To see the extensive list, beginning with the idea of 50 best and ending with a push to find silent movies, and the resolution of the the best-for-comedy/best-for-drama question, go here.
July 11, 2025
Looking at all these sports movies, what do you think is the best sport for a comedy? For a drama?
I asked Grok, after eliciting a long list of sports movies. I had my answer in mind when I asked and Grok gave that answer.
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83 comments:
Tin Cup.
Rocky, but they left off a fav:
North Dallas 40
Sad that Blades of Glory is not represented. Or Dodgeball. Grok no love low-brow comedy.
And Waterboy.
The Cutting Edge -
Toe pick!
Slapshot might have been the progenitor.
The final question isn't what's the best sports movie. It's — looking at multiple movies — what is the best sport — with a different answer for comedy and drama?
I second Slapshot.
I actually met one of “Hanson” brothers at a youth hockey tournament in Western NY. His son was a participant. I didn’t notice if his hands were wrapped in aluminum foil.
Glad to see Grok didn't note any 1930's German movies...
As a general thing, I think baseball is good for comedy and football for drama. But Blades of Glory is my favorite sports comedy of all time. No matter how many times I see it, I LOL in the same places.
Chariot racing.
I'm surprised that Bang the Drum Slowly wasn't on the list. It's a 1973 baseball movie starring Michael Moriarty and a young Robert Dinero early in his career.
The Babe Ruth Story, if unintentionally so.
William Bendix in the title role. Wow.
Best sport for movie drama: boxing (by far), followed by baseball.
A surprising number of movies without Hitler in them. Grok had to be prodded to throw in the Jesse Owens biopic.
Baseball is the strong candidate for both.
“Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?” I assume that gladiator movies are not included in the sport category?
To answer your question - I think baseball is the best sport for drama and hockey is great for comedy. Having said that, Bull Durham is funny as hell and Miracle is quite dramatic, but Slap Shot is the funniest sports movie ever made and for me it's not close. Colleen Brown mentioned Bang the Drum Slowly, which is an excellent example of how baseball and drama work well together. She's right, it's an obvious miss.
The other obvious miss on the list is Hoop Dreams, a documentary about two high school basketball players in 1990s Chicago. It's absolutely brilliant.
Joey, have you ever been in a Turkish prison?
Yes, Reifenstahl’s Olympia. Recommended by Mecha Hitler!
RR
JSM
Ice skating. Ping pong a.k a. table tennis.
Peter Graves delivered the funniest line in the history of cinema. So how come Jerry Lewis got the Légion d'honneur and Graves got a Grape-Nuts Flakes commercial?
Kingpin.
Best sports show (albeit not a movie, it is a series on Hulu) is Shoresy. Very funny while also being quite touching at times.
Football replaced baseball as the answer to the question when it became a more popular sport. Hockey or curling are other possible answers because barriers to entry give Canada unfair advantages in comedy, but tariffs will deal with that.
Correction: I just noticed that I spelled De Niro wrong.
Sport drama - "Days of Thunder"
Sport comedy "Talledega Nights"
There's an axiom in either literature or movies that the smaller the ball, the more interesting the book or movie.
The Natural is a perfect example. Great book by Bernand Malamud and fantastic movie with Robert Redford and Glenn Close.
I can't think of one really good novel or movie about football.
Maybe this is OT, but the movie "Boys in the Boat" was excellent, but the book was even better. You knew in advance who was going to win the Gold, but the movie was still super interesting. I gave it a 10.
"Eight-man crew is the most difficult team sport."
Funny but I was thinking Caddyshack was missing and Golf is one of the best sports for comedy. Happy Gilmore, sorta, kinda Tin Cup, heck even watching celebrities in Pro Am’s like AT&T Pebble Beach yields some pretty good humor (I also seem to remember some Three Stooges golf outings but they made fun with a lot of sports).
But I do wonder if when you have someone like Bill Murray and Chevy Chase just really take a things over the top funny in creating a classic like Caddyshack if we have our own bias toward golf as the best for comedy. Golf does make some excellent points but I can see them applicable to other team sports, especially given how so many sports now are littered with Prima Donna characters that are ripe for parody.
Comedy is golf. Hands down. Caddyshack, Happy Gilmore, and Tin Cup.
Golf involves class conflict, which gives us a strong basis for comedy.
Drama would be boxing. Rocky, Raging Bull, and Million Dollar Baby
But the best sports movie ever made? Bang the Drum Slowly
The Natural and Bull Durham are also outstanding.
Wimbledon is underrated. Ron Shelton is probably kicking himself for not doing a tennis movie.
The funniest sports are the ones that can be played by bumbling fat guys. Hence, golf and baseball. The most dramatic are those with the most potential for last-second game-changing plays: Football and basketball. The fact that hockey is played on ice gives it an inherent sci-fi gloss, which leads to Rollerball.
I know there's a lot to choose from but I'm surprised Brian's Song wasn't mentioned.
W.C. Fields plays golf.
n.n said...
Ping pong a.k a. table tennis.
nn - Nailed it - sports comedy = Balls of Fury
A superb Christopher Walken vehicle.
Hoop Dreams
For a drama: Basketball or boxing.
For a comedy: Bobsledding
So that is a "no" for Brad Pitt's F1 in terms of a good drama or comedy?
Synchronized Swimming or Curling for comedy, Boxing or Horse Racing for drama.
Golf and bowling make for good comedy but saccharine dramas. Horse racing is good for drama, bad for comedy. Baseball prolly best for both…honorable mention for dodge ball or another The Ocho sport for giggles just on premise…
Baseball for comedy. Drag Racing for drama. With F1or Nascar a close second.
Looking at the dates, Kevin Costner was buried in baseball for 3, at the very least 2 years of his prime.
There has never been a football movie as good as most football games, IMO. As for (non-playoff) basketball, it has become so boring that almost any movie is better than the real thing.
I am not a baseball fan, but Bull Durham was pretty good.
One more vote for golf. Drama: chess, a theme explored by Stefan Zweig and Nabokov.
Chess is a good musical.
I'm with Barry and Rejahm, who beat me to it
Definitely dodgeball. Both the Rip Torn movie and the Larry David episode.
"If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peUyLXrgYZ0
John Henry
Badminton can actually be pretty interesting. More athletic than tennis.
Olympiad (1936) and Tokyo Olympiad (1960) are both great sports movies, although they are documentaries. Glad to see the "Set Up" with Robert Ryan. "Chariots of Fire" is another good one, did that make the list?
Individual sports usually make better drama.
Someone made a funny movie about bowling - King pin. Not the usual sport.
Hoosiers is a good BB movie because it focuses on stuff that goes on off-court. Hard to think of a good Tennis movie. Strangers on a Train has a long Tennis sequence but its about murder not sports.
There was a great series of films about Jordan and the Chicago bulls. But, fictional BB movies? hard to think of many good ones. "White men can't jump?"
Grok hasn't seen any of those movies so list is simply invalid ab initio.
What, no love for Synchronized Swimming? The nose clips alone are comedy gold.
"Grok hasn't seen any of those movies," and Grok is not alone.
Until they make a movie about 43 Man Squamish, I'm staying home.
"On Any Sunday." It exploded the sport.
As to the sport itself, I find golf the most ridiculous on its face. The idea of grown men, often powerful alpha types, on an over-manicured lawn very seriously trying to push a little ball in a hole with extra fancy sticks while often dressed like clowns is pretty special. To me it seems like it was invented by a comedian to ridicule the rich.
Major League
Boxing, followed closely by baseball.
Surfing movies are okay. But surfing docs are probably the best docs ever made. Step Into Liquid, if you haven't seen it.
Bang the Drum Slowly is not actually dramatic. Hitchcock is dramatic.
Bang the Drum Slowly is tragic. It's a cry movie for men. And (arguably), it's De Niro's strongest role. Because it's unlike anything he's ever done in any other film.
He's a dumb catcher who is dying from Hodgkin's disease. Half the team knows he's dying. And half the team does not.
Sing it, cowboy.
Golf (of which I am not a practitioner) was the response of the poor oppressed Scots to foreign domination.
Deprived of bows and guns by their English overlords, the Scots were forced to hunt the Wild Haggis with only rocks and sticks. Over the centuries, as the Haggis population declined due to climate change, the formerly serious business of Haggis hunting evolved into the sport we know today.
After football replaced baseball as the most popular sport, streaming video replaced film (and the novel) as the most popular medium. Films from 30 or 40 years ago don't mean that baseball is still the best setting for sports comedies or dramas. Even a half century ago, "Brian's Song" gave "Bang the Drum Slowly" a run for its money. I'd say that "Eastbound and Down" was outdone by "Ballers" and "Ted Lasso" (about soccer of all things).
Closed Circuit (2013) has a soccer game segment in it and is one of the few movies that I happily go back and watch again, every now and then. A romcom disguised as an action film.
Goon is a surprisingly good movie. Looking at the top billed cast and crew, you might be inclined to give it a miss, but it really elevates above the stars - and Liev Schreiber is excellent.
On a slight tangent, grok responded that Dennis Quaid and Kevin Costner are the two leading actors in terms of their number appearances in different sports themed movies.
I actually walked out on Bull Durham. The premise is stupid (nobody is going to send down a quality catcher to babysit some pitcher at A ball) and Susan Sarandon gets on my last nerve.
On the other hand - even after all these years - Brian's Song chokes me up.
"Dodgeball" was fairly stupid fun.
The best sport for a comedy is the one where the players get hit in the nuts a lot and have fights.
The best sport for drama is the one where the players get hit in the nuts a lot and have fights.
Hockey come closest.
I would like to see more fights in curling.
Hoosiers, Remember the Titans, Miracle On Ice are my top 3.
And add Vision Quest for true athletes.
And add Vision Quest for true athletes.
Underrated movie. Excellent soundtrack.
a chess movie would be great. OMG OMG white moved his pawn. Now, the challenger must respond. Can he do it? Five mintues go by. OMG, He moved his pawn too. Damn, the excitement. Cuts to Wife looking scared and hopeful.
I rewatched Brian Song 10 years ago, and well...it doesnt hold up. Mostly, because James Caan cant really act. He's a charismatic star.
There should be a Byron "Whizzer" White movie.
It Happens Every Spring. TV station back when broadcast that every year - I guess in the spring. Couple of years I looked forward to it.
Any chance "Mystery, Alaska" gets any love? It's a pretty good movie with a great cast. And I have to throw in for "The Cutting Edge". Because.... reasons. Less sappy than "Ice Castles".
Agree that baseball and golf are best for comedies.
A thing keeps me wondering is why Billy Bob Thornton didn't do a better job reprising the Walter Matthau role in Bad News Bears.
From an Australian perspective, "The Club" is fantastic, both as a sly comedy and as a time capsule.
The wildest sports documentary I've seen is "All This Mayhem", about two brothers who became world skate-boarding champions. It gets dark.
Colleen Brown said...
I'm surprised that Bang the Drum Slowly wasn't on the list. It's a 1973 baseball movie starring Michael Moriarty and a young Robert Dinero early in his career.
I'd have this on my list. De Niro shows all the talent that we'd come to know in him for.
Hoop Dreams & Searching for Bobby Fischer - beautiful nonfiction
North Dallas 40, Bull Durham - funny as hell
Raging Bull - drama
Tear Jerker - One for Joey (nonfiction also)
Forgot - Breaking Away - Helluva good movie, way underrated/forgotten.
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