The Best Comedy Shorts of March 2024
Each month, many funny videos are posted to every corner of the internet — from X and Instagram to Vimeo and sometimes other weird places we’ll have trouble embedding. Because you’re busy living your life, you might miss some of these funny videos and feel left out when others bring them up in conversation. Well, worry not! We’re here to make sure you’re not listening in on conversations but leading them … as long as those conversations are about funny internet videos. Here, our favorite comedy shorts of the month.
“Baby Monsters,” by Charlie Hankin
In the fantastical animated world of “Baby Monsters” (not Pokémon, I don’t know why you’d think that), Charlie Hankin has created a land bursting with imaginatively designed pocket-size monsters — that is also a land where you have to clean up their shit, and your boss commits wage theft and upsets your work-life balance by making you take monsters home for the night, and it sucks. Cue the international pop-cultural phenomenon any second now.
“Boy Room,” by Gymnasium
Rachel Coster does the Lord’s work in hosting this web series that seeks to transform the illogically messy bedrooms of Brooklyn’s illogically messy boys. In the first episode, Blake of Bushwick shows off the random objects in his mostly empty drawers as he walks Coster through a room that’s so disorganized it almost “feels set decorated.” Though at least he has perspective enough to acknowledge that it’s “pretty fucked up.”
“English Actor on the Oscars Red Carpet,” by Ed Jones
“I thought that was a bacon sandwich” got us good. Ed Jones is a master of the one-man, Hollywood-centric Instagram dalliance, whether it be trailer imitations or insufferably quaint red-carpet Oscars interactions.
“Football Managers’ Classic Sideline Antics,” by Karl Porter
Here on the west side of the pond, we often feel like the only professional sports-coach imitations worth their salt are from the explosive NFL sideline set. But, please believe, just a few thousand miles east, there’s a whole set of spot-on mannerisms exhibited by the lads who claim the one true “football.” And these are, most certainly, them. (Look out for AYSO coaches everywhere as they take note.)
“Freelancer: A Comedic Glimpse Into the World of a Freelance Artist,” by Babak Ganjei
This may very well be our favorite short so far this year (even though it was technically made toward the end of the last). Please delight in this wonderfully subtle rumination on what it means to stroll beside a society where so many are sprinting on the corporate treadmill. It’s not all bad, but it’s certainly not good, either.
“The Launch,” by KK Apple
Watch Video hereKK Apple gives the Danny Boyle treatment to the infamous footage of the Windows 95 team awkwardly dancing at the product’s launch in “The Launch.” The slightly surreal and heightened period details here effectively contribute to this short’s pulse-pounding sense of ambient dread and excitement, especially once Apple brings in a cast of ringers like Alyssa Limperis and Kate Sisk for exaggerated deadpan performances as Bill Gates & Co.
“New York or L.A.,” by Rose Kelso and Ryan Wentz
Rose Kelso is back (this time with Ryan Wentz) for some of our favorite musical stand-up. This time, the focus is on a very important aspect of our social contract: the understanding that living anywhere but New York or Los Angeles is a complete fucking waste of time of what could be a social-climbing, intensely transactional identity.
“PLEASE HELP! My Friends Took a 3D House Tour …,” by Michelle Gold
A point-and-click house tour becomes a point-and-click murder mystery in a spooky over-lit mansion crawling with NPCs in this inventive Shining-inflected short from Michelle Gold. Anyone with fond memories of PC gaming as a kid will relish the barely contained murderous euphemisms of the characters giving you hints, as well as the uncanny, just ever-so-slightly off relationship between object and background.
“POV: Your Mom Introduces You to This Woman That You’ve Never Seen a Day in Your Life,” by Sarah Beth Luciano
Why do we feel like we’ve met this woman every year since we were 5? And yet, why do we never, ever remember her or what her connection is to our mother? Why, too, is she always wearing leather or chunky jewelry? And, at last, why oh why does her Long Island/Staten Island accent get thicker every time we see her?
“Waiter Movie: The Short,” by Ian Faria and Edy Modica
If John Cassavetes had stopped boozing and gotten his act together long enough to take a class at the Brooklyn Comedy Collective, he may have one day gotten to make something as significant as “Waiter Movie: The Short,” which stars filmmaker Edy Modica in a transformative performance as an old man who fancies himself a motor-mouthed hustler while sleeping in a cot at the restaurant he works at. Everyone popping up here is doing yeoman’s work, especially a supporting turn from Brian Fiddyment as an overzealous bartender. In just ten minutes, it’s enough to convince you New York still has character. (Watch it here.)
Like what you saw? Want to be on this monthly roundup? Show us your stuff!
Luke Kelly-Clyne is a co-head of HartBeat Independent and a watcher of many web videos. Send him yours at @LKellyClyne.
Graham Techler has contributed writing to The New Yorker and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. Send him your videos at @gr8h8m_t3chl3r.