Narm / Film I-P

I

• While Will Smith does a fantastic job in I Am Legend, there's still that scene where he started screaming at a mannequin and held it at gunpoint (it's supposed to show that he's going quite nuts). That scene was meant to play into the original ending, where the vampires/zombies are intelligent and used the mannequin as a trap. Foreshadowing minus the thing being foreshadowed can easily lead to Narm.
• The 1934 version of Imitation of Life: Claudette Colbert saying "I want my quack-quack" with all her usual elegance and gravitas. That's the last line of the movie, folks. It's intended to be an Ironic Echo, which only makes it worse.
• In Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, there is a scene where Big Bad Irina Spalko is hanging from a tree branch over a swarm of army ants. What do the ants decide to do? Climb up over each other to get to her! Real life army ants do build structures out of each other like that, but still. To make it better once they reach her, one single ant crawls up her legs, and when she kills it they just stop trying and wait for her to fall.
• Although the Invisible Children documentary definitely had the best of intentions, and definitely touched a lot of audiences, however the one scene where the orphaned boy cries has been known to make immature high school audiences laugh, due to the strange noises he makes while crying.
• The Irishman is an otherwise well-acclaimed film that features a "fight scene" when Frank confronts the shopkeeper who earlier shoved his daughter, clearly intended to be a genre Call-Back to the hilariously over-the-top beatdowns from Scorsese's older movies, but instead it is hilarious for all the wrong reasons. Frank is played by a 76 year-old Robert De Niro made to look like a man in his early thirties through the wonder of CGI wizardry, but he still moves like a man in his late-seventies: as the shopkeeper crawls out into the street, Frank stiffly shuffles up to him and delivers weak kicks while clearly struggling to avoid falling over, and the kicks are accompanied by the other actor's agonized screaming and very loud WHACK sounds that don't match the intensity of the beating. Not only that, but the glass on the shop door, which is clearly supposed to break when Frank throws the shopkeeper into it, instead breaks when the shopkeeper crawls up to the door on his own and touches the handle as De Niro can't quite pull off the stunt. While the previous scene (with Frank talking to his daughter about the incident) is directed and acted with the brilliance we expect from Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro, and the film overall is an admirable one last outing from the legends that made the genre great, it is quite baffling that Scorsese thought he could get away with a scene that looks so amateurish, and what makes the scene so frustrating to watch is that it could have easily been rescued by either using a younger body double or a mo-cap actor to make Frank move more convincingly, or closeups and cuts (like Frank's shoe hitting the man's face or stamping on some fingers).
• It's a Wonderful Life is a brilliant movie, but there's the horrified way that Clarence reveals that Mary's dire fate in Pottersville is that she never married and became a librarian. Even better, George Bailey reacts as if this were the worst thing that could happen. It was supposed to be that she didn't recognize him and screamed when he tried to talk to her, but that point wasn't made that clear. Or perhaps it was supposed to be that she's ended up an Old Maid. Frank Capra admitted in later years that this scene was the one part of the movie he would change if he had the chance.

J

• Jane Eyre
  • The final scene, in which Mr. Rochester has lost his beautiful mansion and most of his fortune. He now lives alone in the country. Jane finally gets to reunite with him. It would've been a beautiful scene, had it not been for Rochester's Beard of Sorrow. It was long and completely out of nowhere, as he'd been clean-shaven (save his impressive sideburns) for the whole movie.
  • When Jane leaves St. John (or Sinjin as it's pronounced) to return to Rochester and shouts "I'm coming!" with all the melodrama she could muster then proceeds to stumble away into the country side.
• Jaws: The Revenge. The shark roars, and is killed by ramming into it with the prow of a boat... which causes it to explode.
• The famous skeleton fight scene in Jason and the Argonauts is done well for the most part, but did the skeletons really have to scream like a bunch of girls?
  • "DESTROY THEM!! KILL! KILL, KILL KILL THEM ALLLLLLL!" Thank you very much for the Large Ham pizza with extra cheese.
• The infamous line Laurence Olivier delivers in the Neil Diamond version of The Jazz Singer.

  "I HAFF NO SON!" [rips shirt and runs off crying]

• Depending on who you ask, both the 1973 and the 2000 version of Jesus Christ Superstar. To give some examples from both:
  • The entire temple scene in the 2000 version, with explosions and cages full of bombs.
  • 'Heaven on their Minds'' in the 1973 version - Judas having a temper tantrum on top of a mountain, ending with him shouting 'listen to me!' over and over. Plus the weird gestures he makes while singing.
  • Jerome Pradon's accent in the 2000 version. 'YOU HAVE MAH-DAH'D ME!'
  • Judas's death in 1973 version. He hangs himself with his belt.
• Considering Johnny Got His Gun is a genuinely horrifying movie, its narm moments are even more jarring. The most obvious is when the eponymous Johnny — who is deaf, blind and mute, and well as missing all his limbs and a substantial portion of his head — realises that the new Matron has left the blinds open in his room. He now can tell the difference between day and night, and is at least able to get even the slightest grasp on his surroundings. In the movie's defence, it's a really big thing for him, but the music and narration is so over the top you could be mistaken for believing he'd just grown his arms and legs back and been able to walk out of the hospital none the worse for his stay.
  • Similarly, in one of the many bizarre dream sequences, Johnny and four other soldiers are playing cards in a train station waiting to head back home. Sitting with them is a stoned Jesus - played by a youngish Sutherland - who has a bone dry sense of humour and proceeds to cheat at cards. The big pay off of the scene, that everyone at the table is, in fact, dead, is done really well, but utterly ruined by the next shot. Jesus, with much wailing and rending of cloth, is seen hanging out the window of a train, floating aimlessly by on a really bad backdrop. It just misses being a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment simply because it technically makes sense given the context, but is so weird and over the top that it falls squarely into Narm.
• From Johnny Mnemonic: "I WANT ROOM SERVICE!"
  I want to get online. I NEED a COMPUTER!
  • Really, anything involving dolphins has a hard time looking serious, let alone a cyberpunk dolphin with all sorts of weird gear attached to him, defeating Dolph Lundgren. The name "Dolph" makes it even more unintentionally funny.
• Learning that the recurring, strangely shaped blood stain in Ju On 2 was a butt print could undermine the horror of the rest of the film.
• Try not to laugh whenever Sylvester Stallone says "law" in Judge Dredd. Stallone isn't the only one, either; Armand Assante practically belches it, he is trying to out-ham Stallone.
  Dredd: YOU BETRAYED THE LAW!
  Rico: (mockingly) LOAAAW!
  • Dredd's sentence for a perp's charges, made even better in that he reads another charge with a sentence of "death", making this one wholly redundant:
    TWON-tee yeeyahs!
  • Rico ranting to his co-conspirators:
    You want fear? I'm fear. You want chaos? I'm the chaos. Youwantanewbeginning? (knocks over bust of a previous leader) IAMTHENEWBEGINNING!
  • Rico's Evil Gloating to Dredd:
    To the charge of being human, [beat] when we could have been GODS, [beat] guilty!
• In Jumanji, Alan (Robin Williams) is sucked into the board game. When he escapes after 25 years he is unaware of the time gap and expects to see his parents. Judy (Kirsten Dunst) tells him that everyone thought he was dead and Alan walks out the front door in dismay. After he leaves, Judy says, "Sorry".
• Spike Lee's Jungle Fever ends with Wesley Snipes being approached by a hooker who offers to "suck yo big black dick for two dollas!" He responds by grabbing her in a tight hug and screaming "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!".
• Jupiter Ascending:
  • When Caine seriously and heartfelt-ly tells Jupiter that he has more in common with a dog than he does with her, to explain why they can't be a couple. And instead of telling him that she doesn't care about things like that, or that being a genetic hybrid doesn't make him inferior no matter what people say... she says she loves dogs. It's so offbeat and out of place that it's hilarious, especially given her equally serious delivery. After Caine leaves moments later, Jupiter winces and repeats it to herself, lampshading just how awkward the line was.
  • Just about any time Balem switches from his slow, deliberate speaking style to Suddenly Shouting. It always comes out of nowhere and sounds more petulant than threatening.
  • For that matter, Balem's slow manner of speech feels very affected, like he's trying to sound interesting.
  • Creeghan's line to Caine before Caine kills him is either really threatening or straight up hilarious.
    Creeghan: You hurt me. And I'm going to make you regret it.

K

• The death scene from the 1973 Turkish film Karateci Kız has circulated the web as the "Worst Death Scene Ever", and not without reason. Let's describe it.
  • First, the villain is a man in a pale green turtleneck, whose mustache somehow fails to line up with his beard.
  • The villain threatens the heroine with a knife. She knocks away the knife and knocks him onto the bed with some karate moves. Then she shoots him. When we cut back to him, he is somehow standing up with a gun in his hand, even though we just saw him belly-flop onto the bed.
  • When he gets shot, he slowly doubles over—it's shot in slow-motion, but in a way that somehow makes it feel like the actor is only pretending to move in slow-motion—while letting out the world's longest scream.
  • When he finally stops screaming, the heroine immediately shoots him again, which sends him into a second long scream, and also makes him spin around for no apparent reason. And when that scream dies out, she shoots him a third time... We go through this five times in all, which makes the whole thing feel like an Overly Long Gag.
    YouTube commenter "Majima Goro": he would still be alive if she kept shooting
• Kill Bill, having O-Ren Ishii decapitate a Yakuza guy for pressing her Berserk Button (mocking her Chinese-American heritage and citing it as the reason why he doesn't want her leadership) in what's supposed to be her glorious ascension to the top of the Yakuza is chilling. Then it becomes a Black Comedy jewel when she pulls a Decapitation Presentation, and we see the head's ridiculous Oh, Crap!'s face. Not helped by O-Ren dropping a truly over-the-top Precision F-Strike in Gratuitous English as she shows off her "prize".
• In King Arthur (2004), there's the point where Arthur is up on the hill, and Lancelot and the other knights ride up to help fight against the Saxons. Very awe-inspiring, except when the camera turns to Lancelot's face and shows him smirking at Arthur.
• King Kong (1933): The sailor who gets plucked off the tree by the Brontosaurus and eaten gives a rather shrill, overwrought scream. So too does the final sailor who gets shaken off the log by Kong; his scream sounds more like someone who stubbed their toe than a death scream. Both almost make the Wilhelm scream seem understated.

L

• One scene in the Death Note live adaptation/spin off L: change the WorLd. The main scientist injects himself with a virus that causes a good three-minute death scene, gurgling all the way even when off-camera. He is finally incinerated and falls over, but pops up one last time to go "BLAAAAAGH" at his watching daughter... and then he explodes. It's supposed to be dramatic, and the music is full-blown, but it can be hysterical.
  • Is this guy dead yet? Nope. Still dying... still dying... still dying... still dying... still dying... still dying... GOD, SOMEBODY GET A DEATH NOTE AND PUT THIS GUY OUT OF HIS MISERY!!!
  • At the beginning, when all of the criminals were having heart attacks, the somewhat hammy acting of the actors coupled with the overacting of the dub cast made it funny.
  • Towards the end of the first movie, Light puts together a setup to get rid of Naomi, in which she kidnaps his girlfriend Shiori and shoots her while she's trying to run to her side, then killing herself. Before that final bit, our good old Magnificent Bastard friend holds poor Shiori in his arms as she dies and screams in soul-wrenching anguish. Not so bad originally, but in the English dub, he screams at Naomi, "WHY DID YOU HAVE TO KILL HER? TELL ME WHY!!" Ain't nothing but a heartaaaaache...
• There is one scene in the thriller Lakeview Terrace, in which Samuel L. Jackson plays a racist cop terrorizing the mixed couple next door. At one point, Patrick Wilson is sitting in his car listening to loud rap music and smoking a cigarette when Samuel's character suddenly shows up. After giving a couple of not-so-subtle threats, what little tension this scene has created is blown away by a howl of laughter when he calmly says:
  "You know, you can sit out here listening to this shit all night, but when you wake up in the morning, you'll still be white."
• Katsumoto's death scene in The Last Samurai was intended to be profound and dramatic, but his contorted constipation face in conjunction with the solemnity of the scene made for hearty lols all around. Bear in mind, Katsumoto had just rammed a wakizashi into his stomach. Let's see you keep a straight face during something like that.
  • The gunning down of the samurai with the Gatling guns can be vindictively funny, especially if you have grown tired of Katanas Are Just Better and Guns Are Worthless. Where's all your katana-godmodding now, samurai boys? Hahahahaha!
• The Legend Of Hell House is for the most part an atmospheric and creepy haunted house movie, but it has two extremely Narmish moments:
  • The first is when a character is attacked by a cat, represented by an unconvincing puppet thrown at her repeatedly.
  • The other comes at the climax, when Roddy McDowall's character figures out that all the supernatural happenings in the house are the work of a single spirit — the house's original owner. A decent twist, but then Roddy goes on that he knows the reason the ghost is doing all this: he was short. Granted, this guy is constantly described as a giant of a man, and so it's easy to believe that this secret would be so shameful to him that he would be driven to impersonate an entire house full of ghosts. But seeing poor Roddy McDowall shouting "You weren't even five foot (sic) tall!" into the wind is just embarrassing.
• In Les Misérables (2012), Javert's suicide has a hilariously loud and gruesome sound effect. Everyone in the theatre winced and started giggling.
  • Due to every line being sung, some of the dialogue can come off as a tad melodramatic. "I STOOOLE A LOAAF OF BREEAAD."
  • It was always funny when Russell Crowe and Hugh Jackman were acting together because the former was to some people putting in little to no effort and the latter giving it his all. Sometimes it got a bit funny when they were sharing scenes.
  • This exchange:
  Solider: Who's there?
  Enjolras: THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

  • The scene is from the book, without it it makes it seem like a bad knock-knock joke. A really bad knock-knock joke.
  • "My name is Jean Valjean." "And I am Javert!"... Thanks for the intro, fellas. Granted, the former was just expressing his unhappiness of being referred to by number and the latter was simply trying to get him to fear his name, but still, it's a pretty funny way to learn their names, and being sung doesn't help. It's almost like they're on a talk show.
    • Due to Russell Crowe's so-called singing, the introduction becomes even funnier as "AND-I'M-JA-VERT!", as if he needed to put a space between everything he sang. Be-cause you have to hy-phen-ate every-thing you say.
• In The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, the climactic recreation of Peter playing Chance the gardener in Being There is made unintentionally amusing by Geoffrey Rush's failure to get the voice right — he sounds less like Chance than he does Mr. Flibble, especially since he doesn't have much dialogue in the scene being shot.
• The Reveal in the movie The Life of David Gale is like this: "She did it herself!". Um, that's pretty clear after what the reporter did...
• The Lion King (2019) turns Scar's murder of Mufasa, one of the most dramatic moments of the original movie, into an absolute farce. It's practically a microcosm of everything the remake does worse. The animal models' chronic Dull Surprise kills the weight of the original scene, and the poor staging and bright, cheery lighting ruin what emotion is left. Scar's incredibly melodramatic delivery of "Long live the king!" would be bad enough if he didn't then, for lack of a better word, bitchslap Mufasa into the gorge. As the punchline, Simba squeaks his Big "NO!", guaranteeing fits of highly inappropriate laughter. Even the most passionate viewer couldn't take this scene seriously.
• The Lives of Others, which is an otherwise good movie, features a scene in which a character learns about a friend's suicide... and his immediate reaction is to sit down at the piano, brood, and play depressing music while doing his best to look tortured. It comes out of nowhere and is so over the top, you have to wonder if they shot an alternative scene where he goes to his room, puts on black eye-liner and listens to Linkin Park. Or another where he grows sideburns, wears early 19th-century clothes, and writes moody poetry in the forest.
• The entire 90-minute running time of The Lonely Lady.
  "If I write for anyone, Vinnie, I write for MMMMEEEEEE!!!!
  • A highlight is a downright insane breakdown scene, which the publicist convinced the studio not to cut because he's the same one who runs the Golden Raspberry Awards and knew that clip was tailor-made for his ceremony!
• A dramatic scene late in The Lookout is hampered by one character's loud, repeated insistence that "I have the poweeeer!"
• The first part of Paolo Sorrentino's Loro at times seems almost a self-parody of his previous film The Great Beauty, mostly because of the anvilicious metaphors involving random animals. The most ridiculous of the lot is when a giant rat comes out of nowhere and a garbage truck, in order to avoid it, steers and crashes, spraying Rome's beautiful night landscape with tons of garbage. The metaphor of the characters defacing Rome's great beauty with their filth couldn't be more on the nose, and if you add the bizarre CG effects like the truck floating in the air like the van from Stranger Things and more or less exploding in a geyser of trash, you have a scene that's impossible to be taken seriously, even with the intentional comedic undertones of several scenes.
• Harlan Ellison had this reaction to Love Story, especially to the last scenes in which Jennifer asks Oliver to take his clothes off and get into bed with her. Ellison confessed that at other sad or tragic movies he cries openly, but felt that Love Story was manipulative and false.

M

• Macbeth, particularly in one film adaptation. Macbeth's henchmen are invading Macduff's castle and killing his lady and children... and his youngest son, after being stabbed, staggers over to Lady Macduff and says, "He has killed me, mother." Grade ten English lit had never been so hilarious.
  • The immediately preceding lines from the murderer "What you egg! -stab- Young fry of treachery!" didn't help matters.
  • That was the Roman Polański version. That moment provoked plenty of laughter, but there's also the scene in which a hapless minion is shot in the head with a crossbow. The unconvincing make-up and the fellow's perplexed, stupid expression had everyone in stitches.
  • It was justified in the original play. Sometimes you had to say "Oh noes, I'm dead!" because the audience in a theater production doesn't get to see the eyes close as you die. It still should have been cut in the film versions.
  • The witches in that version were Narmy in a disturbing Fetish Retardant way. The Orgy and prophecy scene, aside from being totally unlike the play, was both Narmy and trippy.
  • The scene where Banquo's ghost appears at Macbeth's banquet. Macbeth cowers in terror as the rather gruesome ghost advances... the ghost disappears; cut to the nobles staring awkwardly at Macbeth. Their expressions are hilarious.
    • One of the best scenes in the movie, there. Ghost appears. Macbeth cowers. Ghost bleeds from the injuries that killed him. Okay. Back to Macbeth, cowering. Cut back to ghost, spurting massive amounts of obviously fake blood from all over his body.
  • One film of the play ends with a closeup of every character staring at Fleance, all with overdramatic looks on their faces. One almost expected them to start saying, "Janet! Brad! Dr. Scott!"
  • Orson Welles' version was decent, but he should have requested another costume designer. Welles complained about having to do his final showdown with Macduff dressed as the Statue of Liberty◊
  • In the Judi Dench and Ian McKellen version (sounds awesome, right?) Lady Macbeth (Dench) is angsting to herself while her husband kills King Duncan. During the scene, Lady Macbeth is supposed to give what I assume is a half wail, half groan; unfortunately and hilariously, it comes out sounding like a squeaky door opening very slowly.
    • The witches in this version are particularly hard to watch, especially the one that keeps drooling. They look more pathetic than scary, like old homeless women.
• Man of Steel: "I WILL FIND HIM!" Could double as Narm Charm, this being Zod and all.
  I will find him. I will find him, Lara. (pause) I WILL FIND HIM!
  • We get a freaking Wilhelm Scream when the aircraft takes a hit and Lois falls out the hatch to her near-doom.
  • Given the film's odd method of giving us Superman's backstory through flashbacks, Jonathan Kent gives similar speeches in Anachronic Order.
  • The Jor-El hologram repeating every single plot point from the Krypton prologue, rendering an already long sequence moot. Granted, it was also there to help explain just how stagnant Krypton had become, from a civilization that went to colonize worlds far beyond their reach, to one that seemingly hasn't changed since they figured out how to clone their species.
  • Superman killing Zod. It's meant to be a Shoot the Dog moment for Supes but since he wasn't developed as well as other characters (as mentioned below), his famous super-code against killing isn't explicitly spelled out and it arguably turns into "just" a Big "NO!" moment. On the other hand, most people have been raised to believe Thou Shalt Not Kill - one doesn't have to profess Abrahamic faiths to believe thus - so Superman's reaction can be understood as that of a mere man not "Superman".
  • The scene in the church, where Clark is shown in front of an image of Jesus. Just in case you didn't get it yet.
• The Man Who Fell to Earth's highly surreal nature leads to narm when protagonist Thomas Jerome Newton, out of anger, flips over a tray of cookies that his lover Mary-Lou brings over to him, and in slow motion, no less.
• The end of Marley & Me is supposed to be a tragic scene in which the dog dies. The way our protagonist slowly closes Marley's eyes and the ungrammatical notes his children put in his grave are over the top for some people. Others will still empathize, though.
• In the relentlessly depressing Marvin's Room, Diane Keaton's character is diagnosed with Leukemia. During a trip to Disney World, she's drinking a soda when she sees blood on her straw, gets lightheaded, and passes out. The scene ends with a Point of View shot from her on the ground, as several people are looking down on her... and then Goofy enters the frame, and any drama left in the scene is washed out by giggling.
• Mary Shelley's Frankenstein gets pretty narmtastic a few times, especially "I will have my revenge... FRANKENSTEEEEEIIIIIIN!"
  • The creature murders Elizabeth in a gruesome manner, ripping her heart out, but then her hair catches fire from some candles that were knocked over and Victor has to put it out before he can embrace her dead body.
  • Can't forget the scene where he first creates the monster. After a hilarious "LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!!", the monster gets caught on hooks, knocked out, and dragged upwards, where we see its feet hanging. And the doctor just leaves it hanging there while he goes to collect himself!
• Menace II Society has the "Basehead" scene. It's actually a very accurate portrayal of how actual crackheads behave, and how their dealers treat them (though they usually don't kill them) but as most people are unfamiliar with such things it comes off narmy.
  "I'll suck yo' dick, maaaan!"
• Misery: During the big fight scene, just as Annie Wilkes falls to the floor and hits her head on the typewriter, the actress is replaced by a really bad looking Kathy Bates dummy.
• The Mothman Prophecies has a tense and dramatic scene where the main character receives a phone call from a mysterious stranger claiming to be near-omniscient. The character asks the caller to prove this by identifying what is sitting in his pocket. After a pause meant to build suspense, the whispery voice drawled out, "Chaaaaappppppstiiiiick" in what is supposed to be a creepy manner.
• Moulin Rouge! has Christian sobbing hysterically when Satine dies. Those not similarly moved (with or without hysterics) by this scene may find it amusing, especially the loud "Wa-aaaah!" noise Christian makes that sounds almost like hysterical laughter instead.
• The Mummy has an intense action sequence in which a biplane carrying the heroes is attacked by a magical sandstorm. The sandstorm develops the scowling face of The Mummy, a nice effect... and then it cuts to him controlling the sandstorm by making funny faces in the desert, and the moment is lost.
  • This happens again in the sequel, except this time Imhotep makes his face appear on a tidal wave.
  • Then we get the sequel and the big, scary scorpion-demon thing with... a horribly-animated version of The Rock's face stuck upon it. Stephen Sommers (director and writer) mentioned that he was embarrassed about that. (Those scenes were completed last, with a deadline.)
    • There's also what should have been the big dramatic moment when Rick kills the Scorpion King, utterly ruined when Imhotep literally leaps into the shot like George Reeves as Superman for his Big "NO!" - and does it a second late...
  • Also in the sequel, at one point at the beginning, we see The Rock with a big goofy grin on his face, then he gets hit by a bolt of lightning and does a gesture identical to McCreary Timereary.
  • And then The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor came. Yetis appeared out of nowhere and beat up the Dragon Emperor's army.
    • Why did Jet Li turn into King Ghidorah? Why?
    • Jet Li was pretty much allowing Ben to kick his ass at one point. Jet Li is known for his martial artistry. Watching this scene was, for his fans, like watching your favorite basketball player forced to play against a 12-year-old while wearing clown shoes and a blindfold.
• The first wedding scene in the 1993 adaptation of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. It was meant to be a shocking Tear Jerker as Claudio furiously exposes Hero's infidelity to the rest of the cast (he was actually tricked into thinking she was unfaithful), but his acting, and the scene in general is so over the top that it becomes an hilarious example of Black Comedy.
• In My Sister's Keeper, Cameron Diaz breaks down into hilariously awful tears and what were meant to be heart-wrenching sobs. The audience was still laughing even as her daughter dies from cancer.

N

• The scene in The Neverending Story 1984 where the Child Empress is begging and crying for Bastian to give her a name. It's either the expressions or the repeated cries of "Bastian, PLEASE!" Though some found her quite touching; her acting would probably seem a lot more effective if not paired up with Bastian's. (Her Punctuated! For! Emphasis! "Call. My. Name." and the catch in her voice when she finally pleads "Bastian, please... save us!" had the better delivery than the rest of her lines.)
  • Bastian's acting... Every time we see him react to what he's reading, it's pure Narm. Every. Time.
  • The scene where Bastian reads about Atreyu meeting Morla. He looks up from the book and screams at the top of his lungs, creating a hilariously narmy moment.
  • "I'LL DO IT! I'LL SAVE YOU! I WILL DO WHAT I DREAM!" What makes this unfortunate is that the scene, with the dialogue as written, could have been a true dramatic and emotional moment on all sides. The line itself may be impossible not to Narm, but it may have been possible to deliver it with real conviction and wow even the most jaded audience with a talented actor.
  • Of course, there's the narmiest scene in the whole movie; when Bastian actually does cry out the name he's chosen for the Empress. His scream of her name is so unintelligible that the initial DVD release's subtitles didn't even have anything for it. For the record, he's screaming "Moon Child", but the way he screams it: "Maaaaaaaaahoon-chaaaaaaaaaa-eeyuuuuuuld!" makes it damn near impossible to understand even if you know what he's saying. It's meant to be the Big Dramatic Moment for him, but comes off like a kid randomly screaming out a window.
• Nights in Rodanthe. Towards the end, Diane Lane first finds out that Richard Gere is dead and is clutching their letters and crying; this may be funny to viewers outside the intended demographic.
• Nosferatu manages to be downright scary despite its age, but there are some downright humorous moments that were supposed to be horrifying to the original audiences all those years ago. One example of this is the scene when Thomas Hutter, the protagonist of the film, hails a "ghost carriage", which is shot at a higher speed than the rest of the film. This results in a humorous effect, as the carriage starts and stops abruptly, as in the very earliest comedy films. Another scene involves the titular vampire, who is moving to his new home across from Hutter's. He packs himself into a coffin, lays down, then magically moves the coffin lid over the coffin in a series of short, jumpy cuts (basically bad stop-motion) that make the scene more humorous than it should be. This also occurs later in the film, to the same effect.
• From Mexican Melodrama Nosotros los Pobres:
• Now You See Me: It only becomes apparent on replays, but the final scene between Dylan and Bradley may become a lot sillier when you realise that as Bradley is desperately trying to work out the Horsemen's trick to save himself from life imprisonment (while standing with his back to Dylan), Dylan is squeezing himself between the cell's bars in order to make his big reveal as the Fifth Horseman.
  • Or The Eye really does have "True Magic," and Dylan just teleported.

O

• In the 1997 TV miniseries of The Odyssey, Odysseus throws a spear at a particularly large suitor, who promptly accelerates upward and gets pinned to a wall. Blessed by the gods, indeed.
  • It's more than that; not only does the spear pin said suitor through a door and not a wall, the spear manages to kill the woman said suitor had been sleeping with while trying to woo Penelope. There are several other Narmful moments, including:
    • Odysseus's mother, Anticlea, committing suicide by walking into the ocean. What should be a dramatic and sorrowful scene is utterly ruined by her servant promptly sitting down on the shore, rocking back and forth while patting her head with her hands, and making truly hilarious cries. As opposed to stopping Anticlea from continuing to walk into the sea.
    • During the same scene, Penelope takes action and tries to stop Anticlea from going through with the suicide. She runs in front of her, extends her arms, and screams "NOOOOooooOOOO!!" Supposed to be an dramatic moment, but it's really hard to take seriously.
    • Odysseus carrying the goat for Tiresias into the Underworld... as though said goat were a weapon he planned to use to defend himself.
    • Atrocious CGI effects for Scylla, which only showcases three of her heads and makes them look like Venus flytraps.
• The Omen trilogy has plenty of comic death sequences:
  • The priest's famous death by impalement in the first film. He could've saved himself with a single step to the left, rather than raising his hands and shouting "NOOOOOO!"
  • From the second film, the red-wearing journalist's otherwise utterly harrowing scene where a demonic raven attacks her and graphically pecks her eyes out is ruined when she then stumbles into the path of an incoming truck. Not only is the dummy unconvincing, but it seems to vault over the speeding vehicle, in defiance of physics.
  • Another non-death example from the second film: the number of times the name "Bugenhagen" is repeated.
• Ed Wood's porn film, One Million AC/DC has a scene where a poor, helpless cavewoman is eaten by a vicious dinosaur... a scene that includes an awful hand puppet, an incredibly obvious dollar-store dinosaur toy, and a barbie doll.
• A high percentage of Orphan. Seeing what is supposedly a young girl hold a knife to her young brother's genitals and say "I'll cut off your hairless little prick before you even know what it's for," and then dress up like a total ho-bag and try to seduce her father — that isn't scary or heartbreaking. It's funny.
• Outland is a good movie, but people's heads swell up and explode like water balloons at the slightest drop in air pressure. That, and two pivotal scenes take place in a futuristic racquetball court.
• Oh, God, The Outsiders. Matt Dillon in Dally's dramatic death scene. The cops keep on shooting at him as he crawls around on the ground gasping and choking for almost a whole minute. In the book, after he was shot, he was dead before he hit the ground.

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• Though certain people consider it an ultimate Tear Jerker, the scene where Trevor is stabbed and dies in Pay It Forward is ridiculous if you know anything at all about human anatomy. Put succinctly: unless he lay there for three hours before EMTs got to him, there's no way he should have died. It's as if the director was so desperate to extract more tears from the audience that she didn't care how she was gonna do it. For this scene, rolling the eyes and yelling "Oh, bullshit!" is just as appropriate as reaching for the Kleenex.
  • He did it so humorously. He should have recited a Shakespearean monologue.
• In the film adaptation of Philip K. Dick's Paycheck, James Rethrick yells, "Still think you can change your fate, Mike? I AM THE FUTURE, MIKE!", referencing a deleted scene where Michael Jennings states that he believes he can change his fate.
• Perfect Pie: The scene where Marie asks why no one likes her and Patsy reluctantly admits that she smells due to being too poor to afford enough water to bathe regularly is made far more ridiculous in the movie version, where Marie is for some reason holding a live chicken throughout the entire scene.
• The scene in The Movie of Patrick Suskind's Perfume in which Alan Rickman finds his daughter's dead body is rendered extreme narm by his facial expression and arm movements.
  • What about the ending? The utter horror of what happened is completely and utterly ruined by the dodgy slo-mo bodice-ripping two frames later. Sure, it was never going to translate very well onto the screen anyway, but they could have tried to make it look slightly less like a Renaissance-era Woodstock.
  • Everyone who stops taking care of Jean-Baptiste dying in increasingly spectacular fashion. Not helped by some of these deaths being played in slow motion.
• The Phantasm series is full of narm. For example, this line in the second film:
  "You mean that story about me blowing up my house because it was infested with... midgets?"
  • The way Jody says "Tommy" upon seeing said person's dead body in the first film.
• The Phantom of the Opera (1925):
  • The Phantom's last action before death in it is miming an invisible grenade, and then an abrupt surrender which can be interpreted as "Naw, I'm just messing with you."
  • The mirror scene, where he has to poke Christine on the shoulder about a dozen times before she finally notices him with appropriate levels of shock.
  • There are some overly melodramatic title cards in the silent film.
    "Believe in my love, Raoul, and save me from that monster—oh, save me!"
  • When Christine sneaks up behind the Phantom to take his mask off, the anticipation is deflated a bit when she bumps against a violin hanging on the wall, leaving it swinging back and forth for the rest of the scene.
• The opening scene of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, with the mass hanging of the pirates and the little boy leading them in the "Hoist the Colours" song, is properly chilling — but it loses a bit of its edge when one soldier, let's call him Captain Obvious, rushes over to Beckett and tells him, "They've started to sing, sir." There are hundreds of condemned pirates, and Beckett is yards away. It's... very unlikely he wasn't already aware.
• Plan Bee:
  • The climactic fight scene between the worker bees and the Queen's guard. While probably intended to seem dramatic, the fight in fact comes across as very narmy; the music is overly dramatic and martial, and much of the fighting seems to consist of headbutting the opponent. The disturbing moaning also sounds very... strange to anybody who isn't watching. Meanwhile the Queen just sits there and stares, bug-eyed, at her regime collapsing around her.
  • After standing up to the Queen, Bing is being banished, and Queen's guard encircle him. Bing floats upwards with a daze look on his face, and the guards continue to advance inwards. The whole scene feels very strange.
• "You maniacs! You blew it all up!" as said by Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes (1968). The viewer has known that the planet is Earth since ten minutes after the landing (even if the viewer in question has lived under a rock and hasn't heard the premise of the movie). But when Heston's character sees the broken Statue of Liberty at the very end (just a few frames before we do), he cracks up, pounding sand and screaming.
• The Prince of Tides is a prime source of narm. The hilarious break-down scene where Nick Nolte breaks down crying in Barbra's arms and she whispers "it was sooo hard, you've had to keep it all inside" while a single tear runs down her shiny, shiny face is a prime example of narm. The entire film is indeed one big narm-fest, where chewing the scenery is not only encouraged but required.
• In Problem Child, a scene where Junior and his criminal hero go to the circus was probably meant to be an example of Dude, Not Funny!, but Michael Richards' delivery in this scene is just so hilarious that even a little kid will laugh at watching a random clown get socked. Even if you go with the (more likely) idea that it was Played for Laughs, the complete non-reaction from the other fair-goers still dampens the effect somewhat.
• The Professional has one Narmtastic scene in an otherwise great movie: After helping Mathilda escape Stansfield and his goons by stuffing her into the air duct, Leon suddenly turns around and BELLOWS into the camera like he's turning into a werewolf.
  • Gary Oldman as Stansfield yelling "EVE - RY - ONE" in response to an underling questioning what he means by "everyone" when he tells him to get "everyone." His delivery is so loud and each syllable is so drawn out that it's almost impossible to take seriously.
    • Gary Oldman was just messing with Luc Besson to make him laugh with the "EV - REE - OOOONE!!" thing, and that take ended up being used in the film.
• The 1979 film, Prophecy has a priceless moment where a terrified kid tries to flee a mutated bear... by bunny-hopping away in his bright yellow sleeping bag. The bear then punches the kid into a rock, where he EXPLODES in a shower of fluffy feathers. It sounds gory, but coupled with the dramatic music and the bear roaring, it's unintentionally hilarious.
• As balls-explodingly awesome as Tom-Yum-Goong (a.k.a. The Protector) is, and as much as it's clearly supposed to be dramatic, the scene where a bunch of Giant Mooks put Tony Jaa's elephant in a headlock and throw it across the room is flat-out hilarious.
• In Push, the Screamers were supposed to be menacing, but they looked kind of ridiculous because of the way their faces contorted when they screamed (and because they were men with a superpower commonly attributed to women). Except at the end, when the boys' father finds his sons dead and turns out to be not only a Screamer, but also extremely powerful. Oh, Crap!.
  • Even the screamers at the end seemed hilarious. Every time something tries to get done in an action sequence in this movie, some Screamer shows up out of nowhere and makes his O-face, and everybody else collapses in pain. They need their own family sitcom.

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