Everybody knows that buddy comedies rule the universe. Just in the past couple weeks, we’ve had Zootopia, about a rabbit cop and a fox con-artist, and The Brothers Grimsby, about a superspy and his yokel brother. But buddy comedies have gotten much stranger than those—here are the 20 weirdest buddy comedies of all time!
1) Heart Condition (1990)
Bob Hoskins is a racist cop, who receives a heart transplant from Denzel Washington, a sleazy lawyer whom Hoskins despises. Soon Hoskins has to team up with Washington’s ghost to find out who killed him.
2) Brain Damage (1988)
It’s a tale as old as time... a man and his parasitic brain worm. The worm gives Brian a feeling of total euphoria, thanks to the addictive blue goop he secretes into Brian’s brain—but in turn, the worm needs Brian to feed it the brains of other people.
3) A Boy and His Dog (1975)
The post-apocalypse often makes for strange bedfellows, and you can’t always choose who you team up with after the end of civilization. But Don Johnson’s bond with his telepathic dog is one of the strangest buddy relationships we’ve seen—especially in the film’s twisted ending. Johnson’s later pairing on Miami Vice can’t really compare.
4) Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)
Elvis Presley and JFK are both alive. And they’re in the nursing home. So of course, they team up to fight a mummy. Like you do.
5) Oh, God! (1977)
God and John Denver team up to... we’re not really sure. Maybe to stop that train full of breakdancing teenagers that God left to die
6) Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot! (1992)
Sylvester Stallone teams up with his mother (Estelle Getty). And they fight crime, with machine guns!
7) Double Team (1997)
Van Damme and Dennis Rodman! Van Damme is Quinn, the world’s greatest superspy, and Rodman is Yaz, a flamboyant arms dealer who’s the only one Quinn can trust.
8) Dead Heat (1988)
Doug Bigelow is a cop who’s facing a zombie infestation, because some nutcase has figured out how to bring the dead back to life. His only help in dealing with this crisis? His own undead partner, Roger Mortis. (Yes, really.)
9) Theodore Rex (1996)
Whoopi Goldberg teams up with a tyrannosaur in Mega-City One, basically. They’re on the trail of a maniac who’s killing other talking dinosaurs, but then they stumble on a plot that could lead to armageddon.
10) The Last Action Hero (1993)
A young kid teams up with a fictional character (played by Arnold Schwarzenegger) to save the life of Arnold Schwarzenegger. And they also join forces with a cartoon cat!
11) The Cabbage Soup (1981)
Not so much a weird pairing as an incredibly weird scenario. Two French farmers must make cabbage soup for aliens after their farting contest causes a lightning storm!
12) Fright Night (1985)
A high school student and local TV horror host team up... to fight vampires!
13) Toejam and Earl (1991)
Two aliens crashland on Earth, and try to blend in by misappropriating hip-hop culture, in this classic video game. The three-legged red ToeJam wears a big medallion and a reversed baseball cap, while the big orange Earl wears high-tops and huge sunglasses. They have to find the pieces of their crashed spaceship, so they can get back to the planet Funkotron.
14 Archer & Armstrong (1992)
A young boy has a near-death experience after he catches his evangelist parents molesting small children and his parents try to kill him—and as a result, he wakes up with amazing martial arts and archery powers. He teams up with a homeless man that he meets on the street, to fight for justice. Valiant/Acclaim also gave us Quantum and Woody, the all-time greatest superhero buddy comedy.
15) DR and Quinch (1985)
Alan Moore and Alan Davis created this weird pairing of a green teenage alien criminal mastermind named D.R. (“Diminished Responsibility”) Dobbs, and his sidekick Quinch, who’s big and purple. They come to Earth... to party!
16) Sifl and Olly (1998)
Surrealist sock puppets! Here’s their ode to fake blood.
17) Osmosis Jones (2001)
A white blood cell and an over-the-counter pharmaceutical fight an infection inside Bill Murray’s plague-ridden body! It’s better than you remember, but still not a classic…
18) Alien Nation (1988)
James Caan plays a human cop and who’s forced to team up with an alien detective (Mandy Patinkin) to fight crime. Mostly notable for all the hilarious cultural misunderstandings: “Gesundheit!”
19) Wild Wild West (1999)
In this Steampunk action-adventure movie, Will Smith is a Civil War hero who’s the quickest draw in the West. He teams up with a master of disguise, played by Kevin Kline, to stop Kenneth Branagh from doing something spider-y to President Grant. Mostly, it’s got steampunk spiders.
20) RIPD (2013)
Ryan Reynolds almost didn’t make Deadpool because he was busy making this other comic-book movie about a cop who dies and joins an undead police force, alongside a 19th century cop played by Jeff Bridges. Everyone who meets Ryan Reynolds sees him as an elderly Asian man, whereas Bridges appears to be a hot chick to civilians.