By PAUL BRENNER & DEBORAH NICOL

com·e·dy (kŏmĭ-dē) A motion picture that aims primarily to provoke mirth, and strives to be humorous by being satirical, anarchic, amusing or light in tone, and it usually contains a happy resolution of one of more thematic conflicts

His Girl Friday [Columbia]

Howard Hawks' rapid-fire dialogue film stands as one of the best tough-love romantic comedies of all times. Based on the successful Broadway play "The Front Page," Hawks changed the reporter from Hildebrand to Hildegaard, and allowed her to be the newspaper editor's ex-wife, thus altering the dynamics of the story and creating the perfect love-hate relationship. The tale takes place in the hectic and sometimes unethical newspaper world of Chicago's 1930s, where the reporters are manipulative, the crooks are helpful, and the politicians are blissfully crooked. Ex-reporter Hildy Johnson (brilliantly quick-witted Rosalind Russell) has decided to see what life is like on the other side of the fence, by marrying an insurance salesman (Ralph Bellamy) and moving to the country. Editor Walter Burns (the ever-charismatic Cary Grant) is always one step ahead to bring her back into her natural habitat -- the newspaper biz -- and back into his life. Tying this chaos together is a simple minded murderer about to be hanged, and the slimy politicians obstructing his release. The DVD is a nice little package including four mini-featurettes of the lead actors and director, text bios of the leads, movie trailers, print ads, and an insightful commentary track by film critic and Hawks' bio author Todd McCarthy. - DN

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Raising Arizona [Fox]

The greatest movie ever about well-spoken rednecks who choose to kidnap a baby from those who have too many. The Coen brothers raised the bar in this comedy with a spectacular cast (proof that Nic Cage needs to stick to the hijinks instead of action) and disarming dialogue ("You mean you busted out of jail." "No, ma'am. We released ourselves on our own recognizance.") Cage is excellent as the wise and loving husband and narrator, and Holly Hunter is superbly frazzled and desperate in the role created for her. Coen brothers regular John Goodman is fantastically hilarious, and bounces perfectly off of screen brother William Forsythe. No hyperboles here, this movie is damn good. Unfortunately, the only extras on this DVD include trailers and previews for other Coen films (the excellent "Barton Fink" and "Miller's Crossing"), but the flawless humor of this film makes it a necessary addition to any film library. - DN

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Loves of a Blonde [Criterion]

The Criterion Collection presents a newly restored version of Milos Forman's Czech New Wave 1965 comedy and his dry-ice irony chronicle of a young factory girl's search for love has only become richer with age. The brilliant comic set pieces -- the dance between the middle aged Czech soldiers and the factory girls, the skin-crawling visit with the boyfriend's parents -- are still laugh-out-loud funny. But now, revisiting the film, the undercurrent of quiet desperation in the socio-political straitjacket of Czech society in the 60s, creates a bittersweet melancholy, giving the film the air of a Chaplinesque shrug. The hopelessness and rigidity of the character's lives has left them so helpless that, in their own mundane worlds, they all act like little dictators --the boy's mother acidly cross examining the girl, the soldier forcing his date to drink a glass of wine, even the girl herself as she dumps her old boyfriend and then makes up tales about her new one. But Forman is in love with the characters and utilizing mostly non-actors and centering the film in a neo-realist haze, he not only makes us love the characters too, but makes us believe in their vapidity. Included on the DVD are a 15-minute video interview with Forman and a deleted scene (this scene has appeared in earlier video versions of the film). - PB

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Best in Show [Warner]

Christopher Guest assembles another fantastic mockumentary crew to delve into the seedy underbelly of the dog show world. With co-writer Eugene Levy and previous ad-lib alums Michael McKean, Catherine O'Hara, Bob Balaban, and Parker Posey, it is amazing that this cast can keep a straight face throughout the absurdity, but they pull it off in their greatest farce yet. Within this world of Purina and squeaky toys are a frantic, anal couple who look like they just walked out of a J.Crew catalog, a geeky salesman with two left feet whose wife has a well-known (except to him) sexual history, a southern fisherman who can name every sort of nut, an overly confident breeder and her closeted, gold-digging girlfriend, and the only well-adjusted couple, two flamboyantly gay men from New York. The dog show commentators play off each other, with Fred Willard as the flighty and irrelevant Buck Laughlin ("And to think that in some countries these dogs are eaten."). This hilarious DVD includes deleted scenes, cast and crew profiles, trailers, and audio commentary by the writers. - DN

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Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla [Image]

Not even a nightmare conceived by Bob Dylan during his mid-60s lone wolf period can match the convulsive surrealism of "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla." Two bearded burlesque house schmucks are deposited into a minimal backlot South Sea grass prison. After a shave, the boys begin to walk and talk and it looks like they are Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in their heyday. But wait! These boys are not Martin and Lewis at all but are, in fact, Duke Mitchell and Sammy Petrillo, a couple of low-rent Dean and Jerry rip-offs. Once that fact settles in to your monkey skull, then Bela Lugosi, emaciated and rotting from the inside out as if in training for his final Ed Wood years, appears as -- what else? -- a mad scientist. Add to the mix Muriel Landers, as Dorothy Lamour's evil twin (the writer can't even figure out if the film is a Dean and Jerry or a Bob and Bing picture) and a sex-crazed gorilla, who becomes Duke Mitchell and, in chasing Sammy Petrillo around the cheap warehouse island, turns the entire debauch into a gay romp, just before the whole extravaganza is revealed to be just a dream and you deposit a shoe into the television monitor. For sheer exhilaration and the invigorating feeling of complete god-awfulness, "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla" is the film to beat. As if that weren't enough, the DVD features a recent interview with Sammy Petrillo, who spends most of the time telling us all what a bastard Jerry Lewis was and is. Sheer Heaven! - PB

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The Firemen's Ball [Criterion]

Milos Forman's bemused and satiric comic allegory has been lovingly restored and transfered to DVD. Supervised by the film's cinematographer Miroslav Ondricek, it also includes a short behind-the-scenes look at how the transfer was accomplished, as well as a short video interview with Milos Forman. The film charts a series of disasters presided over by a brigade of volunteer firemen from the Czech town of Vrchlabi, where they put together a ball to honor their 86-year-old retired fire chief. Forman dissects bureaucratic corruption, rigidity and inefficiency in this small town fire department which, taken to the next level, becomes an explicit critique of the Communist state. Immediately the firemen's plans are torn asunder with escalating crises, from mounting a beauty pageant in which the reluctant contestants bolt for the shelter of a bathroom to a lottery table where the prizes on display are being systematically stolen in full view of the celebration. When a hapless fireman is discovered sneaking a stolen headcheese back to the lottery table, the committee of firemen retreat to a back room, where they argue about whether the headcheese should have been returned to the table. In a true voice of Communist dissembling, one fireman argues that their colleague shouldn't have returned the victual to its rightful spot on the table because his action has besmirched the honor of the brigade. The film premiered in Czechoslovakia in 1967, during the Dubchek thaw. But after the Russian tanks rolled in it ended up being "banned forever" by Russian and Czech authorities, and Forman was forced to move to the United States. In spite of the film's spirit of '60s subversiveness, it is certainly not a period piece. - DN

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Young Frankenstein [Fox]

In 1974 Gene Wilder, Peter Boyle and Marty Feldman were brought together by fate, in the form of their agent who decided to kill three birds with one stone. That stone being Wilder's and Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein," the uproarious love letter to horror movies of yore. With enough one-liners to keep the audience laughing continuously and Feldman's eyes co-staring, this film's comedic take on Mary Shelley's famous tale does not disappoint. Teri Garr assists in the laboratory and in the wagon as "Roll, roll, roll in the hay" Inga, and sweetly lays on the German accent to mask her wanton desires. Cloris Leachman portrays Frankenstein's grandfather's old girlfriend, Frau Blücher, who strikes fear in the hearts of horses (her name means "glue" in German). But Madeline Kahn steals the show in her small part as Elizabeth, lover of taffeta and enormous monsters. Who could forget her climactic performance of "O, Sweet mystery of life"? The extras on this Special Edition disc include a featurette, interviews with the actors, deleted scenes, production stills, director commentary, and outtakes revealing that no, the cast could not keep a straight face through the entire filming. - DN

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