"No no, you go first..."

In my last post I mentioned how distraught Romeo & Juliet made me when I was a little kid, so I started thinking about all the other movies, or parts of movies that stress me out. I've come up with a couple of common themes that I find completely cringe-worthy.

I get anxiety watching movies when there is a complete communication breakdown. This is quite a common occurrence in movies so I'll narrow it down to the type that really get to me. I'll coin it, the "You first" moment.

It seems like any time a movie character has some completely huge revelation that they just HAVE to tell someone else, (usually their love interest) said love interest has something to say to them too. Instead of just saying, "I bet mine's more important: I LOVE YOU!" or "SHUSH!! I'MNOTREALLYAPRINCESSTHEREISAIDIT!!" they always say, "Ok, you go first."

You just ran to their house. Like you were on fire. Only to let them talk first? What the hell is that all about? If you were going to do that all along you should have just walked.

Then of course, what the love interest has to say is in complete conflict with whatever the person originally wanted to say. So they say "Oh...it was nothing..." when really it was EVERYTHING!!! Now it's all RUINED!!

Exhibit A. Win a Date with Tad Hamilton. Tune in at 8:27 to cringe as Topher Grace's character makes the classic "You first" mistake:

Ughh it's just the worst!

But not really the worst...because I'm about to tell you about the worst!

The number 1 thing I cannot handle in movies is when things don't go right. So then the character does something completely ridiculous to try to correct their mistake, making something else go wrong. So on and so forth until you have every Ben Stiller movie ever made. (Except for the movies where he's a villain. If he's not a villain, he's a MASTER at ruining everything, and "fixing it" by ruining even more things.) What better way to win the affections of a family that already hates you than to aggressively spike volleyballs at them? Check out this clip where Greg Focker (Ben Stiller) does just about everything possible to screw things up in Meet the Parents:

(This sort of bad-to-worse humor is also the entire premise of the movie the Hangover, and why I absolutely refuse to see the second movie. How difficult really is it to foresee that stealing a police car actually won't solve any of your problems?)

Because it's going to bother me if I continue to think about all the way movie characters launch themselves into a downward spiral where each new scenario is worse than the last, I'm going to end by talking about something that other people find cringe-worthy in movies, but I personally think is hilarious.

This would be the perpetually awkward character. (Maybe I find this hilarious because I identify...or because I'd prefer to think of myself as accidentally hysterical instead of just plain painful to speak with on the phone.) But anyways, here's a quick montage from I Love You Man that's a pretty good test to see if you can handle extreme awkwardness:

I laugh every single time. "Working like a doOOOoog"

Well, I'm in a good mood now...but if you hate awkward situations, sorry to end on a stressful note for you. Better luck next time!



"Slappin' da bass man!"
-Peter Klaven (Paul Rudd), I Love You Man
That should be said with a leprechaun accent for better effect.