Dougie, I think you might be what Dave Barry calls “Humor Deprived”. Not only do you not laugh at jokes, you don’t even see what the joke’s supposed to be.
An exploding platypus is a cliche? I guess I have been going to the wrong movies.
As for my specific movie annoyance, I’d have to point to Die Hard 2, where all the airplanes are forced to hold around Dulles airport because the weather is bad and there is no place else to go. Well, to begin with, you aren’t allowed to fly to a snowed in airport like Dulles was that day without having the fuel to fly to a legal alternate that has good weather. Even if you ignore that fact, however, all those planes held for almost the entire movie. That was way more than 2 hours in movie time. They could have flown to Dallas and landed there for Christ’s sake. If they couldn’t figure out an alternate plan then they all deserved to run out of fuel and crash. I really liked the orginal Die Hard, though. Maybe it’s because I know nothing about FBI procedures, German bearer bonds or giant magnetically locked safes.
Don’t worry- it will be one by the time I make my first twenty movies. 
Does the one good guy gets to battle all the bad guys because they surround him and dance around in a circle, enabling GG to kill them all off one at a time, count as a cliche? Come on, already, bad guys- wise up!
That’s quite possible. In any case I don’t think I deserve the castigation that Saint Zero and others have unloaded on me. I used to get that from my drunken stepfather and the snotty punks I went to junior high school with.
And I have commented that, the content of contemporary movies being what it is, they might as well have been made in Sanskrit or Zulu instead of English, for all that I can get out of them…
Maybe I saw a differently edited version than almost everyone else, since no one jumped on this, but Bill Murray’s character does not pull a knife on the shoeshine guy. When he’s done with his shine, Murray reaches into his pocket and extracts a wad of money, but holds it out of view of the shoeshine guy, attempting to be secretive with it. He hands the guy a bill (or two) and says something to the effect of “You know my motto - a 3 dollar pair of shoes and a 30 dollar shine.”
Lesson to be learned: Avoid snippets. You’ve stated your aversion to movies at length. You won’t go to them, which may be the best choice in your case. But by the same token, basing your criticism of a movie on a ‘snippet run in a local news program’ is disingenous at best. You have no idea what the setting of the scene was, how it was resolved or whether or not it has anything to do with the plot in question. In this particular case, the student was a stoner, who had already had a run in with the teacher. In having the pizza delivered, the implication was that he was stoned once again. The teacher resolved the conflict by giving away the pizza to the other students, leaving the stoner with none. A very clever and adult way of handling it, wouldn’t you say? It wasn’t meaningless within the context of the movie. You may not have liked the movie, I know a few people who didn’t. But criticising a single seen without any first-hand knowledge is ridiculous.
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Well, dougie, some of us find that laughter is the only way to react after things have been piled on so high that you’re afraid the next time you open your mouth it will be a scream. Again, it’s a subjective way of looking at the world. You obviously disagree with it, but considering all the things that had gone wrong for the character, it was perfectly acceptable for many of us, because we’ve been there.
Try renting a video. Then you’ll only have to worry about the elements again. I realize this started out as a personal rant against things that you find depressing/annoying/wrong/whatever, but if you’re going to criticize specific movies, you’ll be much more credible if you’ve actually seen them, instead of relying on second or third hand accounts as your primary basis of information.
Your point here is well taken, Ankh_Too. To me the disadvantage is that I have to see the shtick about the kid ordering pizza in the classroom. But you have pointed out that the teacher gives it to the other kids in the class, “leaving the stoner with none.” Serves him right!
The TV ads for Billy Jack, with Tom Laughlin, in 1971, showed Billy Jack using fierce Kung-Fu type fighting against other characters. When I told my older brother about this, some time later, he said that Billy Jack had done this after a rape-murder and other things. All well and good. The question this raises in my mind, however, is why the act that precipitated Laughlin’s character to do the Kung-Fu fighting, was not itself shown in the ads. I concluded that it was because, unlike the Kung Fu, the crime that provoked Laughlin wouldn’t attract prospective moviegoers. (I did not see Billy Jack; I did read the satires in Mad and Cracked, which were really funny.) 
Your point here is well taken, Ankh_Too. To me the disadvantage is that I have to see the shtick about the kid ordering pizza in the classroom. But you have pointed out that the teacher gives it to the other kids in the class, “leaving the stoner with none.” Serves him right!
The TV ads for Billy Jack, with Tom Laughlin, in 1971, showed Billy Jack using fierce Kung-Fu type fighting against other characters. When I told my older brother about this, some time later, he said that Billy Jack had done this after a rape-murder and other things. All well and good. The question this raises in my mind, however, is why the act that precipitated Laughlin’s character to do the Kung-Fu fighting, was not itself shown in the ads. I concluded that it was because, unlike the Kung Fu, the crime that provoked Laughlin wouldn’t attract prospective moviegoers. (I did not see Billy Jack; I did read the satires in Mad and Cracked, which were really funny.)
I apologize to all Dopers who have logged onto this thread, for carelessly entering this item twice! :o :o :o :o
I’ve never seen this movie, but I would assume that the rape-murder was either a significant plot twist, or a major portion of the plot itself, or even something thrown in to shock the viewer. The point of a trailer is to pique the audience’s curiosity, and giving away a major plot point leads to some very disgruntled audience members. A more recent example would be the crapfest Mission to Mars in which the trailers/posters/other advertising materials informed its potential audience that the movie centered around the idea that life on earth came from aliens on Mars. That turned out to be the END of the movie, rendering all the expository time (the first 24/25 of the movie) useless.
Your point too is well taken. In fact I almost found that bit about Mission to Mars worth a laugh; like a humorous bit Games Magazine once printed about a store’s promotion, which included the line, "Call in and guess the weight of this 52-lb. chocolate bunny! :D:D:D
I think the satires in Mad and Cracked let me in on the plot and nature of various movies from 1971 to 1994 (when I quit reading either magazine), and threw in some funny stuff for good measure. Billy Jack was a case in point, specifically as spoofed in Cracked:
“Why do they call him Silly Jack?”
“Because that’s how he looks in that black Navajo hat!”
Later on “Silly” Jack is shown with the funniest angry look on his face, including when “Blue Jean” tells him that “Barnyard” “said you look silly in that black Navajo hat!”
SILLY JACK (Furious eyes; smoke coming out of his ears): “WHAT???! He DID??!” Then he takes care of “Barnyard.”
Later, however, as the posse flushes him out of the house he has holdle up in, he asks, “Who’ll give me a ‘fair trial’?”
“We will! Your Indian Peers!”
Then Silly Jack, Blue Jean, and the sheriff (played by Clark Howatt in the real movie) face the Indian Peers, who say:
“Silly Jack, we find you guilty of being an Uncle Tom-Tom!”
“Instead of fighting for the rights of your fellow Indians you spend all your time helping this paleface teacher and her weirdo suburban kids!”
“That’s like the Black Panthers giving up their lives to defend the mansion of Governor [George] Wallace [of Alabama]!”
“We were better off when Hollywood portrayed us as stupid savages; at least in those movies we knew who our enemies were!”
And finally:
“We also find you guilty of looking silly in that black Navajo hat!”
Another point: When I was a kid our parents sent the three of us–my older brother, younger sister, and me–to the movies every Saturday, even if the movie playing was not geared to kids. There was no appeal–I go to the movies or else. Maybe this force-feeding (and I sometimes sneaked out of the movie house if the movie didn’t hold my interest) was what turned me off initially, so that when we moved out of that neighborhood and no longer lived within walking distance (my older brother was not quite 12) and I was no longer forced to go, I quit going altogether. (Well, I quit going regularly). All the same, if my parents hadn’t forced the matter on me in childhood I might be less predisposed now (since 1960) to avoid movies to any degree.
Um, isn’t this kind of like saying that you’re going to stop listening to Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones because Yoko Ono’s voice sucks?
There are tens of thousands of movies out there and you base your judgements on the dozen or so that you’ve seen in the last 50 years!
Maybe you need to go check out that movie review site run by a religious whacko that exposes every single scene of everything that could remotely be considered naughty. He even has an offensiveness rating scale. That way you could see if you’re going to be offended before you even rent a movie. (though I doubt even that kook would be offended by a student ordering pizza in class :rolleyes:)
Dougie, get off the cross, we need the wood…
And I guess all questions about you have been resolved with the revelation that you not only glean much of your knowledge from Mad and Cracked magazines, but have felt the need to either memorize sections or have them close at hand to cite.
Oh my God…
I’d just like to step in for a moment and recommend that Dougie go rent South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut. It won’t change your attitudes about the silver screen in general, but I bet it’ll give you about a trillion new peeves you’d never even thought of. And we could all use a few more things to hate, right?
Forget South Park- I want to tie him down and make him watch Resevoir Dogs, Trainspotting, Shallow Grave,& Dog Day Afternoon.
Hey, I bet dougie won’t even watch The Three Stooges.
Dougie, you started a thread on cartoons and then revived it months later. Obviously, you watch a lot of cartoons. (So do I, so that’s not a criticism.) Can’t you get it that the violence in, say, a Die Hard movie is just as fake as the violence in a Road Runner/Coyote cartoon?
I hate how in many movies where there is a labor/birth scene, they show the couple panicking and racing to the hospital at the first TWINGE of a contraction. Father of the Bride II, which was on the other night, is the perfect maddening example.
Um, hello? For most people, giving birth is not such an inherently treacherous event that you have to get to the nearest hospital at all costs the first second you think labor begins. As if it’s risky to have too many contractions away from the machinery and the trained medical staff. Furthermore, it’s more common for babies–especially first ones–to take their sweet time being born. Our hospital doesn’t even want to SEE your panting, sweaty face until you’re, well, panting and sweaty. Also, I can guarantee you that when I WAS in labor, there is no way I’d have let dear darling husband speed. Every pothole, every bump, was agony–he drove with extreme caution, or I’d have ripped his nuts off.
I realize the dash to the hospital is all for the dramatic effect, plus the comedic opportunities to see daddy-to-be swerving through traffic and running red lights (haw! haw! Look at that wreck he caused! Whee! They just went airborne!). But it’s really misleading. It wasn’t until I went to birth classes that I realized that everything I knew about birthin’ babies came from TV and movies–and nearly all of it was complete hogwash.
It’s become a major pet peevola.
OK, I have an objection to two specific movies: Independence Day and Terminator 2. Both movies were set in Los Angeles. In both, a hero/heroine steals a car, and in both instances the keys are stashed behind the viser. Do people really do that in LA?? I live in a podunk Oregon backwater town and I still wouldn’t do that! Or are there people who think, “This is LA, my car is probably going to get stolen anyway, I might as well give them the keys so that maybe, if the car is recovered, the steering column won’t be tore all to hell”?
The director of * Back to the Future * was Robert Zemeckis, not Steven Spielberg. Whatever issues one has with the movie, it would be appropriate to at least blame the man who actually directed it.
Why, what kind of noise does it make, if any? This just came up in a story I’m writing.
It’s not in the least surprising to me that I am opposed by so many people on this point. But it doesn’t matter. As for Mad and Cracked, I haven’t even read those magazines at all in the last six years. What I know about the movies made since 1994 is what I see about them in the Rave!, the entertainment section of the local newspaper, the Daily Breeze, (website http://www.dailybreeze.com ) which comes out every Friday; I’ve been reading this all the way back to 1971. As also noted here, I see the TV ads for the movies and watch Roger Ebert’s program on Sunday nights on ABC. This gives me a satisfactory amount of information on this movie or that.
And for those who asked, I have been a Three Stooges fan for more than 40 years. Don’t try to make an analogy between the Stooges’ slapstick comedy and what is represented as comedy in contemporary movies, knuckleheads.
It may sound like a lazy and easy way out, but for quite a while I have merely assumed that, in this movie or that TV drama, someone is going to suffer in some way, from mild humiliation to brutal, tortuous slaughter. This assumption, as far as I am concerned, makes actually going to see the movie (at home we have hundreds of movies on video, none of which I have cared to watch except for old ones like Casablanca or Music Man) totally superfluous.
And I have sensed that the severe exhortation I am enduring to ‘go see a movie,’ has already impinged on my freedom of choice, or made me sense that I am being castigated for actually exercising such freedom. C’mon–lay your cards on the table!