Reginald Kincaid: The Shadow of Death. The gripping drama was the last play presented at the Orpheum. It closed after only one night, but not without garnering some praise. Harris in the Daily Telegram said, 'In an otherwise dismal evening, Reginald Kincaid provided some welcome laughs.' Wiggins: You said it was a gripping drama!
"In the first Dracula film starring Bela Lugosi, there's an exchange of dialogue which I personally think is very funny but in the film it's supposed to be horrific..."
How can you not like a movie where the villain is defeated with a double-decker baloney sandwich?
The goblins (there are no trolls in that movie) are trying to turn people into spinach...
"You can't piss on hospitality! I WON'T ALLOW IT!"
"Nilbog! It's 'Goblin' spelled backwards! This is their kingdom!"
Other select quotes:
"As for you old man, go back to your kingdom of SHADOWS."
"You stuffed yourself like a PIIIG, Joshuaaaa."
The less said about popcorn, the funnier.
Arnold (the guy in the picture) is speared by a goblin. The other characters hear his screams from afar, and this is what they think it is:
"Probably just Arnold deflowering a Nilbog virgin."
Several unintentionally goofy performances from Battlefield Earth[1]. The movie in whole is supposed to be a drama, but the film is so bad that you'll laugh hard.
The 1931 Dracula has loads of Narm outside of Bela Lugosi (and even he's not fully safe from that either, due to his thick accent.) It'd be shorter to list the scenes that aren't Narm: some cuts of the movie have some extra sounds added, such as Renfield screaming while Dracula strangles him to death, and some extended groaning sounds when Dracula is staked at the end....off-screen.
The Spanish version ups the ante with even worse bat-on-string-effects and its Dracula's ridiculous facial expressions.
The trailer for the gritty drama House of Sand and Fog starts to wallow in overdramatic narm in the second half, especially Ben Kingsley's facial expression at 1:22.
In Spartacus, the famous bath scene between Crassus and Antoninus. Between Tony Curtis' obvious New York accent to Laurence Oliviers' "I enjoy oysters... AND SNAILS", the whole thing is just ridiculous.
Moulin Rouge has Christian sobbing hysterically when Satine dies. Those not similarly moved (with or without hysterics) by this scene may find it amusing.
Silent Night, Deadly Night 2. The previous one was set around Christmas. If the killer's bizarre yelling in the sequel is anything to go by, it is set on "GARBAGE DAY!"
"You tend to get paranoid when everyone around you gets dead."
"I. Don't. Sleep."
You know things are Narmalicious when horror films run out of holidays to have horrific murders take place on.
Even funnier is the killer's massive eyebrow twitching.
The first Silent Night, Deadly Night has its moments, too. Early on, there's a scene meant to help set up the killer's childhood-trauma-filled backstory where he and his parents visit his seemingly catatonic grandfather on Christmas Eve. "Seemingly", because as soon as the parents leave him alone with the kid, the grandfather takes the opportunity to warn him hammily about the perils of Christmas...
"You scared, ain't ya? You should be! Christmas Eve is the scariest damn night of the year!"
Even sillier because you might recognize Grandpa as Old Man Peabody from Back to The Future. And while it's supposed to foreshadow a violent streak and abnormal strength, it's hard to have an eight-year-old knocking a grown man in a Santa suit to the ground with a right cross not be funny.
From Red Dawn, after the boys have met up with their father at the internment camp after the invasion:
When Arnold realizes he's been played by Carl Weathers's character:
"ET ZALL BOOL SHET!!! ALL OV ET!"
In the second movie, it could be argued that the sight of a Badass, invisible alien hunter saying "Want some candy?" falls directly into Narm.
The Canadian Drug Test, an old and dated movie, is supposed to be a jarring exposé of the dangers of substance abuse along with a quiz to see how likely you are to use drugs. However, some students couldn't help but snicker at lines such as "Billy and Jimmy were supposed to go to a party that night, BUT THEY NEVER CAME BACK!" as well as the organ music and ominous chanting that played in the background of some scenes.
During the quiz segments, the utter straightforwardness of some questions (such as "do you smoke marijuana?") can be laughable because they assume utterly straightforward answers.
Surely almost all of Oliver Stone's "Alexander." It's hard enough to take Irish Macedonians seriously without taking Alexander's crazy wig changes into account, or that hideous love scene with Roxane (including, maybe especially, the little scene with Hephaistion immediately before)
"You lawv kheem?" "He is Hephaistion."
The Macedonians were supposed to have Irish accents, as this was an artistic device to emphasise the cultural differences between the Macedonians and the Greeks, who considered the latter to be more rough and primitive. The problem is that, aside from the Macedonians, no one else has a consistent accent; see most of the Persians, for example, or Angelina Jolie's very Egyptian-tinted Queen Olympias.
In the Brad Pitt version of Troy, Achilles can be heard screaming Hector's name for a good forty-five minutes while Hector says goodbye to his family.
Ironically, the original Hector-Achilles confrontation in the The Iliad is more Narmful than the film version.
Every time Brad makes that face when he's upset in the movie. His chin and forehead scrunch up, and his lower lip comes out a bit.
At one point, a man runs screaming as a fireball chases him down a mountain. It's something you would see in a comedy.
A particularly hilarious moment is right after the Greeks pop out of the Trojan horse: they sneak up on one of the guards and bash him on the head with a torch, knocking him unconscious and leaving one to wonder what his helmet was for.
Then they stab him. Sensible, but the execution is amusingly awkward.
At one point, Achilles screams at someone, completely seriously, "YOU SACK OF WINE!"
Mythology Gag. That was ripped clean from The Iliad. Not the same context in modern English as Hellenistic Greek, though.
Achilles basically playing hide and seek with Hector in the temple of Apollo.
All of Agamemnon's screaming.
Return to Oz: The Nome King rises up gigantic and surrounded with flames as the embodiment of pure satanic evil and power. The first line that comes out of his mouth sounds like "S'UP!!!" in a deep rumbling voice.
In the British Film 'Pressure,' pretty much anything the mother says is narm. She is overly-dramatic to the worst extent.
The Sixth Sense has the car scene, which would have been a beautiful, emotional scene if not for Colette's horrid acting. Her over the top facial expressions and crying (especially when Cole tells her about Grandma) and her delivery of "...what?" during that mentioned conversation make for high octane Narm.
The "grandma says hi" line in itself breaks the mood horribly.
In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, there's the dialogue at the end of the transporter accident sequence. The guy at Starfleet says with a Narmtastic monotone delivery:
"Enterprise...what we got back...didn't live long...fortunately."
There was also Kirk's equally Narmy "Oh my God" reaction, which was deleted from the DVD release.
Especially jarring because the transporter accident itself is Nightmare Fuel.
There's also the wormhole scene in all its overacted, slowed-down Narminess.
Remember the (loooooong) Enterprise-approaching-V'ger scene? All the bridge crew gaping at the lovely SFX? Now re-watch it, and consider how much they look like they've each been hit on the head with a large mallet.
Star Trek III the Search For Spock: Robin Curtis' performance as Lt. Saavik is total Narm. Curtis' attempts at playing an emotionless Vulcan often come off as wooden and forced, and thus unintentionally funny. The most notorious example of this:
Admiral...David is dead.
What was even worse than her Narmtastic performance was her 1980s bouffant perm. Kirstie Alley's updo was more Vulcan than Curtis's borderline Afro. And Alley was much better at pulling off a Vulcan.
Kirk's overlong reaction when told David was dead.
The scene in Dead Poets Society where Mr. Perry finds his son Neil, who has shot himself with his father's gun is made rather ridiculous by the camera turning to slow-mo (the only special effect in the entire movie!), making Mr. Perry's "Noooooooo!" just stupid. It doesn't help that Mr. Petty is played by the dad of That '70s Show.
Also in that movie, possibly the scene in which one of the characters breaks down crying from Neil's death.
It doesn't help that another character shoves snow into his mouth at this moment (though he did just throw up).
Many serious, empowering moments in the Spider-Man movies are made difficult to take seriously by Tobey Maguire's strange facial expressions. The infamous train scene from the second film is particularly tough to sit through because Peter's face scrunches up to an immense degree; it looks like he's preparing for a werewolf transformation scene.
Nearly every viewer tends to agree on one element of Spider-Man 3 being hopelessly Narm-tacular: Venom opens his pure, unrefined Nightmare Fuel mouth and out comes... Topher Grace's voice. You expect to hear "Hangin' Out, Down the Street" playing...
The two little kid extras suddenly commenting on the large climactic fight scene.
The scene where Mary Jane breaks up with Peter. Some of us found it hilarious when Tobey McGuire started crying.
Also from Spider-Man 3, every single line that comes from the British TV news reporter's mouth during the final fight.
When Peter knocks Harry down and Harry says, "I protected you in high school and now I'm gonna kick your little ass!"
Peter's immediate reaction, a mock "Oooh!"
This from the third movie:
Mary Jane Watson: "Do you want to push me away?" Peter Parker: "Push you away? Why would I want to push you away... I love you!"
Harry coming after Peter as the New Goblin in the third movie and yelling "SHUT UP!" when Peter tries to explain that "I didn't kill your father! He was trying to kill me, he killed himself!"
From the first movie:
"FROM EEEVIL!!"
One scene from Spider-Man 2, sorely stuck out when Harry starts to have a mental breakdown at the end and sees his father. His Big No sequence came off as funny rather than dramatic.
The lead-in might be more narmtacular:
"Avenge me!"
Earlier on, when Dr. Octavius' experiment goes wrong, Harry shrieks out to one of his aides "I'M IN CHAAAARGE HEEEERE!"
From the second film, there's Doc Ock's arms "talking" to him.
Right before the final battle of...I think the third movie, Spider-Man dashes in across some rooftops to deal with the threat. During this time, he runs in front of an American flag waving majestically. The overly-jingoistic tone of this moment ruins the dashing entrance he's supposed to be making.
Depending on the audience, the following dialogue might lead to snickers.
Peter: Picking up where we left off. Mary Jane: Where was that? We never got on. You can't get off if you don't get on, Peter.
Many scenes in the Rocky movies - particularly Mickey's death scene in Rocky III. The scene itself is effective and well-done, but when Sylvester Stallone degenerates into a blubbering wreck by the end of it, it becomes difficult not to giggle. It's in-character for Rocky, but it's a bit much.
Some of Rocky's speeches are surely meant to qualify as wise in their simplicity, but there's nothing wise about saying "youse guys" over and over.
In Rocky IV, when he is giving a big speech to his son before going to Russia, it is pure, unadulterated narm due to the fact that you can't understand half of what he's saying.
Oh, God, The Outsiders. Matt Dillon in Dally's dramatic death scene. The cops keep on shooting at him as he crawls around on the ground gasping and choking for almost a whole minute. In the book, after he was shot, he was dead before he hit the ground.
In the film adaptation of the short story by John Updike "A & P", Sean Hayes says the line "Fiddle-de doo" as a dismissal of his manager telling him he's making a mistake in quitting. The original version has him mumbling that in utter confusion; it was supposed to be sort of embarrassing and silly. In the film, Sean Hayes says it totally seriously, as if it was "Shut the fuck up." Fiddle-de-doo.
From Terminator: "Cyborgs don't feel pain. I do." (Though some think that line awesome.)
Sarah shouting, "MOVE IT, REESE! ON YOUR FEET, SOLDIER!"
The scene in the factory near the end is both scary and Narmful. It was Nightmare Fuel when the Terminator walks out of the burning wreckage. It became Narm when the Terminator's torso was crawling for the gimped Sarah Conner and she was struggling to walk away...it was akin to the world's slowest and most pathetic chase.
Michael Biehn's performance as Kyle Reese:
(gravelly monotone) "I dunno. With these weapons...I dunno."
Sarah's roommate's boyfriend (Matt) says this when the Terminator breaks into the bedroom he and his girlfriend are using:
John Connor pounding on Marcus' chest and yelling "WAKE UP!"
One of the most relentlessly Narmish movies ever filmed is Simon Birch, a truly ghastly adaptation of A Prayer for Owen Meany. In particular, there's the deer who shows up every fifteen minutes or so and who is supposed to represent the hero's mother. Ick... Oh, and Joe's mom symbolically became a deer in the first place because Simon hit a foul ball that bonked her on the head, and it killed her.
"You can run your ladyship. But....YOU CAN NEVER...RUN...FAR ENOUGH!"
"You have the powah of the immooohtaals."
"The battle may be over...But not! The WARRRRRRRR!" * cue Jeremy Irons pretending to grow wings*
If the producers hadn't run out of money, then they could have included all the effects that would have helped the movie make a lick of sense. Then this could have been the evil wizard's One-Winged Angel act. It still would have been narmy, but at least there would have been real wings.
Bruce Payne's entire performance in that film is Narm. It's telling that he has a cult following online and is the only thing this film and its sequel In Name Only have in common.
"POST brigades at every sewer entrance and exit. I want them found...nnnow."
It's interesting to note from Snails' death scene that Ridley is clearly an alumni of the William Shatner School of Acting. Compare his pain posture with Captain Kirk's whenever he gets zapped with an invisible alien pain laser: falls to his knees, elbows connected, palms open toward the sky, looking up with eyes closed as he gives a hammy scream. The Shatner would be so proud!
The famous 'plastic bag blowing in the wind' scene from American Beauty is Narmy—not because of the idea that the scene represents (that art and beauty are all around us in unlikely places), but because of the pretentious awe that the characters in that scene show for that little plastic bag and the message it represents as if it's something deep and original that no one else has ever thought of. One character intones "Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I don't think I can take it" as if he's just discovered the cure for cancer. Sometimes a bag is just a bag, guys.
It's even funnier once you learn that the filmmakers were only able to get the bag to dance around like that by having two crew members out of shot with leaf blowers.
The makers of the film Knowing clearly have not spent much time on the internet. Shooting laser beams from the mouth is daft enough; making it almost identical to the famous "Shoop da Whoop" meme is just asking for trouble.
One of the most should-have-been-tense moments in the regrettable movie The Abyss is when, during a hurricane, the crane connecting the surface rig with an underwater lab breaks off. The drama is somewhat lost when the Captain frantically reports to the divers, "THE! CRANE! THE! CRANE! IS COMING! DOWN! AND IT'S ON! ITS WAY! TO! YOU!"
Also from The Abyss is a whole scene in which the hero desperately tries to save a female character who seems to have drowned. He pummels her chest repeatedly before yelling, "SHE HAS A STRONG HEART! SHE WANTS TO LIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!". Unsurprisingly, this causes her to wake up. There is much relief on the ship. It's meant to be the darkest scene in the movie, but the catharsis hit a little early...
Rumor has it that this is partly the result of Ed Harris and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio being so pissed off at Cameron they eventually just refused to re-shoot it any more. The Miraculous Bitchslap of Life certainly doesn't help, mind you.
In the mediocre disaster movie Daylight, Sylvester Stallone's character tries to rescue a guy named George who is pinned under a truck at the bottom of a pit filling with water. Stallone manages to find a rubber tube, which he puts in the almost unconscious George's mouth to buy him more time... then undermines the tension by screaming the words "Come on George, BREATHE! BREATHE! IN AND OUT! IIIIIIN AND OOOOOUUUT!" in a way that makes you wonder if he was having a flashback to his short lived porno career. Unsurprisingly, Stallone was nominated for a Razzie for that movie. (He "lost" to Tom Arnold and Pauly Shore).
The opening monologue of Transformers. Optimus Prime's wise, deep voice says, "Before time began, there was... THE CUBE."
"The Allspark is two hundred and thirty miles from HERE!"
It has plenty of these moments. Most notable is Sam's hilariously over-the-top, melodramatic reaction to finding out that Mikaela has a criminal record. Not only is this not something that's a huge deal in and of itself, but all of the Autobot-military stuff going on around him right then makes it look unimportant by comparison.
"You want a piece of me, Megatron?"
"No, I WANT TWO!"
From: "I'll take you ALL ON!" Into: "I will defeat you!" (spoken in a rather bored voice)
In Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Megatron dramatically yells "All. Hail. Megatron!". At a bunch of elephants and zebras.
The implication there seemed to be that Megs was a tad delusional by that point, given his horrific head injury and all. Still, at least it wasn't as bad as it was in the novel and comic, wherein he follows up said yell by randomly blowing up an elephant with his fusion cannon.
Any scene in Three Hundred with Queen Gorgo because she has the same name as a famous British monster movie. She was probably a real person, but that doesn't make it any less funny.
There were also the over-the-top attempts to make the Persians look evil. Uber Immortal and Fat Executioner get a pass for being freakin' awesome, though.
The decapitation scene of that random Persian General. His head just flew in the air with clenched teeth. Funny as hell.
Extra points go to the scene when that bloke's son gets his head cut off in the most ridiculous manner possible, especially because it completely inverts the High-Pressure Blood trope used throughout the movie. Not a drop comes out.
Also extra points to all the scenes with the hunchback.
When Xerxes loses it in during his conversation with Leonidas, when he's shaking and has his mouth all clenched up—he's supposed to look angry, but it looks more like he's about to burst into tears.
ANY part with Xerxes. He's like a giant drag queen with James Earl Jones's voice and Mr. T's jewelry.
Can we talk about when Gorgo kills Theron, please? His purse spills open, revealing Persian gold to the assembled elders. One of them picks it up and says "Traitor." The rest all start yelling, "Traitor! Traitor! TRAITOR!" Not only is it silly on its own, but it's also Narmtastic because they're all very old men. It seems as if they're all senile and would shout any phrase with equal fervor if they heard someone else say it. "TAPIOCA! TAPIOCA!"
Come on, guys! Didn't we all learn very important lessons from that movie? Like, falling down a staircase will cure you of racist feelings?
This movie is so full of Narm, it's even in a scene in which a little girl almost gets shot. Slow motion, muted Big No, close-ups, One-Woman Wail... all combined for one of the most narmtastic scenes in recent history.
I have a magic spot on me where I am bulletproof.
The second half of this scene from Doctor Zhivago, where the character goes from sober to steaming drunk in twenty seconds flat and proceeds to chomp down on the scenery. Especially hilarious is the final line:
"We're all made of the same clay you know. CLAY! CLAAY!"
Batman's introduction in Batman. After sneaking up to some thieves, he decides to reveal himself to them by slowly standing up and posing while spreading his arms to make his cape look like bat wings in a scene that takes forever. Then rather than attacking the thieves, he stays like that until he gets shot and quickly falls to the ground.
The Mummy 1999 has an intense action sequence in which a biplane carrying the heroes is attacked by a magical sandstorm. The sandstorm develops the scowling face of The Mummy, a nice effect... and then it cuts to him controlling the sandstorm by making funny faces in the desert, and the moment is lost.
This happens again in the sequel, except this time Imhotep makes his face appear on a tidal wave.
Then we get the sequel and the big, scary scorpion-demon thing with... a horribly-animated version of The Rock's face stuck upon it. Stephen Sommers (director and writer) mentioned that he was embarrassed about that. (Those scenes were completed last, with a deadline.)
There's also what should have been the big dramatic moment when Rick kills the Scorpion King, utterly ruined when Imhotep literally leaps into the shot like George Reeves as Superman for his Big No - and does it a second late...
And then The Mummy 3 came. Yetis appeared out of nowhere and beat up the Dragon Emperor's army.
On that note, did anybody else completely lose it when Jet Li was pretty much letting Ben kick his ass? This troper loves Jet Li martial arts movies and watching this scene was like watching your favorite basketball player be forced to play against a 12 year old while wearing clown shoes and a blindfold.
While Will Smith does a fantastic job in I Am Legend, there's still that scene where he started screaming at a mannequin and held it at gunpoint (it's supposed to show that he's quite nuts). That scene was meant to play into the original ending, where the vampires/zombies are intelligent and used the mannequin as a trap. Foreshadowingminus the thing being foreshadowed can easily lead to Narm.
He delivered quite a few lines in a needlessly overdramatic fashion, such as "I like Shrek" and "I was saving that bacon."
"I like Shrek"? What a place for Product Placement! (Even if the studio is just placing its own product.)
His puckering, contorted facial expression when he kills his dog is just disturbing. It's not sad or angry in any way, just incredibly odd.
"Well, I'm not going home. I'm gonna get on my boat, and I'm going up river, and I'm going to kick that son of a bitch Bison's ass so hard that the next Bison wannabe is gonna feel it! Now, who wants to go home... and who wants to go with me?"
Please, Bison just steals the show. There's the ridiculous facial expression he has when the heroes are being gassed. And there's this line:
The 1982 filmed version of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (NOT the 2007 film) has a huge Narm toward the beginning, thanks to George Hearn, the MOST CAPSLOCK MAN ALIVE, bellowing a rather bizarre "GNAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" sound and burying his face in his hands when he learns his wife poisoned herself fifteen years ago. This may sound like an obvious reaction, but the actual sound is what makes it hilarious.
Not to mention the climax of "My Friends":
"AAAAAATTT LAAAAAAAASSSSTTT, MYYYY ARRRRRRRRRRRMMM IS COMPLEEEEEEEEEETTTTE AGAAAAAAAAAIIIIIINNNN!!"
Some might say that that particular line is Narm incarnate and cannot possibly be done in an un-narmy manner. Seriously, it's a psychotic screaming to a straight-edged razor, after singing a song to that razor about how much he's looking forward to killing people with it. Many versions of Sweeney Todd exist, all of them drop into a bucket of Narm on that single line, no matter how well-done the rest of the performance may be.
The 2006 version ofThe Wicker Man, the single most EMBARRASSING movie in Nicolas Cage's otherwise impressive career (and he has made many impressively embarrassing movies). It seems that the closer the film gets to the climax, the cheesier it gets - and then it culminates at the unforgettable "NOT THE BEES!" scene.
Johnny de Mol played a nutty religious resistance fighter, and his reaction to shooting a collaborator made a tense scene hilarious.
In Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the fight scene during which everyone stops for a moment to declare their beef with Jade Fox is somewhat comical.
House of Flying Daggers had plenty of Narm at the end where the female lead has a knife sticking out of her chest for approximately four hours while she and two other characters argue about how she's too close to death to continue arguing with them.
Flying Daggers also has a Narmy scene at the middle with all the secrets -- "So you are NOT blind!" "So you are NOT the leader of the House of Flying Daggers!" "So you ARE a spy!" They were all revealed in the space of two minutes, making it seem like a parody of such scenes.
The (in?)famous "I drink your... MILKSHAKE!" line from There Will Be Blood is either this or an Awesome Moment, depending on personal taste. Sad thing is, that's Real Life Narm. That whole milkshake analogy was spoken by the historical figure upon whom the character was based. The Memetic Mutation comes from taking that one line out of the context of the deeper metaphor; not everyone knows what leads to that line.
Right after that, Daniel flies into a rage and attacks Eli by throwing bowling balls at him.
I AM THE THIRD REVELATION!!
There's also the classic "DRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAINAAAAAAAGE!", in which Plainview does his best to imitate the sound of a revving motor.
Even narmier is the scene when Plainview starts slapping Eli Sunday and then pulls his hair and smears mud all over him. Eli's girly squealing only increases the narmishness.
Eli's sermon. Sure, sermons are sometimes hammy; but faith healing gets narmy when it includes throwing an invisible ball of wickedness out of a church in the most overblown way possible. ("AND IT LEEEEEEEEEFT!")
Also, when Daniel is carrying his injured son away during the mill accident, random Native American-sounding music keeps playing, getting louder and louder, and it ends up sounding more silly than dramatic.
In the more recent version of The Hills Have Eyes, there is a terrifying scene in which most of the main characters are killed or incapacitated. But the horror of a brutal rape was dulled by the victim's trying to fend off her attacker by hitting him with a pillow. The rapist then grabbed the pillow and started hitting her back.
Stephen King wrote in his survey of the horror genre Danse Macabre that real horror means you're unable to figure out whether you should scream or laugh, or both. By that definition the above scene succeeds, at least on paper.
Ghost Rider. "I address the spirit of elemental fire within myself," or something along those lines. Yeah...
When Blackheart quotes "My name is legion, for we are many", it should have been scary. But he does it with what was supposed to be a group voice but turned out to be a "demonic possession has turned me into a retard" voice.
Any scene involving that actor is so badly acted, it should be narm-worthy.
Ghost Ship opens with a scene of a crowd of people being sliced in two by razor wire. The sliced people stand around looking shocked for a second before they fall apart, making it seem more like Looney Tunes than a horror movie even with the gore. There's even a shot of a man's clothes falling off before he falls apart.
V, freshly escaped from prison, horribly burned, and lacking eyes for some reason, turns to the camera and roars. Over the top, especially compared to the graphic novel.
After Portman's released from the prison, she walks out onto the porch in the pouring rain and raises her hands in a crucifixion-esque pose while weeping. It was supposed to show some sort of change in her attitude towards the government etc., but it ended up being cheesy.
V decides to reveal his name to Evey by freestyling.
V revealing his name at all. In the book, his identity was deliberately never revealed because, to paraphrase V himself, such knowledge would be worthless and would undermine everything V's been saying. But here, in the movie, the grand reveal: V was... some guy. Hooray.
Also the end of the movie, after the successful bombing, where a massive crowd in Guy Fawkes masks shows up, looks right at the camera, and then unmasks. (get it get it because V is within us all! .... thus further undermining the reveal of V's actual identity.)
In Jackson's The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers, when Aragorn reaches Helm's Deep after being thought dead, Eowyn, who has a crush on him, rushes forward to welcome him back. She stops when she sees Legolas return the Evenstar to Aragorn because it reminds her that Aragorn is already in love with Arwen. From the way the scene is shot, it looks like Legolas is proposing to Aragorn and beating Eowyn to the punch.
Fun fact: They originally intended for Arwen to appear at Helm's Deep. That was the scene Eowyn was supposed to be reacting to. Considering what scene they replaced it with, one wonders if the producers wantedHo Yay in the movie.
During the Battle of Helm's Deep, Legolas's shield-boarding, and the running orc that seems to have come straight out of the Orc Olympics with its obvious BURNING TORCH! OF BURNING!
In The Return of the King, when Legolas finally comprehends Aragorn's plan to draw the gaze of Sauron's eye, he adds a real gem to the conversation:
The whole "people the size of children jumping on a bed while an old geezer watches and laughs" is hilarious. Even more so viathis video.
Frodo greets Aragorn and Gimli by shouting their names, but gives Legolas a look of "oh, yeah... that other guy that did... stuff..."
Who can forget Gimli's over the top wails in The Mines of Moria, it's even more jarring since in the book he just pulls his hood over his head without making a sound and in the animated version he just sadly and silently walks away.
Saruman starts making Gandalf spin in circles on the floor during their fight. This is seen in part from above, by the way.
Some people consider Galadriel's "dark queen" transformation, complete with slowed down/warped voice and (possibly) overdone effects, Narm. When Galadriel was shot from the front, her arms were pointed in an awkward position, and her slightly upturned face, along with the negative colours, made her nose look like a pig's snout. It made her look like a weird scarecrow. But then it shifted to a view from the side, and suddenly she looked impressive and scary.
Denethor's death scene. Gandalf lays the beatdown on him with his staff, Shadowfax kicks him in the head right onto his son's funeral pyre, and then he catches fire and runs all the way into the courtyard, through the garden (which looks like a helipad from the top down), and off the conveniently-placed cliff of Minas Tirith.
Bonus Narm for those who recall the parallel scene from the book. Gandalf speaks the same line in both - "So passes Denethor, son of Ecthelion". The film version has him passing in a literal "Keep to the left" sense.
When the Black Gate is collapsing in Return of the King, there's a shot where you see Aragorn's face staring in awe. Thing is, there's another guy right behind him who looks like he's whistling; his expression screams, "Oooooooh, cool." (Around 1:03 in this video.
"A wizard should know better!AAAAAAAAAGGGGGH!!!"
In The Return of the King, when Pippin's being mind-raped by the Orthanc Palanatir, it looks like he's having either a seizure or an orgasm. His face doesn't help.
The Elvish words Frodo speaks to illuminate the Light of Elendil sound a little like "I need another CANDY BAR."
The Fellowship's faces, especially Aragorn's, when the Balrog first arrives and the orcs scatter.
"A BALRRRROG OF MORRGOTH!"
"Legolas! What do your Elf Eyes see?" Swish your Elf Hair! Listen with your Elf Ears!
There are certain words that are impossible to take seriously. "Younglings" is one. "Man-Flesh" is another.
Some of the orcs' dialogue can often be this ("Looks like meat's BACK ON THE MENU, BOYS!")
A lot of dialogue in these movies comes across as very narmy when it's being lifted more or less directly from the books. Some lines work well when they're written down (even if it's only because they're accommodated by the writing style in general) but end up sounding incredibly silly when spoken aloud, especially to our 21st-century ears.
Blade Runner: It was supposed to be terrifying, but Roy Batty chasing after Deckard, howling like a wolf, and smashing his head through walls like a cartoon character? Amusing.
The dying Pris thrashing on her back as if she's throwing a temper tantrum. Even between viewings, this scene doesn't necessarily age well.
It does not help that the female stunt actress was too exhausted to do the preceding scenes and they had to get a MAN to do it, attentive viewers noticed. Or the makeup this character wore.
This becomes hilarious after watching Daryl Hannah do something similar in Kill Bill Vol. 2.
Speaking of Kill Bill, having O-Ren Ishii decapitate a Yakuza guy for pressing her Berserk Button (mocking her Chinese-American heritage and citing it as the reason why he doesn't want her leadership) in what's supposed to be her glorious ascension to the top of the Yakuza is chilling. Then it becomes a Black Comedy jewel when she pulls a Decapitation Presentation, and we see the head's ridiculousOh Crap's face. Not helped by O-Ren dropping a truly over-the-top Precision F-Strike in Gratuitous English as she shows off her "prize".
In Tombstone, there was a certain serious scene in which the main character, Wyatt Earp, is wading through a river with gunshots just barely missing him; he's shouting "No!" as he shoots at the bad guys. This culminates in a long, slow-motion, slightly over-the-top "Nooo!" at the end. This is either awesome or hilarious.
The above scene actually took place. It was part of how his legend was established.
The incredibly sappy music that sprang up whenever Wyatt saw Josephine.
Its a Wonderful Life is a brilliant movie, but there's the horrified way that Clarence reveals that Mary's dire fate in Pottersville is that she became a librarian. Even better, George Bailey reacts as if this were the worst thing that could happen.
It was supposed to be that she didn't recognize him and screamed when he tried to talk to her; but that point wasn't made that clear. Or perhaps it was supposed to be that she's ended up a Christmas Cake.
Frank Capra admitted in later years that this scene was the one part of the movie he would change if he had the chance.
Vada's habit of singing "Doo Wah Diddy Diddy" fast when she's upset tends to ruin what are supposed to be emotional moments in My Girl.
An early scene in the film Alien vs. Predator: Requiem has a father and son (out hunting) come upon a crashed Predator ship containing deadly facehuggers. One of them follows the pair; the father shoots it, causing acid blood to spill on his arm. The son hides behind a rock and watches as his father groans like he just ate a bad bowl of chili while his arm melts off.
Only rivaled in hilarity by most of the sequences afterwards, including a scene in which the main character (a once-convicted felon) says to his assembled motley crew after most of Gunnison, Colorado is taken over:
"People are dying. We need guns!"
That, or the pizza delivery boy going crazy and shooting at a Predator.
Near the end of the movie, the main character's obligatory annoying, moronic, unlikable love interest runs away from the group and is accidentally impaled on one of the Predator's stray weapons.
That was the best scene of the movie. By far.
"That's not possible! The government doesn't lie!"
Most James Bond movies are light-hearted, but sometimes they top themselves:
The Man with the Golden Gun is Narm-laden, but particular notice must go to sticking a comedy sound effect into the bridge jump.
Another Roger Moore Bond movie, The Spy Who Loved Me, has an opening scene so laden with narm that it's impossible to watch without laughing. It's not clear which is worse: the cuts between the action and the close-ups on Moore in a studio acting like he's in a completely different movie; or the disco soundtrack playing throughout.
Die Another Day turned what should have been a Crowning Moment of Awesome -- James Bond surfing the tidal wave with the parachute—into a Narmfest, thanks to unconvincing CGI. Especially bad because there was a surfing sequence at the beginning of the film done without CGI effects that looked much better.
Daniel Craig's reactions during the torture scene in Casino Royale are over-the-top even for a serious Groin Attack. And Le Chiffre looks like the lead singer of My Chemical Romance.
To be fair, Ian Fleming's description is amazingly effeminate (including "red woman-like lips")
Would that make Kratt the analogue of Bert McCracken in all this?
Dominic Greene from Quantum of Solace would've been threatening... had he not made the girliest battlecries ever when he was fighting Bond.
His uncanny resemblance to pianist/TV presenter Jools Holland is also distracting.
The scene after Mathis dies. Presumably, you're supposed to be deeply affected by Bond's shift from grief to cold professionalism; but the sudden cut to Bond chucking the corpse into the rubbish and nicking his money was more comical than anything.
The Harvey Keitel film Bad Lieutenant has a sequence where a nun is raped by two men. The initial shot of the assault is all right, but someone on the production crew thought a cut to Jesus screaming on the cross would make the scene more horrifying. It turned out to be so on-the-nose that it became Narm.
Kenneth Branagh's otherwise excellent version of Hamlet has the intermission break at the end of Hamlet's line, "My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth". The (written) speech is a somber reflection on Hamlet's reluctance to take action when he has been clearly wronged contrasted against a whole army about to go to war over a worthless plot of land. Branagh, in Large Ham fashion, delivers it as a bombastic tirade, standing on a cliff as the camera pans back, back, revealing more and more soldiers. The shot should have ended with a soldier saying, "Who is that guy up there yelling at us?"
Another Narm moment comes when you see who is playing Osric the courtier: none other than Robin Williams.
If that wasn't enough, Claudius got chandelier'd when Hamlet uses it to swing down from the balcony.
And then there's Hamlet's famous speech to the actors. Branagh's Hamlet, during this speech, does exactly what he's telling the players to avoid doing - he even "saws" his hands through the air when he's talking about that. And Hamlet isn't supposed to be acting then! This is a gift that keeps on giving because, well, the Narm comes from his unintentionally lampshading his unnatural natural behavior. Branagh's Hamlet always is like this, so if you notice Narm here, then the amusement will last through the rest of the film.
Laertes storms into the throne room after Ophelia's death flanked by an angry mob... which disperses in the most polite manner five seconds later.
When Hamlet and Laertes duel, they wear fencing armor that appears to be composed of the foam muscles from a Superman Halloween costume, and spandex pants. It is impossible not to at least chuckle at this.
Polonius' face as he lies in a pool of his own blood looks more like a mischievous frog than a murder victim.
In one film version of The Great Gatsby, the scene where Myrtle gets run over by Gatsby's car was poorly done.
There's also a scene in which Gatsby is throwing shirts around, and Daisy starts crying and says, "These are the most beautiful shirts I've ever seen!" The movie had its share of Narm, that's for sure.
In the more recent adaptation starring Paul Rudd as Nick, it works until Myrtle's "leg" flies into the air.
Another scene has Myrtle looking out a window and seeing a car parked below with Tom, Jordan, and Nick in it. Then she suddenly punches through the window and reacts by awkwardly putting her bloody fist in her mouth. It is supposed to be a shocking display of rage, but her overreaction makes it hilarious.
The Mothman Prophecies has a tense and dramatic scene where the main character receives a phone call from a mysterious stranger claiming to be near-omniscient. The character asks the caller to prove this by identifying what is sitting in his pocket. After a pause meant to build suspense, the whispery voice drawled out, "Chaaaaappppppstiiiiick" in what is supposed to be a creepy manner.
On a side note: If only Gollum had possessed that power...
In the 2002 film adaptation of The Time Machine, the first instance of the death of the hero's fiancee is acceptably melancholy; her subsequent deaths aren't.
Tron: Legacy: "KEVIN FLYNN! WHERE ARE YOU NOW?" It's the needless insertion of the word now that really drives this narm home. The fact that his CGI face looks especially plastic in this shot certainly doesn't help matters.
Speaking of which, the younger Kevin Flynn's plastic face in the beginning provided some unintentional comedy.
Kevin Flynn's line in the flashbacks: "It is our DESTINY!" It sounded like he was going to tear his mask off and start eating the crowd.
Sam Flynn looks like he's having an orgasm while he's firing those turrets during the dogfight scene. Unintentional Hilarity Ensues.
"Biodigital jazz, man." That is all.
Castor/ Zuse's dance moves during the battle scene in his own club. Many viewers couldn't take the intense battle scene, let alone Michael Sheen, seriously because of this.
Intentional, I'm sure. It's hard to be that Narmy by accident, surely? I hope...
In the aftermath of the raid on the End Of Line club, in which some partygoers are brutally derezzed, we see a woman crying over some remains - pixel remains.
And for those of you who saw the trailers ad nauseam, Quorra's "Here they come."
In the film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera has many examples, from Emmy Rossum's stilted line readings to Patrick Wilson's wig, from masquerade dancers doing the Robot to all that angsting over a face that could be considered "hideously disfigured" only by the broadest definitions of Hollywood Homely.
Especially considering Christine calls it "so distorted, deformed, it was hardly a face"! Yes, she's a naive scared Ingenue, but there are limits!
The protagonist sings dramatically while being choked.
The dancers in the background of the "Point of No Return" scene. One Phantom of the Opera community refers to them as the "Dread Pirate Roberts dancers".
The horse in the middle of the title song: What's meant to be a tense, dramatic moment as the Phantom leads a bewitched Christine to his lair is made absolute Narm the moment the Fridge Logic hits--how and why the hell did he get a horse into the sewers under the opera house? Sure, it's supposed to be stylized and surreal, but the oh-so-pretty pony leaves people in stitches. The Paris Opera does have its own stables, and a horse figures in this scene in both the original novel and the silent film adaptation. But in this film, it's used to convey Christine down one short length of hallway and then promptly abandoned. And for bonus points, the BBC documentary Behind the Mask (about the original London staging) revealed there were plans to incorporate a horse into the stage version of the sequence, but it was dropped because it looked silly.
The title song is supposed to be scary and demonstrate the Phantom's power of suggestion, but the moving candelabras remind some people of another moving candelabra.
Then there's the Phantom's toy opera house. Theoretically, the scenes of him moving around figurines of the other characters provide a Chessmaster vibe; but he may just look like Dark Helmet playing with his dolls again.
Also from the film, any time Christine is singing. Yes, you recorded the songs in a sound studio; but don't just LIPSYNCH! Throat muscles can move, too!
Yes, and at the end of "Think Of Me" - you don't change pitch by moving your jaw up and down!
"Clearly, Madame Giry, genius... has turned... into MADNESS." With Gerard Butler playing the Phantom, it's difficult to hear this line and not shout the obvious response. Plus, Raoul comes across as the Only Sane Man in light of the Phantom's just-revealed backstory. (In the stage version, his backstory was only recounted through dialogue.)
The dialogue after Christine kissed the Phantom is simply hilarious.
Gerard Butler is not the ideal voice of the Phantom. First, he's singing an octave low, and he's singing badly. The Phantom is meant to be an otherworldly operatic genius, but Butler can barely hit the notes at half their usual range. Wrong, bad... etc. All that remains—is the problem Lloyd Webber's casting or Joel Schumacher's direction? This review of the soundtrack album sums up the issue well.
The rest of the accent soup is no better than the Phantom's brogue. Why is Miranda Richardson talking like Pepe Le Pew?
Speaking of Phantom of the Opera, from the Lon Chaney silent film: The Phantom's last action before death in it is miming an invisible grenade, and then an abrupt surrender which can be interpreted as "Naw, I'm just messing with you."
The mirror scene, where he has to poke Christine on the shoulder about a dozen times before she finally notices him with appropriate levels of shock.
There are some overly melodramatic title cards in the silent film.
"Believe in my love, Raoul, and save me from that monster--oh, save me!"
When Christine sneaks up behind the Phantom to take his mask off, the anticipation is deflated a bit when she bumps against a violin hanging on the wall, leaving it swinging back and forth for the rest of the scene.
From the remake of Prom Night 2008: they tried hard to scare the audience by having the protagonist bump into a lamp.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. After Moody's lesson, Hermione starts to rant about how horrible it is that a teacher actually dared to use the Unforgivable Curses in a classroom, and as she's talking, you can see Neville is standing just a ways ahead of them, staring into space and traumatized from the lesson. Naturally, Hermione HAS to say the line "I mean, did you see the look on Neville's face?" just as they walk past him. The timing was so spot-on, it was hilarious. And by the way, Hermione, we DID see the look on his face.
The part in the fourth film where Hagrid, Ron, and Hermione sing the Hogwarts theme song while Harry is thinking. Flat What.
The singing is a little too reminiscent of various drunken singalongs from other films, not to mention this troper's friends' habit of launching into song at random moments, to be anything other than very very odd.
The bit in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix when Harry gets a peek into Snape's mind. It's supposed to be a profound, tense moment where our hero gets some insight into his great nemesis's past; but there's a brief shot of young Snape sitting in his Emo corner...
The intense possession scene at the end of Order of the Phoenix made Harry look just like Regan from The Exorcist.
Sirius's line, "Nice one, James" from the flashback.
It doesn't help that, instead of the coherent narrative it was in the book (and during filming, judging from behind-the-scenes photos), Snape's worst memory is shown as a hazy, psychedelic rapid-fire sequence that gives the impression that Harry just dropped some bad acid.
Keep an eye on Emma Watson's eyebrows throughout the movies. Not only are her eyebrows constantly jittering up and down, but sometimes they get out of sync with eachother, such as when she's on the train in Goblet of Fire.
In Goblet of Fire, Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort delivers a painfully straight (and unfortunately delivered) double threat of Big No and (apparently) Skyward Scream when Harry got away... again. It is hilarious.
Earlier:
"I CAN TOUCH YOOOOOOU."
The scene in the seventh movie when Ron and Harry destroy the Horcrux, and it shows, among others, Harry and Hermione making out (naked by the looks of it) to Ron. The scene just looked so damn hilarious.
Rupert Grint apparently had to go off set while they were filming that particular scene because he was laughing at it too hard.
When Harry's wand breaks, Ron brings him a new one, saying "Ten inches, nothing special." That's what she said.
That bit in the beginning of HP and the Deathly Hallows, when Voldemort tells Nagini to eat the body of the teacher. Voldy, do you know how long it takes for snakes to swallow things? Nagini lunges at the camera, fangs extended... and all I can picture is her then settling down, after that terrifying lunge, to slowly wedge the body little by little into her mouth over the course of the next few hours.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, had a lot of these sort of moments too, such as this one scene, whilst Voldemort and Harry are falling off a cliff. It shows a wide-angle close-up of Voldemort's face. Grinning. A Complete Monster like him is not supposed to smile.
Snape crying over Lily's dead body ended up being hilarious, especially since the former's emotions go from zero to sixty billion in the blink of an eye.
Voldemort's gloating laugh after declaring Harry to be dead. The whole theater erupted in laughter.
Voldemort's scream of "NYEAAHHHHH!" found in the trailer for Deathly Hallows Part 2, mainly because the exact same scream is repeated four times throughout the trailer, with the result that it becomes rather... amusing.
The exaggerated facial expressions and presentation of the scene where Snape cradles Lily's body while baby Harry cried in the background ruins what would've otherwise been a fairly tragic moment and instead turns it into something comical.
At the end of Deathly Hallows - Part 1, when Voldemort stole Dumbledore's wand from his grave, Voldy was so close to his corpse's face, that one half-expects him to kiss Dumbledore then and there.
In the movie An American Crime, based on the real life torture murder of a girl named Sylvia Likens, there is a scene that didn't occur in Real Life, in which she finally manages to escape the house, but her sister Jenny is left behind. She is driven, by the guy who helped her, to her parents' home, and tells them what happened. They drive her back to Gertrude Baniszewski's house, and she walks in to bring Jenny out, only to find her own dead body on the floor. The Sylvia that escaped then vanishes, showing that her escape was a dying dream, a wish of what she wanted to see happen. What makes it ridiculous, sadly, is that Sylvia says "I have to do this" to her parents before walking back into the place where she had been tortured and beaten for months. Who the hell would do that? Talk about a random Wall Banger thrown into an otherwise accurate, good recreation of this infamous tragedy. Even if it was only a dream, it was stupid.
Not as Narmy as Popcultural Osmosis would lead you to believe; the context of the line lends more credibility to the claim in the source than it has in most of the parodies and homages. But don't be disappointed, Narm-seekers; there's more than enough Narm earlier in the film to make up for it. One early scene avoids What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome? solely because of how rare meat is in the setting (pun only intended in retrospect).
The film Dark Prince: True Story of Dracula is entertaining and moderately accurate to, well, the True Story of Dracula, even if it does involve a stubbly Rudolf Martin in a lot of black leather- but the heavy hammer of Narm slams down hard on an otherwise dramatic scene. Vlad Dracul, previously established as brutal but well intentioned and a loving husband, watches his wife leap to her death, and responds by shouting her name. With Anakin-esque intensity and the previously upheld attempts at accurate accent... well, narrrrrm...
Near the end of Titanic, at the scene where the aft end of the ship is tilted out of the water. Some poor guy is hanging off the rear railing, and loses his grip, falling to his tragic, inevitable death... and then he bounces off the propeller on the way down with a huge "BWONNNG" sound.
Another narmy moment near this one: People are dying all around them; Rose and Jack are climbing onto the back of the railing. Rose goes "This is where we first met!" and Jack holds her close... with a slightly confused expression.
He was probably wondering why she was thinking of something so trivial.
Kate Winslet ad-libbed the line. Clearly, Leo DiCaprio wasn't as good at ad-libbing.
There's one after the ship has sunk. There's a landscape shot with survivors splashing around; we can hear them loudly but, because it's a distance shot, we can barely see them. For some reason, it looks more like they're having a giant splashfight than they're dying.
Two words: Billy. Zane. (Aka Cal.) His performance is a special kind of genius - the unintentional kind. In one scene, Cal starts shooting at Jack and Rose as the ship is sinking. As one critic put it, "Oh no! I hope he doesn't shoot them! They might drown!"
Pathetic cries for help are expected in a disaster film. But in the interlude after the stern sits vertical and before it sinks, one woman's cries are rather comical in her delivery:
"Help! Helphelp! Heeelllp!"
"Hold on Mrs Pennyworth!" Cue sliding down the ship and flashing undergarments to everyone.
Rose's last lines to Jack pretty Narmy: "I'll never let go Jack, I'll never let go!" Woops down he goes!
In another instance Jack and Rose break through a door after escaping from the rapidly flooding lower decks:
Steward: Hey! What do you think you're doing? You'll have to pay for that, you know! That's White Star Line property! Jack and Rose: SHUT UP!
The sheer number of instances that Jack and Rose have the Say My Name moments.
One of many mistakes in The Exorcist II: The Heretic was revealing that the demon possessing Regan, unnamed in the first film, is the Babylonian god Pazuzu. This god was quite a terrifying figure; unfortunately, his name sounds silly when spoken aloud. And Richard Burton bellows it at the top of his lungs during a close up of his extremely sweaty face. It has been retconned that (in the universe where the movies take place) Pazuzu is what Africans call Satan. That doesn't make it sound any less silly.
"I. AM. PAH-ZU-ZUUUUUUUU!"
The original preview screening of the film did cause the audience to erupt into laughter. The result was so bad that the studio immediately pulled the film and recut it. (It didn't help.)
James Earl Jones spits leopards.
Hugo Weaving's character in The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert dresses in stereotypically "straight" clothes for the journey home with his son. He looks much more ridiculous than in his normal street clothes. It detracts from the angst of him re-closeting himself.
That's kind of the point... He's trying too hard.
Outland is a good movie, but people's heads swell up and explode like water balloons at the slightest drop in air pressure. That, and two pivotal scenes take place in a futuristic racquetball court.
Van Helsing: any scene involving Dracula ranting and emoting like an angsty teenager with illusions of depth, doing Bela Lugosi by way of Dominic Purcell... Especially the scene in which he rants and emotes about his inability to feel emotion.
"I FEEL...NOTHING!"
You sure could have fooled us, Drac - if you weren't such a godawful actor.
In all fairness - Richard Roxburgh isn't that bad an actor (take his roles in Sanctum, Doing Time For Patsy Cline, Hawke and Rake (the latter three of which he won awards for)) it's just that for some reason he plays almost all his villains way too over the top.
The ending, where Anna's face appears among the clouds and smiles down at the hero as he's cremating her.
Hey, speaking of Dracula, how about the Coppola version, Bram Stokers Dracula, for some great Narm, specifically from the One himself? Keanu Reeves attempts a British accent at first; it's shaky at best. But he stops trying halfway through the film. Just listen as he says "It is the man himself. Look, he's gotten younger!" COMPLETELY like Ted "Theodore" Logan.
Heathcliff: Is that all I've become to you, then? A pair of dirty hands? Well, have them then! * slap* Have them where they belong! * bitch-slap*
The infamous line Olivier delivers in the Neil Diamond version of The Jazz Singer.
"I HAFF NO SON!" [rips shirt and runs off crying]
William Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet. The guns named after swords were ridiculous enough, but the crowning moment comes as Juliet awakens just as Romeo downs the poison.
"Fetch me my longsword!" Cue a shotgun...
Made even better by the fact that the full line is "Fetch me my longsword, ho!" He's talking to his wife.
"Sword" was the brand name of most of the guns. Juliet had a "Dagger" gun... And yes, Juliet waking from her faked death just in time for Romeo to realize he goofed (it does come across in the acting) did slip from tragedy to black comedy.
She looks at him longingly for ten seconds; then he drinks the poison.
Romeo and Juliet, like many of Shakespeare's shows, can be played either way. Though you'd think a comedic version would have fewer giant explosions.
Then there's the occupational hazard of all Shakespearean adaptations relocated to relatively modern times: Elizabethan dialogue spoken in relatively modern times.
Romeo losing it at Tybalt right before he kills him. Leo's overacting is almost painful, and it's nearly impossible to understand what the hell he's saying when he's screaming that loudly. The way he yells "EITHER THOU, OR I, OR BOTH MUST GO WITH HIM!" over and over, you half expect Tybalt to shout "STOP SAYING THAT!" And it all culminates in Romeo's hilariously overdonePrimal Scream as he unloads his gun into Tybalt.
The Swedish version didn't subtitle that. Either the translators didn't find it important enough, or they simply couldn't hear what he was shouting...
The scene where Juliet wakes up to discover Romeo's dead body is meant to be moving and tragic but is rendered hilarious by Clare Danes' terrible crying.
Mercutio crossdressing in a silver, glittery tube top and miniskirt... Then pulling Romeo's invitation to the party from the bottom of said miniskirt. After seeing that, it's impossible to take his death scene seriously.
Even more hiarious when you realize that the dude playing Mercutio is Harold Perrineau aka Michael from Lost. You'd almost expect him to scream WAAAAAAAAAAAAALT!!
The Happening wavers between ultimate narm (RUN AWAY FROM THE WIND!), self-parody ("Do you like hotdogs?") and genuine scariness (the first five minutes, Suicide by Cop, the house with the paranoid old couple). Even the plot - plants think humans are jerks, and so they selectively evolve to make humans kill themselves as painfully and creatively as possible - is funny.
"Cheese and Crackers!"
The ending is hilarious - the plants start killing the French, further reinforcing their place as the world's Butt Monkey.
That scene with the shotgun blasting those children through the window and a slow-mo NOOO.
The film uses so many shots of Mark Wahlberg's face trying to look horrified that fail. And then there are all the times that the actors pretend they're crying...unconvincingly. Oh, and there's gaudy and gory Special Effects Failure. They tried to do Techno Babble: it makes your brain Reverse Polarity.
Even better was the scene near the beginning where Marky Mark is talking to his class and elicits speculation from his students as to why bees are disappearing. The last student says something to the effect of 'it's an act of nature and we'll never fully understand it.' Wahlberg acts proud. Science works only because we can understand acts of nature; science only operates on the natural world. M. Night apparently believes that science is magic.
"What? NOOO!" The film may have been narmtacular, but that line made it worth the ticket price. (It also helps if you decide M. Night was trying to make a comedy.)
The Gus Van Sant movie Elephant had so much inherent drama and pathos built into its story that it would take an extra-special effort on the director's part to get any Narm out of it at all, but Van Sant pulled it off anyway. Simply put, this is the most laid-back school shooting ever depicted. Here are some highlights: A kid who had advance warning of the rampage simply stands outside the school and obliquely warns other students that "you don't wanna go in there." He doesn't explain why or ask anyone to call the police. One student peeks out into the hall, gets shot dead, and the other kids in his classroom -who heard the gunshot and see the blood- start flatly admonishing the dead boy to "stop foolin' around." Another one serenely strides the halls during a lengthy tracking shot, stops to help an extremely mellow girl calmly exit out a window, and then walks directly into the gunman's path and is blown away. Van Sant may have been trying to go for some kind of dramatic statement with all this, but it just comes off looking like no one in the school can muster the energy to actually give a shit whether or not they're violently murdered by their classmates.
I think you just mentioned the dramatic statement he was trying to make. What do bratty, middle-class American high school students whine about the most? How they "Don't give a fuck about anything, man!" and "I wish I was dead/aborted/never born!" Van Sant was probably trying to show the little bastards what REAL apathy was.
Maybe, but real apathy wouldn't be found anywhere near a school shooting, making the whole scene ridiculous. Since Van Sant obviously wasn't going for laughs, the whole climax is top-shelf Narm.
The otherwise excellent Gone Baby Gone (Ben Affleck's surprisingly good directorial debut) is dark and suspenseful until it is revealed that one of the main antagonists, who may have kidnapped a four-year-old girl, is a drug dealer named... Cheese. Not helped by his remark after shooing away one of his kept women, "Bitches love The Cheddar".
In the book, the character is white (while black in the movie), and he was nicknamed Cheese because of his pasty, crater-y skin.
In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, there is a scene where Big Bad Irina Spalko is hanging from a tree branch over a swarm of army ants. What do the ants decide to do? Climb up over each other to get to her! Real life army ants do build structures out of each other like that, but still.
What about the 'Shia Lebouf and monkeys' swinging scene! It was over the top and unbelievable and a distraction from the epic truck battle going on.
The CGI gophers. Those little bastards let all viewers know what they were getting into.
In the relentlessly depressingMarvin's Room, one of the characters is diagnosed with Leukemia. During a trip to Disney World, she's drinking a soda when she sees blood on her straw, gets lightheaded, and passes out. The scene ends with a Point of View shot from her on the ground, as several people are looking down on her...and then Goofy enters the frame, and any drama left in the scene is washed out by giggling.
During the scene in The Godfather where Sonny beats up Carlo, one of his punches clearly misses by a mile.
The horse head scene in The Godfather because It Was His Sled. Once the viewer is given time to brace for the intended shock and Squick, Woltz doing The Scream can be quite amusing.
The Godfather III, when Sophia Coppolla says "Dad?" right after getting shot. And Pacino's subsequent overlong silent scream of anguish.
Macbeth, particularly in one film adaptation. Macbeth's henchmen are invading Macduff's castle and killing his lady and children...and his youngest son, after being stabbed, staggers over to Lady Macduff and says, "He has killed me, mother." Grade ten English lit had never been so hilarious.
The immediately preceding lines from the murderer "What you egg! -stab- Young fry of treachery!" didn't help matters.
It was probably the Roman Polanski version. That moment provoked plenty of laughter, but there's also the scene in which a hapless minion is shot in the head with a crossbow. The unconvincing make-up and the fellow's perplexed, stupid expression had everyone in stitches.
It was justified in the original play. Sometimes you had to say "Oh noes, I'm dead!" because the audience in a theater production doesn't get to see the eyes close as you die. It still should have been cut in the film versions.
The witches in that version were Narmy in a disturbing Fetish Retardant way. The Orgy and prophecy scene, aside from being totally unlike the play, was both Narmy and trippy.
The scene where Banquo's ghost appears at Macbeth's banquet. Macbeth cowers in terror as the rather gruesome ghost advances... the ghost disappears; cut to the nobles staring awkwardly at Macbeth. Their expressions are hilarious.
One of the best scenes in the movie, there. Ghost appears. Macbeth cowers. Ghost bleeds from the injuries that killed him. Okay. back to Macbeth, cowering. Cut back to ghost, spurting massive amounts of obviously fake blood from all over his body.
One film of the play ends with a closeup of every character staring at Fleance, all with overdramatic looks on their faces. One almost expected them to start saying, "Janet! Brad! Dr. Scott!"
Orson Welles' version was decent, but he should have requested another costume designer. Welles complained about having to do his final showdown with Macduff dressed as the Statue of Liberty
In the Judy Dench and Ian McKellen version (sounds awesome, right?) Lady Macbeth (Dench) is angsting to herself while her husband kills King Duncan. During the scene, Lady Macbeth is supposed to give what I assume is a half wail, half groan; unfortunately and hilariously, it comes out sounding like a squeaky door opening very slowly.
David Tennant's scenery-chewing portrayal of Hamlet stayed on the right side of Narm for most of the play, but there were a few moments when it was too much. There's a part where Hamlet has been messing around with a bunch of props and is still wearing a spangly fake crown lopsided on his head. He runs up behind his praying uncle with a sword, but finds himself unable to kill him. He pulls an expression which was presumably supposed to convey frustration and self-loathing, but looks like an angry 'O' face.
Captain Rhodes' death from Day of the Dead. "CHOKE ON 'EM!" Indeed...
The Final Sacrifice has a scene in which a cult member starts rolling around on the ground for some reason. Anything involving Pipper or Satoris also counts. Satoris is best described as an evil Morrissey who talks at 30 RPM.
"Death woll be too morciful for you, Zap Rowsdower!"
Oh, yes, the hero's name is Zap Roswdower. The film isn't a Sci-Fi future movie; it takes place in 1980s Canada. Zap Rowsdower.
In one TV-movie adaptation of The Odyssey, Odysseus throws a spear at a particularly large suitor, who promptly accelerates upward and gets pinned to a wall. Blessed by the gods, indeed.
From the film adaptation of Left Behind, the scene of Hattie entering into the plane's cockpit after the Rapture:
"Hundreds of people - MISSING!"
Let's be honest. "Left Behind" is nothing but narm (yes, that goes for both the books and the movie).
The opening scene in Equilibrium when the Mona Lisa is burned. It had to be the best-known painting in the world to make sure even the Lowest Common Denominator would catch the "drama."
Colin Farrell's performance in Alexander. Swinging back and forth between extremes, one being hyper-manly Large Ham and the other being a cripplingly wimpy mama's boy, with hilarious facial expressions and even more hilarious hair. Come to think of it, his hair deserves this entry.
Legend of Hell House is for the most part an atmospheric and creepy haunted house movie, but it has two extremely Narmish moments:
The first is when a character is attacked by a cat, represented by an unconvincing puppet thrown at her repeatedly.
The other comes at the climax, when Roddy McDowall's character figures out that all the supernatural happenings in the house are the work of a single spirit—the house's original owner. A decent twist, but then Roddy goes on that he knows the reason the ghost is doing all this: he was short. Granted, this guy is constantly described as a giant of a man, and so it's easy to believe that this secret would be so shameful to him that he would be driven to impersonate an entire house full of ghosts. But seeing poor Roddy McDowall shouting "You weren't even five foot (sic) tall!" into the wind is just embarrassing.
To some, the outbursts by the mothers in Terms of Endearment and Steel Magnolias may have been tear jerkers; to others, they were massive Chewing the Scenery moments. They came out just to have an outburst moment, even if it didn't fit the characters.
Case in point: Steel Magnolias has some sad moments, especially during Shelby's funeral. But M'Lynn's whiny, prolonged screech "Whyyyyyyyyyyyy?!" ruins the effect because it's so hilarious.
One unfortunately edited scene from The Incredible Hulk (2008) suffered from this. There's a touching and heartfelt scene of Ed Norton and Liv Tyler's characters trying to sleep in separate beds across the hall, each clearly thinking about the other. And then there's a shot of a topless, tattooed Tim Roth angrily opening a door. This was a different scene happening elsewhere, but...
Tim Roth ought to either keep his shirt on more, or take it off more. He can't keep taking the middle ground.
The scene with the bear in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian: The heroes, travelling in the wilderness, pass by a bear. Lucy, the youngest of the children, runs towards it, saying stuff like "what's your name"; the bear, quite understandably runs towards her, roaring. After she is saved in the last moment by her dwarf friend, she exclaims, "I don't think it could talk at all!" Instant Narm. The point is that she's used to meeting talking, sentient animals in Narnia; but the scene makes it look like the girl is completely insane.
Sopespian looked like a bearded Saddam Hussein right after he was captured.
That one scene where some of Miraz's soldiers find Caspian in the forest with Nikabrik and Trufflehunter? The sudden realization and pan on Caspian's face to see his dumbfounded reaction (dundunDUN) was so unnecessary and so funny. And man, he was quick to use the horn!
Any time Prunaprisma did her "anguished" screams.
The scene where the cast is planning to go to war, and a very large and (probably) stupid bear calls, "For Aslan." It doesn't seem narmy unless you listen to him say it; his voice sounds like Mr Ed's, only with audible stupidity.
The scene where the Telmarine soldiers are marching onto the field in front of Aslan's Howe. Row after row of carefully disciplined soldiers—wearing Greek theatre masks.
There's also a scene early on in the film, when Caspian is leaving his castle, where he walks down a flight of stairs. Totally uninteresting scene, except that he almost dances.
Any time Peter opens his mouth. Maybe it's unfair to blame William Moseley for hitting puberty a decade late, but I can't bear listening to his voice without laughing.
Although the first Narnia movie is good, there are some Narmy scenes that probably weren't meant to be funny. For instance, when Peter holds up the sword awkwardly and says, "We have come to see Aslan". Peter's awkwardness before and after he meets Aslan was probably the point, but it's so obvious that it's amusing.
The third Narnia flick, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, was overall very good, but near the end of the film I had trouble not smiling during what should have been a serious and suspenseful scene. The crazy old lord that they just saved from the island warns them not to "reveal their fears" with the implication being that whatever they fear will become real. Problem is that, immediately after this warning, Edmund (of course) apologizes and tells them that he couldn't help it as they all rush to the side of the boat to see what hideous fate lies in store. Anyone who watched this part and didn't expect the Staypuft Marshmallow Man to come rising up from the deep is made of sterner stuff than I...
The scene in The Neverending Story where the Child Empress is begging and crying for Bastian to give her a name. It's either the expressions or the repeated cries of "Bastian, PLEASE!" Though some found her quite touching.
Bastian's acting... What makes this unfortunate is that the scene, with the dialogue as written, could have been a true dramatic and emotional moment on all sides. "I will do what I dream!" may be a line impossible not to Narm, but it may have be possible to deliver it with real conviction and wow even the most jaded audience with a talented actor.
The scene where Bastian reads about Atreyu meeting the giant turtle. He looks up from the book and screams at the top of his lungs, creating a hilariously narmy moment.
Batman Begins features a scene in which a fear-toxin-poisoned Rachel is rushed to Batman's cave, about to die from fright... And a still-masked Batman sits next to her, repeatedly growling at her. Real helpful, Batman.
If you go frame-by-frame when he shouts "RACHEL!!" just prior to entering the bat-cave, he makes the most hilarious face.
Anything involving Katie Holmes under the influence of mind-altering substances of any kind. Now that it's demonstrated that she doesn't need substances to have her mind altered, using them might be overkill.
A similar nonverbal example: Batman himself gets gassed in an earlier scene and is subsequently seen going into spastic hallucinations. Because of how stiff his costume is, Bale's drug-induced shuffling ends up looking awkward. For fans of YTMND and YouTube Poop, it might even resemble the "Retarded Batman" clip.
Yet another Rachel example - when she slaps Bruce after he shows her the gun he was going to use to kill Joe Chill, she clearly makes contact but clearly hits him very weakly. Also, something about the sound effect is off. It makes Rachel seem extremely physically weak.
Some considered Scarecrow's costume to be this, as it's little more than a paper bag over the head.
Of course a full Scarecrow costume might have been even worse. Cillian Murphy said he was glad they didn't do a full costume since it would have made him think of Worzel Gummidge.
In The Dark Knight Saga, Aaron Eckhart, in what was otherwise a fantastic performance, shouts "Say it!" at Gordon, and screams "Rachel!" There's a guy who cannot pull off Say My Name.
Batman sounded super drunk, especially in the important final scene with Jim Gordon and Two-Face. Being Batman is something you have to do sober.
He sounded like Patty and Selma, Marge's chain-smoking twin older sisters, on The Simpsons.
The ridiculous CGI that was Two-Face's burned half. For a reboot that was supposed to be realistic, Harvey should have been in shock from losing that much skin. Instead it's REVENGE TIEM NAO!
More than being in shock, the man's face shouldn't have fucking worked anymore. The Narm here comes from the fact that Aaron Eckhart had no idea they were going to go this far with the special effect, as it was added in with CGI in post-production, so here's Harvey Dent, talking and growling and being angry despite literally missing half of his entire face. Seriously, there is no muscle, half of his lips are flat-out gone, he's missing an entire cheek, he has no lid over his eye and none of this is stopping him from delivering entire soliloquies with absolutely zero impediment to his speech. It is such a ludicrous Special Effects Failure that it is impossible not to just stare forever.
Rachel Dawes acts all BadassAction Girl in Lao's interrogation scene and then smirks smugly - which reveals that Maggie Gyllenhaal has that almost cartoonish effect of having the creases of her smile go beyond the outlines of her lips. It looks like a cross between one of those 'Have a Nice Day' buttons with the ridiculously exaggerated facial muscles and The Joker. Not good when the film includes the Joker!
"I'M NOT WEARIN' HOCKEY PADS."
Also, Harvey Dent saying "it's not about what I want, it's about what's FAIR!" Something about it just seems immature.
"It puts the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again!"
Nearly all of the scenes with Buffalo Bill were hysterical, especially the mangina dance scene.
At the end of Wanted, where Sloan, revealed to be spinning his own targets instead of accepting what the Loom of Fate tells him to kill, hands out papers to every assassin in the room, saying, "You came up...you came up...you came up..." What makes it Narmy is that he does this to every single assassin in the room. Considering that the Loom of Fate was a fucked up Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, it was cruel to make every single member of the Brotherhood a target.
The very last shot of James McAvoy turning to the camera with the hammiest tough guy face and spouting "what the fuck have you done lately?" Though some think that was awesome.
Mommie Dearest is infamous for its narm. Even the director and lead actress repudiated many of the worst scenes, particularly the classic "NO...WIRE...HANGERS...EVEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRR!" line.
The ending of Se7en; Brad Pitt's repeatedly narmful readings of the lines "WHAT'S IN THE BOOOOX? OH, GOOOD!" derail any possible narrative tension.
"WHAAAAT'S IN THE BOOOOX? IN THE BOOOOX? WHAAAAT'S IN THE BOOOOX TODAAAAY?"
Ugh. That was the worst one, but his "Heeeeeeeeee's...anut-bag!" line was also was pretty Narmy.
Brad Pitt's atrocious delivery of his lines during the driving-to-the-desert scene (just before the box is delivered). It's almost like Brad didn't feel like acting that day.....so he didn't. Watching Brad phone it in as Morgan Freeman and Kevin Spacey give it their all is pretty damned hilarious.
During the big football scene in The Best Of Times, the band starts playing "The Liberty Bell March". This is not a smart thing to do in a movie in a post-Monty Python's Flying Circus world if you want people to take it seriously.
From a horror film called Vacancy. Kate Beckinsale runs away from the masked killer and jumps in the car. He runs up and dives headfirst through the sun roof to get at her. She slams down on the accelerator... and we get about fifteen seconds of her driving along, him still trying to grab her while upside down with his legs sticking out of the car roof waving about before the car smashes through a wall into another killer! It! Was! AWESOME!
Also, the notable Special Effects Failure when the spectral Samara rises from the bathtub, composed entirely of water, with the face of Daveigh Chase (who played Samara in the previous film) badly pasted on.
It's hard to take Samara scarily once you realize that she's Lilo in disguise. Unless you found Lilo creepy... But that sequel could make Lilo less creepy.
Any time Tony Montana started getting crazy and possessive over his sister in Scarface, director Brian de Palma opted to use extreme closeups and incredibly melodramatic-sounding synth music. The result was... er.... not as chilling or visually impressive as intended. It ruined what should have been an emotional moment in the death of Manny at Tony's hands.
"SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND!"
The Gravedancers is Narmish at first but, surprisingly, manages to dig itself out a little past the midway mark with a bit of oldschool design work and Character Development. However, the end takes the hope the viewer tentatively invests in it crashing down. Instead of carrying on to the end with what had been a subtle haunting for its genre, the movie suddenly launched into a car chase. For "car chase", read "gigantic CGI-enhanced puppet ghost head screaming through the halls of the mansion, attempting to eat the protagonists' Humvee with them inside it". The extras imply that the director intended it as a Crowning Moment of Awesome. In practice, it's such a blunt 180 on the tone that it sends the movie plummeting back down from "not that bad" to "horror horrible". The sad part is that, without the CGI, it's a badass puppet...
Katsumoto's death scene in The Last Samurai was intended to be profound and dramatic, but his contorted constipation face in conjunction with the solemnity of the scene made for hearty lols all around. Bear in mind, Katsumoto had just rammed a wakizashi into his stomach. Let's see you keep a straight face during something like that.
The gunning down of the samurai with the Gatling guns can be vindictively funny, especially if you have grown tired of Katanas Are Just Better and Guns Are Worthless. Where's all your katana-godmodding now, samurai boys? Hahahahaha!
CCH Pounder's death in RoboCop 3 has to be seen to be believed. She gets shot, gives a weary thumbs-up to RoboCop and friends, shouts "Go!" and then... just deflates. Words fail to describe the absurdity of this scene. It's a shame, because CCH Pounder knows how to act.
In the climax of the film, a young girl and a doctor are held up at gunpoint by the film's villain, McDaggett. Robocop flew in through a window with a jetpack to stop him but was unsuccessful. McDaggett also has an explosive device that will detonate in twenty seconds. The unintentional humor lies in the film's PG-13 material. After McDaggett calls the doctor a "stupid slag", Robocop calls McDaggett "chum" before incinerating his legs with the jetpack. As McDaggett falls down, Robocop grabs the woman and child, and flies out of the OCP building as it explodes in a marvelous Special Effects Failure. This caps off a film where Robo has had to fight robot ninjas. Oh, and the young girl disabled an ED-209 robot with her laptop computer.
The Old Man's cry of "BEHAVE YOURSELVES!" at the climax of RoboCop 2.
The scene in The Movie of Patrick Suskind's Perfume in which Alan Rickman finds his daughter's dead body is rendered extreme narm by his facial expression and arm movements.
What about the ending? The utter horror of what happened is completely and utterly ruined by the dodgy slo-mo bodice ripping two frames later. Sure, it was never going to translate very well onto the screen anyway, but they could have tried to make it look slightly less like a Rennaisance-era Woodstock.
Maria berating Tony after the rumble by beating his chest and exclaiming "Killer!" over and over again is kind of hilarious.
As is the preceding scene, when the viewers and Maria overhear a random Hispanic boy tell his mother, " Bernardo está muerto!" and the mother respond, " Bernardo muerto?" Considering this moment came less than a minute after Maria received the news herself, one must wonder how her neighbors found out so quickly.
The ending. The Jets and The Sharks both helping to pick up Tony's body was supposed to imply that the gang war would finally stop; but did The Jets have to pick him up so ineptly that he slips from their grasp and falls to the floor before being caught by the Sharks?
The constant cuts between the shivering old lady and Evolet in Ten Thousand BC. Death and rebirth indeed.
From the 1993 film adaption of Hamlet starring Mel Gibson as Hamlet: Hamlet going berserk and bashing his sword on the castle walls. And Gertrude's death being loaded with orgasmic twitching.
How about Ophelia singing bawdy songs at her introduction?
This Scene from the Chinese film Kidnap, Is Passable, despite every actor speaking with huge amounts of Large Ham...Until the car appears. Then the scene devolves into Pure Narm.
The subway scene in Cloverfield was dramatic until the monsters started sounding like someone strangling a duck.
There was a made-for-TV adaption of Bridge to Terabithia back in the 1980s. The director gave the lead role to his son, who, it turns out, couldn't act.
One scene in the Death Note live adaptation/spin off L: Change the World. The main scientist injects himself with a virus that causes a good three-minute death scene, gurgling all the way even when off-camera. He is finally incinerated and falls over, but pops up one last time to go "BLAAAAAGH" at his watching daughter.... and then he explodes. It's supposed to be dramatic, and the music is full-blown, but it can be hysterical.
At the beginning, when all of the criminals were having heart attacks, the somewhat hammy acting of the actors coupled with the overacting of the dub cast made it funny.
Towards the end of the first movie, Light puts together a setup to get rid of Naomi, in which she kidnaps his girlfriend Shiori and shoots her while she's trying to run to her side, then killing herself. Before that final bit, our good old Magnificent Bastard friend holds poor Shiori in his arms as she dies and screams in soul-wrenching anguish. Not so bad originally, but in the English dub, he screams at Naomi, "WHY DID YOU HAVE TO KILL HER? TELL ME WHY!!" Ain't nothing but a heartaaaaache...
In First Blood, when sobbing Johnny Rambo recounts his traumatic 'Nam experience, making even hardass Richard Crenna's lip tremble, the enunciation leaves something to be desired.
It's Vietnarm.
There's also David Caruso's screams of pain when he gets stabbed in the leg.
The part when the asshole deputy Art Galt dies has a bit of Fridge Humor: He's falling in slow motion but screaming at regular speed. So, does that mean he was squealing like a chipmunk on the way down?
From the 2008 Rambo, Rambo's facial expression after being grazed by a bullet. My god, just... you know chill. He's not living for anything if he keeps shaking the camera around like that.
That face comes built in (it was caused by forceps damage when he was born), so expect some narm any time Stallone yells.
"They would have RAPED her 50 times, and cut all your FUCKIN' HEADS OFF! WHO ARE YOU?! WHOUHANNYOYOU!?"
Speaking of Stallone movies, try not to laugh whenever he says "law" in Judge Dredd. Stallone isn't the only one, either; the guy who plays Rico practically belches it, as if his actor is trying to out-ham Stallone.
Okay, Psycho is a fantastically creepy movie and justly regarded as one of the greatest films ever made. That said, Anthony Perkins looks...silly in old lady drag.
Though certain people consider it an ultimate Tear Jerker, the scene where Trevor is stabbed and dies in Pay It Forward is ridiculous if you know anything at all about human anatomy. Put succinctly: unless he lay there for three hours before EMTs got to him, there's no way he should have died. It's as if the director was so desperate to extract more tears from the audience that she didn't care how she was gonna do it. For this scene, rolling the eyes and yelling "Oh, bullshit!" is just as appropriate as reaching for the Kleenex.
In the 2008 horror film The Ruins, the German Greek guy started swatting at his legs and screaming, "Git zeem auf! Git zeem auf!"
In the film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's Paycheck, James Rethrick yells, "Still think you can change your fate, Mike? I AM THE FUTURE MIKE!", referencing a deleted scene where Michael Jennings states that he believes he can change his fate.
You know it's bad when you're at a 12:01 showing of Twilight, the theater is full of hardcore fans, and everyone is laughing throughout the whole movie. Examples:
Edward's first scenes. Inhumanly pale skin, fluffy retro hair, pink lipstick, and a vague, Johnny Rotten-like stare - and then, out of the blue, he trots up to Bella and says, "I don't think we should be friends".
What about the expression Edward has when Bella first walks into the science room? He looked like he was going to vomit! Or he did... something else.
The scene at La Push where Bella tells Angela to ask Eric out because she's a "strong, independent woman" (or pretty much those words).
Emmett looks like he smelled something nastay - maybe sparkly BO is worse than normal BO...?
Billy Black's eyes bugging out as he drives past Edward.
Edward calling Bella's scent his 'own personal heroin'.
"SAY IT OUT LOUD!"
The deleted scenes are even worse. On the DVD, they are prefaced with the unbearableramblings of the director, who wrote most of the narmy lines. (Hop on, spider monkey!) One of the uncomfortable deleted scenes is so narmy that it comes out the other side as almost awkwardly endearing: The scene with Bella in Edward's bedroom, and a rather touching moment where Edward's 100 years of journalling is shown, are deflated by Bella walking over to his bookshelf, picking up a rain stick, and telling an anecdote about how, as a kid, she and her mom used to make rainsticks with chinchilla droppings and paper towel tube rolls. With a straight face.
In another deleted scene, Bella's dreaming of Edward. In her dream, she literally grabs him by the shirtfront (as he stands watching her sleep) and drags him back onto her bed while making out with him. So. Very. Eager. Along with Bella sleeping in her panties and a tank top, this quickly becomes "wow, Bella must be really horny."
In New Moon, Alice has a vision during the final Volturi meeting in which Bella (who is destined to become a vampire) and Edward run through a forest. The scene is shot in lovingly overexposed film with the two characters running along, dressed in designer clothes and sparkling like nobody's business. The idiotic smiles on their faces help seal the narminess.
The whole dramatic fight scene was ruined by Edward's wearing what looked like a red dressing gown.
The look on the werewolf's face before he nearly attacks Bella. "Hulk SMAAAAASH!!"
The trailer for Eclipse has given us some narmy lines:
"I'm gonna fight for you until your heart stops beating".
"Isabella Swan,I promise to love you every moment of forever".
From Mexican MelodramaNosotros los Pobres, the scene that named the trope in the Spanish side of TV Tropes:
The scene in Dantes Peak where Charles Hallahan's character dies. It could have been a relatively decent scene (remember what happened when Hallahan died in The Thing?) were it not for the unwise placement of The Wilhelm Scream... For clarification: the shot in which we see him die is a distance shot, and he is standing on top of his car in the middle of a traffic jam as the volcanic river heads his way. You can have no sound but the rolling volcanic river, or you can have everyone in the area scream; but if you have just the character we know screaming over the rumble of the volcanic river—that is lungpower!
From Volcano: After a character gets some lava splashed on her:
"My leg's on fire. It hurts. It hurts."
Also from Volcano, a character makes a Heroic Sacrifice when he carries an injured man on his back and jumps into a pool of lava before throwing the man to safety. It would be dramatic if the man didn't slowly sink vertically into the lava with a high pitched scream. Since he does, it's got a Wicked-Witch-of-the-West vibe that adds unwanted unreality to the scene.
The main threat of the movie is lava... which moves at about two miles per hour, especially when it's anywhere near people. Convection Shmonvection is in effect, and the ash in the air is treated as nothing more than an inconvenience.
The hero in this film, before taking his present position in LA, was head of the FEMA Fictional Counterpart in St. Louis, Missouri. This explains almost everything this character does, from his being "always on duty" for most of the film to his refusal to even consider ordering the evacuation of LA. He's just treating the rivers of lava as if they were rivers of water that happen to set things they touch on fire—midwesterners always fight to save flooding cities before evacuating, and sometimes don't order evacuation until watercraft is required to do it. Since lava does work much like burning water in this film, it works out just fine.
"Look at their faces... they all look the same."
The beginning of The Miracle Worker: Kate started screaming when she found that her child was blind and deaf. But it was so overdone!
HELEN! HELEN! HELEN!
The "Mama! Papa! SHE KNOWS!" scene was spoofed in the episode of Strangers with Candy where Jerri learns to read, including one element you don't necessarily notice if you're not looking: After yelling this line, Annie Sullivan throws up her hands and just falls right out of frame while the family joyously and obliviously group-hugs.
The Lives of Others, which is an otherwise good movie, features a scene in which a character learns about a friend's suicide... and his immediate reaction is to sit down at the piano, brood, and play depressing music while doing his best to look tortured. It comes out of nowhere and is so over the top, you have to wonder if they shot an alternative scene where he goes to his room, puts on black eye-liner and listens to Linkin Park. Or another where he grows sideburns, wears early 19th-century clothes, and writes moody poetry in the forest.
The scene in This Is England where Shaun and Combo shout at each other after Combo has beaten up Milky was pure Narm. Not only were both trying to chew the scenery, but Combo's Scouse accent also made it funnier.
The Ten Commandments. The dialogue seems like it was intended to be carved into monuments, not spoken by men who were slow of tongue and speech. Cecil B DeMille did it on purpose, but not for humor: that's just how the dialogue in Biblical epic films and 1950s theater productions works. Expected then, but funny for people who aren't used to those styles.
The acting in the film is like a silent movie or a theatrical production from the time. Again, no problem then; but some viewers are no longer used to that acting style.
The well scene:
"Who cares? He's a MAN!"
The miscasting of Edward G. Robinson, best known for playing gangsters, as the villainous Dathan...with a heavy Brooklyn accent. "Yuh see?"
In a retelling of Snow White, they change the original story a bit while still using old things from the original story that hadn't been used before. There's this one scene after Lilli finally dies after eating the apple. Will suddenly pulls her out and throws her limp body over him, shaking her and yelling "BREEEEATHE!" twice.
The end of Marley and Me is supposed to be a tragic scene in which the dog dies. The way our protagonist slowly closes Marley's eyes and the ungrammatical notes his children put in his grave are over the top for some people. Others will still empathize, though.
In Eragon (as if the book was not narm-y enough), Galbatorix (who was not meant to be a character this early) and his servant, Durza, are seen numerous times in awkward Ho Yay situations, including Galbatorix shoving him up against a wall whilst whispering battle plans softly to him and getting touchy-feely.
Galbatorix was keeping his dragon beyond a big-ass cloth map the entire movie. It was meant to be hyper-dramatic.
The scene where Eragon wakes up after exhausting himself trying to save Saphira. Murtagh's face looks like he just played a priceless joke on Eragon.
"Some friendships can never be replaced...but fortunately they don't have to be!"
The above is made all the better by the fact that it's bloody obvious Eragon's actor is the only one taking the film remotely serious after the first ten minutes.
The sex scene in Enemy at the Gates was intended to be steamy or moving, but Rachel Weisz's facial expressions....
BTTF Part 2 had Alternate-Biff, the ripple effect brought in the ham in droves.
Marty: First tell me how, where and when you got that book.
Biff: Alright, take a seat.
Marty doesn't sit.
Biff: SITTT DOWNN!!!
Back to The Future Part III originally had a scene before Marty's showdown with Buford Tannen where Buford kills Marshal Strickland. It was deleted because Robert Zemeckis felt it made audiences so unsympathetic of Buford that they would want him to be killed by Marty. The part with Strickland's son plaintively crying out "PAWWWWWW!" after his father is shot is (would have been?) dripping with Narm.
Superman II had a deleted scene, reinstated for network TV airings, where the boy whose dad Zod dropped to the ground tries to leave the town to get help, and the Kryptonians kill him. "I said, no one leaves!" and "He was only a boy!" are definitely Narm.[2]
The "Please Mister!"/"He's a general!"/"Please Mister General!" part that is in all versions is Narm, especially because this Midwest hick-town kid is speaking with a British accent. This part of the movie was shot in Surrey, England, doubling for a Midwest U.S. small town.
Superman Returns, when a criminal turns a gatling gun on Superman only for the bullets to bounce off of Superman's eyeballs in Slow Motion.
Well, the bullets from the gatling gun bounce of his chest, after which the criminal pulls out a handgun, walks up to Supes, and fires it point blank at his eye.
The protagonist's breakdown is doubly hilarious when his friends pointed out his silly sobs as his face contorted into the least convincing sad-face in all of cinema.
In Matchstick Men, when Nicolas Cage's character freaks out in the pharmacy. The funniest nervous breakdown ever, and Cage has done many good/amusing ones in his career. Videos are here and here. Watch out especially for his one-line Jamaican accent.
When Grant bursts into his trailer on the dig-site....to be met with Hammond bent over, ass in the air, rummaging through his fridge with a bad VPL.
"SHYOOOOOOOT HAAAAAAAR!"
Laura Dern as Dr Satler is horrifically narmy throughout the film, numerous examples include: her high school play shocked-face on seeing the Brachiosaur for the first time, her wincing sobs of joy on encountering an unwell Triceratops, smashing her arm into a massive pile of dino-shit, her goofy running - "ru-uuuuuun!!", the bizarre and slightly un-hinged "Mr Hammond, I think we're back in business!" line when she reboots the power and finally - "S'GONNA COME THROUGH THE GLAAAASSSS!". Oh and also - "Look, we'll discuss sexism in a survival situation when I get back".....just awful.
Hammond's shrill, matronly scream when he overhears Grant shooting at the velociraptor.
The merciless close-up of Samuel L. Jackson's back-lit, whispy-tache mouth, munching on a cigar repeating "Access main program, access main secuuurity."
Samuel L. Jackson narms it up pretty well with the "PLEEEASE! GOD DAMNMIT! HATE THIS HACKER CRAP!"
Space Mutiny. David Ryder's shrill scream near the end of the movie leads Mike and the 'bots to imitate it a few times and giggle; but the most narm comes from the villain Kalgan ("take me away!"). His name sounds the same as a kind of water softener and a kind of bath product; his lines are delivered with weird pauses and mad cackling...seriously, just watch it.
Kalgan is a one-man narmy.
"Meddling fool!"
"Take this you space bitch!"
Kalgan is played by John Philip Law, who virtually made his entire career out of Narm. Especially check out his rare star vehicle: The Love Machine.
The whole "space dentistry" sequence is pure uncut Narm from beginning to end. First there's Kalgan's typical hammy performance as he explains how it works, "not that you'd know anything about that". Then he shines a laser on one of Lea's teeth, and her reaction to being horrifically tortured looks like a cheerful grin. And the laser makes a drilling sound like an actual dentist's drill. Then her inept seduction of an even more inept guard to escape, complete with copious Fan Disservice. Awful.
A dramatic scene late in The Lookout is hampered by one character's loud, repeated insistence that "I have the poweeeer!"
The Unborn: A Jewish woman receives from her deceased Holocaust survivor grandmother a letter read aloud via voiceover (Jewish accent and all) that includes the line, "It has fallen upon you to finish what was started in Auschwitz." It Makes Sense in Context, but it's so needless and wrong that it's hilarious.
Also, when the old dude turns into that weird monster and got a ridiculous looking pancake head. Compared to that freaking kid, that was nothing at all.
"You....complete me" in Jerry Maguire. It doesn't help that Tom Cruise looked like he was taking a dump while he said it.
Hell, with that rictus smile of his, he looked like he was taking a dump through half the movie.
Touching The Void is a generally well-done 2003 documentary about two mountain climbers' nearly-fatal attempt to climb a mountain in the Peruvian Andes. However, one re-enacted scene pulls the viewer out of the moment. One climber is pinned with a broken leg at the bottom of a cravasse. He begins yelling "Stupid!" repeatedly. It loses its effect around the fourth yell, and there are about a dozen. Halfway through, he switches to the even-more-melodramatic "FUCK!"
There is a lot of Ho Yay in the film. If you imagine that the second ice climber is deliberately trying to murder the first climber—an interpretation lent weight by many of his actions—the whole thing becomes a comedy-thriller.
At one point, we get a long sequence wherein the injured climber is lying in a delirium, probably dying, accompanied by lots of trippy camerawork and a song by Boney M. There was a reason for the song—he was experiencing auditory hallucinations of it—but the Soundtrack Dissonance!
Lestat in Interview with the Vampire has quite a few narm moments, the most notable being midway through: Louis finally embraces his vampire instincts by biting a little girl, and Lestat decides to celebrate by dancing around with...wait for it...a dead corpse. Don't believe it? There's still life in the old lady yet!
In the book, that scene is almost creepy. But Tom Cruise dancing with a dead woman is just strange.
Brad Pitt's Heroic BSOD while his Louisiana mansion burns down.
"This place is cursed! DAAAAAAAAMNED!"
"AND YES, YOUR MASTER IS THE DEVIL!"
Swing Kids, starring a young Christian Bale and Robert Sean Leonard, ends with what is supposed to be a heartwrenching scene where one of the characters is taken away by the Nazi gestapo for listening to swing music—presumably to his death in a labor camp. The phrase that the other characters yell at him to show support and cheer him on?
"Swing heil!"
It's repeated over, and over, and over again. By a little boy with a very high pitched voice. Now, that was historically accurate. But it seems ridiculous here, especially since they rarely say anything in German in the movie—just HJ as the abbreviation for the Hitler Youth, the standard Sieg Heils, and this.
The scene where one character slits his wrists with shards of one of his jazz records comes off as both funny and disturbing. Same for the scene involving... the ash box. Were this film pro-Nazi, it would be a sad tale of a young man so extremely disillusioned with his country that he becomes obsessed with jazz music; he appears brainwashed into a life invested entirely in jazz, and he eventually kills himself in a tragic scene shortly after driving his friends away. That all happens in this film! It's just a sub-plot to the main "I don't wanna be a Nazi" plot.
During the finale of The Matrix, Neo kicks the Agent. He proceeds to leave his leg stiff, foot above waist level as he moves it from facing forward to facing his side, then slowly lowers it. Surely intended to be dramatic, but it came across as silly.
The way he nonchalantly says "no" sounds less like a man commanding bullets to stop and more like telling a cashier whether he wants fries with his burger.
The bit where he fights the Agent off with one arm whilst looking slightly bored/stoned.
In The Matrix Revolutions, the death of Trinity was meant to be poignant; but somehow, when the camera panned to her impaled body....
"...There is no spoon." It's supposed to be profound and philosophical, but Keanu Reeves' delivery makes it hilarious.
In Neo's climatic battle with Smith, his mighty slow-motion punch to the face is suddenly rendered hilarious by Hugo Weaving's comically distorted face on impact
Whilst hanging on for dear life above a twenty foot drop, the building which Neo is hanging onto shakes slightly, drawing attention to the fact that the scenery was made of styrofoam. It was funnier than the scene was originally intended to be.
Agent Smith's monotone interrogation was actually hilarious due to the delivery. Until the bugsshow up.
Neo and Trinity walk into a building and shed their cloaks, each carrying eight guns.
In Push, the Screamers were supposed to be menacing, but they looked kind of ridiculous because of the way their faces contorted when they screamed (and because they were men with a superpower commonly attributed to women). Except at the end, when the boys' father finds his sons dead and turns out to be not only a Screamer, but also extremely powerful. Oh Crap.
Even the screamers at the end seemed hilarious. Every time something tries to get done in an action sequence in this movie, some Screamer shows up out of nowhere and makes his O-face, and everybody else collapses in pain. They need their own family sitcom.
From Watchmen: "You killed my dogs!" said in an annoyed tone. Thus almost making one of the most chilling parts of the novel a joke.
Rorschach's voice all through the film. It's as if he's doing a bad impression of Bale's already-terrible Batman voice.
Dreiberg's Big No when Dr. Manhattan asplodes Rorschach, coupled with his falling to his knees dramatically. It varies between Narm and powerful.
It was very narmy in the trailer. In the context of the film, it makes more sense. Most people would react the same way.
DRAMATIC SLOW MOTION in random action scenes. For instance, Rorschach using his poor-boy flamethrower on a SWAT team before running off in dramatic slow motion while bullets whiz past him. They tried too hard to make him look like a total badass.
Dr. Manhattan's giant glowing penis is capable of turning any scene it appears in into epic Narm.
In the opening with the hippies and the soldiers:
"Have this flower, Mister Soldier."
"Why thank you, little Hippie girl. The boys and I got you something, too."
"Yay! Bullets!"
It combined two different real-life scenes. There was a protest where soldier(s?) fired on unarmed protesters, though no flowers were involved.
That would be the Kent state massacre, which pushes that scene into very uncomfortable territory. Especially given that two of the four fatalities weren't even participating in the protest; they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. One of the survivors was also permanently paralyzed from the chest down.
The scene in Watchmen that took the cake was during Silk Spectre's climactic confrontation with Ozymandias. ""Adrian!! [dramatic pause...] You're such an asshole!" Yes, it was in the comic (with slightly different wording), but the actress's delivery killed it.
Silk Spectre just stands around doing nothing while Doctor Manhattan goes after Ozymandias. When Ozymandias returns to the main hall, Silk Spectre just magically appears from beside him.
There's a frequently revisited argument between Silk Spectre I and her husband that includes the line, "I used to be a hero, GOD DAMNIT!
In fact, pretty much any scene with Silk Spectre I devolved into narm.
Hallelujah...
Every. Single. Sex. Scene.
While I'm not a fan of the movie (I'm of the opinion that the original comic is unfilmable, and should not be made into a movie), I will defend the sex scenes: they're SUPPOSED to be awkward and kinda funny. It's showing how, despite being heroes and vigilantes, the characters (especially Dreiberg and Manhattan) are inept at almost anything else.
"The Comedian... was your (Laurie's) father." That line was so unnecessary after the flashback sequence I burst out laughing at it.
Both Rorschach's voice and the random slow-motion in fight scenes can be justified as parodying some more ridiculous elements of superhero movies, much as the comic deconstructed and parodied various comic book tropes. Not that this makes them better to watch, necessarily. YMMV.
Barton Fink: "LOOK UPON MEEEE! I'LL SHOW YOU THE LIFE OF THE MIND! I'LL SHOW YOU THE LIFE OF THE MIND!" Maybe it was meant to be symbolic and gruesome; but out of context, seeing John Goodman running down a flaming hallway with a shotgun screaming that.... Darn YouTube...
Born On the Fourth of July. It's hard to shed a tear over Ron's frustration and despair when Tom Cruise is yelling "PENIS PENIS PENIS!" for nearly a minute straight. Also, the wheelchair fight between him and Willem Dafoe.
Is that the Training Routine which comes after giving forceful instructions to an ashtray?
In the 2004 version of King Arthur, there's the point where Arthur is up on the hill, and Lancelot and the other knights ride up to help fight against the Saxons. Very awe-inspiring, except when the camera turns to Lancelot's face and shows him smirking at Arthur.
From the same film, the scene where Lancelot leaves his village. He turns back to look at a crowd of warriors watching him go, and they all scream at him.
Lancelot! BLAAAAAAGH!
That's supposed to be Rus, a Sarmatian battle cry. Why can't that guy speak clearly?
"You killed my brother George you BAST-ERD!"
"This is battery acid, you slime!"
The entire second half of the movie, the half featuring the adult actors, is brimming with Narm. For instance, there's Richard Thomas's (as adult Bill Denborough) laughable attempt at stuttering, and John Ritter's awkward love scenes (one of which involves macking the bloody clown itself).
Though Eagle Eye as a whole was generally okay, and this had nothing to do with the acting: the insane computer declares one of the characters a traitor and states, "and treason is punishable by death."
The reciting of the preamble:
The tension of the final scene is undermined when you realize that none of the children are playing their instruments, and would have to be musical prodigies to play them that well.
Longtime fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000 are well-aware of just how notoriously brimming with NARM Miles O-Keefe's The Cave Dwellers is. The three protagonists encounter "snakes that growl". The setting of the film jumps around from scene to scene. A dramatic long shot of the hero riding his horse off into the sunset is ruined by tire tracks in the background. The same hero inexplicably FLIES A HANG GLIDER.
Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that Miles O-Keefe himself saw the mockery of his film and found it so funny that he asked for a copy in the mail.
Michael J. Nelson:Hey, you guys; if I ever burst through the eye of a giant sea monster, I promise to have a better line ready than "MIIIIIIIKE!"
The Omen trilogy has plenty of comic death sequences.
Patrick Troughton getting a church spire through him
Tell me you didn't keep waiting for him to regenerate.
This troper was actually waiting for him to move instead of screaming "NOOOOOOOO" for 10 minutes.
A guy getting decapitated by a plate glass window, complete with slo-mo of his flying head.
Buggenheim being buried alive. He looks only slightly annoyed.
The black guy and the cable
Damien's burning aunt
Cthulu Mansion (which, despite the title, has nothing to do with Cthulu) has a would-be dramatic scene at a carnival where one of the main characters gets shot in the leg and then kicked when he's down. Not only does the person doing the kicking appear to just be kicking his own foot, but also, during the same scene, the actor playing the character who just got shot in the leg shows up as an extra, casually walking by as security guards rush to the scene. See the video clip accompanying this review.
The Boondock Saints, where Willem Dafoe's FBI investigator character just whips out his gun and yells, "There was a FIREFIGHT!" Possibly also the bit where he dresses in drag...
In Disney's Hercules, Zeus, after discovering that his son has been taken from Mount Olympus, lets out a fantastic "NOOOOOOOO!"
Some of the Titans' voices are a bit silly. Especially when they are proclaiming what they will do to Zeus, and the hurricane one goes "Blow. Him.Away!"
There's also the Cyclops using Hercules to play hackey sack and his Evil Laughter.
The football scene in Little Children. Between Sarah's incredibly overenthusiastic cheering and both football teams vanishing immediately, it's more funny than emotionally moving.
The 1977 B-movie Death Bed is for the most part a borefest, but has a few moments of truly fantastic narm.
After claiming one of its victims, the bed lets out a low moan, and then consumes the contents of her bag, including... wait for it... Pepto-freaking-Bismol.
The most boring scene in the movie is probably the one where a character drags herself from the bed, moaning repetitively and unconvincingly, for a whole two minutes and fifty seconds... until she gets lassoed by the bedsheet. Shades of Indiana Jones and the Balrog before those films were made...
One character late in the movie gets his hands skeletonized by the bed but remains quite composed throughout. His reaction when the tip of his finger falls off:
"Great, the cartilage is decaying."
From the psychological thriller Session 9, featuring David Caruso:
"You. You come with me."
"Hey," * gratuitous zoom* "Fuck you."
Caruso was okay in that movie, and the direction was great on the whole, but Caruso happened to have his worst delivery at the exact second the director faltered.
In The Black Dahlia, the resemblance between the characters Madeleine Linscott and Elizabeth Short is a plot point. But their respective actresses, sharp-faced, full-lipped Hilary Swank and waifish, wide-eyed Mia Kirshner, aside from both being attractive young brunettes, look NOTHING alike. Another character's exclamation of "She looks like that dead girl!" has been known to shock audiences into confused laughter.
Gallipoli's final scene, in which Archie goes out of the trenches and is shot. The exact moment of this is a freeze-frame, which then fades to black. The Narm comes from the freeze-frame lingering for so long that the viewer might start wondering if the film (or tape or DVD) is defective.
Nights in Rodanthe. Towards the end, Diane Lane first finds out that Richard Gere is dead and is clutching their letters and crying; this may be funny to viewers outside the intended demographic.
The Trojan Women. Talthybius (Brian Blessed) tells Andromache (Vanessa Redgrave) that he has to throw her son Astyanax off a cliff. She screams inarticulately for, seriously, about five minutes as the soldiers try to grab the boy from her; she keeps twisting her body (she's really tall) in front of him as they lunge ineffectually. Plus, Astyanax is supposed to be a baby, but the kid playing him looks about eight and says nothing the whole time people are discussing his murder! Wouldn't you at least react?! Even poor Katharine Hepburn's -- um, Hecuba's -- constant shaking (caused by a hereditary disorder) can be amusing.
In My Sister's Keeper, Cameron Diaz breaks down into hilariously awful tears and what were meant to be heart-wrenching sobs. The audience was still laughing even as her daughter dies from cancer.
A high percentage of Orphan. Seeing what is supposedly a young girl hold a knife to her young brother's genitals and say "I'll cut off your hairless little prick before you even know what it's for," and then dress up like a total ho-bag and try to seduce her father—that isn't scary or heartbreaking. It's funny.
It's absurdly disturbing or disturbingly absurd; we can split the difference.
And then there's what the movie says about America's adoption process. That a woman who almost got her youngest child killed via neglect while in a drunken stupor and is still in therapy for many serious issues would be allowed to adopt is hilarious. In real life, it's hard for fit and capable parents to adopt. However, these parents can just walk into an orphanage and pick out a special needs child when they can't take care of their own special needs child.
From Iron Man: In the climactic battle, the dialogue goes something like this:
"PUSH THE BUTTON!!!"
"You said not to."
"JUST PUSH IT!!!"
The A Clockwork Orange gang fight scene was a testament to the ultraviolence that Alex and the Droogs does on a daily basis. Unfortunately, thanks to changes in Standards and Practices and culture, it now falls under Seinfeld Is Unfunny. Films can get away with so much more graphic violence now than they did in The Seventies, and do it so often, that the gang fight now seems, um, moderate.
Also, the look on the author's face when he realizes that Alex is the guy who raped his wife. Even the actor thought it was too much, and complained to Kubrick that "I look like I'm takin' a shit!"
In Quarantine, a handheld camera style horror movie, at one point the cameraman is attacked by a zombieperson infected with super-rabies jumping out from the shadows. He fights back by repeatedly poking his attacker in the face with the (incredibly delicate and expensive) lens of the camera he's carrying with him, rather than swinging the camera like a club like you would expect someone in that situation to. It needs to be seen to be appreciated, and it doesn't mesh well with the rest of the movie, since after all that abuse, the camera is miraculously unharmed. This, when there are many times in the film when it malfunctioned from someone lightly swatting it.
Almost every possible dramatic scene in District 9 is dampened by utterances of "Fowck!"
Somewhat justified in that he's using the Afrikaans word "fok," which means the same thing but is pronounced slightly differently.
The part just before Wikus vomits and blacks out repeats the line "cut some cake!" in slo-mo, and it ends up sounding an awful lot like a bad Bill Cosby impersonation.
Near the end of Strangers on a Train, the police are chasing the criminal through a carnival. One police officer shouts "You there!" and fires into the crowd, hitting the operator of a carousel. The operator collapses onto his control board, causing the carousel to spin faster and faster until it flies off its axis and dramatically explodes.
The Covenant has the Big Bad trying to look intimidating by quoting Little Miss Muffet.
Let's not forget the movie's climactic battle scene where the Big Bad levitates from the balcony, arms outspread, and intones, "How 'bout I make you... my wi-otch."
Most of Nic Cage's time as Castor Troy is full of this especially that one face he makes when he grabs the girl's butt.
I'm sorry, but as Cage had his Berserk Button moment when he was Sean Archer first seeing himself in the mirror as Castor Troy, smashes the mirror with a chair and yells "Fuck You!" and points at person in the room #1 [camera shows shocked expression of person number 1], yells "Fuck You!" and points at person in the room #2 [camera shows shocked expression of person number 2], yells "Fuck You!" and points at person in the room #3 [shocked expression of person number 3]: I literally howled with laughter and rewound the DVD like 10 times.
Tron: Early on in the film, the program CLU (played by Jeff Bridges) gets caught by the Master Control Program and gets de-rezzed. He screams like a little girl.
Yes, that is the line used in the theatrical version.
It gets even Narmier when her character gets tackled and bitten by said baboon when she finds it. Other movies would have played that for the absolutely bizarre, ridiculous experience that it was -- Murder by Numbers decided that it was a good time for Bullock to deploy the Very Serious PTSD Flashback. (PTSD flashbacks = Dude, Not Funny; PTSD flashbacks induced by a random baboon attack = unintentional hilarity.)
The scene where Tommy tears up his apartment and then kills himself - "Why, Lisa, WHY, WHY?! YOU BITCH!!"
Then there's a short scene where all Johnny is supposed to do is buy some flowers. It's not sad, not funny or dramatic. It's just Johnny buying some flowers. But even such a simple and regular scene was too much for Mr. Wiseau. The results has to be seen to be believed.
The majority of the movie is Narm. Most of it can also be seen as So Bad It's Good.
Kitana: Mother, you're alive Sindel: Too bad YOU... will die.
The Elder Gods declaring at the end, "The fate of the universe will be decided as it should be... IN MORTAL KOMBAT!!!!" just tends to unintentionally lampshade how utterly absurd the whole concept of the franchise is.
At the end of The Golden Compass, Lyra is alone on a vast barren tundra (the camera pans out helpfully to show just how vast and empty it is) at a tiny building she's only barely been able to find after looking forever. As soon as she gets in trouble, several large groups of people who should have no idea where she is converge conveniently on the same spot all at the same time.
Any time there's a close-up of a CG bear roaring defiantly; it happens about twenty times in under five minutes.
The film ends on a happy note with Lyra and Roger going to reunite with Asriel, hoping he'll protect them. This may elicit a bit of chuckle from anyone who has read the book... Asriel kills Roger to further his plans when they get there.
From Beyond, a little known 1986 horror movie bearing an odd likeness to "The Thing": A pair of scientists create a device that opens into a nightmarish, otherworldy dimension. After finding the deranged head scientist's "headless" corpse, the police arrest his assistant, Dr. Crawford, whose experience with the machine has reduced him to a gibbering wreck. At the rehabilitation center, he recounts his horrifying ordeal in one of the most laughable quotes possible:
"It [the alien creature] bit off his head, like a gingerbread man!"
As balls-explodingly awesome as Tom Yum Goong a.k.a. The Protector is, and as much as it's clearly supposed to be dramatic, the scene where a bunch of Giant Mooks put Tony Jaa's elephant in a headlock and throw it across the room is flat-out hilarious.
The religious film Facing the Giants features a scene where Coach Grant gives one member of the football team a lesson on motivation by making him crawl from one end of the field to another while carrying his classmate on his back. The number of times he yells at the player to keep going makes it hilarious instead of motivating.
Every single moment with the coach's wife. True, most of the cast had never acted before due to the low-budget, locally filmed nature of the movie, but most of them are at least trying. The wife, by contrast, seems like she just stepped out of Hee-Haw.
Don't see Nine with anyone who doesn't get Greek funerals. Just... don't. It's cruel.
From Saw VI: The entire scene revolving around the Carousel Trap.
"LOOK AT ME! When you're killing me, you LOOK AT ME!"
"Piranha..."
From Saw 3D: "Why couldn't you just SHUT THE FUCK UP?!"
In Daredevil, the scene where Bullseye is introduced. Flinging the darts without missing (or looking, for that matter) was kinda cool. But when he decides to reveal his trademark forehead, just the look on his face... it's hilarious. And not in a good way.
Speaking of Bullseye, the scene where he stands up on his motorcycle. Yes, Colin Farrell, we get it. You think you're a badass. Go away.
Daredevil standing out in the rain and thunder saying "I'm not the bad guy".
The 1999 remake of House on Haunted Hill: "I had nothing to do with this! I was adopted!", said in a way that sounded straight out of a Saturday Night Live skit.
Once the survivors escape the horrific and murderous house, they cheerfully end the film with these lines:
"That was a kickass party!"
"Okay, but one more thing--how do we get down from here?"
laughter*
Big Fish: A film directed by Tim Burton about a man who goes on a bunch of amazing, and sometimes supernatural adventures during his younger years. Now old and near death, the man's incredulous son tries to reconcile him by telling him a story of how he dies. In the alternate dream version, he takes his father out of the hospital and after that escape he takes him to the lake. Everything in that scene is extremely emotional, until the end. Before saying goodbye, Will finally tells his father:
"You become what you always were.... a very big fish".
The 1934 version of Imitation of Life: Claudette Colbert saying "I want my quack-quack" with all her usual elegance and gravitas. That's the last line of the movie, folks. It's intended to be an Ironic Echo, which only makes it worse.
Disco Pigs (an indie Irish film) had Cillian Murphy, a twenty-four-year-old man, play a sixteen-year-old boy at the heart of an obsessive romance that makes Bella and Edward look independent, when everyone else in the film either was much younger or looked much younger. The movie's overuse of slow mo didn't help. Just try to watch the scene where Murphy's character loses it in the men's room for fifteen bloody minutes without thinking, "Cheer up emo kid!" And slow-motion in the crying scenes... A Veritable Narm goldmine!
There's a scene in The Breakfast Club where Bender and Andrew get into an argument. Andrew says something about how he would win a fight between them, and Bender says something like 'Actually, I'd kill you' and Andrew's like 'Yeah, right' but Bender takes out a knife and sticks it into the top of a chair. Obviously it's meant to be a serious scene, but it's ruined by Allison leaning over and stealing the knife.
Oh, come on, you're a bunch of suicidal morons! What are you, crazy? Plan C? Restart the core "somehow"? Oh, that's a great idea! That's a brilliant idea! I can't believe I'm stuck in this floating septic tank with you lunatics! You may have nothing to lose. You may have nothing to lose! You may have nothing to lose, but I have my life to lose thank you very much while you're up! Now turn it around! He told us to go back and we're going back! Why? You want to be a hero? You want to be a martyr? What do you want to be? You're out of your mind! Thank you! Turn it around!
The Right Stuff shows how thin the line between a Crowning Moment of Awesome and Narm can be. One particular moment has a jeep driver surveying the crash site, spotting a distant figure, and asking "is that a man?" Quick cut to Chuck Yaeger walking proudly Out of the Inferno, and then to the other man answering, "you're damn right it is!" Depending on where you are on the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism, it can be highly awesome or hilariously awesome.
At the end of Gran Torino, when Clint Eastwoodstarts singing about his car. It's supposed to be a solemn, bittersweet ending, but that was just too much.
The most ridiculous moment was probably Tao trying to break out of the basement screaming "WAAAAALT WAAAALT LET ME OUT RIGHT NOW! WAAAALT!"
The rape scene in the Swept Away remake is robbed of any power it might have thanks to two things. Firstly, the sequence doesn't even attempt to disguise the fact that both parties are still wearing their pants throughout the whole thing, and secondly the victim is being played by Madonna, whose legendary acting un-ability just makes her seem whiny and slightly annoyed during the sequence.
Buildings are collapsing, people are screaming, the characters are racing to reach the airport in time... And suddenly a giant donut rolls by.
The Brazillian dub made it even funnier by making one of the characters shout "Cuidado com a rosquinha!!!"(Watch out for the donout!!!)
The donut was fine, that was silly and shocking at the same time. The old ladies in the taxi, however...
"Reverse motion engaged."
"No Pull-ups!" "Niiice." FFFFFFFFFFFFF-
Hell, the movie wasn't even out a weekend, and this was already happily adopted as the year's best bad movie quote.
The first time a plane takes off from or lands at an airport that's literally falling into the ground, that's pretty cool. By the fourth... yeah.
The Las Vegas takeoff was especially Narmful. Some ass in the control tower screams repeatedly at the heroes not to take off because they don't have "clearance"-as a volcanic ashcloud kills him.
Seriously? No one's going to mention "WHERE ARE THE SPACESHIPS?!?!"
Gordon tells Kate "I think there's something driving us apart" or something to that effect, and immediately the ground fissures, right between them both. By this point, many viewers were certain that the film had segued into happy self-parody mode.
After watching This you will never see a certain scene the same way again. "The latinos...HAVE MUTATED! And they're heating up the planet *dances*"
Parodied MERCILESSLY in Dirty Work: "Now he's taken my chainsaw, and he's using it onME!
Moviegoers went into hysterics after watching the trailer of Legion, during the scene where a possessed elderly woman climbs up onto the ceiling.
It wasn't so much the lady for me as the guy screaming "SHOOT IT!!!" at the top of his lungs.
In the movie itself: the Special Effects Failure with the evil ice cream man, the fact that there's a character named Jeep, Gabriel's chainsaw-mace thing, "I just want to play with your baby!"
In The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, the climactic recreation of Peter playing Chance the gardener in Being There is made unintentionally amusing by Geoffrey Rush's failure to get the voice right—he sounds less like Chance than he does Mr. Flibble, especially since he doesn't have much dialogue in the scene being shot.
In Dogma, when Bethany learns that she's a descendant of Jesus. She responds by running away and falling into a lake and screaming to the heavens "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT?!?" It was supposed to be... dramatic, maybe, but it ends up as just silly. Probably due to the sudden Mood Whiplash.
A Fistful of Dollars may be one of the greatest Westerns ever made, but it has one of the least intimidating speeches ever:
See, that's what I wanna talk about. He's feelin' real bad. My mule. You see, he got all riled up when you fired those shots at his feet. I understand you were just playin' around. But the mule, he just doesn't get it. Of course, if you were to all apologise... I don't think it's nice, you laughin'. See, my mule don't like people laughin'. He gets the crazy idea you're laughin' at him. Now, if you apologise, like I know you're going to, I might convince him that you really didn't mean it.
The last five minutes of Requiem for a Dream. Up until then, it was pretty awesome. And then, suddenly, it... um, wasn't.
Any film that packs simultaneous fates of gangrenous arm removal, deep-South imprisonment, lobotomy, and donkey sex has veered from parable to parody.
How on earth hasn't anyone mentioned: ASS TO ASS! ASS 2 ASS!!!
Ditto that for the "blackout" sequences in Y Tu Mama Tambien. Okay, we get it - things die. After the "pig picnic" scene, though, the cutaways meant to symbolize the innate tragedy of mortal existence become laughably narmtastic. By the end, it's damn near impossible to take them seriously... which ruins what could have been a powerful climax.
That fucking piano theme used to death in Eyes Wide Shut. Oh, hell with it - just the entire duration of Eyes Wide Shut.
The creature murders Elizabeth in a gruesome manner, ripping her heart out, but then her hair catches fire from some candles that were knocked over and Victor has to put it out before he can embrace her dead body.
Can't forget the scene where he first creates the monster. After a hilarious "LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!!", the monster gets caught on hooks, knocked out, and dragged upwards, where we see its feet hanging. And the doctor just leaves it hanging there while he goes to collect himself!
Dr. Varnick, the villain of Beethoven, has a number of narmy lines. "I need PUPPIES!"
The entirety of an Egyptian film called Ahlam Omrena, Dreams of Our Lives. The DVD box cover claims it to be romance, comedy, drama, and action all in one. The opening of the film has a Meet Cute scene of the two leads, when suddenly "Khalid, your horse is giving birth!" Cue dramatic music, the rush to help birth a pony, and a ruined chance meeting. It doesn't get any better than that, or does it...?
In Sherlock Holmes, it is shown that Sherlock can take down enemies by attacking nerves in a kinda slow V.A.T.S style. At full speed, it can appear that he is slapping the enemies to incapacitation.
The Wolf Man: The 2010 remake of the 1945 classic. Despite being a movie rife with dismemberment and painful transformations, all of it fails to cover up the immeasurable number of narm in every scene:
In almost every single scene is the goddamn moon, even during the daytime! Even reviewers of Spill.com noted how every scene transition is the moon. It was like the viewing audience were too stupid that to equate a full moon with every werewolf transformation.
In the midst of the werewolf son and father battle, Benicio Del Toro's character's love-interest Gwen runs into another room to escape the battling beasts. Suddenly, right in the next scene she is already on the other side of the lawn outside the burning mansion. The scene cut looked like she managed to cover that much ground in only a few seconds, and wearing a thick Victorian dress no less!
The less than subtle over-the-top gorn fest makes the movie seem more like a horror-comedy, than the horror-drama it was meant to aim for. Seriously, the werewolf actually completely beheads a guy hitting him once.
Whenever the wolfman starts howling. However, it's more of a narm charm than pure out narm.
The director's decision to use a computer animated bear and deer. Also doubles as special effects failure.
The last moments between Gwen and the dying Lawrence after being shot in werewolf form by a silver bullet. The scene would have been heartrending, if Lawrence didn't die right there the moment they exchange their last words. He doesn't pass off slowly, he just turns his head and he's dead. And suddenly it's not so sad anymore.
The way the movie went nuts with the jump-scare tactic.
Anothony Hopkin's Headroll
The Dr's impalement on the asylum fence.
And shortly after that, the scene where the wolf is on the roof with the statue, howling at the moon. It's supposed to look all imposing and whatnot, but comes across as though he's raping the statue.
Richard Rich Sr.: The Smellmaster says it's trinitrotoluene. And if my memory serves me right, trinitrotoluene is the proper name for... Regina Rich "TNT!" Richard Rich Sr.[mild surprise] Good gracious, Regina, it's a bomb! Regina Rich : Get RID OF IT!!
Among many other things, Gigli contains the immortal and oddly prophetic line spoken by Jennifer Lopez's character Ricki (requesting Ben Affleck's character perform oral sex on her):
Wesley Snipes, in Blade II, when baiting Ron Perlman and his Blood Pack buddies: "Now you got an explosive device stuck to the back of your head!" Possibly meant only to be semi-serious, but should not have generated the widespread paroxysms of laughter that it did.
The ending of the first one made it look like they ran dry of their special effects budget. The head explosion when the Dragon Lady was sprayed by the garlic mace looked like a balloon popped. The Big Bad's death looked animated. And the vampire spirits looked so badly CGI'd it ruins the seriousness of it.
Pretty much everything in Blade: Trinity's unrated version. Ryan Reynolds and the vampire trio that resurrect Dracula are the narmiest things in the whole franchise. They all hate each other so much, that they come up with the worst combinations of swear words and normal words ever to fling at each other as insults. On top of that, the vampire trio seems so immature and utterly nonthreatening, they come off more like spoiled douchebags than evil villains.
When Perseus said to his men, in regards to Medusa: "Don't look that bitch in the eye."
The line "Soldiers from Argos!" (as well as any subsequent reference to Argos) is hilarious if you live in the UK, where Argos is the name of a general goods retailer.
The Ritchie Valens BiopicLa Bamba ends with Ritchie's brother Bob (Esai Morales), after Ritchie's death (obviously), walking to the middle of a bridge, then crying out to the heavens "RRRIIIIIITCHIIIIEEEEE!!!"
Speaking of him, there was one scene in the dreadfully boring thriller, Lakeview Terrace, in which Samuel J. Jackson plays a racist cop terrorizing the mixed couple next door. At one point, Patrick Wilson is sitting in his car listening to loud rap music and smoking a cigarette when Samuel's character suddenly shows up. After giving a couple of not so subtle threats, what little tension this scene has created is blown away by a howl of laughter when he calmly says:
"You know, you can sit out here listening to this shit all night, but when you wake up in the morning, you'll still be white."
"I'm not going to lose my virginity to a piece of fruit" .
Dr. Grace Augustine of Avatar, when explaining that Pandora, a planet, has more connections between its trees than the human brain. No wonder everyone just stares at her.
Another rather narmy moment in that film is in the scene where Eytukan is killed during the destruction of the Hometree. Neytiri sounds suspiciously like she's saying "wakey-wakey" at one point, which can rather ruin the dramatic mood once you hear it.
Depends on the viewer, but there are several events and lines in the movie that don't come off quite as dramatic as intended. The destruction of Hometree, particularly because of Quaritch's Colonel Kilgore moment during it, the death of the Na'vi chief, and the "Eywa has heard you, Jake!" speech in the final battle can actually be pretty narmtastic, coming across as a bit over-the-top if you weren't fully drawn into the story.
Zoe Saldana's entire performance as Neytiri can be this for some viewers. She goes highly overboard with the acting on occasion, including the "You are like a BAY-BEEE!" speech, and half the theater burst into groans and snorts when she went "Waaaaaaaaaah!" during Eytukan's death.
It doesn't help that she sounds exactly like Tia Dalma.
Though at least in the last case, it may be more a misinterpretation. In some cultures that the Na'vi take inspiration from such overly dramatic displays (from a Western standpoint) of mourning at entirely appropriate. The louder you cry, the bigger of a scene you make, the greater the mourning.
"Oh yeah, I banked SO hard!"
"They killed their Mother!"
"SHUT YOUR PIE-HOLE!"
Lyle Wainfleet's over-excited cries of "GET SOME!!!" have become pretty notorious amongst the Avatar fandom.
Ridiculous slo-mo when Quaritch terminates the link-ups and arrests Jake, Grace and Norm: Grace's "YOU BASTAAAARD!!" and Norm's silent shouting and aggressive pointing.
After Trudy and Max the scientist guy break Grace, Jake and Norm out of jail and they dash off down some corridors to steal a chopper and escape, Max does a hilarious spin to check for pursuers.
When Grace gets shot:
Jake, to Norm: "Get the trauma kit!"
Norm, screaming (to who??) "TRAUMA KIT!!!!"
Misery: During the big fight scene, just as Annie Wilkes (played by Kathy Bates) falls to the floor and hits her head on the typewriter, the actress is replaced by a really bad looking Kathy Bates dummy.
In For the Love of the Game, the main character's girlfriend is trying to get him help in the hospital after he cuts his hand open with a saw but no one will help them. In frustration, she screams:
IS BASEBALL NOT AMERICA'S FAVORITE PASTIME!?
Ninja Assassin has an unforgettable scene where the hero and his potential love interest are tending bonsai trees.
Raizo: Trees don't have hearts. Kiriko: Everything has a heart. Raizo: I don't. Kiriko: Want me to check? (she applies her ear to his chest) Yes. It says "Hello!" It misses you.
It's a holdover from Joss Whedon's pass at the script, where Toad had a Running Gag involving "what a toad does" about so-and-so. The payoff line stayed in, but not the buildup. Even knowing the context, however, it's still kind of a dumb thing to say.
X Men First Class is a mostly well-acted, impressive film but one particularly narmy scene was when a young Erik Lehnsherr delivers a Big Nein after Sebastian Shaw kills his mother to trigger his powers over magnetism, followed by his Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
Michael Fassbender (who plays adult Erik) puts in the best performance of the whole film. Unfortunately, about two-thirds of the way in, he starts lapsing into an Irish accent. By the final scene on the beach, he sounds like Ian Paisley asking where the terrorists operate from.
"I can't feel my legs. I can't feel my legs. I can't feel my legs."
The scene where Banshee learns to fly by screeching in the air while uplifting music plays.
Don't we have any from Pirates of the Caribbean? The opening scene of At World's End, with the mass hanging of the pirates and the little boy leading them in the "Hoist the Colours" song, is properly chilling—but it loses a bit of its edge when one soldier, I'll call him Captain Obvious, rushes over to Beckett and tells him, "They've started to sing, sir." There are hundreds of condemned pirates, and Beckett is yards away. It's... very unlikely he wasn't already aware.
"You like pain? Try wearing a corset!!"
Bad Girls has this infamous line:
"We sold our bodies; why can't we sell some wood?"
Depending on who you ask, both the 1973 and the 2000 version of Jesus Christ Superstar. To give some examples from both:
The entire temple scene in the 2000 version, with explosions and cages full of bombs.
'Heaven on their Minds in the 1973 version - Judas having a temper tantrum on top of a mountain, ending with him shouting 'listen to me!' over and over. Plus the weird gestures he makes while singing.
Jerome Pradon's accent in the 2000 version. 'YOU HAVE MAH-DAH'D ME!'
Judas's death in 1973 version. He hangs himself with his belt.
Inception: Every time they cut to the falling van. Especially Arthur's expression.
Cobb talking to Mal in limbo, which is an extremely intense scene - until Cobb gets to his "all your perfection, all your imperfection" speech. It probably is the only time in the film Leonardo DiCaprio looks genuinely confused, instead of acting confused.
The Prince of Tides is a prime source of narm. The hilarious break-down scene where Nick Nolte break down crying in BARBRA's arms and she whispers "it was sooo hard, you've had to keep it all inside" while a single tear runs down her shiny, shiny face is a prime example of narm. The entire film is indeed one big narm-fest, where chewing the scenery is not only encouraged but required.
Basic Instinct 2. During his sex scenes, David Morrissey always looks like he's about three seconds away from tossing his lunch. You almost expect him to ask Sharon Stone if she has any Dramamine.
The premise of Seven Pounds, build up and emotional beating over the head just fail spectacularly. The main character is unlikable and delivers the Broken Aesop of the movie by killing himself. It basically boils down to the emotional equal of Tastes Like Diabetes.
This is pretty much caused by the film's cold open where Tim reports his own suicide. You know how the movie's going to end, so it's impossible for the suspense and emotion to actually get to you.
Masako Tezuka from Godzilla and Mothra: the Battle for Earth has her mouth hang open when seeing Godzilla's Kick the Dog moment flinging the Mothra larva from his tail as Disproportionate Retribution for biting the tip of the tail.
The prison documentary Scared Straight is so over-the-top with bellowed profanity that it's a laugh riot since the prisoners aren't actually in your face. "THEY'RE GONNA KNOCK YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THAT BED AND DO BODILY HARM TO YOUR ASSHOLE! BY STICKIN' A DICK IN IT!"
The Man Who Fell to Earth's highly surreal nature leads to narm when protagonist Thomas Jerome Newton, out of anger, flips over a tray of cookies that his lover Mary-Lou brings over to him, and in slow motion, no less.
Alot of the movie is narm, mainly due to all the unnecessary Mind Screw elements.
"GET OUT OF MY BRAIN! GO BACK TO WHERE YOU BELONG!"
The sheer awfulness of that scene has to be emphasized. What we have are six or seven Earthbenders moving in perfect precision and choreography and stomping the earth, and then from the side of the screen a rock about the size of a football floats lazily towards the Firebenders. They would have done better simply to pick up rocks and throw them.
To be fair, the 6 Earthbenders were more likely responsible for the second wall of earth that was bent up to block a fireball, as the man who was saved looked towards them immediately after. And there's a seventh man present that actually shoots the rock at someone. It doesn't save the scene however, because of awkward choreography and camera movement made it look like they were moving the little rock.
The best of all has to be "And you think my son might be this person?" "... YEEEEEEEEEEES!"
Iroh's dreadlocks. Iroh's from the Fire Nation, not Rasta Nation, mahn.
And in her first scene scene, Yue's hair seen from the back happens to look like a penis. That was the only thing the Cinema Snob found entertaining. Since her hairstyle changes for the rest of the movie, one must wonder if she noticed...
Another great line is "Again, I offer my condolences on your nephew burning to death in that terrible accident". Subtle, Zhao...real subtle. He then goes on to talk about Iroh's son dying in the siege of Ba Sing Se, at great length and detail.
"HOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" They obviously meant it to be dramatic, but it fell short of that and just sounded like a walrus' mating call. Or, seeing as waterbenders get their power from the moon, one could easily interpret that they are actually werewolves due to this war cry...
Also, the close-up of two waterbenders who looked more like Jonah Hill and Jesse Eisenberg. "Fan-boy battalion", indeed.
Due to the difference between American and British English, "I could tell at once that you were a bender, and that you would realize your destiny." has much different connotations.
Katara shoving a Fire Nation Soldier (aka Ka-tackle).
Fire Nation Soldier: (to Aang, in the tone of Will Ferrellimitating Robert Goulet) The Avatar has to be an airbender. Are you an airbender, boy? (laughs slightly)
Before that, "IT'S TIME FOR YOU TO STOP DOING THIS!". Not convincing, AH-ng.
One that many people miss is an old man saying "They took away any....tools...related to...bending." I...am...acting.
SOME OF THE GREAT MONKS. CAN MEDITATE. FOR FOUR DAYS.
Anytime Zhao is on-screen. His whiny voice is a contrast from the sexy voice of the one and only Jason Isaacs. He's basically talking as if he's doing commentary on The Daily Show.
Katara's defeat to Zuko. No, she is not in the lead at first then defeated after the sun is up, she was instantly beaten after two shots. The funniest part about that scene is that after being defeated, she was instantly whacked into a tree. Cue laughter from the audience.
Remember when Zuko's ship got blown up? In the movie version, Iroh, who was busy having his foot massaged, simply pushes his masseuse aside and shouts "ZUKO!!!!" with his hands way up.
And then right after Princess Yue's sacrifice, the moon finally returned. This was supposed to be a moment of hope, and then a Northern Water Tribe villager starts shoving a Fire Nation soldier to the ground, instead of doing some water whip or something. Not only this is unintentionally hilarious, this scene completely misses the point of connecting the moon with waterbending.
The ending, right before the Azula stinger, was supposed to be an epic bowing down scene ala Lord of the Rings. Instead, we see Aang doing some weird pose with expression that screams "I need to pee, dammit!".
The Deleted Scenes are arguably worse. This one starts with the stupidity of Soh-ka hitting a Fire Nation mook on the ass with his boomerang, Katara's wooden acting, and the dancing. My God, the dancing. And then the crew wanders into the shot.
In a deleted scene, Katara takes down a Fire Nation Mook by flipping him by his arm. Katara is a 13-year old girl.
"Ung" telling his friends that if they don't make it to the Northern Water Tribe, the Fire Nation would win the war. You'd think it would be a really dramatic and ominous moment, but Noah Ringer basically delivers it with all of the urgency of a little kid telling his parents that his tummy hurts.
Zuko's appearance at the spirit oasis. With a giant torch. Enough said.
When Zhao fights Zuko. He does this firebending move that basically involves first a lot of spinning, and then him cupping his hands by his chest and thrusting outwards. MAN-BOOB BLAST!
And to deflect the attack, Iroh puts both of his hands in front of him and the fire parts to both sides. Any possible awesomeness is ruined by the fact that he looks kind of like an Indian Moses.
Minority Report is a serious, sometimes-disturbing and always-absorbing film - until you realise that the police are using vomit-inducing weapons for crowd control, and that said weapons are called sick sticks.
Or the scene with the organ. What should have been a really dramatic moment was utterly ruined by the fact that none of the keys were pushed down. Considering this is a Spielberg movie with a budget in excess of 100 million, you'd imagine they could have afforded some tape to stick them down.
Music of the Heart is loaded with narm. It's quite unfortunate, because the true story on which it is based is genuinely inspiring. The film wastes a good source material, good casting and good music on director Wes Craven and first-time screenwriter Pamela Gray. There is a lot of chunky exposition to the camera, unnecessary embellishment of real events, and a good deal of histrionics - see whenever Roberta yells at her really nice mom or her really nice kids. The characterisation of Roberta is garishly inconsistent - an incredible feat, considering Roberta Guaspari is a real person. When Meryl Streep starts to look like a bad actress, you know the script is beyond salvation.
Tristan and Isolde, the 2006 film. Isolde and her nurse find Tristan near-dead on a beach with hypothermia, so she immediately strips to warm him up, and tells her nurse to do the same.
The Social Network features two extremely emotional scenes between the two leads, showing how the cracks are forming in their relationship...revolving around a chicken.
To be fair, the chicken thing is treated as fairly ridiculous in-universe. Watch this scene and just look at Justin Timberlake's interjections.
Gandhi is an extremely well acted, emotionally resonant movie... except for the very first scene, which depicts Gandhi's assassination. Something about the way Ben Kingsley just kind of whimpers "Oh, God," like getting shot three times in the chest at point blank was no big deal, followed by his slow, jerky fall. After watching the movie, though...
A large portion of this troper's history class started laughing during that scene (especially with that one yell). Our teacher paused the movie and yelled at us about it.
Flex Your Rights.com's very informative movie "10 Rules For Dealing With The Police" includes this scene.
The vintage school scare film "Another Man's Family," is about fire safety presented through the tragic story of a typical American family. It's a gem of a film featuring a creepy ginger child, a couple of walking Darwin awards for parents and several Family Unfriendly Aesops (no bunk beds or your children will die from smoke inhalation; don't leave the dog outside or he won't be able to wake you up in case of fire). The film is crowned with a sad walk through the burnt shell of the house and a description of how everyone did the wrong thing. Then, the family dog, left outside at night (and whose barking alerted neighbors but somehow not the family) carries the doll of the little girl he worshiped through the charred house and lays down on the grass. The dog then hears the sounds of the last time he played with the little girl, and your heart about breaks. Until the dog starts crying. Remember that old Native American from the anti littering commercials? Oh yeah, Narm at its best
"I could have it done by...tomorrow!" "TOMORRAH?!"
The scene where the two crooks track Cathy...by following about three feet behind her, on a darkened and deserted street, with their lights on. Also, the scene where one of them tries to catch her little brother.
In Jumanji, Alan (Robin Williams) is sucked into the board game. When he escapes in 25 years he is unaware of the time gap and expects to see his parents. Judy (Kirsten Dunst) tells him that everyone thought he was dead and Alan walks out the front door in dismay. After he leaves, Judy says "Sorry".
The first comes when Aaron Eckhart is trying to console a small child. He tells him, in his overwrought Sergeant Rock voice, that he needs him "to be his little Marine". Instead of a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming, we get an uncomfortable jingoist slogan with shaky pedophilic undertones.
Right after that, he has to deal with a Marine who hates his guts because he got his brother killed in action. Eckhart proceeds to rattle of a The Dead Have Names list to demonstrate that he still feels regret for every man lost under his command. Okay, not bad. But then he utterly destroys any semblance of emotional stock he gained by saying "But none of that matters now." I guess he was trying to make the point that they needed to focus on the task at hand rather than dwell on the past, but it comes off as "Okay people, we got the emotional side-story out of the way now. Let's get back to the 'splosions!" It has garnered laughter from every audience that I've seen it with.
Excalibur: A sex scene near the beginning would be extremely dramatic, portentous and erotic were it not for the fact that one of the participants is fully ARMOURED.
Teeth has a couple including a very bad doctor who gets his fingers bitten off screaming "Vagina Dentata! The legends are true! VAGINA DENTATA!" and Dawn's first, supposedly abstinent, love interest tying to rape her while shouting "I haven't even jerked off since Easter!"
In the second Twilight movie, at this strange point in which I can only assume that Alice is having a vision (it wasn't very clear), there is a scene when Edward and Sparkle-Bella were holding hands, running through a field. There was no sound except some dramatic music (I think it was a One-Woman Wail), and it was in slow motion. It was supposed to be dramatic, because it was revealing that Bella would eventually be a vampire, but between the Baywatch running, the odd stark white clothes and the length of the scene, it just had everyone in the theatre laughing.
The 2011 film of Jane Eyre has the final scene, in which Mr. Rochester has lost his beautiful mansion and most of his fortune. He now lives alone in the country. Jane finally gets to reunite with him. It would've been a beautiful scene, had it not been for Rochester's Beard of Sorrow. It was long and completely out of nowhere, as he'd been clean-shaven (save his impressive sideburns) for the whole movie. Half of the theatre was giggling at it.
In the original Halloween, Laurie runs across the street with Michael stalking her. She runs up to the door of the house and reaches into her pocket to find the keys. Her line?
Laurie:The keys?THE KEEEEYS?!
In the Zombie remake, we have Michael bursting through a car windshield followed by Dr. Loomis shouting "MICHAEL! JESUS CHRIST!" as if he were reacting to someone spilling coffee on the floor. The line even became a meme in the Dread Central podcast and forums, usually used whenever Malcom McDowell is mentioned.
Let's not forget the ending of Halloween: Resurrection. Michael has just been defeated and the heroine is being bombarded by reporters. She's rescued by Busta Rhymes' character who drops this gem.
Michael Myers is not a sound-byte, a spin-off, a tie-in, some kind of celebrity scandal. Michael Myers is a KILLER SHARK. IN BAGGY ASS OVERALLS.
Mississippi Burning, given its premise of racism in Mississippi, has a pretty serious tone through most of the movie. However, when one character yells at another down a hallway with cries of "Mr. Anderson" with the cadence of Agent Smith, the dramatic tone fizzles quickly into unintentional hilarity. Fortunately, this only affects that one scene.
Eric Robert's crying in Pope of Greenwich Village: "THEY TOOK MY THUMB, CHAAAAARRRLLLLIIIIIIIEEEE!!!! THEY TOOK MY THUMB!!!"
Nothing to say about Mink Stole's best line in Pink Flamingos?
They castrated him! His penis is gone!
Although the Invisible Children documentary definitely had the best of intentions, and definitely touched a lot of audiences, however the one scene where the orphaned boy cries has been known to make immature high school audiences laugh, due to the strange noises he makes while crying.
The Crazies. Not the film itself, but the title: "the crazies" is the name for a kind of cat behavior (and a rather goofy one at that). Once you know this, it's nearly impossible to hear the film's title without snickering.
This troper always thought that the scene in the remake where the helicopter blows up the car is hysterical: one of the main characters just died, it's supposed to be really sad, and then—BOOM the car blows up and you see the helicopter trolling away in the sky.
The Dirty Harry franchise had its unintentionally funny moments.
In an early scene in The Enforcer, when a criminal gang demands a getaway car, Harry gets in his squad car and rams the shop front where the criminals are holed up, taking them utterly off guard. In a later scene, Harry is chasing an assassin on foot across rooftops, who accidentally falls through a roof window - right into a porn film shoot. Harry also uses a toilet plunger on an underworld figure's face to extract information from him.
In The Dead Pool, the celebrity killer attempts to blow up Harry Callahan's car with a modified RC car infused with C4. However, the attempt fails when some kid playing with his own RC car interferes with the bomb-car's radio frequency. Instead of waiting for another opportunity, the killer starts a downright hilarious RC car chase across San Francisco.
In addition, Johnny Squares death was horrific until you notice he was flailing about in a particularly weird way. The poster taken by the killer does not help as it seems to indicate what happened in a slightly silly manner: "You check in. You die."
2001. Yes, that2001. Seeing a bunch of apes flip their shit while staring at a chunk of black rock with not-so-eerie "EEEEEEEEAAAAUUUUHHHOOOOO" music playing in the background is hysterical. And the baby/Starchild? Even better.
The ending of Buried could be seen as this. Especially the line "I'm sorry Paul. I'm so sorry...". YMMV, of course.
The Reveal in the movie The Life of David Gale is like this: "She did it herself!". Um, that's pretty clear after what the reporter did...
Green Lantern has a lot of potential moments, but a good one is probably Hal's flashback sequence to his father's death. When your dramatic internal struggle has uncanny similarities to an episode of South Park, I think it's safe to say that you have officially entered Narm territory.
Contamination .7 (aka Troll 3) has an unfortunately hilarious rape scene in which the rapist repeats, "I'm gonna stick it to yoo" while bouncy synth music plays on the radio, and the girl shrieks, "Get off me, you pig!"
Menace II Society has the "Basehead" scene. It's actually a very accurate portrayal of how actual crackheads behave, and how their dealers treat them (though they usually don't kill them) but as most people are unfamiliar with such things it comes off narmy.
Super Mario Bros has plenty of this, especially from Dennis Hopper. You know you have a bad script and overdone acting when your two most memorable lines are "Bob-omb!" and "Monkey!
The movie Ricochet had a pretty strange line where the villain is breaking out of prison, he grabs a guard's gun and yells "The last time I held a gun in this hand, a young black man took his clothes off for me!" Funnily enough, this is exactly what happened.
In Problem Child, a scene where Junior and his criminal hero go to the circus was probably meant to be an example of Dude, Not Funny, but Michael Richards' delivery in this scene is just so hilarious that even a little kid will laugh at watching a random clown get socked.
Pretty much ALL of Australia, largely due to a frankly eye-watering script.
"Drove 'em home, drover."
"I mix with dingoes, not duchesses."
That famous scene from An Officer and a Gentleman, when Zack screams, "DON'T YOU DO IT!! I GOT NOWHERE ELSE TO GOOOO!!!!!" is meant to show the audience how much pain the character is in. Except Richard Gere is reallyoveracting in it, making the scene really REALLY funny. Go watch that scene, and wonder why Gere hasn't done any real comedies outside of those cheesy romantic ones.
In What Lies Beneath, some initials appear on a computer screen to show the main character who has been killed. The problem? The initials are MEF, and they're repeated endlessly, making for a hilarious scene if you read the letters out loud.
Tagline on the poster for The Day of the Dolphin neatly summarizes the plot of the film. Too bad it makes the plot seem something out of a comedy sketch.
In Run Lola Run's second run, Lola and Manni are about to be reunited after their harrowing day when Manni is abruptly hit by an ambulance while crossing the street. After everything they've done that should be heart-wrenching, but the way it was shot makes it hard not to break out in hysterical laughter.
Can't remember if it was her second or third run, but Lola runs out into the street and yells MAAANNN—NNEEEEEEEE to try to get his attention. It was the slow, stilted timing of it, and the way her voice sounded. For some reason my cousins and daughter all roared with laughter. Now, everytime I watch Scarface, or even Leon - when I see the Mannie characters I softly say MAAAANN—NNNEEEE in a high pitched voice.
In Cyberbully, main character Taylor Hillridge tries to kill herself by overdosing. However, due to a combination of over the top ridiculousness, bad acting and cheesy music, what was originally supposed to evoke heart wrenching emotions turned out to be quite hilarious. See for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fStdkvn4tnw
The scene in the 1990 film of Lord of the Flies. Just...dear good, the scene where Roger shoves the rock down the cliff is absurdly cheesy. And combined with Ralph's Big No...This troper doesn't know a person who's seen it and not cracked up.
Wade's death in Fargo. A low, throaty "Ohhhhhhhhh..." combined with goofy bugged-out eyes. Of course, this is the Coen Brothers we're talking about, so it could just as easily have been Black Comedy.
Somehow, Loki manages to out-Narm both his father and brother (no easy feat), with such memorable moments as, "TELLLLLLLLL MEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!"
The 1979 film, Prophecy has a priceless moment where a terrified kid tries to flee a mutated bear...by bunny-hopping away in his bright yellow sleeping bag. The bear then punches the kid into a rock, where he EXPLODES in a shower of fluffy feathers. It sounds gory, but coupled with the dramatic music and the bear roaring, it's unintentionally hilarious.
The Creeping Terror was presumably meant to be dramatic and scary, but when the monster is so slow that victims have to literally crawl into its mouth it loses some impact
In Time has lots of dramatic moments ruined by hilariously ungraceful running, Olivia Wilde being the exception. Yeah, I know, they're running for their lives ... but if your movie is going to feature a lot of dramatic shots of people running, you should probably try to cast people with a graceful stride and not put your leading lady in high heels.
Also, some people found Cillian Murphy and Olivia Wilde's death scenes to be incredibly hilarious, the former because of the really silly circumstances that lead to it and the second one due to Justin Timberlake's reaction.
The Thing Below. Just...TheThingBelow. The whole movie is narmful. From bad acting to horrendous dialogue to laughable CGI, the movie is impossible to take seriously. One of the most narmful lines in the whole movie came from a scene were a woman, while hallucinating, saw her dead son, and pulled a gun on him; the son said, and in a creepy monotone to boot:
Sheriff of Nottingham: "Cancel the kitchen scraps for lepers and orphans, no more merciful beheadings, and call off Christmas!"
Sheriff of Nottingham: <sizes up a wench> "You. My room. 10:30 tonight." <turns to another wench> "You. 10:45...and bring a friend."
Considering Johnny Got His Gun is a genuinely horrifying movie, it's narm moments are even more jarring. The most obvious is when the eponymous Johnny - who is deaf, blind and mute, and well as missing all his limbs and a substantial portion of his head - realises that the new Matron has left the blinds open in his room. He now can tell the difference between day and night, and is at least able to get even the slightest grasp on his surroundings. In the movies defence, it's a really big thing for him, but the music and narration is so over the top you could be mistaken for believing he'd just grown his arms and legs back and been able to walk out of the hospital none the worse for his stay.
Similarly, in one of the many bizarre dream sequences, Johnny and four other soldiers are playing cards in a train station waiting to head back home. Sat with them is a stoned Jesus - played by a youngish Donald Sutherland - who has a bone dry sense of humour and proceeds to cheat at cards. The big pay off of the scene, that everyone at the table is, in fact, dead, is done really well, but utterly ruined by the next shot. Jesus, with much wailing and rending of cloth, is seen hanging out the window of a train, floating aimlessly by on a really bad backdrop. It just misses being a Non Sequitur Scene simply because it technically makes sense given the context, but is so weird and over the top that it falls squarely into Narm.
Léon: The Professional has one Narmtastic scene in an otherwise great movie: After helping Mathilda escape Stansfield and his goons by stuffing her into the air duct, Leon suddenly turns around and BELLOWS into the camera like he's turning into a werewolf.
Valley of the Dolls. The entire film. It rather reaches its ludicrous climax with the scene where Neely O'Hara rips off Helen Lawson’s wig and flushes it down the toilet. It’s so silly, it’s hard to believe they didn’t intend for it to be a comic scene.
In one scene in the 2005 version of House of Wax where the entire theatre cheered when the character Paris Hilton was playing got killed.
Spike Lee's Jungle Fever ends with Wesley Snipes being approached by a hooker who offers to "suck yo big black dick for two dollas!" He responds by grabbing her in a tight hug and screaming "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!".
Karl Urban is just terribly narmy as the villain in the loose film adaptation of Priest.
Unless you're scared by dolls/puppets, Dead Silence will be a wonderful Narmfest. The cherry on the top is the part about Edward being turned into a ventriloquist doll, especially the scene with his back hollowed to make room for the wooden shaft.
Catwoman: The entire movie. Just try not to laugh at some of the "dramatic" scenes.
Love Me Deadly. When McSweeney is embalming the male hooker alive. "NOOOOOOOOO! NAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOO, DON'T CUT MEEEE!"
In Brother Bear, Phil Collin's song being played while Kenai tells Koda that he killed his mother.
I know it's not supposed to be funny, but Daniel Craig's "fuck" during the dead cat scene makes me laugh.
Scream: Casey's screaming when the killer sees her outside of the window outside of her house. It looks a lot like she's smiling instead of screaming. As well as when she hits him in the face with the phone knocking him out.
Fantastic Four In the second one, a military officer completely and utterly snubs Reed Richards and his ilk simply because Reed didn't play football in high school. This is not only a stupid idea in its own right, but its obviously only added so Reed can amount a stupid, forced comeback that people are expected to relate to. Him referring to his wife only by her physical attractiveness, instead of her supposed intelligence doesn't help. Sure, Reed's a jerk, and Jessica Alba didn't display any intelligence in the role, its still Narm to me.
In Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, Ciaran Hinds is up to his hammy villain ways. When he dispatches of a snitch by way of poisoned beverage, he intones "this is the sound of a traitor dying."
I'll see your Dr. Reiss and raise you one Devil. Good lord, but that man's a fine Irish ham.
The Wilhem Scream. Have a look (and listen) to the compilation here. It works as a funny scream, but seems out of place as a serious, pained scream.
You could write a book about all the Narm in The Number 23. To start off...the main character in the titular book is named Fingerling. They try to write it off by claiming it's the name of the author's favorite children's book, but did no one working on the movie realize the potential hilarity of that name?
The part where Walter's wife screams, "Look at all the BEAUTIFUL TWENTY-THREES! You don't want to DISAPPOINT them, DO YOU?"
Sandra: "What's the matter with you?" Regan (in a rather matter-of-fact tone): "I was possessed by a demon."
<Sandra's eyes widen to the size of dinner plates> Regan: "Oh, it's okay. He's gone!"
