The movies are back – or rather, we are back at the movies.

2023 had the highest box office gross in the post-pandemic era, signalling that movie lovers aren’t waiting to watch blockbusters sitting oun their couches. After a too-long hiatus, the theaters are showing new films to full houses and only a select few films are being streamed the same day they are released in theaters.

Of course, that’s partly because studios stopped offering same day streaming for most of their new releases, but the quality of the films was a factor as well. A lot of great films came out in 2023 – Barbie, Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon, Poor Things, The Color Purple, and so many more.

And while so many critics have made best-of lists, in advance of movie’s award season, not every movie released last year was, well, fun. Sure, there are several movies worthy of being called 2023’s best. But were they fun? Were the audiences in the theater laughing, cheering, and clapping at the end? For Oppenheimer and other serious fare, the answer to that is no.

But 2023 offered film fans a lot of enjoyable movie-going experiences. (So did streaming, for that matter.) This list is a compilation of the best times to be had watching movies this year, based on the films that we here at Pop Culture Junkie watched last year. The most fun movies of 2023 – and again, these aren’t necessarily the best movies of the year – were, by month:

JANUARY
M3GAN

January gave us M3GAN, a tale of electronic babysitting gone wrong. Allison Williams starred as the robotics whiz who created a protective robot friend who took her mission statement a bit too seriously. Naturally, M3GAN overstepped, truing from protective to murderous, and while she was scary, she was also fun. With her fashion-forward wardrobe, slick dance moves, and inventive kills, mass murder was finally fun again.

FEBRUARY
COCAINE BEAR

Back in February, we called Cocaine Bear “the best film of 2023.” While that was a bit of enthusiastic hyperbole, the movie about a coked-up killer bear was an incredible time, especially when seen in a theater full of people enjoying every gory maiming, mauling and murder. Though the movie balanced that mayhem with deft humorous touches and even a bit of heart-warming family drama, so even if it doesn’t make a lot of critics’ top ten lists, it’s easily one of the funnest movies of the year.

MARCH
DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG THIEVES/COFFEE WARS

Sure, no one in Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves was rolling a 20-sided die or having a dungeon-master decide their fate, but the movie had enough dragons, fairies, elves, magic and spells to play out like an adventure within the classic tabletop game. Great performances by a game Chris Pine as the leader of the group of fantasy characters and Hugh Grant as the nefarious baddie help this film make the list of fun March movies.

March also has a runner-up fun film, Coffee Wars starring Kate Nash. The Pop Culture Junkie podcast interviewed star Kate Nash for an episode, which meant we all had the pleasure of watching the movie in which Nash plays a barista who attempts to save her struggling business by entering the World Barista Championship, proving that it is possible to make a delicious – and winning – vegan latte. The movie offered some genuine laughs, plus a fascinating look at a real-life competition that most people probably haven’t heard of. Coffee Wars was caffeinated and frothy fun.

APRIL
ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET/RENFIELD

For women of a certain age, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret the book was an introduction into the world that awaited us after puberty – periods, breasts and boys. We were all Margaret, who at 11 had no answers, only questions, as she worked through not only the mysteries of impending adolescence, but also her place in a world. Margaret had a Jewish father and a Christian mother, but was able to choose what she wanted to believe in, if anything. But such a momentous decision cannot be arrived at without a lot of soul-searching and no small amount of heartache. Judy Blume’s 1970 book had never been adapted for the screen before, as the author was reportedly waiting for the right filmmaker to bring the novel to life. Director/writer Kelly Fremon Craig did right by Blume, and she does right by the memories shared by all readers of this beloved book, and Abby Ryder Fortson makes a marvelous Margaret.

Nicolas Cage and Nicholas Hoult’s horror Renfield is an April also-ran, mainly due to Cage’s gonzo performance as a mad (as in crazy and as in angry) Dracula who loses his power over his servant Renfield (Hoult) after he decides to empower himself and resist his master. Awkwafina also is a delight (as usual) and there are some clever nods to the classic Universal film Dracula that add to the gory fun.

MAY
THE MACHINE

May was pretty light on fun films, but The Machine was rollicking adventure starring stand-up comic Bert Kreischer as a big dumb idiot kidnapped by the Russian mob who are trying to find something he stole while on a semester abroad 20 years earlier. Mark Hamill plays Bert’s dad, Albert, who gets kidnapped along with him, and the two must outsmart different branches of the same crime family – no easy task for someone as…non-intellectual as Bert. But they call it dumb luck for a reason, and watching Bert and his dad bumble their way through their kidnapping was actually really fun.

JUNE
SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE

Watching Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is a feast for the eyes and ears, as well as the mind. The movie is visually stunning, with graphics that expand across multiple dimensions, and it has a killer soundtrack, great voice work and an involving story that is both hilarious and heart-breaking. It was best seen in a movie theater, so viewers could take in the sheer magnificence of the film. The multiverse introduced in the first Miles Morales adventure, Into the Spider-Verse, is even more fleshed out here. The artistic direction of the film offers six different universes, all with their own unique style; seriously, every single frame of this movie is a work of art. And though that’s reason enough to see the movie, the story is fantastic too. This movie is rightly being called one of the best films of 2023, but don’t let that fool you – Across the Spider-Verse is a ton of fun.

JULY
BARBIE/JOY RIDE

How could Barbie, a film made about one of the most iconic toys of all time, be anything but fun? But Barbie was more than a toy story; it was a powerful film that challenged gender roles in ways that are still being talked about six months after its debut. Barbie opened the same weekend as Oppenheimer, a film that was always going to get nominated for all the movie awards, but not only did Barbie handily best the Christopher Nolan-helmed picture about the beginning of the atomic era, the film and director Greta Gerwig, as well as stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling are also mentioned in the same serious film award conversations. That said, Barbie wasn’t afraid to get silly; Gosling was perfectly cast as Ken, turning Barbie’s Dream House into his uber-masculine mojo dojo casa-house and aggressively singing a Matchbox 20 song at the doll of his dreams. I watched the film in a theater full of mostly women, many dolled up in pink, and we all had a joyous time.

July’s runner up for most fun is Joy Ride, a film starring Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Stephanie Hsu and Sabrina Wu as four friends who take a trip to China, each for their own reasons. Ashley Park as Audrey wants to discover her birth family; she was adopted by an American couple when she was very young. Regardless of the reasons, their journey is beset by one hilarious calamity after another, and the film is not afraid to get raunchy, crude and vulgar – in the best possible way. There are some gut-busting laugh-out-loud moments (and a few sad scenes, too), but mainly this adventure is all about the laughs.

AUGUST
THE BLUE BEETLE/SLOTHERHOUSE

Warner Bros. premiered The Blue Beetle in August, which is not the ideal month for a blockbuster to premiere – those usually hit theaters around the major holidays. But Blue Beetle was (probably) the best DC film of the year. Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) becomes the unwitting host for a super-powered exoskeleton, and must figure out how to use its powers intentionally, all while keeping the technology out of the clutches of the film’s big bad villain, played by Susan Sarandon. But Jaime is not alone – he’s got a big, loving family ready to help him, and that is the movie’s best asset. The Reyes family has amazing reserves of strength, humor, and skills (don’t mess with Abuela!), making them an unstoppable force. The movie keeps the action frantic and fun, as was a real treat on the big screen.

Runner up for August’s most fun movie was the satirically silly Slotherhouse, a horror flick about a killer sloth with social media savvy that came off as more of a parody than an actual killer creature feature. But it embraces the goofy premise – a sorority girls adopts a sloth, hoping the new sorority mascot will help her get elected as house president – and leans even further into absurdity with each successive scene. Maybe you’ll lose a few brain cells watching this deeply silly film, but it’s totally worth it.

SEPTEMBER
BOTTOMS

Speaking of absurd, September brought Bottoms to the theaters, and anyone lucky enough to take a chance on this film, which did not receive a lot of promotion, was rewarded with a hysterically funny mash up of Heathers and Fight Club. Josie and PJ (played by Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennot) start a girl-fight club at school ostensibly for personal protection, but their underlying motives are to get closer to their crushes, Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) and Brittany (Kaia Gerber). Of course, they get found out and it isn’t pretty, especially when people start getting hurt – or dead – for real. That’s played for laughs, just like everything else in this over-the-top farce that still hits all the right teen drama notes.

OCTOBER
TOTALLY KILLER

Just in time for Spooky Season, we got Prime Video’s Totally Killer, a comedy/time travel/slasher pic that starred Kiernan Shipka as Jamie, a high-schooler who had to go Back to the Future to save her mom from the town’s infamous “Sweet Sixteen” killer, who resumed his murder spree after a long hiatus. Jamie’s time travels deposit her in the fabulous 1980s, so she has to confront not only the evil serial killer, but the combined horrors of puffy sleeves and big hair. The movie has a lot of fun with the time travel conceit, giving Jamie ample opportunity to see how much things have changed over the decades – mostly for the better. The movie doesn’t get too bogged down in the mechanics of time travel – it just works! The real pleasure in this film is following Jamie around as she gets to know her mom as a teenager, and struggling to like her anyway. (And yes, this movie didn’t play in theaters, but it should have – it was October’s funnest film!)

NOVEMBER
THE MARVELS/GOOD BURGER 2

Marvel released three superhero flicks in 2023, but only one of them hit the sweet spot of adventure and fun. In The Marvels the powers of Captain Marvel (Brie Larson), Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) and Ms. Marvel (Iman Vellani) become entangled, causing any two of the heroes to switch positions every time they use those powers at the same time. This creates a massive problem for the three, especially when one of them materializes in thin air without the power to fly. The three of them get together and learn to coordinate their timing so they can fight effectively against the movie’s baddie, who wants to steal Kamala’s bangle, which is the source of her Ms. Marvel abilities. Looking beyond the good vs. evil aspects of the film, the movie is a blast. A scene where various Marvel’s (and the baddies they are fighting) flash in and out of the Khan home, much to the consternation of her delightful family, is hilarious. And the scene where a litter of Flerkins help evacuate Nick Fury’s space station workforce, set to “Memory” from Cats is one of the most enjoyable scenes of the year. The movie gets a little emotional, but mostly it’s just plain fun.

Runner up for November is Good Burger 2, an enjoyable second helping of laughs from Kel Mitchell and Kenan Thompson, who once again play the roles they originated decades earlier in sketches on the Nickelodeon show All That. The story isn’t important; the film is merely a tasty treat that keeps the nostalgia – and the laughs – coming.

DECEMBER
POOR THINGS

Poor Things begins like a rehashing of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, but becomes so much more. Emma Stone plays Bella Baxter, who is the creation of mad scientist Godwin Baxter, who makes weird hybrid animals just for the fun of it. Bella starts out as a child in an adult’s body, but with time and tutelage becomes more and more independent and smart. Godwin keeps Bella away from society for as long as he can, but Bella yearns for adventure, and runs away with the caddish Duncan Wedderburn (played with gusto by Mark Ruffalo.) Bella’s growth into a remarkable woman, highly educated and spiritually and sexually liberated at a time – the Victorian era – when most women were not able to be any of those things. Stone’s performance is fearless and funny, but also very endearing. Director Yorgos Lanthimos is known for his oddball concept movies, but Poor Things is very accessible: sublimely strange but genuinely hilarious.

There were more great movies last year; for example, I know Swifties had fun watching the cinematic rendition of Taylor’s Eras tour, Nicolas Cage starred in Dream Scenario, finding his way into the dreams of everyone on Earth, and many more, but I have yet to see those. I only know that 2023 had me, more often than not, putting down the remote and driving to the theater to experience all the joys the cinema had to offer.