The 10 Most Underrated Bill Murray Movies

Ask random people on the street to name their favorite Bill Murray movie and the answers will undoubtedly range from Caddyshack to Ghostbusters to Groundhog Day, possibly with the occasional mention of Stripes. And if you stumble across an indie cinema buff, the response could either be Rushmore orThe Royal Tenenbaums. It’s not as if the prolific Saturday Night Live scene-stealer turned film actor has a shortage of classic flicks for fans to pick from—he arguably has the deepest resume of any comedy heavyweight still working today.

So, naturally, many of Murray’s better movies fall by the wayside when his back catalog is discussed, including one of our favorite Bill Murray flicks, the psychiatry-themed comedy What About Bob? Today, in fact, marks the film’s 20th anniversary, though you’d never realize it; folks are too busy worrying about his thoughts on the most likely never-going-to-happen Ghostbusters 3 to pay respect to one Bob Wiley.

That’s where we come in; not only are we dedicated to showing What About Bob? some much deserved love, but we’ve also revisited the legendary comedian’s extensive record to shine a light upon The 10 Most Underrated Bill Murray Movies. This one’s for you, Bob.

Ghostbusters II

10. GHOSTBUSTERS II (1989)

Popular critical consensus will tell you that Ghostbusters II is a forgettable sequel, one that’s not horrible yet adds little to the pot necessary to distinguish it from the superior original. While we do agree that 1984’s Ghostbusters is the far better movie, that doesn’t mean that we don’t also love this silly second round.

For one, the special effects are much crisper in comparison to the ’84 film’s visuals; it might look cheesy today but, when we were kids, the ghost train sequence was legitimately creepy. The sequel’s best attribute, though, is its willingness to simply let Bill Murray and his returning cohorts (Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson) riff, resulting in witty one-liners and free-flowing energy.

Murray, for his part, acts as the viewer’s droll voice-box amidst the movie’s goofiness. His performance is all side-eyed annoyance and self-assured rationality. You can’t blame him once you realize that the villains in Ghostbusters II are a Fabio predecessor named Vigo the Carpathian and pink lava that looks like Pepto-Bismol and runs on Manhattan residents’ unkind vibes. Leave it to Bill Murray to call bullshit when the audience can’t.

Get Low

9. GET LOW (2010)

Put any two actors in Get Low other than Bill Murray and Robert Duvall and you very well could’ve had 2010’s most boring flick. The plot is interesting enough, about an old, maligned hermit (Duvall) who decides to combat the local townsfolk’s condemnations by staging a “living funeral” that’s overseen by a slick con man/funeral parlor owner (Murray). That set-up, rich in black comedy potential, unfolds in an excess of talking and little doing.

With both Murray and Duvall in tip-top form, though, the slow and chatty Get Low is a prime example of actors uplifting an otherwise subpar script. Whereas Duvall is grizzled and stoic, Murray’s performance hits the perfect balance of outspoken charms and snake-like faults. Like 2003’s Lost In Translation, Get Low shows facets of Murray’s acting skill-set unseen in his various comedies.

Coffee And Cigarettes

8. COFFEE AND CIGARETTES (2003)

Folks who watch movies to see shit they’ll never see up close and personal in real life (i.e., aliens, monsters, death-defying stunts, or Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis tonguing each other down) will probably hate Coffee And Cigarettes. Written and directed by eccentric independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, it’s literally all dialogue, consisting of 11 shorts in which random pairings of characters talk while sipping on cups-of-Joe and puffing zig-zags.

If you’re willing to sit back and engage yourself in the quirkiness, Coffee And Cigarettes is often funny and always strangely fascinating. Amongst the talent involved are Cate Blanchett, Steve Coogan, and The White Stripes members Jack and Meg White, yet our favorite segment features none other than, you guessed it, Bill Murray, who’s joined by Wu-Tang’s own RZA and GZA—seriously.

Murray’s a waiter serving the Wu cousins caffeine-free herbal tea, which leads to a conversation about how BM can overcome a smoke-related cough. It’s arguably one of film’s most random pairings, and it works. The reason: Bill Murray ain’t nothing to fuck with, obviously.

Kingpin

7. KINGPIN (1996)

As reprehensible bowling champion Ernie McCracken, Murray sleazes his way through Kingpin, the Farrelly Brothers’ most neglected comedy, with extreme sliminess. In the funnyman’s movie canon, McCracken just might be the lowest in terms moral codes and good behavior, which, of course, means it’s also one of Murray’s funniest turns.

McCracken’s mission in life, other than to roll strikes, is to make washed-up bowler Roy Munson’s (Woody Harrelson) life miserable, started by a double-cross that left Munson’s hand mangled in a bowling-ball return device. Kingpin is entirely mean-spirited, though also tastelessly amusing, and no one in the cast was as aware of that as Murray, who has a ball with a true bastard of a character.

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou

6. THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU (2004)

Wes Anderson, the genre’s resident independent oddball, has directed some of Murray’s more peculiar comedies. While Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums get most of the love, in our eyes as well as the general public’s, The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou stands out for its sheer bizarreness.

In what’s basically Anderson’s loopy rendition of the old Moby Dick story, Murray plays Steve Zissou, a famous oceanographer who leads a team of colorful colleagues on a mission to kill the Jaguar Shark, which murdered Zissou’s longtime partner.

It’s not really a revenge tale, however; The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou is more of an excuse for Anderson, Murray, and co-stars like Owen Wilson and Willem Dafoe to indulge in oddities. Anderson assembles the pic into a series of vignettes that don’t always gel into a cohesive narrative, yet it’s tough for us not to love a movie that randomly sidetracks into an action movie featuring Filipino pirates before morphing back into a typically unusual Wes Anderson comedy. Especially when it also features a delightfully wacky Bill Murray. Wins all around.

Quick Change

5. QUICK CHANGE (1990)

It’s a little known fact that Bill Murray has a directorial credit on his filmography, that being his co-director tag on the overlooked 1990 flick Quick Change. One look at this very dark comedy will leave you wondering why our dude Bill hasn’t grabbed the camera since.

Though not a perfect film, Quick Change generates its fun through unpredictability and irreverence. Murray plays the lead of a bank-robbing trio—which also includes Geena Davis (at her hottest) and Randy Quaid (typically bonkers)—lost in New York City while fleeing a midtown heist. Anyone who’s either lived or spent time in NYC should especially dig this short but tireless pic; Murray’s lone directing job gets its richest laughs from recognizable New York headaches such as cab drivers who can’t speak English, confusing highway signs, and super-strict bus drivers.

It has much in common with another slept-on Manhattan misadventure, Martin Scorcese’s twisted 1985 comedy After Hours; both have fun with audience expectation while turning the Big Apple into a main character. After Hours is the superior film, but earning comparisons to Marty Scorsese with your only directorial work is no minor accomplishment.

What About Bob?

4. WHAT ABOUT BOB? (1991)

In his biggest comedies, such as the Ghostbusters movies, Stripes, and Groundhog Day, Murray is identified by his signature wise-ass arrogance, which is totally abandoned in the manic and consistently clever What About Bob?

Here, he’s pathetic, batshit crazy, and endearing, playing a desperate patient, Bob Wiley, who follows his uptight psychiatrist, Dr. Leo Marvin (a perfectly humorless Richard Dreyfuss) on a family vacation. The doc’s family doesn’t notice Bob’s lunacy, instead embracing him more than they do Leo himself; naturally, Dr. Marvin slowly loses his mind and Bob appears saner by the minute.

Playing against Dreyfuss’ unwavering straightman, Murray storms through What About Bob? with a brilliant sense of playfulness. It’s not a show performance; whether he’s taking “baby steps” or sailing while tied to a boat’s mast, he’s hilarious without trying too hard.

As a character, Bob Wiley is the best kind of nutjob, one whose insane ramblings are both funny and harmless. Well, harmless to us viewers behind the fourth wall; if we were in Doc Marvin’s shoes, we’d probably want to kill the crazy son of a bitch, too.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

3. FANTASTIC MR. FOX (2009)

This isn’t a diss at all: In Wes Anderson’s family flick Fantastic Mr. Fox, Bill Murray isn’t that big of a factor. Yes, he gets some funny lines in a small part as the film’s badger lawyer, cleverly named Badger, but this pretty breathtaking exercise in stop-motion animation isn’t an actor’s showcase—not even the venerable pair of George Clooney or Meryl Streep (as Mr. Fox and his ball-and-chain Felicity, respectively) are able to dominate the proceedings.

The real star of Fantastic Mr. Fox is Anderson himself, who both directed and co-wrote what remains one of the more unfortunately disregarded kid’s movies of the last few years. Though, that’s probably because it plays more like one of Anderson’s grown-up and eccentric comedies that just happens to be animated.

To create the film’s pop-up book feel, Anderson and his collaborators filmed the stop-motion technology at half speed, and it’s quite the ingenious tactic. Fantastic Mr. Fox was a unique experiment that has both flown over people’s heads and coasted beneath the mainstream’s radar since its late ’09 release. It’s about time we change that.

Broken Flowers

2. BROKEN FLOWERS (2005)

Even if you prefer Murray’s showier comedic performances, his somber work in Jim Jarmusch’s unflinchingly deadpan Broken Flowers should be easy to admire.

Undermined by a limited release in the summer of 2005, this quaint road movie finds a soft-spoken Murray playing a former playboy searching for the identity of a mysterious baby mama. After receiving an anonymous pink letter informing him that he has a 19-year-old son, his character, Don Johnston, tries to reconnect with old flings (played by Sharon Stone, Jessica Lange, and Tilda Swinton).

Be warned, though: If you’re not more than an ardent Bill Murray fan, his performance in Broken Flowers could both bore and irritate you. As a mentally tired guy yearning for retirement, Murray’s Johnston drifts through each encounter with firm passivity; at times, you’ll want to grab dude by the shoulders and yell, “Show some energy, dammit!” But, since we’re on Team Bill around here, we’re totally on board with this minimalist success.

Ed Wood

1. ED WOOD (1994)

At this point, frequent collaborators Johnny Depp and Tim Burton can probably finish each other’s sentences; Depp could say, “Our last movie together, Alice In Wonderland,” and Burton would follow up with, “was absolutely dreadful.” Long ago, however, Depp and Burton used to team up for unique and damn good flicks, particularly the idiosyncratic, black-and-white biopic Ed Wood.

To us, it’s quite possibly Burton’s best movie; if that’s ultimately an example of hyperbolic overload, then Ed Wood is inarguably the weirdo director’s most unfairly neglected movie. Depp stars as the titular Hollywood punchline, who, back in the 1950s, cranked out some of the worst movies ever made. Lighthearted and campy, Ed Wood treats the hack’s life with admirable reverence.

At his straight-faced best, Murray co-stars as Bunny Breckinridge, Wood’s flamboyantly gay friend who top-lines his pal’s colossal cinematic fail Plan 9 From Outer Space. Like the rest of the cast, Murray fully commits to a pitiable character, one whose real-life existence makes him all the more tragically hilarious.