We had to turn off the DVD of that. No one was laughing, we couldn’t understand the combination of the accents and slang, and when we did, people were being humiliated and crushed. Where’s the funny?
It’s not for everybody. But I have worked for more than one person (one in particular) who were, more or less, David Brent. It becomes funnier once you have had similar experiances in reality.
I’m glad you mentioned this one. I never would’ve thought anyone could portray her sympathetically, but damned if I didn’t feel for that woman–in the scene you describe, and just the everyday stuff where she’s introducing her new girlfriend and she’s so obviously on top of the world. It just hurts to know that she’s going to go so horribly wrong down the road.
And One Hour Photo got me too. Robin Williams can tear my heart out with that sad, awkward smile of his.
Best,
karol
Happiness. When the man is explaining to his son why he does what he does, and why he doesn’t do it to the son. The theater emptied like someone had called in a bomb threat.
YES. That movie is what I came into this thread to talk about.
Let’s just say that I had to block out all but the very bottom few inches of the screen with one hand and clutch my snoozing furry doorstop of a cat with my other hand.
And even so, I was still in shock for a good hour afterward. :eek:
Another movie would be Romancing the Family Stone. That movie was so unfunny it wasn’t funny. It pretty much was a whole string of public embarrassment/humiliation squicks. Yeesh.
I’m completely OK with most screen violence but there’s a scene in Saving Private Ryan when Mellish (one of the American soldiers) is involved in a hand to hand fight with a German solider. The German gets the upper hand and slowly (against Mellish’s weakening resistance) forces the knife into his chest, all the while Mellish knows what is coming and is begging the German to stop, and the German (I’ve been told) is almost whispering along the lines of Don’t worry, it will be over soon.
Totally squicks me out in a movie I otherwise love.
What makes it even worse is that Upham, the ineffectual-intellectual German-speaking interpreter, is right there, right outside the room, armed, and could save Mellish’s life if he weren’t having a panic attack. And then the German stalks out of the room sparing Upham only one contemptuous glance. And then . . . when the American unit has the Germans at their mercy, Upham finally lifts up his rifle and demands their surrender in German; and the one who killed Mellish puts up a momentary face of defiance and Upham shoots him. That’s even harder to watch.
Although unavoidably over-the-top, Chuck and Buck retains just enough reality and emotional connectedness to the main characters to induce several cringeworthy scenes, where you don’t know whether to laugh, cry, hang you head or run from the room screaming, or try to do all of the above at once.
Two childhood friends and once 11-year-old sexual experimenters, Chuck grew up, Buck did not. I literally had to cover my ears with my hands and look away as, after they reconnect at 27-year-old Buck’s mother’s funeral, Buck makes a pass at Chuck. Then, on a pro forma invitation by Chuck (now Charles) for him to visit California(extended out of embarassment), Buck moves there and the embarassment is compounded from there.
There were many enjoyable moments (including belly laughs) but nonetheless, boy, was I glad when that movie was over.
Was iit too far over the top – or a little too close to home?
I think (based on a discussion of precisely this issue a few years back on the SDMB) that you have your Germans confused. The German who Upham shoots at the end is “steamboat willie”, the German they captured, who they made dig graves, who they almost shot in cold blood, and who they released when he promised to surrender. He (steamboat willie) was one of the guys who shot Tom Hanks. He tries to remind Upham that they were friends, and that is when Upham shoots him. The soldier who kills Mellish (and I agree that that scene is incredibly hard to watch) (although not as hard to watch, imho, as the medic dying while crying for his mother) is an entirely different German. cite
Almost all of Nathan Barley, which I found more painful than The Office. (Dude, I know – I didn’t think it was possible, either.)
There’s a scene in the first episode in which the one remotely sympathetic character quits his job in a bridge-burning fiesta (painful), then goes on an extremely awkward interview in which he humiliates himself and ends by begging for the job (even worse), and then you see him trudging back to his old job and miserably pretending that his enthusiastic "fuck you!"s had just been a joke (so uncomfortable it took me a few tries before I could make it through the whole scene).
And that’s just the first episode. Each passing episode is more and more agonizing. Despite demanding that its audience be made of masochists, it’s actually a good show.
ETA: In dramas, any scene that features spousal abuse is impossible for me to watch.
Spud in Trainspotting during and after the sheet tug of war. I love this film, but this scene is hard to watch.
SherryBaby
where
her father is hugging her at her son’s birthday party and then begins to feel her up, grabs her tits and what not…
Her whole screwed up life kinda made sense right after that pivotal scene.
AGREED. I had my head under my quilt for the entire drumming audition scene.
I’ll second Extras. The scene where Andy walks in on his manager masturbating. Or the scene where the manager and Maggie have a fantastic date-
but it ends with Maggie sitting there while Darren uses a whisk to unblock the toilet he had just, uh, blocked.
There was a period when both my wife and I were extremely unhappy with our jobs and we rented season 2 of the British Office series. We had like season 1 a lot, but we had to turn off season 2. It was like they had hired Brit actors to act out our work week. Now that we are happier in our jobs, we’ll revisit it.
Also, most of the US version of the office. Michael’s character is so over the top that I cringe and usually can’t watch it out of embarrasment for the actors in the scene.
I liked season 1 of the British series; the awkwardness seemed designed to intensify the humor. But in season 2, I felt like they were just creating awkward scenes for the sake of awkwardness. I found it much harder to watch than season 1, and not nearly as rewarding.
Now I know I wouldn’t like either Office. I can’t stand watching people be embarrassed or go through awkward moments on TV or in a movie.
One scene I can’t stand to watch is in Jungle Fever when the secretary is coming home after her dad finds out about her affair with Flipper, and beats her for it. What made it worse was the Stevie Wonder song in the background. I had to walk out of the film class I was watching it in, and felt like a wuss and an idiot for not being able to deal with a scene which apparently didn’t faze anybody else. The other scene I couldn’t stand was the thing at the end when
Flipper walks out onto the street and a mixed-race teenager walks up to him and says something along the lines of “Can I [perform oral sex on you] for two dollars?” and Flipper just hugs the girl and shouts “Noooo!!”
What the hell was that about?
Max is correct. The first time I saw that movie, I thought they were one and the same. A couple of viewings later, I realized they were two different people. That is such a great movie. I need to watch it again.
For me it is embarassing moments for the characters that make me uncomfortable. It happens a lot for me in sit-coms. Chandler in Friends seems to induce those feelings in me quite often. I feel like “Please Og, leave the poor guy alone”.
And likewise Straw Dogs. I must have been mad as a teenager to like those.
My favorite scene in that movie is when he’s sitting in his car across the street watching the family through binoculars. “What’s WRONG with those people!” 