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Man has drinks with a dead bartender, goes crazy, does some hotel remodeling his wife doesn't care for, then freezes to death.
Man does some really bad things until he's caught, then Beethoven makes him sick.
Four comic book heroes come to life, but they're completely unlike their comic book selves and fight an enemy that's completely unlike their comic book enemy. And there's lots of weddings.
Burt Reynolds plays a bit part in a remake of the only movie he ever made that was good, thus causing the new movie to suck.
An alien kills everyone but the chick.
Lots of aliens kill everyone but the chick.
An alien kills everyone but the chick, but she dies anyway.
Lots of aliens kill everyone but the chick, the midget, Hellboy and Winona Ryder.
Lots of aliens kill lots of other aliens and some people who get in the way.
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Cartoonist girl likes girls. Cartoonist girl likes boy. Boy blows it, big time. Girl likes girls again.
Two guys hang out in a mall, have their fortunes read and trash a game show.
Woman hears message from Vega, goes on a six second windsurfing trip on another planet that lasts sixteen hours.
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Pointy-headed aliens from outer space ineptly screw up a invasion mission to earth but make a home there after a forced residence.
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Man tries to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather by raising the dead with hilarious results.
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Japanese dude goes on quest, meets a crazy woman with lots of medieval firearms, then meets a crazy woman who runs around with big wolves in the forest, and has to stop said crazy ladies from killing each other. Oh, and there's a weird elk god thing involved somewhere...
Swedish woman goes crazy as the men in her life ignore her.
Swedish guy goes home from the crusades. He plays chess with death, then dies.
Japanese cyborg cop investigates crazy murders. Perp turns out to be a sentient computer program. They become one person, or something.
And finally, a 14 year old mentally unstable, voyeuristic, depressed, self-hating, not-quite-rapist kid undergoing a nervous breakdown, who happens to pilot a giant robot, loses his mind. The world ends, he becomes God, kills everything, has really weird sex with the 14 year old clone of his mom/the goddess-mother of all humanity (funny how they turn out to be the same thing, huh?), then goes back to the Earth which he blew up to hang out with the girl who hates him more than anything, and who he was both voyeuristic to earlier and nearly raped. He chokes her awhile. Then he breaks down crying. The end. Forever. (Until the creators decided it was time to make more money off of it.)
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posted
Shoot. That wasn't a one liner. Let me try it again:
A crazy kid becomes God, has sex with the clone of his mom, the world blows up, he gives up his Godhood, the end.
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quote:"It's a story about a rat who goes to Paris to be a cook, but they won't let him be a cook, because he's a rat."
With a paraphrase like that, who'd want to see it?
Okay... what I want to know is why you think this description would make you not want to see it? It's pretty much exactly what I thought the story would be about going into it, and I went.
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A lot of one-liners are actually more appealing the movie itself.
While there are several mentioned above, here's another example: "Hot alien chick kills a lot of people." That's Species... but even after that intro, you'd be disappointed by the movie.
How about these [Edit: These are not meant to be illustrations of my comment above, but actual attempts to ruin a movie with a one line phrase]:
"A man doesn't want to enter the family business, but ends up doing it anyway." - The Godfather
"Three men go through a midlife crisis on a ranch." - City Slickers
"Several miserable racists' lives intersect in a series of vignettes." - Crash
"An old woman's memories of falling in love on a sinking boat." - Titanic
"A group of men cheat another man out of a lot of money." - The Sting
"A cognitively impaired man reminisces about his life while waiting for a bus." - Forrest Gump
"A sports agent tries to rebuild his life after losing his job." - Jerry Maguire
posted
Not that I don't like them personally - but that description could turn someone off to it.
And, of the movies listed, Forrest Gump would rank far, far below The Godfather, and slightly below City Slickers and The Sting. It would, however, rate well above Jerry Maguire, Titanic, and Crash.
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Ah, I thought these were meant to be examples of "one-liners more appealing the movie itself."
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I've edited for clarity. I originally had a paragraph in-between that I edited out prior to posting... losing that paragraph made things confusing.
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"Baby dinosaur loses mother, follows her in cloud form to new grazing grounds, brings friends."
and from the same director/producers,
"Baby mouse loses family, joins a socialistic revolution to extradite cats, finds family."
"Kid accidentally travels back in time, wastes the opportunity improving his already decent family rather then accomplishing any real good."
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quote:"It's a story about a rat who goes to Paris to be a cook, but they won't let him be a cook, because he's a rat."
With a paraphrase like that, who'd want to see it?
This is what I've thought of every Pixar movie since Finding Nemo. They all sounded and looked lame, but when I finally saw them, I loved them.
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See, all three of those that you listed are interesting synopses to me, BlackBlade.
"following in cloud form" - piques my interest. "joins socialistic revolution" - interesting "kid accidentally travels back in time" - already hooked
Howzabout:
"Group of dinosaurs walk until they find food." and "Mice sail to America to find life no better."
I can't seem to find any shortening of Back to the Future that seems mundane. I can't put in the words "Time Travel" without making the one-liner seem at least somewhat interesting, and I can't leave it out while still making the one-liner descriptive of the movie.
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I wrote synopsis of movies I love that would make them very uninteresting to me.
I'll admit though upon review, the second one interests me now but only because I am a political science major.
I am sick to death of time travel, I actually prefer radical change to mundane. The cloud form thing to me is a turn off because I hate the, "ghost/phantasm" mentor archetype.
As for Back to the Future and making it sound mundane.
"Kid goes back in time, calls the science behind it, "heavy."
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Still, though, the description of An American Tale could have actually been the marketing pitch.
As for some others:
"Three guys in a boat kill a big fish." - Jaws "Hamlet with fur." - The Lion King "30 minutes of great action best seen by using the scene selection feature of the dvd." - Ong Bak
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quote:Still, though, the description of An American Tale could have actually been the marketing pitch.
Grudgingly agreed.
"Scuba tank malfunction results in the death of a fish."-Jaws
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"Kids play a board game called Jumanji, decide the game is not fun."
"Kids play a board game called Zathura, decide the game is not fun.
Also I have tried to get several people to go to Ratatouille with me, every time they ask about the plot I can feel how stupid the words coming out of my mouth sound. But I am positive its going to be great!
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Tres was right. It's the End of Evangelion, and, of course, while being completely truthful, I tried to make it sound infinitely less appealing than it really is.
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quote:Also I have tried to get several people to go to Ratatouille with me, every time they ask about the plot I can feel how stupid the words coming out of my mouth sound. But I am positive its going to be great!
Just say "It's the latest Pixar movie".
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quote:Also I have tried to get several people to go to Ratatouille with me, every time they ask about the plot I can feel how stupid the words coming out of my mouth sound. But I am positive its going to be great!
Just say "It's the latest Pixar movie".
That is pretty much the line I rely on. Its the only one that even counts as a selling point.
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19th century Parisian ghetto dwellers sing 90's pop songs while Nicole Kidman dies of tuberculosis.
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This guy gets out of college and can't figure out what to do next, so he sleeps with his girlfriend's mother and gets married.
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