This one’s kind of weird. You can, of course, do with this what you like, but the idea is to think of movies that have really silly things, but the movie somehow manages to rise above the silliness, or the silliness works, or the silliness is no longer silly. The point is that the movie triumphs over the silliness. My main inspiration for this is Magneto’s hat in the X-Men movies, which I could never get over. I always felt that was way too silly and the silliness won. Others felt differently. So this is one of those entirely subjective ones.
Here are our picks.
Kellywand
3. Nuking the fridge in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls
2. The videogame in Never Say Never Again
The robot in Rocky IV
Dingus
3. Batman’s voice in The Dark Knight
2. Ricardo Montalban’s chest in Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan
Gertie’s emoticons in Moon
Tom
3. Jeff Daniel’s mustache in Gettysburg
2. Musical numbers in Dancer in the Dark
The whole idea of a guy dressing up in real life as a superhero, doing really stupid stuff, is kinda silly. That said - it has one of the strongest emotional endings I ever saw…brilliant movie.
edit: it really is a silly movie, but somehow the ending twists the entire movie into something completely different.
Absolutely. I recall sitting leaving the theater at intermission with my dad and brother, and all is agreeing that the movie was great, but the mustaches were terrible.
Punch Drunk Love. Adam Sandler playing a realistic-ish version of his standard violent man-child in a PTA-quirky romantic drama. There’s a whole lot of silly going on there, but relatively quickly the movie lets you forget about Gilmore/Madison comparisons and connect with the characters.
Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. Just the name is all the silly that was needed for me to avoid it until recently. It just sounds like a bad joke gay porn name. Obviously, I haven’t read the books or I would have already been over it, but eventually the combination of Gregory Peck and Raoul Walsh (and widespread acclaim) wore down my doubts. And it’s a good thing, too: there’s a nice story (credit to the novels, I am sure), plenty of late golden age swashbuckling, and the classic Technicolor feel is just beautiful.
Kind of blanking on a great one, but how about The Ladykillers remake? This could also fit in the scene-chewing or underrated threads. Though it is a lesser Coen film, I generally like their farces (Hudsucker easily being my favorite) and think they tend to get short shrift. It takes a little bit to get used to Tom Hanks’ unusual silly-Southern drawl, but I think it works in context. I haven’t seen the original but just the shots of Alec Guiness look like he was a comparably odd character.
Daniel Day-Lewis’ American eagle glass eye in Gangs of New York. I think everyone had already been exposed to the villain’s clever fake eye bit in Last Action Hero, so it’s pretty astounding that Scorsese dropped the same goofball visual gag into this ultra serious movie about gangs in 1860’s Manhattan. I think it’s only saved because the character of Bill Cutting is so nuts, and Daniel’s method performance is so over the top, that you can actually believe that he would do something as wacky as using a glass eye with an eagle printed on it to intimidate “the foreign hordes.” But just barely.
The Force in Star Wars. Think about it. Before we found out about midichlorians, the Force is presented to us as a mystical religious aura by an old desert hermit in a movie that has so far been about robots, spaceships, and laser guns. By all rights, Han Solo’s smug dismissal is the most logical response, but there we all were believing Obi Wan and knowing that Solo was wrong. It’s quite a Jedi mind trick Lucas pulled off there.
All the villians in the James Bond movies. Austin Powers has a throwaway line about the silliness of having an evil empire of henchmen, the money to build things like giant lasers, and a vast network of corporate shadow funds, but still being obsessed with doing stupid things like causing earthquakes in Silicon Valley or irradiating Fort Knox. It’s a conceit we all just go with to get to the good stuff of Bond doing manly things like drinking and shooting people.
I really like the Batman’s voice pick – that is so easy to make fun of but rarely takes me out of the movies while I am watching them. I hadn’t thought of Gertie’s emoticons being silly, but I can totally see that. On the other hand, maybe I’m just a Bond purist, but I don’t think Never Say Never Again rises above anything. It is in every way a inferior movie to its “inspiration”, Thunderball, but that video game scene is the nadir.
Punch Drunk Love. Adam Sandler playing a realistic-ish version of his standard violent man-child in a PTA-quirky romantic drama. There’s a whole lot of silly going on there, but relatively quickly the movie lets you forget about Gilmore/Madison comparisons and connect with the characters.
Captain Horatio Hornblower R.N. Just the name is all the silly that was needed for me to avoid it until recently. It just sounds like a bad joke gay porn name. Obviously, I haven’t read the books or I would have already been over it, but eventually the combination of Gregory Peck, Raoul Walsh, and widespread acclaim wore down my doubts. And it’s a good thing, too: there’s a nice story (credit to the novels, I am sure), plenty of late golden age swashbuckling, and the classic Technicolor tones are gorgeous.
Kind of blanking on a great closer, but how about Tom Hanks’ unusual silly-Southern drawl in The Ladykillers remake? It takes a little bit to get used to, but I think it works in context. This could also fit in the scene-chewing or underrated threads. I won’t disagree too much that is a lesser Coen film but I generally enjoy their farces, Hudsucker easily being my favorite, and think they tend to get short shrift. I haven’t seen the original but the shots of Alec Guiness look like he went for a comparably odd character.
James Bond is pretty awesome for this 3x3 because every movie has to overcome (or not) the inherent silliness. From the villains, as you say, to the villainous super-organization of SPECTRE, the gadgets, the one-liners, the Bond Girls and the ridiculous come-ons/chauvinism, and some questionable plot points. In You Only Live Twice, they try to get us to believe that a haircut and taping back Sean Connery’s eyes a little bit will allow him to pass as a Japanese fisherman?? Maybe Dr. No gets away without silliness, though it does have SPECTRE and a chick named Honey Ryder, but from then on you have to accept it as part of the world. I was going to say On Her Majesty’s Secret Service breaks the mold too, but between Kojak as Blofeld and Lazenby’s Seinfeldesque puffy shirt… ehhh, not so much.
FWIW, I love Bond (except the Brosnan ones) in-spite-of-slash-because-of all that.
Seabiscuit- I love the move, but sometimes I just get caught up in that awful hair dye job on Toby McGuire.
Tootsie- Dustin makes an uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugly woman.
Back to the Future pt. II Just 3 years from now expect floating cars that run on garbage, self-drying jackets, automated restaurants with robot servers, and Coke and Pepsi are “quaint” items. There are more movies like this where the “envisioned future technology” just seems silly, but this one pops into my head the most, plus it was a fun movie despite the silliness.
This may not be what you were going for, but these are the movies that came immediately to mind that I enjoyed even though they were inherently silly. It probably didn’t hurt that number 1 and 2 I would always watch while completely drunk after a night at the bar. I had a local buddy in college that worked at a theater and they would always show a budget movie late nights on the weekends. He would open up the theater after we closed the bar and we would watch them while drinking beer and eating popcorn in this really cool balcony they had. For number 1 it probably didn’t hurt that the entire local population loved hockey and talked like Canadians and drank way way too much beer (very far north in the upper peninsula of Michigan).
Happy Gilmore. The entire movie is mostly silly, but is one of my favorites of all time. I remember all of us trying to hit golf balls that way at the time.
Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Perhaps it was just the right movie for my state of drunkenness at the time, but I really enjoyed it. It has a certain charm to it.
Strange Brew. Especially the Star Wars hockey scene where the dude in the Darth Vader hockey mask says something like, “I am your father, Luke. Give in to the dark side of the force, you knob.”
Then again, maybe they are just silly, heheh, but for some reason they worked for me.
John Leguizamo as Benny Blanco from the Bronx in Carlito’s Way. Over-the-top performance, not even legit, it’s like he’s in a skit, I just didn’t buy his drug dealer caricature. But come on, Al Pacino and Sean Penn!!!
Pootie Tang: the entire movie was silly: Pootie, his enemies, the belt, his slang (speech impediment???). Still, I couldn’t stop laughing. Same with Kung Pow. It probably helped that I’d had a few beers in me at the times I watched them :)
I think the premise requires that the movie be something other than comedy. I would throw in Face/Off for both the silliness of the entire premise and the naming of the secret prison Erehwon, but the movie didn’t actually overcome those issues.
Jeff Daniel was defending Little Big Top (quite possibly wrong, I’m going on memory here and too lazy to look it up), he was defending higher ground against those crazy ass rebels with the remainder of his troops from Maine. The facial hair was indeed horrible, but anyone who has seen Ken Burn’s documentary on the Civil War will recognize that, yep, they really did that crazy shit with their beards! Awesome pick by Tom, if I could grow a beard or mustache I would be twirling it right now.
Ah, you know, I think you’re right. I probably just plucked Pickett’s Charge out of the corner of brain that stores a set of shuffled Civil War References. I should re-watch Gettyburg, but I’m not sure I have it in me to sit through four plus (?) hours of Important History when I should be seeing crappy summer movies instead.
