Movie Cliches

[Deleted]

Yes. The racial and religious cliches abound. Like how if there is ever an African American woman in a romcom movie (or as a long running character in a sitcom) she is always the sassy "gurlfriend" to the main white chick who comforts her when she's down and gives her endless "sista gurl" love tips to snag her man. However sassy girlfriend doesn't seem to have any friends of her own besides main white chick, never has any other black people she knows around her, not even family, and for all the endless unsolicited love-advice and agony auntying she does never seems to have a boyfriend or a rocking love life of her own to speak of?

This also seems to happen with the token African American guy in a romcom being the buddy of the main white guy. He gets some kind of Agony Uncle/sounding board part. I'm thinking Dave Chapelle in You Got Mail and once again Dave Chappelle in 200 Cigarettes - only at least he got to have sex with somebody at the end which is unusual.

But that seems to overlap with the whole NY cabdrivers are really mobile love guidance counsellors looking to fix the cities love problems and get you to your destination all in one - and preferably the destination should be the place where you love interest is. If you got into the cab headed for the airport to fly out for a business meeting the cabby will convince you to head back to tell your love interest right away that you realise you were wrong about XYZ and will they take you back, or you realise now how much you love them etc. Again, noone carries on with what they were doing or where they were going and save it for a phone call later or when they get back. It must be right then and there! Otherwise it's just not romantic or dramatic enough.

Oh and why are all Asian men super-passive geeks of some kind. Even in Harold and Kumar, Harold was some computer nerd who worked in business and was "the quiet Asian guy" the frat-boy jerks in the office bullied and shoved their work onto with him complaining. And Kumar though he was technically a dropout actually was living off his dad's money and for all the stoner talk was a super-intelligent med student and even he didn't want to say much to the skater boys harassing him and Harold. They always walked away - even when the gang attacked the shop-owner and trashed his store. Yeah Harold stood up to the guys at his office but only after he had dirt on them but how long had it been going on that he had never thought to report their asses to their superiors?


Forgive me if these have been covered. I read the last half of the thread and not the first half.

[sleepy]

marywebgirl said:

Speaking of Ohio, that seems to be the "naive-small-town-person" home state of choice.

Yup, and Indiana, too.

[petals]

I just have to add my hate to the woman being saved cliche. It seems that no matter how strong and capable she appears to be, she will always need to be saved by the man. This is especially annoying if the woman has superpowers of her own.

And as a woman who wears glasses and has her hair up most of the time, I can tell you for a fact that beauty does not always await under super-thick lenses and ponytails.

[satellite]

I watched The Glass House yesterday and I realized another cliche- contemporary minimalist homes are always owned by cold-hearted, materialistic, and childless upper middle class or wealthy people- i.e. the bad guy- see also Catherine Tramell's homes in the Basic Instinct films, Peyton's house in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Patrick Bateman's apartment in American Psycho, etc.

Good upper middle class/wealthy people live in traditional houses - colonials or brick, and have warm cozy furniture usually in autumnal tones.

Unless they're super-rich and evil, then then might live in a more traditional palace-like home, with antiques, wood paneling, huge fireplaces, and expensive paintings, but it's more a museum than a lived-in house.

[marywebgirl]

Add the abusive husband in "Sleeping with the Enemy" to that list, too.

[sjankis630]

Don't forget about the old Black "Mama" character that every Black character has in both Black and White movies as well. This extra Sassy woman can do/say no wrong and can at times be down right abusive to said family member without ever being called on her extremeness.
Case in point the not good, but extremely entertaining Nothing to Lose with Martin Lawrence and Tim Robbins.
Lawrence first brings Robbins' character to his house late and is smacked not once but twice across the lips for staying out late and getting into trouble. When the White Robbins tries to say something he too is slapped with the line "I hit you because you were with him!"
All Lawrence's character can say is "Aw Mama you didn't have to hit me twice"
later at the end of the movie Robbins' character eats the last of Mama's "special mustard" and is again smacked as the credits roll.
Don't mess with Black people's Mamas, food or hair - apparantly this is what all movie writers think.

[shriekingeel]

Another hated cliche is the Plane Flight Buffetted By An Electrical Storm, on view in innumerable films from the Twilight Zone to Red Eye, etc, etc.

I've been a passenger on lots of planes in bad weather and I have never endured the simultaneous thunder and lightining (another cliche in itself that I talked about a while back) of an electrical storm while in flight. The fact that commercial airliners fly at 35,000+ feet--essentially above 99.9% of the weather--might have something to do with it.

[chiqui]

I thought of one that hasn't been mentioned yet. Main character is captured, detained, or tortured by the movie's foe. As they converse the foe or an underling mentions, in third person, a character dear to the hero who is in imminent danger in their identity is revealed:

Foe's underling: Sir, we're tracking another spy on the outer perimeter.

Hero (gasps): Oh no! Sheila!

Foe (glinting): Aha, that's who it is then? Send out the killer robots with thermonuclear flamethrowers! Ha ha, now you can watch her die slowly and painfully.

Or some such.

[Deleted]

I kept noticing this in the commercials for We Are Marshall but why is it in every damn sports movie ever created there is one shot where someone in the field must look up into the stands and point their finger at the person in the stands as if to say "I did this for you! This win is for YOU!" Every movie.

Never having played football, I can't say for sure but it seems to me that it would be very hard to see someone in the stands from the field. Even if you knew their general section that they were sitting in, could you really make out their face? And do the victory point?

[hobocamp]

There's never enough blood when someone gets stabbed. I now know this because I accidentally stabbed my hand with a kitchen knife on New Year's. I thought I was going to bleed to death from the spurting.

I watched a movie a couple days later where someone stabs a guy in the hand with a pencil and just a little drop came out. That pissed me off.