The Wilby Conspiracy. I’ve never seen this in a cinema, but I can’t imagine the gratuitous sex scene between Sidney Poitier and Persis Khambatta evoking anything but riotous laughter.
Indeed, I think he is poor in everything.
IIRC, there was a romantic interlude between Gregory Peck and the Greek woman who turned out to be the obligatory traitor in The Guns of Navarone, while they were hiding from the Nazis in the mountains. This made almost as much sense as James Darren bursting into song at a Greek wedding.
Great way to remain inconspicuous while on a secret mission inside enemy territory. Way to go, Jim! :rolleyes:
Green Lantern
as it was, it was two movies jammed together, and the seams showed.
Yeah, even that. I thought about listing it separately, but figured my blanket statement covered it.
“Lack of running time” ought not to be the reason you leave in a romantic subplot. That “burning the guy alive in a gorilla costume” was taken from another Poe story, Hop-Frog (and is, chillingly, based on a real historic incident i which a LOT of guys dressed in gorilla costumes burned to death). There’s no reason they couldn’t have added other Poe elements to the story, as well.
Heck, it still bugs me that they skimped on the number of colored rooms. There are seven in Poe’s story. They only have four or so in the movie. How hard would it have been to repaint the set for a different room?
Yes, but unlike some other poor actors, he can speak in an English accent.
Not exactly. The Coconuts and Animal Crackers didn’t have any romance, unless you count Groucho’s wooing of Margaret Dumont. And in Horse Feathers, the romance was also played for laughs, not romance. When they moved to MGM after Duck Soup, a love plot was required by the studio executives, and it did help at the box office.
Brute Force was the story of an attempted jailbreak and a revolt against a psychotic prison guard (played by Hume Cronyn(!)). There are several unnecessary flashbacks about the prisoners’ relationships with women.
Considering that the story was based on real events, and deNiro’s, Peschi’s, and Stone’s characters were all based on real people, I think that the filmmakers can be forgiven for keeping the love interest in that one.
Enemy at the Gates
The sniper-on-sniper action was great. The shoehorned romantic triangle with Rachel Weisz was not.
The Beach. The book had it right - Françoise and Étienne are a couple, and Richard is their friend. There was no need for him to sneak around with Françoise in the movie. It did nothing but detract from the rest of the story.
This x100. God, that was awful.
The recent Aquaman would have been better if they had taken out the romance subplot. Or put it in, either one. Just, not the “Well, our two leads are different genders, so of course they’re going to kiss in the climactic scene, even though there’s been absolutely no development between them” that they went with.
Actually, scratch that. They shouldn’t have taken out all of the romance: The bits between Aquaman’s parents were good. Just not Aquaman/Maera.
Any John Ford western. This also applies to “the best John Ford western not made by John Ford”, Howard Hawks’ Red River.
The Man in the High Castle
Why do you think they call him Dirty Harry?
But my votes have to be for the Affleck/Hartnett “Pearl Harbor” and “Enemy at the Gates”.
*
Pearl Harbor* would have been a big-effects summer movie centering on the bromance between Affleck and Hartnett and their involvement in Pearl Harbor and the Doolittle Raid. * It would have been relatively forgettable, but it would have been much shorter, and much less sappy/absurd.
Enemy at the Gates managed to be a fine movie even with the shoehorned in romantic plot, but it didn’t really add to anything- there was no reason to have Joseph Fiennes or Rachel Weisz** in the movie at all- it could have been all Jude Law and Ron Perlman and it would have been just as good, if not better.
- honestly I’d have probably minimized the Pearl Harbor part, removed the romance, and made it a Doolittle Raid movie.
** except for the oddly erotic fully clothed sex scene.
34 posts and no one’s mentioned Top Gun? Less romantic blah blah, more jets!
Unnecessary, sure, but worth it for Dunaway the following morning:
I originally saw the film on network television. Probably a few times, so when I finally saw the full version, that line made me burst out laughing.
The same is true of the original Midway (1976). I always imagine Charleton Heston growling through clenched teeth “The evening before the greatest sea battle in history, my son tells me he’s in love with a Japanese girl!” :mad:
Bloodsport
The plot is paper-thin, but it’s definitely not improved by the romance with the completely unnecessary reporter character.
Gangs of New York
Cameron Diaz’s character’s only real purpose is to be a motivating factor in Amsterdam taking down Bill the Butcher, except he already had a much bigger reason from the opening scene of the movie when Bill kills his father. It’s only, like, the entire main plot of the movie.
Yep. That whole thing was totally unnecessary. Bridge on the River Kwai had some romantic nonsense, but damn little and didn’t detract too much.
As much as I liked Peter Jackson, I feel the entire second movie was unnecessary.