Movies Based On a Premise That Is Extremely Ridiculous

Edward Scissorhands?

Deep Throat

Brokeback Mountain.

The Soul Man.

JUST MY LUCK

North by Northwest

Schindler's List.

I like ES when I'm in the mood but the barber in Seinfeld was OTM: "How can a man have scissors for a hand? What you gonna do on the toilet? You tell me that. What you gonna do on the toilet?" (Seems to work better in an Italian accent.)

xposts

most movies

kangaroo jack

gymkata

most movies == otm I could prob just start listing off the top of my head and at least 2/3 of all the movies I could recall would fit the bill.

http://www.vanguardcinema.com/misscastaway/misscastaway_lrg.jpg

that movie with jennifer garner, 13 going on 30

FACE/OFF

Speed 2: Cruise Control

Intolerance

The Man With Two Brains

i had some real problems with weekend at bernie's.

Face/Off is a great example because not only is the premise ridiculous, it turns out to be really laborious to actually set the premise up in the movie. And then it's just utterly confusing if you walk in halfway through. Given that movies like this seem designed to do half of their business on the USA network, you've got to think about these things.

I'm a huge fan of movies that include dialogue that acknowledges and then shoos away the ridiculousness of the premise. For example, in "BATS," when they confront the madman who has created the army of contagious killer bats and ask, why on earth would you create these monstrosities? His answer: "I'm a scientist. It's what we do.." Can't argue with that!

Obviously the best example of this is "Snakes On A Plane." About halfway through, as the snakes are wreaking havoc on the plane, they cut away to the mob boss who has unleashed the horror. One of his underlings asks, reasonably, why on earth they have put hundreds of snakes on a plane in order to kill one witness. The mob boss snaps back something to the effect of "You fool! Do you think I'd be doing this if I hadn't exhausted every other option?!" An open and shut case.

^ good post!

dearh to smoochy

batman

liar liar

The Peacemaker--The terrorist's speech about why he was going to explode a nuclear bomb in America didn't really make sense--to bring the US into the war in Yugoslavia? On their enemies' side? Come on, terrorists should just say, "We hate your freedoms" and be done with it.

Game (2009) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034032/

Set in a future-world where humans can control other humans in mass-scale, multi-player online gaming environments, a star player (Butler) from a game called "Slayers" looks to regain his independence while taking down the game's mastermind (Hall).

Whoa, if they pull that off with enough cheese that could be a sort of inverse Tron for the 21st century!

Untraceable - In Theaters January 25

Special agent Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) works within a division of the FBI devoted to investigating and prosecuting criminals on the internet. Jennifer thinks she's seen everything, until a serial killer begins displaying his murders on his website. Not only that, the fate of each victim is decided by the number of hits to his site -- the more hits, the faster the victim dies. When the sinister game turns personal, Jennifer and her team have to race against the clock to find a mastermind who is virtually Untraceable.

yea, I've seen that trailer and those were my thoughts exactly.

I guess I'm tired of these movies and tv shows with super sophisticated criminals because they paint the FBI/every law enforcement body as completely incompetent for 2 hours.

Manhattan

Commando

Untraceable - In Theaters January 25

Special agent Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) works within a division of the FBI devoted to investigating and prosecuting criminals on the internet. Jennifer thinks she's seen everything, until a serial killer begins displaying his murders on his website. Not only that, the fate of each victim is decided by the number of hits to his site -- the more hits, the faster the victim dies. When the sinister game turns personal, Jennifer and her team have to race against the clock to find a mastermind who is virtually Untraceable.

-- Oilyrags, Sunday, January 27, 2008 3:18 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

virtually Untraceable

This should have been the title of the film.

They don't paint law enforcement as incompetent so much as they paint law enforcement as plucky upstarts who triumph against the odds. It's tricky, making a movie about The Man what still winds up sticking it to The Man.

Hence very few cop movies where the cops aren't either "loose cannons" or uncovering some kind of police corruption

(Haha versus TV procedurals, which unlike movies are allowed to comfortingly reaffirm hierarchies of good people serving the public!)