Movie lines people laughed at in theaters despite not actually being intended to be funny?
Movie lines people laughed at in theaters despite not actually being intended to be funny?
I remember in Revenge of the Sith, when the actor playing Vader yells "nooooooooo", at what is supposed to be the emotional climax of the trilogy, the theater roared in laughter.
Do you have other examples?
Not really a movie line but a scene from a movie.
In Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The scene where Leia gets blown out of the spaceship. She floats there a little then opens her eyes and proceeds to use the Force to fly through space towards the ship.
The audience absolutely erupted in laughter at that.
I've never spoken in a theater until TROS. I spoke twice.
Once when Rey and Ren were facing each other, and were about to kiss, and I audibly said "oh come on don't say it" when the old lady asked Rey her surname. I was in disbelief she would say something that stupid.
I stopped watching after The Force Awakens, and this makes me even more sure of my decision.
I saw I am legend I cinemas with my brother I would have been 16 him 11.
When Will Smith killed his dog my brother started balling his eyes out and I started laughing at him uncontrollably. I'm sure from an outside perspective I looked like a psycho
Titanic. Propeller guy.
I was there, i laughed. Wife looked at me with distaste.
Now imagine it with a Wilhelm added to the KLANG sound effect. Gold. 100% pure.
I was a Radioman in the Navy, and some coworkers and I had gone to see Cider House Rules in the theater.
There's a scene where they come to inform someone that a plane with a loved one on board had been shot down.
To quote the movie:
When the plane was hit, the crew chief and the radioman jumped close together. The copilot jumped third.
We immediately started laughing when we heard that, because we were told that the Radiomen are some of the last to leave a sinking ship due to needing to destroy the cryptographic material. Hearing that a Radioman was one of the first to bail was too good to us..
Not the movie that caused it, but during either the first or second Tobey McGuire Spider Man movie there is a scene where Peter tells Aunt May he is responsible for Uncle Ben’s death. Right during this dramatic scene in the theater a kid said pretty loudly (but not quite yelling) “I have to go poop!” Quite of a few of us burst out laughing during this heavy scene.
The Titantic. In the scene when the dude falls off the back of the ship and hits the propeller on the way down. He hits it with a solid clang and someone in the theater loudly goes “oooooohh that’ll leave a mark…”
The entire theater fucking lost it.
The Samuel L Jackson scene in Deep Blue Sea, I know it's supposed to give the sense that nobody is safe, but it's so random and quick that it dives head first into comedy.
Love that scene, it's absolutely hilarious.
I'm still not sold on that not being deliberately hilarious.
The parts from Jupiter Ascending between the start and the end.
Not a line, but I saw Matrix: Revolutions in theater on opening weekend. During the 1-on-1 fight with Smith in the rain, there's a slow-motion shot of Neo punching Smith in the face. It's such bad CGI the entire theater burst into laughter. I'm pretty sure it was intended to be dramatic, but after seeing the latest Matrix movie and how tongue-in-cheek it is about itself, I'm not entirely sure anymore.
The CGI in that movie was so bad that it looked like a then-present-era video game.
Which felt maybe-kinda intentional, or maybe-kinda retconned as intentional?
I had someone in my theater say "Die already" during the prolonged death scene in the ship. People busted out laughing.
In Before the Midnight, at the theater with my wife at the time, when the couple are at the hotel having a serious argument. I was losing it, laughing uncontrollably, because it mirrored my abusive relationship I was having with her so damn perfectly.
I'm not married anymore.
Before Midnight with Handsome Hawke and Julie Delpy?
Not sure if this counts as it's not strictly a line but it's a family favourite story.
During Interview with the Vampire during a very tense scene, Tom Cruise walks out holding three severed heads by the hair. Well my sister started laughing hard, causing me and then the rest of the cinema to follow suit shortly after.
I watched the first hunger games movie in a Thai cinema. There is a scene where Katness (is that the main characters name...) breaks up with her boyfriend for some reason, neither of them is happy about it. The whole theater broke out in laughter, I have no clue why.
There must've been something weird in the translation there. I can't think of a "break-up" in the first book or film.
Steven Seagal's death in Executive Decision was supposed be a dramatic moment instead the theatre I was in broke out in spontaneous clapping, laughing and cheering.
I cheered too, ngl. Seagal is a turd.
Not in the theatre but watching Kill Bill. Very tense moment when Uma Thurmam confronted the other woman (at 30 seconds https://youtu.be/sPfjd2bayVs). It zooms in on her eyes, plays the music, and I fucking lost it.
They used to do that in Bruce Lee movies and I was not expecting that in a Hollywood blockbuster. QT was inspired though.
One of the Marvel movies, Avanegers I think?
"Get all of your spectrometers, put them on the roof and set them to detect gamma rays!"
Most of our group got a pretty good laugh out of that one in the theater.
It's bad, but is it as bad as in movies/tv where people look into a microscope and see little viruses multiplying, or even worse, DNA double-helices floating around? Maybe it is...
Works for me.
Mark wahlberg in The Happening: “come on douchebag, think like a scientist”
"I need a second OK why can't anyone just give me a goddamn second!?"
In the recent Ferrari movie, there's a scene with one of the legendary racing drivers. He's in the lead at the big race and he just needs to bring it home for the win. He's got a big smile, the shots are serene, the music is swelling. Then suddenly, he wrecks super violently and crashes into a crowd of people. I absolutely lost it. I was the only one.
Why don't normal people find sudden changes in emotional tone funny?
That scene sounds funny AF.
The crashes look so bad as well. It's like they spent all their special effects budget on old man make-up and had nothing left for those.
All the emotional scenes of rebel moon part one . I know its a crime around here and reddit to like snyder but tbh i really like most of his movies like batman v superman series , army of the dead series , dawn of the dead etc they are by no means perfect but it is what it is and i like them for that .
But oh my fucking god the critics and haters were right on this one the emotional aspects of this movie were a riot and kora (or whatever her name was) just telling her backstory and making a terrible reason why its there etc made me wanna quit watching anyway i put myself through it mainly because of the time i spent to pirate it and hoping it would get good (it never did ) and no way in hell i'm watching the second part .
You don't often hear people laugh out loud in a Finnish movie theater, so I remember the one time there was a sudden spontaneous burst. It was one of the Underworld movies where Bill Nighys character gets his head cut in half or something. I guess the visual was just so ludicrous and kind of mismatch to the tone that several people lost it at once.
I saw revenge of the sith in the theater multiple times and there was no laughing at the no. I never noticed it being laughed at until the “do not want” translation gaffe.
It's been decades since I've been to the cinema, so I don't know if this counts, but a recent example I can think of is when I watched No Exit the other day, and laughed really hard both when one bad guy
spoiler
gets shot with a nail in the forehead by the other
::: and again when he thenspoiler
fell on his face and drove the nail home, literally
::: ¯\(ツ)/¯I think James Cameron's "The Abyss" is kinda famous for having way more funny moments than intended.
I saw it in the cinema for its recent anniversary re-release. As you might expect most of the audience were enthusiasts and tended to lean older-male and slightly "technical" or "nerdy" in interests/professions. All to say that they were taking the film seriously. But then there were some, a minority, who didn't fall into that demographic at all. They found many moments in the film hilarious and were laughing out loud. Which rather annoyed the majority of the crowd some of whom would look around wondering where the annoying laughs were coming from. What's interesting is that over time the majority softened and started to find the humour themselves and laugh out loud at similar moments.
This is also mentioned in the wikipedia for the film ... it seems under the strain of making that movie some of the directing just got a little comical.
The only part of Oppenheimer I loved was when Oppie met Downey Jr.'s character. Oppie says, "You are a working man, I can respect that.
Downey: were you also a working man?
Oppie: no, but my father was.
I was the only person in the theater who laughed at this line and the people in front of me did not appreciate it.
The Patriot (2000) dull Mel Gibson movie, as far as i can recall, anyway random dude gets head cleanly lopped off with a cannonball, buddies and i played too much UnrealTournament that day not to hear the "HEADSHOT" anouncer in our heads.
My friend and I saw Deep Impact in the theater, when the plan fails and the comet fragments are still going to hit earth, there is a dramatic moment when they explain to projected impact sites. One in the ocean and one ... in Canada. For whatever reason my friend and I both burst into laughter when they said Canada. The whole theater turned to glare at us.
Canada is an entire category! When they announced the 4 astronauts for whatever mission, 3 of them had job descriptions and 1 was described as Canadian.
In Alien: Resurrection I think, Ripley, goes on and on for most of the film about how she wants to exterminate aliens. My friends and I had been joking all film about how much like this one racist dipshit Ripley was in this film.
Then in a tense close up Ripley actually uses the dipshit's catchphrase: "I don't like it". So we bursts out laughing, annoying many other patrons.
...when you turn my voice about
I don't go to theaters enough to see entire audiences laughing, but I laughed..
I laughed uncontrollably at the climax/ending of Dark City at a friend's birthday party. It was his favorite movie at the time. He wasn't amused. I think the fact that he took the movie SO seriously, and that it ended in such an embarrassing schlocky way, was just too much for my poor system.
the ending spoiler
It turns into a Dragonball-z fan film, with energy beams meeting in the middle and one guy straining and pushing harder and knocking the energy beam into the other, and other silly nonsense. It did not fit the tone of the movie AT ALL. Then, the movie ends as quickly as possible.
Also laughed my way through most of the first Fast and the Furious movie, in the theater. At the time, it seemed like an amazing absurdist comedy, but these days it'd be very tamely dumb. Lots of people probably think of it as some sort of classic or some shit now.
Finally, nobody in the theater laughed once at Down Periscope. IMDB has it at 6.2, but.. nobody laughed. We walked out after giving up 30min in. edit: it was a different spoof movie from almost the same time that I'm thinking of, McHales Navy. Sorry for slandering you, Down Periscope, I'm sure you're amazing.
Similar story, when Kylo Ren died, my friend straight up busted out laughing. It was a bit contagious and a few others in the theater ended up laughing as well.
You know how there are a lot of small theaters in Paris that screen old movies? There we were, watching a noir thriller classic "The Asphalt Jungle" one night.
As an epilogue, there's a tacked-on morality speech by a police chief, and you can smell the stench of The Hayes Code and J Edgar Hoover all over the goddamned thing.Like a cheap piece of lazy propaganda. "Your local Police Department... tirelessly fighting day and night, to protect all regular citizens from society's external disruptive forces, like the Red Menace and Reefer Madness."
After being a rapt audience for the main story - which is a jewel of its' genre - this weird speech happens, it ends abruptly with a "The End" title card and we ambled out of the theater, that speech was the final disconcerting taste in our mouths, you could hear more than a few puzzled, snickering laughs.
Not quite the same but having listened to the 1712 Overture several times before hearing the 1812, I didn't get some of the jokes until I actually heard the 1812, and THAT's when I laughed.
But on-topic me and the wife have been watching an animation film where the cinema was mostly kids and we got, and laughed out loud at, some of the "jokes for the grown-ups" that none of the kids did, who were all staring at us for laughing at something that was totally not funny for them.
I used to laugh during certain scenes in Commando. He'll do ridiculous things like rip the seat out of a truck like it's nothing.
I got lots of weird looks for laughing during multiple death scenes in the John wick movies, not sure if that counts...
That bit in JW4 where he falls down like 10 flights of stairs reminded me of the old lady in The IT Crowd.
"I'm afraid I've had a bit of a tumble"
Christ those sequels are terrible.
I'm gonna show my kids Nobody and tell them that's John Wick 2.
I feel like we went from bullet proof suits like kinda saving your life but hurting like a bitch and don't take more than 1 shot, to, you can empty a m16 into this god damn suit as long as he holds it 1 inch away from his body and keeps running.
Edit: for the record though, I still loved them.
Not a line per se, but a scene. Watching The Haunting of Emily Rose in theaters and it's supposed to be a serious scene and maybe even shocking or scary. The possessed main character jumps out of a barn loft or house window... I lost my shit, laughed so loud. The way the girl jumped out was just too funny looking.
The times that this has happened to me weren't serious moments that tickled me wrong, they were sophisticated references that only I got (or others were just quieter). I couldn't give you a specific example but it's happened at least twice.
Not very high brow, but this happens a lot in good children's movies, with adults laughing at moments when the kids don't understand why. My favourite is in Shrek when he's walking across an onion field trying to contemplate how troll are like onions, but gets constantly interrupted by Donkey.
In Peer Gynt, the protagonist picks up an onion after having considered marrying into a family of trolls. He starts out by comparing himself to the onion, exactly like Shrek, in that he has multiple layers. However, as he's not being interrupted by Donkey, Gynt keeps removing layers until he realizes there's no core - the onion, like himself, is just a bunch of thin layers with no real central identity or reason to exist.
Shrek never gets to make this realisation, because Donkey keeps insisting nobody likes onions: he would be better off comparing himself to a parfait, as they also have multiple layers.
What's a bit of a turning point of self-insight in the beginning of Peer Gynt is ruined by Donkey in Shrek, rendering it instead a commentary on how everybody loves perfait.
