both affectionate liveliness and deep respect. Compounded by its litany of excellent one-liners, energized sense of bizarre pandemonium, and its ability to extract uproarious hilarity from impeccably filmed action sequences, Hot Fuzz has a gravitas that is as viscerally alluring as it is enthralling and infectiously fun. Furthermore, as part of the thematically-connected "Cornetto" Trilogy, it contributes to what is arguably the most fun and enthusing movie trilogy cinema has ever seen.

1 'Mad Max: Fury Road' (2015)

Pure propane punch. Mad Max: Fury Road isn’t just the greatest action movie of the 21st century, it is possibly the most awe-inspiring and ferociously outstanding blockbuster experience of all time. With George Miller returning to the post-apocalyptic dystopian he first mastered in the original 1979 classic, the soft reboot maintains the same sense of grit and brutality while ratcheting up the spectacle as it unfurls as a continuous rampaging chase sequence over the course of its relentless two-hour run.

It may not be the kind of movie that inspires fits of laughter, but every frenetic combat sequence is realized with such craftsmanship and creativity that it captures an air of prodigious magnificence, leaving viewers breathless and gleefully overwhelmed. A masterclass in epic-scale action bolstered by the faultless precision of its choreography and camerawork, the tangible realism of its high-concept storyworld, and its propulsive sense of momentum, Mad Max: Fury Road is the peak of energized cinematic grandeur that enthralls and excites with its majesty as well as its might to be the most fun and invigorating movie of the 21st century thus far.