This would seem to be the better place for me to speak my mind about content of movies that irritates me, rather than spoiling, as I did, a thread in MPSIMS concerning movies you’d watch if working in a video store. Who knows, I may get correct information about some movies here!
Here goes:
Smokey and the Bandit: Beery, irresponsible trucker gleefully flattens police cars. The Terminator: Arnold Schawrzenegger goes on an insane murder rampage, blowing innocent people away with a machine gun while grunting, “Hasta la vista, baby!”
I may have more movies to rant about here but I don’t remember them offhand. Other Dopers, please post what you objected to about a specific movie, or give me clarifying information about my rants. Thanks.
Just one itty bitty comment on Smokey and the Bandit. The two truckers played by Jerry Reed and Burt Reynolds were NOT drinking while driving the car and the beer truck. Back to the rant.
Yeah, the little casualties indicator in his glasses read “0.0” at the end of the movie. Never did understand why it required precision down to the tenth of a casualty, though.
What I object to: female “lead” undressing in front of the camera as though it were vital to the plot.
I don’t care if it is essential that we see what cup size she is, or that she’s wearing a metal bra, or that she has three sets of implants . . . that’s over the top.
I object to the “Get Out Of Death Free” cards given to animals and children that very obviously should not have survived some explosion/attack/disaster/whatever.
Example: Independence Day. Setting aside for the moment how ludicrous Vivica Fox’s escape from the Wall O’ Fire was: she hollers from her safe haven for her dog, who leaps in just as fire sweeps past. Did she yell for any of the hundreds of human beings who ran past, try to save any of them? Of course not, we didn’t get to know them as characters, so they don’t matter. But we just can’t let the dog die, by thunder!
Gotta give credit to Tim Burton for not letting the kid get away in Sleepy Hollow.
My movie rant: Any submarine movie, but especially U-571.
Depth charge, torpedo, something shakes the boat and ruptures a steam or water pipe. They quickly valve it off to stop the leak and then go back to whatever it was they were doing. Apparently all subs are designed with pointless water and steam lines running to nowhere and operating nothing. These pipes have a purpose people! If you valve off a pipe, something is going to shut down!
I’m a very un-critical movie viewer. Getting to see a movie was special when I was growing up, and that attitude has stayed with me.
But I object to gratuitous anything. In particular, in Mission to Mars (which I just saw last night), the sand monster thing.
If the Martians were so advanced that they could build spaceships, including one that lasted for millions of years in perfect working order, why couldn’t they have devised a more humane security system? A simple force field would have sufficed.
The sand critter was probably featured in the trailers, thereby sucking in (oooh, a pun) viewers who were expecting lots of gory action.
Hmmmm. Actually, that’s not bad. They got a thinking person’s SF movie instead. Well, thinking on the 6th grade level maybe.
A classic 70’s movie that is part of my collection. The Bandit didn’t actually crush any cars… and he didn’t drink any beer during his trip. My biggest gripe with this movie is at the end, they say they are going to Boston for some clam chowder. But Smokey and the Bandit II had nothing to do with it.
The greater question is… what the hell is a diablo sandwich?
But then again, maybe I’m biased… I’m the brother of a truck-drivin’ mother (boogily boogily boogily)
I can’t believe no one around here caught your biggest mistake of all, Dougie.
I believe your referring to a specific scene here. Problem is, ya got it all wrong.
In the scene you refer to, the trucker flattens a line of motorcycles, not squad cars. Furthermore, he was having a sandwich at the bar- not a cocktail or brew to be had. He never would have flattened the bikes had it not been for some ignoramuses messing with his mut.
They do… he takes umbrage… he gets pummeled in the melee… he leaves. At this point we’re led to believe the whole messy incident is over. Nope. He has one last trick up his sleeve- he runs over the motorcycles with a smirk on his face that only Burt himself could appreciate.
This scene is made all the more memorable with the line made by the gas attendant- “Far out”.
movie computers. Yes, all computers display text in inch-high letters and have special commands like “upload virus” with graphical displays and everything.
“L.A. Confidential”—The straight-arrow cop would NOT have fallen into bed with Kim Basinger like that. Totally out of character, and was done just to keep the plot perkin’ along.
“Gone with the Wind”—Ashley Wilkes? I don’t THINK so.
“The Wizard of Oz”—After nearing getting killed, Dorothy finds out she could have gone home any time? I’d have poked Glinda right smack in the beezer.
Don’t blame the movie…he did it in the novel, too.
Which also had that weird ending where none of the good guys die…a lotta people think the movie CHANGED the end to make it more cheerful, but no, it was Ellroy. The only thing the Hollywood guys did to the original story was subtract about eighty percent of the plot; can’t blame them, otherwise we would have had a 28-hour flick.
Okay, how about the fact that the girlfriend of the main character in every action-adventure movie for the past ten years enjoys a lucrative career as an exotic dancer?
Okay, I understand that the hero needs an eye-popping squeeze, but why can’t they date pediatricians or carpenters or mathematics professors or hat-check girls?
No, wait, that’s another irritant…wheeling out the top nuclear physics specialist in the Free World and she’s a 22-year-old blonde in a form-fitting jumpsuit.
That’s one of the reasons I’m happy the studio system has died away. We no longer have to suffer through actors half-heartedly playing parts they were forced into doing.
Pet peeves of mine:
-Whenever there is some alien/creature in a kids film, it speaks with the same type of cutesie-wootsie voice. It drove me up the wall even when I was a kid.
-Hearing the snapping sound when someone’s neck is broken.
-The heroes of the story outrunning a wall of water/fireball/river of mud/avalance.
-When the timer of a bomb says 2 minutes, the heros talk for a 3 or 4 minutes and yet still manage to stop it at 1 second.
