What funny moments have you had when you realize you’re not watching the movie you thought you were? This has happened to me a couple times, where either there is another movie by the same name as what I think I’m watching, or I catch something on TV and think it’s something it’s not.
This was the Twister I thought I was watching earlier. It turns out that one isn’t available for Instant Viewing on Netflix, I wasn’t paying attention and I started actually watching this one.
So I sit down and start watching. I remembered that there was a divorced couple involved somehow in Twister, but I didn’t remember any of the actors that well. So I went along with the beginning, where the guy in the 1989 Twister goes over to meet this lady whose sleeping outside.
Her family turns out to be a real mess, and there’s a lot of talking about getting married, and various family discussions going on, and I’m starting to think, “I don’t remember there being this much family drama in Twister.”
I kept watching a bit more until I got sick of the family drama, which is about my least favorite kind of movie. So I started scrolling forward to the end of the film, and back towards the start, using the scene preview feature Netflix had, and I looked for the famous Twister scenes but couldn’t find a single preview of an actual tornado. So I pressed back on my browser and looked at the movie description and realized it was a totally different movie. I had clicked to play the movie from the Recommended to Watch screen so I never saw the description of it as a dysfunctional family flick.
Another funny mix up I had was when I rented the Thomas Crowne affair a few years after seeing the new 90s one. Only I accidentally rented the old one. I never realized there were two. It only took me a few minutes to realize, this wasn’t the same movie. I ended up liking it, but I’ve thought since then, that the 90’s version was better.
I’m interested to hear the movie watching mixups other people have had.
Are movie names like that, which are much too general, not copyrightable? Do they even copyright movie titles? Can I go out and film something which I call “ET” (non-parodic) and not have Universal try to sue the pants off of me?
I am not an entertainment lawyer, but I know you can’t copyright a title. However, the MPAA has a Title Registration Bureau that resolves disputes over titles, and would probably rule against another “ET” (the full title of the Spielberg’s film is actually “E.T., the Extra-Terrestrial,” but there would obviously still be a potential for confusion).
Even if you could get away with it, you might not want to since any attempt to sell any related product other than the film itself with the “ET” name would undoubtedly run up against registered trademarks.
Note that many films have had the same titles. There may not have been much of a fight over the use of the title “Gladiator” before the Russell Crowe movie, but there certainly will be over the next one.
I took my daughter and her friend to see ‘Bridge to Terabitha,’ which the ads had lead us to believe was a fantasy film where two kids went into another world. Turns out it’s a real-life coming-of-age movie with no fantasy elements at all. It’s OK, but it’s not the sort of movie we’d usually go for, and it was annoying to keep thinking ‘ah, here’s the part where they’ll realise that Terabithia is real!’ only for it never to happen.
To add to TW’s response, I think there would only be problems if you also wanted to make a science fiction film about an alien befriending a little boy. The abbrevation ET wasn’t made up for the film, after all.
Went to a multiplex awhile back to see religulous, I was running late and in a hurry stepped into the wrong theater. After sitting through fifteen minutes of previews I suddenly realized I was watching Nick and Noras infinite playlist. Figuring I had already missed the beginning of religulous I stayed where I was at and toughed it out.
God I wish I had that two hours back.
Back in high school, I once managed to trick a classmate into watching about a half-hour of The Sound of Music (a film he had no interest in seeing). “Whatcha watchin’?” “Something with Nazis”.
Years ago (pre-cable) I was checking the TV schedule and saw that one of the stations was going to be showing the original “Lost Horizons” with Ronald Colman. However, it turned out to be the musical remake with George C Scott. I still remember checking the listing after the movie started and wondering whether some idiot at the station put on the wrong movie or if whoever prepared the schedule didn’t realize that there were two versions.
I was at the video store seven or eight years ago, and on a friend’s recommendation I picked up Touch of Evil, about which I knew almost nothing.
I popped it in the player, and my thought process was approximately as follows:
*Hmm, I thought this was in black and white?..
Ooh, Cary Grant! Wonder if Charlton Heston’s gonna show up and beat his ass or something…
These opening titles are mighty cute for a movie with a title like Touch of Evil…
Wait a minute, I am rock-certain that Doris Freaking Day is NOT in *Touch of Evil…
Turns out the DVDs had been put on the shelf behind the wrong cases, and I’d inadvertently grabbed That Touch of Mink. Instead of a tale of corrruption and evil in a Mexican border town, I had a light-as-air confection about the richest man in the world falling in love with a secretary.
Something slightly different has happened to me, where I’ve rented a movie thinking I was getting one kind of movie, started watching it and thought it was a different movie, and then halfway through realizing it was the movie I thought it was all along. The movie? From Dusk Till Dawn.
I rented it thinking it was a vampire movie. Started watching it, and it looked like a standard Tarantino-esque action flick. At about the time I started wondering whether this was the movie I thought it was, the vampires showed up
I just remembered the worst mistaken film of all time! From my life, that is.
Ten years old. At the video shop with my best friend. Loved animals. Loved cartoons. Saw Animal Farm on the shelves - the cartoon version of Orwell’s fable. We’d seen the Plague Dogs recently and it looked similar.
Rented the porno.
The video shop bloke probably thought it was for one of my older brothers, as I often got videos for them, though never out-and-out porn (that I know of).
In college I took a woman to a movie, billing the movie as a movie about a woman who finds herself. The movie was Wise Blood which, while pretty good, clearly wasn’t about a woman who finds herself. My friend was a good sport about it.
Back when Donnie Darkowas released on DVD I was using Netflix and decided to watch it. All I knew about the movie at the time was that it was supposed to be good but was kinda hard to follow, confusing, and something about a rabbit. I added it to the queue and forgot about it. Several weeks later it shows up. The sleeve it came in says Donnie Darko so without looking at the DVD I put it in and sat down to watch it.
The movie starts and they are speaking in a different language but there are subtitles. Hadn’t heard about that but not really a problem. There are teenagers running around doing drugs and there’s prostitution and I am getting confused but this is supposed to be a confusing movie right? Eventually I am really confused and really start to wonder what’s going on and I am still waiting for a rabbit which never shows up. Probably 45 minutes into it I am convinced this just can’t be right. I pop out the DVD and see that it is From the Edge of the City aka Apo tin akri tis polis. A movie about immigrants from USSR living in Greece. :smack:
I did eventually see Donnie Darko. Yes, it was confusing but at least I finally saw the rabbit.
My dad went to see the “Guns of Navarone” in the theater when it first came out. As the movie started the woman sitting behind him said to her husband, “this isn’t a western.”
Not quite what you mean, but my sister started watching Grizzly Man on television having missed some portion of the beginning, and was absolutely sure it was a Christopher Guest-style mockumentary. She found out that she didn’t watch the movie she thought she watched when she was joking about with a co-worker the next morning: “I saw this hilarious movie last night!” He thought she was a sicko until he figured it out, and proved to her that the movie was real, and not really supposed to be all that funny.
To her credit, the main dude in the film was indeed very over the top, as were a number of the others that were interviewed, and I believe she said she was taking Sudafed at the time. I kind of want to rent this and try to watch it again with that in mind.
Back when Nip/Tuck had just started up, I decided to catch an episode some evening since I hadn’t seen it yet but had heard good things.
It was about ten after the hour, so I figured I’d only have missed the credits and a few minutes of the show.
I flipped the channel, saw Julian Mcmahon, and started watching.
Huh, this show isn’t what I expected. A lot more lighthearted. Also nobody is performing plastic surgery. WHAT THE FUCK?? He can teleport? What the fuck is this show??
After about ten minutes I realized that I was watching an episode of Charmed :smack:
In my defense, FX was the channel immediately after TNT at that time.
