Silly scenes in films

[Touring Mars]

Even the best movies have mistakes in them, and even a good or entertaining movie can require you to suspend your disbelief a little too far... so this thread is not about mistakes or rubbish films, but about certain bits of films that you have found strange or funny when they weren't intended to be...

My first example has to be in the film "The Day After Tomorrow"... it's almost too hard to pick the silliest scene in this otherwise pretty watchable film (it's on right now, hence I remembered about the scene!), but one scene in particular has me in stitches...

Just after New York city has been all but annihilated by a giant 100ft high storm surge, a cataclysm beyond anything in modern human history, a plucky bunch of survivors (including our heroes) are holed up in a public library, and wondering what to do next. Our hero (Jake Gyllenhaal) is seeking a phone and goes up to a receptionist to ask her if there are any public phones in the building. The prim and tidy receptionist helpfully tells Gyllenhaal where the phones are but warns him casually that "they may be under water!"... You have to ask yourself, what would you do in her situation?! Presumably you'd be just a tad more concerned about what has just happened outside - you know, the storm surge thingy? Maybe a few people injured? But nooooooo... maintaining a functioning library reception is clearly priority number one here, and just as well too, otherwise it might have taken Jake an extra few minutes to find a payphone.

I can only surmise that this receptionist must either be a) an orphan and unmarried with no living relatives (well, on the Eastern sea board, atleast) b) a sociopath who couldn't care less about the fact that millions of people in her home town have likely been killed in an instant, or c) a robot.

Any more?

 

[daan]

Have you ever seen the people that work in a library? They tend to be a bit detached from reality.

Oh, and music...?

 

[Touring Mars]

Oh, and music...?

Fixed! I can't believe I did that

 

[prisonermonkeys]

There's one in Batman Begins when the train carrying the microwave emitter is aproaching the Wayne Enterprises building, which serves as the hub for the water main. It cuts to the control terminal within the hub, and the supervisor starts talking about how the train is following the water mains, releasing the steam (which contains fear toxin) as it goes, and when it reaches the terminal, the pressure will spike causing a mass blowout. That's not silly in an of itself, but the problem - aside from the poor acting - is the fact that it's just useless exposition. Bruce Wayne already knows the consequences of the train reaching the terminal; it's been established for an hour or more that the pipes run under the building. Hence, we already know, and it's been stated by Batman himself that he can't let the train reach the tower on another occasion. While it doesn't kill the film, it certainly would have been a lot better without it.

Also, most of Die Another Day. Namely the invisible Aston Martin, the Robocop-like control suit on the plane and worst of all, the scene where Bond escapes the villains in a rocket-powered sled and is chased by the Solar Powered Outer Space Death Ray (TM, patent pending). He somehow goes from eight hundred kilometres an hour to zero by dropping a dinky little grappling hook out of the rear of the sled just before he goes over the edge and slams into the front of the ice face. The bad guys then use the Solar Powered Outer Space Death Ray (TM, patent pending) to carve a chunk of the ice out (instead of simply running over Bond with it and roasting him). Bond uses the rocket sled's parachute and the rear hatch to then drop off the edge of the ice fce and parasail down the wave created by the collapsing ice face ... in CGI of extraordinarily crappy quality. He then comes out clean on the other side, and while that can be expected of Bond because of his nature, he strikes a pose - whether intentionally or not remains open to question - that you would expect to find in a Mountain Dew commercial.

 

[Anderton Prime]

How about in The Dark Knight when the captain of the prisoners' ship takes the detonator into the hold and immerses himself in the sea of orange-suited convicts.

Now, why the hell would anybody do that?

 

[daan]

My post from the technical inaccuracies thread....

The whole of Driven.

Driving the wrong way down the track.

Methanol, which is put out by water, catching fire whilst upside down in a pond whilst it was raining.

Driving Indycars on the street with no earplugs or helmets.

etc

etc

etc.

 

[TheCracker]

Whilst on the theme of crap racing films....

The bit (or bits) in Days of Thunder where the drivers change up or even down a gear to pass another driver. Why the hell were they in the wrong gear, on an oval of all places, in the first place?

 

[daan]

And it then shows the driver pushing the throttle to the floor....

 

[livemusic]

Haha, good thread. I can't remember of any silliness in particular right now...

 

[Mark T]

There is a scene in The Transporter where a bomb is strapped under a car. Jason Statham then drives the car up a conveniently placed ramp, manages to spin the car horizontally so that the bomb underneath the car catches on a crane hook and removes the bomb. He then lands perfectly.