I'm overwhelmed.
A vague, wispy look of emptiness given by a character that's supposed to convey intense emotional shock, horror, or revelation, but really looks like they've been binging on every single narcotic known to man for their entire lives.
Trope named for a skit in an episode of
Mystery Science Theater 3000 where Mike Nelson attempts to guess the emotions portrayed by Kathy Ireland in the episode's movie; the correct answer for each was "Dull surprise!"
The exact opposite of
Feed Me
Examples:
- It can be argued that actor Keanu Reeves has this in all of his movies, but it's most noticeable in The Matrix trilogy.
- In this troper's Shakespeare class, we watched a movie adaption of Much Ado About Nothing where Keanu Reeves played Don John, a character who likes to be evil just 'cause. Everytime he opened his mouth, the entire class burst into hysterics because of this trope.
- This other troper's class watched it in Grade 8, and came up with a running joke that Reeves suffered from perpetual constipation on set.
- Transformers fans have used this term
to describe the emotions portrayed by the characters in any Dreamwave comics drawn by Pat Lee or anyone aping his style.
- Kristen Kreuk's character of Lana Lang in Smallville. From finding out she's pregnant, to finding out about Clark's superpowers, to overwhelming joy, to anger and so on and so on.
- Selma Blair maintains this expression at all times in the film version of Hellboy. It works when her character is hooked to a thorazine drip, but other than that...
- The film version of Pride and Prejudice had Matthew McFayden (Darcy) doing this whenever he was supposed to be feeling romantic. This is too bad, since he was pretty good in The Way We Live Now.
- The "actress" playing Janet in Shock Treatment had the viewer wondering what drugs she was on throughout the movie.
- Considering the tone of the movie, her performance worked pretty well.
- The answer to the indirect question is "tranquilizers". It's something of a plot point.
- Kira in Gundam Seed Destiny sports this when Meer Campbell dies and everyone is crying and he just looks like he just smoked a bunch of pot. And he, of course, is animated, so it must be intentional.
- Natalie Burke in the MST 3 K-featured movie
Warrwilf Werewolf. Altogether now: "tis is ebsolutly fescinatung".
