10 Best Sci-Fi Comedy Movies You Need To Watch

The perfect combination of silly and smart.

By Josh Mills /

As a genre, sci fi is prone to the sober and stuffy. With a tendency towards deep and difficult concepts, theories and continuums and so forth, pure sci fi movies can take themselves awfully seriously in their attempts to answer life’s grand questions. It can be off putting.

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Which is all the more strange given how silly sci fi can be. Aliens, spaceships, mad scientist, time travel - all of this is fodder for good fun and big laughs.

Sci fi and comedy are two genres that don’t mesh altogether too often (due to the aforementioned seriousness of many creators), but when they do, the styles can combine to great effect.

Comedy is all about possibility, and there’s no genre more open to possibility than science fiction. With the right crew, a talented comedy team can use the infinite scope of the cosmos as the ultimate playground for inventive jokes and crazy premises.

These movies have taken a beloved, often misunderstood genre and given it the shake up it needs to unlock its true creative potential, and left us with something to laugh about amidst all the theorising.

10. The World's End

The final part of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright’s Cornetto trilogy doesn’t boast the laugh count of Shaun Of The Dead or Hot Fuzz, but as a mix of high concept sci fi and bittersweet buddy comedy, it’s a particularly impressive achievement, complete with great performances and social commentary.

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Perhaps the only sci fi film centred around a pub crawl, The World’s End sees five once-close friends tricked into a reunion by eternal teenager Gary (Simon Pegg, acting his very hardest). There they uncover a mystery - the homogenisation of the British town centre is not evidence of capitalism run wild, but rather the work of an extraterrestrial entity looking to deprive Earth of its distinctive character.

With its Easter eggs and callbacks for longtime fans, Wright and Pegg ensure significant rewatch value for the capper to their beloved trilogy. You can’t go too far wrong when you combine Nick Frost, Simon Pegg, and a familiar cast of some of the UK’s finest talent, and this armageddon and pathos-laden film is a fitting finale.

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