Now before I'm run out of the Arts & Faith forums on a rail, let me just say that it was my wife's rental. She likes to give every movie a chance (I've actually seen some great ones because of her), and she was also complaining about how stupid this 84 (84!!!) minute music video was.

So yeah, the whole thing was stupid... dialogue, plot, and action combined (or separate, your choice), but here's the topper:

"Me and Johnny Law ain't exactly on a first name basis." -- Ice Cube's character in Torque.


...yeah.

Wrap your minds around that little nugget for a minute or two.

This topic has been moved to the better-suited "Film Awards, Festivals, and Lists" forum...

X-Men: "Ever wonder what happens to a toad when it's struck by lightning? Same thing that happens to everything else."

"I don't like sand. It's coarse, and rough, and irritating, and it gets everywhere; not like here where everything is soft and... smooth."

--Star Wars, Episode II

I don't know if the worst ever, but that "Crazy like a fox" line in the Inside Man trailer always makes me cringe.

Trinity's dying speech in Matrix Revolutions. People were actually groaning out loud when I watched it.

Can I nominate an entire screenplay? Titanic.

OK, OK, I'll try to narrow it down. Problem is, I've mentally blocked that mind-numbing movie-going experience from my consciousness, and all I can really remember is DiCaprio's obnoxious "I'm king of the world!" (which certainly qualifies here). And, oh yeah, Kate Winslet naked. And Kate Winslet flipping someone the bird. But that's not dialogue.

So I checked out the memorable quotes section at IMDB, and it confirmed my suspicion that I have NOT been too hard on Titanic all these years. Specifically, that inane exchange between Kate and Leo when she's supposedly gonna jump, and he tells her how cold the water is in Wisconsin. But there's other stuff equally bad.

So, too bad to quote verbatim, eh? Yeah. I'm with ya'.

More like too many to choose from.

It has always been my contention that Titanic would be a fine film if the Kate/Leo stuff were edited down to a couple of minutes. The rest of it is very interesting for history buffs. Maybe just edit Leo out altogether. Yeah, that's it. That's the ticket...

Oh, and I nominate all the dialoge between Anakin & Amidala in ST Ep 3. It's so bad I mentioned it in my bad romance novel blog.

Neb

Mark wrote:
: . . . all I can really remember is DiCaprio's obnoxious "I'm king of the world!" (which certainly qualifies here).

It's not a great line, no, but I am not sure what makes it "obnoxious". The only person who could possibly hear him is that friend who is enjoying the moment with him.

: And, oh yeah, Kate Winslet naked.

Dude, there is simply no context in the world in which the words "worst ever" and "Kate Winslet naked" should EVER go together.

: And Kate Winslet flipping someone the bird. But that's not dialogue.

Dude, there's bird-flipping in all SORTS of movies. What makes THIS one stand out?

Quoted for great justice.

We've been re-watching Titanic this week, with James Cameron commentary, and I now understand why he did this, and I agree with him. He felt that if one were to grasp the immense horrors of the Titanic, you had to care for one or two characters. He took all the detailed information he could get and found a story in which you can capture class warfare, every major room on the ship, images from early photos, dialogue from actual historical figures and the testimonies of survivors.

The reason for the "low" dialogue (flipping the bird, the spitting sequence) was to remind viewers that this wasn't going to be your father's Titanic story. He was accomplishing two things: he was certainly making the film more mainstream for a wider audience, but he was also reminding us that not everything that happened on the Titanic was overly dignified and proper; the people who signed up for its maiden voyage did not know that they were going to die, and he was demonstrating their lack of foresight with a demonstration of what lives could have been like, without the context of foreboding. Oh yeah, flipping the bird, according to J Cam, goes way back to Roman times.

Titanic worked for me. Re-watching it makes me forgive it for not having lines worthy of Shakespeare. The film tried very hard to be accurate on a lot of levels, and to incorporate a story that was worthy of demonstrating the magnitude of the tragedy. "The death of one person is a tragedy; the death of thousands is a statistic"--Stalin.

It's generally common knowledge that, back in the good old days, when an opposing side captured an archer they cut off his middle finger thereby incapacitating him. When in battle, they would then 'flip them the bird', to borrow an Americanism, to wind them up.

There is absolutely no way that without the ridiculously awfully written romance story Titanic would have been such a huge box office hit. It's success was largely dependant on repeat viewings. The main culprits: teenage girls. Somehow, I don't think they were going for the historically accurate depiction of a star crossed oversized cruise liner. Diss the script all you like (it's really not at all difficult) but Cameron knew exactly what he was doing and the bank proved him right. I agree with Nick, it suits the film.

Dude, I'm thinking you misread my comments, since I never said the "bird flipping" or Winslet's, ahem, assets, were the movie's worst moments, only the few parts I could remember vividly. (Although I guess I do have a problem with the Hollywood-ishness of that whole nudie scene, and the portrayal of some great tragic romance between two characters who've known each other all of a few days. In fact - not to veer too far off-topic, which I fear has already happened by discussing Titanic as a whole instead of merely its bad dialogue, but what the hey ... for all the heated discussion about whether the cowboys in Brokeback Mountain, which I've not seen, really love each other or just want to get off together, Titanic is one of the worst offenders for perpetuating the myth that great sex equals true love, right down to "old Rose's" recollection of "it was the most erotic moment I'd ever experienced" and the reaction shot of a hot-and-bothered Bill Paxton and Suzy Amis.)

As for the king of the world scene - it fit well with the overall dumbness of the interactions between Rose and Jack. I suppose it gained its "obnoxiousness" when Cameron flounced around the Oscar stage repeating it as if it were Shakespeare.


Nick, you've captured the problem, for me anyway - I don't give a rat's rear about either character, and for that I blame Cameron. Obviously, I'm in the minority; for millions of satisfied Titanic viewers certainly do connect and care about Rose and Jack. To me, they are ciphers.


I'm all for fictionalized history, but other films have done this so much better. Low dialogue and vulgarity doesn't bother me, when it's wrapped in a more intelligent package. Cameron did the dumbed-down, seventh-grade Masterpiece Theatre version of Titanic, complete with snivelling villains and and performances straight from the arched-eyebrow school of drama. Frankly, I would have been much more interested in hearing the stories of the "low" passengers who perished, instead of a couple of pretty movie stars who get naked and steam up the windows.

But then, that version wouldn't have raked in the bucks.


Well, the title of the thread is "the absolute worst movie lines/dialogue ever," so I'm not sure what "the bank" has to do with it. Matrix, Star Wars and X-Men were all box office hits, too, and they've all been mentioned in this thread.

I'm begining to wonder whether we should leave action movies out of this, they're too easy a target. Furthermore they're supposed to be cheese laden. The genre demands it (as Con Air proves so wonderfully: "Put the bunny back in the box") as does the bank. Besides, I'll contend that as a whole the script for Titanic is pretty dire but that there are no single lines that stand out as that hideous Star Wars quote does.

Chain Reaction -

While racing across ice on a hovercraft, his leading lady yells to Keanu "What are you doing?" And in the emotion I call "angry Keaunu" (one of two of his) he yells back "The best I can!!"

The theatre broke out in laughter.

Is anybody in the mood for lines from Raise the Titanic (1980)?

Dana Archibald: I'm a dynamite fisher-person. I just can't put the wormy on the hooky.

I cared about Rose in Titanic.

But only because I care about Kate.

I stop whatever I'm doing when her American Express commercial comes on...

-----------------------------

But this, by far, is the worst Star Wars experience of my life. Reading this scene is personally painful. I confess however, it's not about the dialogue--but--well, just read it.

From Return of the Jedi.





It hurt me just to cut and paste that.

Oh yeah! Any Nic Cage action movie automatically qualifies, because he delivers the cheese whiz with that steely-eyed earnestness of his. The Rock has some of the best worst dialogue, too - unfortunately I've not got the kind of brain that remembers/repeats stuff like that verbatim.


You won't find me defending Star Wars, either, but I give you this gem from Titanic:

Jack: Anyway, I fell through some thin ice and I'm telling ya, water that cold, like right down there, it hits you like a thousand knives stabbing you all over your body. You can't breathe. You can't think. At least not about anything but the pain. Which is why I'm not looking' forward to jumping in there after you. But like I said, I don't have a choice. I guess I'm kinda hoping you'll come back over the railing and get me off the hook.
Rose: You're crazy...
Jack: That's what everybody says. But with all due respect miss, I'm not the one hanging over the back of a ship here. Give me your hand. You don't want to do this. I'm Jack Dawson.
Rose: Rose De Witt Bukater.
Jack: I'm gonna have to get you to write that down.

And:
Old Rose: A woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets.

And although technically this doesn't count as dialogue:
You're here in my heart and my heart will go on and on ....


That American Express commercial has more emotional honesty than the Titanic script.

That's because Kate is Kate is Kate.

While writing my review of Tristan & Isolde, I realized that, as prosaic as the dialogue in that film can be, there was no single line as groan-worthy as this line from director Kevin Reynolds's previous foray into medieval legend, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves:

Kevin Costner (to Christian Slater): Did I wrong you in another life, Will Scarlett?

"Did I wrong you in another life"!? So this medieval Christian knight is aware of California-style reincarnationism?

This will no doubt annoy many lovers of this film, but for my wife, for whom this movie is nails on the blackboard, these are undoubtedly the most painful, deplorable movie lines in recent history. (94% Metacritic notwithstanding...)

"Hoo. Hoo."
"'scuse me! 'scuse me! 'scuse me! Sor-ry."
"I WANT A JOB!"

Spirited Away.

Expanding the category to WORST MOVIE SCENES EVER:

This is a good place to start.

(Warning: You'll hear one spectacularly inappropriate and obscene line. But I guess that's why it deserved inclusion.)

Hate hate HATE that line. Mainly because Rose was about as "deep" as a plastic kiddie pool. But I generally hate any line that ascribes such attributes solely to women. What, men don't have secrets?

Maybe we do and maybe we don't. I'll never tell.

I used to find myself repeating this line, or variations of it, for quite a long time after seeing John Carpenter's They Live...


Some lines are so bad that you just have to love them.

I think this is the beauty of some of Carpenter's popcorn films (Big Trouble in Little China is another example, and easily one of my favorite films). The dialogue is just beyond stupid in spots, but so intentional and wry that it's a laugh.

If I were to pick the worst line ever written for a novelization of a movie, it would be a passage from the adaptation of John Carpenter's Escape From New York. In the novel, just after Snake has met up with the Brain, and is introduced to Maggie, Maggie has some back sass for the Brain that Snake really likes. The book reads...