# Summarize something (tv, movie, book) you like to make it sound stupid **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 19, 2008, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summarize-something-tv-movie-book-you-like-to-make-it-sound-stupid/453499 "2008-06-19T18:45:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2008, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summarize-something-tv-movie-book-you-like-to-make-it-sound-stupid/453499/81 "2008-06-23T20:28:36Z")
[QUOTE=fachverwirrt] Sorry, **Opal**. This was _The Grapes of Wrath_. [/QUOTE] Cool. See, I managed to avoid reading that. I don’t like him as an author based on what I have read, and I heard nothing but whining about it from everybody else. I never bothered to investigate what the plot was because I had no interest. About all I know is that in the play version of it, there’s boobies. ---
**Author:** ![cainxinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/7bcc69/32.png) [@cainxinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cainxinth)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2008, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summarize-something-tv-movie-book-you-like-to-make-it-sound-stupid/453499/82 "2008-06-23T20:40:32Z")
My contribution is a real film review by Gregory Weinkauf of the Dallas Observer for the film adaptation of “The Cat in the Hat”: [Mike Myers: Asshole in Fur](http://film.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,12589,1094482,00.html) [QUOTE=control-z] An old woman roams the country, secretly murdering people and framing others for the crime. - Murder She Wrote [/QUOTE] Lol [QUOTE=Ellen Cherry] A couple of yuppies die and are forced to haunt their own home, which they do ineptly. A gross dead guy tries to help them. To reggae music. – _Beetlejuice_, one of my all-time faves. [/QUOTE] Nitpick: it was calypso. My fav too. ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2008, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summarize-something-tv-movie-book-you-like-to-make-it-sound-stupid/453499/83 "2008-06-23T21:03:55Z")
Shamelessly stolen from my college American Lit professor: A young girl in a fantastic world needs help getting home, so she enlists the aid of a metal man, a funny man and a big fuzzy creature, among others. Your choice: Wizard of Oz or Star Wars ---
**Author:** ![Sigmagirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c89c15/32.png) [@Sigmagirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigmagirl)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2008, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summarize-something-tv-movie-book-you-like-to-make-it-sound-stupid/453499/84 "2008-06-23T21:07:27Z")
[QUOTE=Sigmagirl] A backwards mountain girl moves to town and amuses her rich, invalid cousin by milking goats; cousin’s health improves through the magical power of goat’s milk. Brought to you by the Swiss Goat’s Milk Council. [/QUOTE] Sorry, Opal. It’s Heidi. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2008, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summarize-something-tv-movie-book-you-like-to-make-it-sound-stupid/453499/85 "2008-06-23T21:10:23Z")
[QUOTE=OpalCat] Unless… that means… :eek: no!!! say it isn’t so! [/QUOTE] Well, I guess to be fair, I can’t really like or dislike something I’ve never tried. OTOH, to quote from Pulp Fiction, “sewer rat might taste like pumpkin pie.” ---
**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2008, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summarize-something-tv-movie-book-you-like-to-make-it-sound-stupid/453499/86 "2008-06-23T21:21:07Z")
[QUOTE=OpalCat] I don’t see how any of these make it sound stupid. [/QUOTE] Well in my case, it is supposed to be stupid in that it sounds so mundane and boring. ---
**Author:** ![Marlitharn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/779978/32.png) [@Marlitharn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marlitharn)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2008, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summarize-something-tv-movie-book-you-like-to-make-it-sound-stupid/453499/87 "2008-06-23T21:32:31Z")
Sorry. Mine was _Harvey_, starring Jimmy Stewart and one of the homicidal aunts from _Arsenic and Old Lace_. A very funny and sweet movie, but when you’re talking about 6 foot tall invisible rabbits, there’s no way to describe it and _not_ make it sound stupid. ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2008, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summarize-something-tv-movie-book-you-like-to-make-it-sound-stupid/453499/88 "2008-06-23T22:43:30Z")
[QUOTE=Gangster Octopus] Well in my case, it is supposed to be stupid in that it sounds so mundane and boring. [/QUOTE] Ah. Well I was thinking stupid more along the lines of illogical, disjointed, contrived, preposterous, etc. That is, make it actually sound BAD. ---
**Author:** ![Roadfood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9fc348/32.png) [@Roadfood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roadfood)\ **Post date:** [June 23, 2008, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summarize-something-tv-movie-book-you-like-to-make-it-sound-stupid/453499/89 "2008-06-23T23:45:13Z")
Star Wars: The bad guy wears a dorky helmet and has some severe breathing problems. The bad guy’s henchmen are the worst shots in the entire galaxy; heck, the movie would be over in the first five minutes if any of the henchmen had even the slightest ability to shoot a gun straight. Ok, the plot, what little of it there is, involves two robots, one that just whines and complains all the time and another that just makes silly-sounding squeaking and booping noises. They have to deliver a warning message to a farm kid who then immediately manages to find an old guy who’s the last of some high-and-mighty warrior/religious sect who, instead of actually fighting the bad guys, apparently just decided to give up and hide out on some backwater planet, which just happens to be same one where the farm kid lives, and just happens to be where the robots end up. Can we spell “coincidence”? But just the sight of the stupid farm kid and the dumb robots is enough to spur the old guy into action. For some reason, they have to get off their current planet, and they manage to find a really egotistical space pilot who takes them where they need to go, except that first they get captured by the bad guys. And again, the complete ineptitude of these so-called bad guys is all that keeps the plot going. The good guys – get this – hide under the floorboards of their spaceship. The bad guys bring it aboard their much bigger ship, take a quick look around, see that it’s empty, and just go, “Huh, kinda odd, but let’s just leave it onboard and unguarded and go about our regular business.” We’re supposed to believe that not one of the bad guys thinks to check under the floor boards? And that in this oh-so-advanced age, they don’t have anything that could, I don’t know, maybe detect the heat from a group of hiding people? So anyway, the good guys scatter around the bad guy’s ship, doing what they need to do the get away, then the head bad guy catches the old good guy and, for reasons that are never explained, the old guy just gives up and lets the bad guy kill him. Then we finally get to the main action part of the plot. Get this: the bad guys are building this giant, round spaceship, and the good guys manage to find its one weakness (this actually ties back to the beginning, the beeping robot was carrying the plans for this big-ass spaceship). Seems the bad guys conveniently left an opening from the outside straight into the heart of the spaceship’s power source, so that one little shot into the opening can destroy the whole thing. I could talk about how lame that is, but I had long since just chucked my “willing suspension of disbelief” out the window. In the final climactic battle, all of the very experienced space pilots with their far-advanced computer targeting are unable to hit the crucial hole in the giant spaceship, but of course the completely untrained farm boy, using some mystical mumbo-jumbo from the deceased old guy, pulls it off at the last minute. And everybody is happy, except for the main bad guy, whose space ship goes tumbling off into space, ready for the inevitable sequel. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2008, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summarize-something-tv-movie-book-you-like-to-make-it-sound-stupid/453499/90 "2008-06-24T02:10:43Z")
[QUOTE=fachverwirrt] A convicted murderer and the rest of his hillbilly family go to California to pick fruit. [/QUOTE] Nitpick: they were Okies. Poor white trash maybe, but not hill folk. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2008, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summarize-something-tv-movie-book-you-like-to-make-it-sound-stupid/453499/91 "2008-06-24T02:23:22Z")
[Harry Potter.](http://www.theonion.com/content/news/nation_in_frenzy_about_little) ---
**Author:** ![Kamino\_Neko](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kamino_neko/32/34_2.png) [@Kamino\_Neko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kamino_Neko)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2008, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summarize-something-tv-movie-book-you-like-to-make-it-sound-stupid/453499/92 "2008-06-24T02:34:40Z")
A video game, rather than a movie book or TV show, but… Your father screws up, big time, so you need to clean up his mess by picking up crap that’s randomly strewn around the world. And, half the time, he insults you when you bring him his clumps of crap. And, in the sequel, he lets random people tell you what crap to pick up. And he still insults you. Na, na-na-na-na-na-na-na, Katamari Damacy… ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Pangloss](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a698b9/32.png) [@Peter\_Pangloss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Pangloss)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2008, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summarize-something-tv-movie-book-you-like-to-make-it-sound-stupid/453499/93 "2008-06-24T04:08:55Z")
I couldn’t make up anything stupider than this REAL movie synopsis I saw some years ago in our local newspaper’s TV supplement: EQUUS (Richard Burton, Peter Firth): Stablehand’s infatuation with horses interferes with his sex life. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2008, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summarize-something-tv-movie-book-you-like-to-make-it-sound-stupid/453499/94 "2008-06-24T04:38:59Z")
Ship sinks. _Titanic_ ---
**Author:** ![OpalCat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/8edcca/32.png) [@OpalCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OpalCat)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2008, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summarize-something-tv-movie-book-you-like-to-make-it-sound-stupid/453499/95 "2008-06-24T06:19:42Z")
[QUOTE=Boyo Jim] Ship sinks. _Titanic_ [/QUOTE] Again, I’m not seeing the stupid. A ship sinking sounds like a pretty potentially interesting event to write a plot around, to me. I’m talking about things that sound STUPID. Like, “holy crap, I can’t believe anyone thought we would actually believe _that_” kind of stupid. Like “space monkeys? Really? Seriously, _space monkeys??_ I can’t believe I just paid $10 for this!” kind of stupid. “As few words as possible” does not equal “stupid” in any definition I am familiar with. ---
**Author:** ![devilsknew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4da419/32.png) [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2008, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summarize-something-tv-movie-book-you-like-to-make-it-sound-stupid/453499/96 "2008-06-24T07:14:39Z")
See, there’s this guy who is crazy, and he thinks he can timetravel. And there’s a women he loves and loves him throughout. I know it sounds crazy, right? Nifinegger’s The time traveler’s wife ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2008, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summarize-something-tv-movie-book-you-like-to-make-it-sound-stupid/453499/97 "2008-06-24T10:45:41Z")
[QUOTE=OpalCat] Again, I’m not seeing the stupid. A ship sinking sounds like a pretty potentially interesting event to write a plot around, to me. I’m talking about things that sound STUPID. Like, “holy crap, I can’t believe anyone thought we would actually believe _that_” kind of stupid. Like “space monkeys? Really? Seriously, _space monkeys??_ I can’t believe I just paid $10 for this!” kind of stupid. “As few words as possible” does not equal “stupid” in any definition I am familiar with. [/QUOTE] To me, the stupid part is hat it’s a 3 hour movie, and everyone knows what’s going to happen already. There are no surprises. There is no point to watching except to see how good the effects are. ---
**Author:** ![KneadToKnow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kneadtoknow/32/3999_2.png) [@KneadToKnow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneadToKnow)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2008, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summarize-something-tv-movie-book-you-like-to-make-it-sound-stupid/453499/98 "2008-06-24T13:18:39Z")
[QUOTE=Boyo Jim] To me, the stupid part is hat it’s a 3 hour movie, and everyone knows what’s going to happen already. There are no surprises. There is no point to watching except to see how good the effects are. [/QUOTE] Not to pile on, but your summary doesn’t suggest any of that. Perhaps what you meant to say was something like, “You know the _Titanic_, right? Let me spend 3 hours telling you something you already know about her.” ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2008, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summarize-something-tv-movie-book-you-like-to-make-it-sound-stupid/453499/99 "2008-06-24T14:20:37Z")
Space HippiesStar Trek TOS “The Way to Eden” ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [June 24, 2008, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summarize-something-tv-movie-book-you-like-to-make-it-sound-stupid/453499/100 "2008-06-24T14:31:03Z")
**Killer Klowns from Outer Space** > **[Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988) ⭐ 6.2 | Comedy, Horror, Sci-Fi](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095444/)** > > 1h 28m | PG-13 Heck, I don’t have to quote anything aside from the title. There are plenty of films like this, but I suspect they’re not what the OP had in mind [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summarize-something-tv-movie-book-you-like-to-make-it-sound-stupid/453499.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/summarize-something-tv-movie-book-you-like-to-make-it-sound-stupid/453499.md?page=6)