Most common movie cliches

[celeb_2006]

List of things you see over and over in the movies (sometimes t.v. too):

1. Unless it is a comedy, people NEVER use the bathroom

2. Villain never kills the protagonist right away. Pointing the weapon, villain always elaborates with a speech about why he must kill, his objective, etc. etc. This gives time for the protagonist to figure a way out of predicament or someone comes to the rescue.

3. "Ugly" women in the movies have no makeup on, wear thick glasses, have frizzy/nasty hair, and sometimes braces.

4. The cop that is retiring (and you know what his fate is)

5. There is no such thing as a poor person in a movie. They are all successful and wealthy execs with mansions and bling bling.

6. The most glamorous profession in the movies is a professional hit man/ hit woman. These hit people live in million dollar homes (complete with a hidden room filled with an arsenal of weapons, accessible by a switch) and are filthy rich.

7. 99% of movies feature that most 21st century of inventions, the cellular phone. In suspense thrillers, the cell phone plays a crucial role in many scenes. Usually the phone will lose its signal or battery life at the most crucial of times.

8. In movies where someone has to wear a 'wire' or bug to record conversation, signal will be lost at a crucial time.

9. War movies will feature a soldier showing a picture of a loved one. He will be dead in no time.

10. Whenever someone in a movie is shot, someone else will run back and try to rescue the person, and in turn be shot and killed.

[twitchy]

Or in real life, the guy's behaviour would classify him as a creepy stalker, but in the movie it eventually wins the girl's heart. No means try harder!

[HWBL]

3. "Ugly" women in the movies have no makeup on, wear thick glasses, have frizzy/nasty hair, and sometimes braces.

Ugly can be replaced by "intelligent" too. Smart women usually wear dorky clothes, are barely able to crack a smile, and to put emphasis on their "intelligence" they often wear glasses.

Other cliches:

When teams are partnered up, be it cops or lovers or whatever, they hardly ever like each other when they first meet. (Lethal Weapon, Turner and Hooch, tons of romantic comedies etc.)

When somebody gets really badly injured there's only two ways out: death or full recovery.

When somebody's been in a coma, they usually wake up talking like nothing ever happened, or the whole movie is about recuparation that they in the end get > 100%!

(Mostly in TV) Blacks date blacks or are married to blacks, whites marry/date whites. Only friendships are interracial

I'm colored, and what irritates me most is that in most black TV comedies, the characters are either super intelligent and well to do (The Cosby's, Fresh Prince) or they are in any other way very stereotypical.
It still goes on today and is soooooo damned dated.

In soaps> one person's occupations can run from teacher, to brain surgeon, intermitted with model, accountant, newspaper owner etc.......

In horror movies> most creepy things happen at night or during bad weather. When people hear something in the house they GO where they hear it, they hardly ever run out of the house or get help.

In violent movies hardly ever innocent bystanders get shot during shootouts in the middle of the street!

In movies AND on TV women mostly go to bed wearing full make-up!

[ourmaninBusan]

Whenever a character lives in Paris, their apartment has a view of
the Eiffel Tower. Always.

[ediebrooks]

HWBL, glad that you mentioned soaps. On soaps, the ladies are always perfectly coiffed and made up. Nobody smokes, but I guess I shouldn't complain about that. Half of the characters on the soap seem to work at the local hospital.

[Sleuth]

If you have don't have a last name you may as well kill yourself now because you are a disposable character! and if you have sex ... you will die!. and if you're in high school your class only goes for 5 minutes!

[HWBL]

Nobody ever cleans up around the house, yet the houses are spotless.

The first "realistic" show I think was All In The Family with the sometimes messy house, the toilet experiences, the fights, the bad luck etc.

[AKAMissy]

Originally Posted by HWBL

In horror movies> most creepy things happen at night or during bad weather. When people hear something in the house they GO where they hear it, they hardly ever run out of the house or get help.

^Oh, that's a good one. Of course, let's go investigate the creepy noise. Yeah right.

Other cliches:
Phone numbers always start with 555-
Women ALWAYS fall when being chased (horror movies).
A car that has been working fine all movie conveniently dies when the killer is three feet away.
The killer WALKS slowly, yet somehow he is able to catch up to a character who has been RUNNING.

[HWBL]

Also in movies and series> you almost never see neighbors. Like in movies about domestic violence, couples scream and beat each other senseless and throw stuff yet: no neighbors. Until, that is, one of the parties involved dies and then, when the coroner's wagon and ambulance and police are in front of the house, there's the obligatory crowd of curious onlookers and neighbors

[mtlebay]

-in a car chase scene, one car ALWAYS has to crash through a colorful fruit stand

-when playing basketball, the actor throws the ball with bad aim, then the next shot is the ball perfectly going through the net

-they ALWAYS find convenient parking right in front their anticipated establishment

-actors never do have 'other' friends that call them or pass by them in the street

-women ALWAYS have to trip, fall down, and never be able to get up when being chased

[ourmaninBusan]

Originally Posted by AKAMissy

Other cliches:
Phone numbers always start with 555-

Actually, this (Busan) is the one city in the world where phone numbers
DO start with 555. (There is a taxi company whose number
is all 5s.)

No, really.

[southernbelle]

If there is a couple, the girlfriend will always walk up just in time to see her slutty rival kissing her boyfriend, who is never a willing participant, and then run away before the guy stops Slut and says something like, "I think you got the wrong idea." or "What the hell are you doing?"
This sets up the story for an additional 30 minutes of the girl thinking that the guy cheated on her, refusing to talk to him, and the guy having to win her back.

Every time that I see a romantic comedy and I start to get bored, if I realize that there hasn't been a breakup scene yet I get super annoyed because I know that we're not even halfway through the movie.

[Lobelia]

What gets me in movies & tv is when a character has VERY IMPORTANT news to tell another character, but the 2nd character won't stop talking, and the 1st character just won't blurt it out. So they don't ever tell, and when it all comes out later, they'll say "I TRIED to tell you"

[Grimmlok]

Every movie character, be it a villain narrowly avoiding getting killed or a hero making a daring escape, is able to dodge/outrun a fireball from an explosion.

In reality fireballs travel so fast it would cook them before they took half a step.

[louiswinthorpe111]

Originally Posted by Lobelia

What gets me in movies & tv is when a character has VERY IMPORTANT news to tell another character, but the 2nd character won't stop talking, and the 1st character just won't blurt it out. So they don't ever tell, and when it all comes out later, they'll say "I TRIED to tell you"

Or, how about constant misunderstandings/assumptions, ala Three's Company.

More Cliches:

• Mother/Daughter or Father/Son conflicts.
• The awkward male/female suitor that always puts their foot in their mouth.
• The Dad who works too much and realizes by the end of the movie that family is more important than work.
• Whenever the gun runs out of bullets, it gets thrown at the assailant.
• The serial killer who plays cat & mouse with the police because he's smarter than him; police get him in the end.

I'm sure I can come up with more if I think about it.