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“There’s no crying in baseball!”
“I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
“Forget, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”
Film isn’t really a writer’s medium, but that doesn’t mean that writing doesn’t matter. The perfect line, delivered by the right actor, can elevate even a bad shot into something powerful. That said, the opposite isn’t always true. The best movies can survive some clunky writing, if the acting and cinematography are good enough. Still, some of these clunkers deserve a bit more attention if only to praise the rest of the film for overcoming a real stinker.
“It was an abortion. An abortion, Michael. Just like our marriage is an abortion” – The Godfather, Part II (1974)
The Godfather regularly shows up on lists of movies much better than the books that inspired them. Yet, The Godfather author Mario Puzo worked on the screenplays for all three movies, so it’s not like Francis Ford Coppola strayed that far from the original vision. Sure, Coppola managed to excise Puzo’s pages about the size of Sonny’s member, but that doesn’t mean everything works.
The absolute worst line comes in The Godfather, Part II, in which Kay (Diane Keaton) and Michael’s (Al Pacino) marriage has fallen all apart. After learning that Kay ended her pregnancy, Michael suddenly finds religion and gets upset about what he considers taking a life. The audience wants so badly to cheer for Kay at this moment, as she should leave Michael and he deserves the insult she’s trying to levy. But she stretches the “abortion” metaphor much farther than it can sustain, losing her point in the process.
“Is it still raining? I hadn’t noticed.” – Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994)
Look, people have been complaining about Andie MacDowell’s performance in Four Weddings and a Funeral for 30 years. Amidst a cast of affable Brits, MacDowell’s wooden line readings distract every time. Fortunately, director Mike Newell and screenwriter Richard Curtis get a lot of help from Hugh Grant, who exerts all of his mid-‘90s charm to sell the apparently unescapable allure of MacDowell’s Carrie.
However, not even Grant’s floppy hair and blinking eyes can help MacDowell when she has to say one of the dumbest lines in romance movie history. When Carrie and Charles (Grant) finally come together amidst a downpour, the former waits to address the weather. “Is it raining?” she asks. “I hadn’t noticed.” Maybe a better actor could make the line work, which tries to be romantic by suggesting that the two are lost in love. But MacDowell doesn’t do it any favors.
“Everybody needs money. That’s why they call it money.” – Heist (2001)
As a playwright turned screenwriter, David Mamet has a particular voice. In his best works, such as Glengarry Glen Ross, Mamet captures the terse, brutal way that fragile men talk to one another. Most of Heist follows in that same model, as tough crooks played by Gene Hackman and Delroy Lindo trade one-liners.
Again, this list allows for a lot of leeway when it comes to stylized dialogue. After all, Mamet gave us “Third prize is you’re fired” in Glengarry. But when Danny DeVito’s character from Heist sneers “Everybody needs money. That’s why they call it money,” it feels more like a parody of Mamet than the genuine article. I mean, what in the world does that even mean? Is DeVito’s character an expert of etymology all of a sudden? Is there some slang that equates the word money with desire? No idea. Instead it just feels like somebody trying too hard to sound cool.
“Looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys” – The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
There are few things that author J.R.R. Tolkien took more seriously than language. After all, as a trained philologist, Tolkien wrote the novels because he wanted to give a backstory to the Elvish language he had developed. For the most part, Peter Jackson’s adaptations of The Lord of the Rings respect the integrity of Tolkien’s intentions, playing all of the high fantasy straight and never giving into winking at the normal people.
The magic of Jackson’s vision breaks a bit in the middle chapter of The Two Towers during a confrontation between Ugluk (Nathaniel Lees), captain of the Orc warriors the Uruk-hai, and one of his subordinates, Grishnakh (Stephen Ure). When Grishnakh tries to eat the captured Hobbits Merry and Pippin, Ugluk chops off the offender’s head and declares, “Looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys.”
The line clangs because it sounds more like something a modern action hero would say, not a beast from the fantastic Middle-earth. If it’s something that Star-Lord would say in an MCU movie, it shouldn’t show up in a Lord of the Rings film.
“That ain’t no Etch-a-Sketch. This is one doodle that can’t be undid, Homeskillet.” – Juno (2007)
To be 100 percent clear, stylized dialogue is not the same thing as bad dialogue. Characters in fictional works do not need to sound like actual people if realism doesn’t serve the film. So you won’t be seeing anything from M. Night Shyamalan, David Lynch, or the Wachowskis here. Nor will you see much Diablo Cody on the list, as most of her more outrageous lines work within the world of her films, revealing emotional truths through unusual dialogue.
That said, we have to draw the line at Rainn Wilson’s lines from Juno. Wilson’s shopkeeper, who chides pregnant teen Juno (Elliott Page) for shaking her pregnancy test too vigorously, doesn’t sound too different from other characters in the movie. But it’s different enough to be off-putting, especially with Wilson’s smarmy delivery, making it harder to engage with an otherwise moving story of a kid finding herself in a difficult situation.
“Okay, that’s not good!” – The Dark Knight (2008)
Behold, the irony of Christopher Nolan. On the one hand, people complain that they can’t understand the dialogue in his movies. On the other, his dialogue is occasionally bad enoug hthat you’re not missing anything anyway. Case in point: The Dark Knight.
By most standards, The Dark Knight is a remarkable achievement, taking the moody tone of Michael Mann’s Heat and applying it to a superhero story, complete with a magnetic performance by Heath Ledger as the Joker. However, the movie succeeds in spite of, and not because of, some goofy moments. That’s particularly clear in an amazing chase sequence through the streets of Chicago. The sequence includes some of most impressive moments in Nolan’s filmography, including the emergence of the Batpod and a semi getting flipped. But it’s marred by ongoing commentary from a SWAT officer played by Nicky Katt, who says the obvious at every point.
“It’s not about what they deserve. It’s about what you believe. And I believe in love.” – Wonder Woman (2017)
Wonder Woman should not work. It’s another entry in the beleaguered DCEU with the limited Gal Gadot in the lead. Yet somehow, director Patty Jenkins uses Gadot’s inability to play an actual person to make Diana unearthly, ethereal, and compelling. Add in Jenkins’ ambitions to channel the optimism of the Christopher Reeve Superman movies, and Wonder Woman promises to be one of the most compelling superhero movies of all time.
And Jenkins almost pulled it off. That is until the last act of Wonder Woman tosses aside all of its nuanced approach to good and evil for a standard CGI punch-fest, complete with villain monologuing. So when David Thewlis somehow transforms into the hulking God of War, Ares, he has to say ridiculous things like, “They do not deserve your help!” And, of course, Diana has to respond, “It’s about what you believe. And I believe in love.”
That line overtakes Jenkins’ direction. For this single moment, her illusion of Gadot being mythical princess who doesn’t accept the ways of man is shattered. Instead Gadot turns back into a terrible actor who feels like she’s never heard a human talk before.
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