Movie's title awkwardly in movie's dialogue

[Flywheel]

@CalMeacham

Don’t Eat the Daisies DEFINITELY belongs on the list. Nothing about this thread demands that the line not come first. The problem is that there’s no way to work it into the script. It’s a cathchy book title, but a stupid line, u8nless delivered by a suburban mom to a child (or dog), and for some reason they didn’t want to do that, so they put it in a song.

Same with Don’t Eat the Pictures.

[Morbo]

The worst for me was A View to a Kill. Christopher Walken and Grace Jones were in his blimp looking out over the Golden Gate Bridge.

Grace Jones: “What a view!”
Walken: “To a kill!”

Ugh.

The best was in the (IMO really funny) 21 Jump Street:

Ron Swanson as a police captain: " Tomorrow morning, you are both going to report to…37 Jump Street!…Wait, no, that doesn’t sound right. What was it again?"

[Battle_Pope]

No wonder neither of you could do that appendix operation. You’re spies like us!

[eastcheap]

@Cumberdale

I believe in both films she says that she is “looking for a man with true grit.” I believe one time it is to the man she convinces to buy and sell the horses. I also believe she says it to Cogburn himself after his testimony.

The line is right out of the book and is, ostensibly, the source of the title, so you can’t really accuse Porter of shoehorning it in. After Cogburn has testified in the Wharton trial:

I approached him and said, “Mr. Rooster Cogburn?” He said, “What is it?” His mind was on something else.
I said, “I would like to talk with you a minute.”
He looked me over. “What is it?” he said.
I said, “They tell me you are a man with true grit.”
He said, “What do you want, girl? Speak up. It is suppertime.”

Apart from that, Mattie is content to use the word “grit” alone.

[Sitnam]

It’s a scene in the book, but does the movie ever explain why it’s called Trainspotting?

[FlyingDragonFan]

For me personally, it almost always stands out, not necessarily because it’s awkward, but just because it always reminds me that I’m watching a movie with that title. Even the Chinatown reference, which dialogue-wise sounds just fine, pulls me out of the movie for a moment. The only real exceptions to this are eponymous titles, Like *Robocop *or Terminator.

[Two_Dollar_Tallboy]

In Saving Private Ryan, Tom Sizemore’s character has a line like, “Maybe this is the best thing we’ve ever done, saving Private Ryan”. That felt pretty shoehorned in to me.

[Morbo]

Jimmy Kimmel’s auditions

[leftfield6]

If the premise here is that the offending insertion has to be awkward, I’m going to disagree with the inclusion of the dialogue Fellowship of the Ring. I certainly noticed it when it was uttered during the council meeting, but it didn’t strike me as being unlike the way the characters normally spoke or phrased things.

Dog knows that Tolkein could be said to be guilty of beating you over the head with words, so I guess that kinda covers any transgression of inserting the title into the dialogue.

[Jas09]

@Sitnam

It’s a scene in the book, but does the movie ever explain why it’s called Trainspotting?

I’m pretty sure it doesn’t, thankfully.

[Elendil_s_Heir]

My sister insists you have to sarcastically applaud when the movie’s title shows up in dialogue. So I do.

[awldune]

The king of awkward name drops has to be Face/Off:

Every time they say "Face Off" in Face/Off

[Freddy_the_Pig]

In St. Elmo’s Fire, the characters hang out at St. Elmo’s Bar. But that wasn’t enough of a title drop, so late in the movie Billy utters this soliloquy to his strung-out and suicidal friend:

Jules, y’know, honey… this isn’t real. You know what it is? It’s St. Elmo’s Fire. Electric flashes of light that appear in dark skies out of nowhere. Sailors would guide entire journeys by it, but the joke was on them… there was no fire. There wasn’t even a St. Elmo. They made it up. They made it up because they thought they needed it to keep them going when times got tough, just like you’re making up all of this. We’re all going through this. It’s our time at the edge.

This seems very forced to me–out of place under the circumstances, and if he had to say it wouldn’t he at least cross-reference it to the bar? Very awkward.