Podcast / We Hate Movies

"Hello I'm Andrew Jupin...
...Steven Sajdak...
...Eric Szyszka...
...Chris Cabin...
And We... Hate Movies."

A weekly podcast wherein three (or sometimes four) New York writers/comedians/filmmakers sit down to make fun of bad movies. The show has a general rule of only making episodes on movies that are over 10 years old, but this is regularly suspended for things such as theme months or listener requests.

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We Hate Tropes:

• Accent Upon The Wrong Syllable: The guys routinely pronounce a handful of everyday words in silly ways ("vill-AIN," "jewELS," "PRO-grum") just for the hell of it. Some listeners occasionally don't get it and write in to correct them. Other listeners start unconsciously saying them the same way.
• Accentuate the Negative: Played with; as the point of the podcast is to make fun of bad or subpar movies, naturally they tend to focus heavily on the bad parts that will get the most laughs. However, it's not just pure negativity or snideness; they usually are willing to take a moment at least to appreciate and praise something they legitimately enjoyed, be it a good scene, a talented performance, or just an actor who's been in better stuff. Furthermore, while they will mercilessly mock every movie they watch, they are willing to admit when they're willing to recommend a film to their audience (even if only on a you've gotta see this." level) and will often do "bad" movies which they nevertheless unironically love (such as Hard Target or Tuff Turf). In December 2018, they debuted "We Love Movies" Month, in which the things they chose are classic films they all enjoy; this also spread to the Patreon-exclusive episodes they run.
• Actually Pretty Funny: A running gag is that whenever The Mafia or organised crime is brought up, the guys will stress that theirs is a "pro-Mafia podcast" just in case any gangsters happen to be listening and take offense to perceived criticisms. A few years into this, one of the submissions to the mailbag was from someone claiming to be in prison for unspecified Mafia-related crimes who listened to the podcast as part of his entertainment privileges. This person revealed that apparently these jokes went down very well amongst the prison population.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: invoked In the Stealth episode, Eric is utterly stunned when the others inform him that Tajikistan is a real country and not something the movie just made up (though everyone agrees that it's most likely nothing like the movie portrays it).
• Angrish: Multiple times during the Easy Rider: The Ride Back episode.
• Ate His Gun: A running gag in the Off Beat episode is that Cleavant Derricks' scheme (have Judge Reinhold pretend to be him, complete with wearing his uniform and going by his name) would end with him "enjoying a gun-metal dinner" in any realistic universe.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Eric tries to play this card against Batman in the Batman Returns episode, pointing out that Batman's suspicion of the Penguin stems in large part because of the Penguin's non-typical appearance. The others shut this down by pointing out that in this particular case Batman has a point, since the Penguin is a near-literal monster.
• Beleaguered Assistant:
  • Jeremy, the unpaid intern charged with shipping out all of Trickster's evil CD-ROMs and putting up with all his tantrums in Brainscan.
  • Brian, Keanu Reeves' mail handler (though, in fairness, the guy's really overstepping his bounds with all that meddling).
• Berserk Button:
  • As New Yorkers, the guys really hate it when the movie they're watching dips into the "cynical New Yorker" stereotype, or depicts the city with wildly inaccurate geography.
  • Precocious child characters (A.K.A. "shit-eatin' kids") for Andrew.
  • Adding darker sexual elements to a movie in an "edgy", irresponsible manner (such as Kill Crazy with its multiple instances of rape, or The Butterfly Effect and its child molestation subplot) has come up a few times, to mutual scorn.
  • On the kids note, the guys likewise are having nothing to do with "kid power" movies (e.g., movies of the Nineties where a child character acting like a precocious little shit is to be exalted).
  • Stowaways, apparently, for Steve, as he seems to consider it a lazy and overly "precious" way for a movie to write itself out of a corner. (Doubly so for kid stowaways, of course.)
  • Steve also hates alien and/or foreign characters that can only say their own names. Some include Station, Hodor and the Smurfs.
  • They also tend to get quite annoyed whenever characters fail to react with appropriate awe, horror or amazement at world-changing events and developments. Examples include Godzilla (1998), where everyone reacts to Godzilla trampling New York with stereotypical "Noo Yawker" sarcasm and aloofness instead of pant-shitting terror, and Deadly Friend, where the people around the protagonist react to his basically inventing artificial intelligence not with amazement and offers of lucrative R&D funding but with dismissiveness and even disdain.
  • The Designated Hero and Designated Villain tropes particularly annoy them, especially when concerning obnoxious, oafish, manchildish and even downright depraved or villainous protagonists whom the narrative treats as the greatest person ever despite their being in every objective way a horrible human being. Repeat offenders include James Belushi, Adam Sandler and Steven Seagal.
• Best Friend: The guys have known each other for many years and, despite all the smart-ass remarks about one another, are clearly very fond of each other. In the Jurassic World episode, Steve is downright indignant when Eric describes seeing the movie with his two "best friends": "Dr. Pepper and Mr. Popcorn." They often use their real friendship as a basis for criticising the many idiotic and unrealistic things that Hollywood often depicts best friends doing; for example, Steve at one point insists that as much as he cares about his friends he will never sit them down and urge them to start a romantic relationship with someone, as countless romantic comedies depict, because as far as he's concerned that's none of his business.
• Blatant Lies: In one mailbag episode, Andrew recounts the story of one evening when he was sharing an apartment with Chris during their college years, and the two of them went to a party which resulted in Chris engaging in an epic amount of drinking. The two got separated, and Andrew eventually returned home to find Chris sitting covered in vomit in the middle of a vomit-covered apartment. When Andrew, not unreasonably, accused Chris of having vomited everywhere, he was met with a blanket denial.
• Bring My Brown Pants:
  • The guys - ESPECIALLY Steve - remark that this should be the reaction of the characters to the titular monster in Roland Emmerich's Godzilla. What pisses the guys off is how the characters instead respond as though attacks from a giant, rampaging monster are more of an inconvenience than a life-endangering threat. To push it even further, they play on the New York stereotypes that the guys hate.
  • Much to the exasperation, horror and — at times — warped curiosity of the guys, many of the letters they receive in the mailbag revolve around unfortunate experiences the writers had with either soiling themselves, other people soiling themselves in a way that affected the writer, or being mistaken for soiling themselves.
• Catchphrase:
  • Andrew: "This is where things get... really stupid."
  • "But here's the thing..." for Andrew as well.
  • Steve often vocalizes "Question Mark?" when expressing uncertainty, or uses "Talk to you later!" when discussing awkward scenarios.
  • Starting with Swordfish, Eric sometimes says "It's okay to like a movie" to jokingly assure people the show doesn't have an in-universe Reviews Are the Gospel attitude.
  • As natives of New York, Andrew and Steve habitually use slang terms like "not having it" or "and you can keep it."
  • "Still haven't, still happy". When someone discusses a recent bad movie they managed to catch outside of the podcast, one of the other gentlemen (usually Steve) will proclaim this to note how blessed they feel at not having endured the pain.
  • Steve will precede an interjection with "BTW," pronounced as "Bee Tee Dubs", which is used as a shorthand for "By the Way." Chris has also used it.
  • Cabin's emphatic "Get the fuck outta here!" after being asked if he'd recommend a movie.
  • "...And I'm throwing up/wanting to throw up" by Andrew, usually when he's midway through a diatribe on something repellent.
  • Whenever something too "clever" that occurs in a movie is described, Andrew contemptuously replies, "Oh, suicide."
  • A frequent response to particularly unbelievable or outrageous events is: "My ass, movie."
  • The New York slang saying that something is a certain way "from Jump Street" as an alternative to "from the beginning" (e.g., "This kid is evil from Jump Street.")
  • Andrew often refers to wild overacting as "beboppin' and scattin'," in a shout-out to Seinfeld.
  • A discussion of a Designated Hero and his/her various awful deeds will usually be greeted with "... Our hero, everybody."
  • A surprising (or "surprising") moment will frequently be greeted by Steven Sadjak exclaiming "Say whaaaaaaat?" in a sarcastic or exaggerated manner.
  • Any ridiculous alien life is referred to as "a bunch of gleep gloppin' aliens," after a sketch from MrShow.
  • Steve will sometimes acknowledge the profound silliness of one of their extended riffs with a sigh of "...ah, that's stupid."
  • "Who. Could. POSSIBLY. Care?"
  • Particularly useless examples of law-enforcement are often described as being "cold on the trail."
  • In reaction to badly written, particularly fake-sounding dialogue, the guys will say that the screenwriter is "click-clackin' at keys" or some variation.
  • Stephen uses "Figure it out!" often enough that it's started appearing on merch.
• Caustic Critic: As implied by the title of the show, the main draw is listening to the hosts tear into subpar films, though they will occasionally express fondness for some of their subjects for being entertaining in spite of their flaws.
• Church of Happyology: The trope inspiration naturally comes up in the Battlefield Earth episode. The boys proceed to mercilessly make fun of the religion, its beliefs and the controversies surrounding it and its leaders, complete with lampshades about how, owing to the church's notoriously litigious and threatening nature, they'll either be sued to oblivion or murdered by an Australian enforcer.
• Cluster F-Bomb: A regular occurrence.
  • This tendency actually led to a prudish 1-star review on iTunes, the text of which read simply: "Why don't you ditch your potty mouths?!" Not only did they proceed to make fun of it, but Eric graciously offered to use "fudge" for the rest of the episode instead.
  • In between the swearing, though, Andrew is occasionally prone to comically polite expressions of exasperation in response to crazy letters or plot points, e.g. "Oh, mercy me."
• Comically Missing the Point: Steve finds himself doing this during the discussion on "what makes a seventh son".
  Andrew: Now that we've spelled it out, it does make sense to me, what you're saying... but holy shit.
  Steve: (Defeated) Yeah, that was just four minutes of everyone's life.
• Commander Contrarian: Chris Cabin is often referred to by the others as the World's Most Contrarian Film Critic, usually whenever he expresses an opinion that goes against the majority consensus, whenever they disagree with him about something or think that he's maybe being a bit too forthright and unyielding in his opinions. This stems from an article in Gizmodo which compared the Metacritic scores a selection of critics gave the movies they reviewed with the overall Metacritic scores those same films received in order to determine roughly which critics were most frequently out of step with the general consensus of their peers and the public. Chris, for what it's worth, actually came tenth, but this was nevertheless more than enough for his friends to find the situation both incredibly accurate and incredibly amusing. Discussed in the Species episode when guest host Angelica Jade Bastién admitted that she often agreed with a lot of Chris' more contrarian viewpoints, leading to this exchange:
  Steve: Just so you know, Angelica; you come at the king, you best not miss.
  Angelica: You come at the queen, you best not miss.
• Commuting on a Bus: Since moving from New York after Season 5, Chris has predictably appeared in much fewer episodes, and it's become something of a running gag — the others treat his sudden appearance via Skype chat as a spectral manifestation, and Eric speculates he might've been abducted by aliens.
• Covers Always Lie: The early recurring segment "Off the Box," where Eric reads laughably overwrought synopses and taglines for the film from the VHS cover or on IMDb.
• Creator's Pet: Invoked and discussed, as this is an accusation often levelled at the characters played by Jim Belushi among others. The guys often note that whenever he plays the main protagonist of a movie, the character usually not only shares his interests (such as blue music and supporting the Chicago Cubs) and his somewhat retrograde political and gender views, but is frequently treated by other characters as if he's the greatest guy ever despite being an obnoxious, boorish jerk. They also note that whenever he plays the hero, the character will never face any kind of meaningful challenge and will overcome obstacles ridiculously easily. Taking Care of Business is especially guilty of this in their eyes.
• Cringe Comedy: Many, many personal anecdotes related by the guys fall under this category, and they encourage listeners to send similarly awkward movie-related stories. Of special note is a letter from a fan detailing the time he worked a summer job at a bible camp as a teenager and was forced to watch Son of the Mask with another, fully-grown counselor who had become invested in the story, but was afraid that if he watched it alone, everyone might assume he was masturbating to such a "sexy" movie. The guys are horrified.
• Dawson Casting: Discussed in-universe in the episode on Winter's Tale, wherein the fact that Colin Farrell is clearly almost in his forties is frequently brought up as a reason why the film doesn't work. In addition, the fact that the age difference with the female lead, Jessica Brown Findlay, is rendered somewhat awkward due to the age difference between them, their dialogue, characterisation and the heavy emphasis on "true love" makes the characters seem quite young, making it odd when such sentiments are coming from a man who is clearly nearer middle-age.
• Designated Villain (In-Universe): A frequent point of criticism for them is when the audience is expected to demonise a character who actually has a very good point or may even be entirely in the right. Some examples include:
  • Mary Steenburgen's character in One Magic Christmas, who is treated as The Grinch by her family and the story for wanting a low-key Christmas when in fact she's the only one who seems to recognize and try to address her family's dire financial situation in a practical way.
  • Anton from Addicted to Love — as the guys note, the only actual "villainous" thing he's shown to do is sleep with a health inspector, and even that is simply to keep himself and his restaurant financially secure after Meg Ryan's character commits credit fraud with his savings account; in other words, a hard-working immigrant who loves his girlfriend and is a great boss to his staff (who will all likely become unemployed in the wake of his business folding) was pushed to commit infidelity by two jealous psychopaths stalking him, and we, the audience, are meant to hate him for it.
  • Stuart Dunmeyer from Mrs. Doubtfire, simply because First Father Wins.
• Devil's Advocate: Eric occasionally likes to jokingly act as one to play off the other guys when they're railing against specific plot holes of certain movies.
• Dirty Coward: Played for laughs; when discussing how they would react to the situations in the movies they watch compared to the heroes, a certain rather cowardly pragmatism on part of our hosts can make itself apparent. For example, in their episode on Child's Play they note that if a child of theirs was beholden to a possessed doll due to a voodoo curse, they would probably just surrender the child rather than continue to fight against the curse. Steve in particular tends to be presented in this fashion, to the point where a running commentary / gag is "when in this movie would Steve Sadjak kill himself rather than face the horrors to come?"
• Don't Explain the Joke: Occasionally, such as in the The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen episode, when Steve says that the League should have included Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, instead of the other one, so they could actually cast a single black dude in the movie. He then quickly amends that he knows that Ellison's novel isn't actually about a magical invisible guy, and the other guys chide him for ruining his own joke.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: As with many podcasts, the show took a while to find its feet into the format it now uses:
  • Very early episodes would be comparatively short, usually between half an hour to an hour. Current episodes are usually at least between ninety minutes and an hour forty-five, and at times are longer than two hours (with their patreon-exclusive "We Love Movies" on Star Wars: A New Hope clocking in at just over three hours).
  • The content of early episodes often revolves around a general freeform discussion / critical review of the movie under question. Gradually, the episodes began to be structured around a general recap of the movie which would be used as more of a springboard for comedic riffing and tangents, with the critique element downplayed (although they're no less shy about vocalising their opinions on quality). Accordingly, these days the hosts themselves tend to describe the show as more of a comedy podcast that happens to centre around movies rather than a movie review podcast specifically.
  • Episodes would also frequently draw on sound clips from the movies under discussion and would be played in by a pop song that was either from the movie in question or which had lyrics which were thematically/comedically relevant in some way. The clips were gradually dropped and the songs were officially replaced by an original theme from episode 109, both to help establish an individual identity for the show and to avoid potential copyright issues as the show became more popular.
  • Except for special episodes (anniversaries, milestones, etc.), the episodes would only have three of the four regular hosts appear (or two regular hosts and a guest host), likely as a result of issues with recording space and facilities. When The Bus Came Back and Chris Cabin started appearing again after a lengthy absence, episodes started featuring all four hosts together, along with any guest hosts.
  • For a period around Episodes 100-200, at the end of an episode one of the hosts would offer a clue to the subject of the next for listeners to guess at on social media. Eventually, they dropped this and simply started announcing what the next episode was going to be outright.
• Escapist Character: Invoked and discussed as one of the major problems with James Belushi vehicles, and, by extension, the entire "slobs vs. snobs" genre — if the focus of the movie's admiration rests on such a coarse, pig-headed, sexist, degenerate loudmouth as Jimmy Dworsky, and everyone touts that character as what all "guy's guys" should be, as Chris notes, it can very easily come off as insulting to the audience rather than endearing.
  Steve: Look at high-society types, isn't being a sloppy piece of shit the best thing you can do with your life?
• Evil All Along: Given the name "Cat Eyes Twist Ending," after the conclusion of the Thriller music video.
• Fetish Retardant: In-universe, many things intended to be sexy, but none more so than Blame It on Rio, a "comedy" in which 51-year-old Michael Caine plays a man having an affair with his best friend's teenage daughter, portrayed by a (frequently naked) underage actress. The guys even make multiple attempts to steer any new listeners away from the episode, lest they be scared off for good.
• Filler and Padding: Two of their biggest bugbears in the movies that they watch; while they're not opposed to long movies, they hate movies which just stuff their runtimes with meaningless events just to fill up a run-time.
• Finishing Each Other's Sentences: Being longtime friends, the hosts occasionally predict one another's comments or even "joke-jack" one another. A prime example occurs in the Buried Alive episode when the guys discuss the likelihood of Steve (absent from the episode) being murdered in the street by an enraged listener; Andrew and Chris exclaim "HEY, SAJDAK!" in perfect unison.
• First Father Wins: Discussed and mocked with Mrs. Doubtfire; despite the movie bending over backwards to make Pierce Brosnan the best potential new husband for Sally Field imaginable (he's impossibly handsome, charming, sweet, good with the kids, and independently wealthy), the audience's sympathy is still meant to be with Robin Williams' Daniel Hillard, a comparatively lousy, neglectful father who spends all his time conning his children, manipulating his ex-wife, and sabotaging his romantic rival, up to and including trying to induce anaphylactic shock by dosing his food with pepper. By the end, the guy should've racked up countless charges of fraud, assault, and attempted murder, and yet instead of being sent to prison (or possibly Arkham Asylum), he still earns visitation rights.
• Formerly Fat: Deconstructed mercilessly in the Madhouse (1990) episode, where the guys all denounce the cruelty of casting a fat child actor just to be a subject of mockery in a flashback sequence.
  Andrew: "Oh, great! What am I doing?" "You're being made fun of by an entire neighborhood of children for being overweight." "...What?"
  Chris: "We're going to pretend that you're a float. In a parade."
  Eric: "And you, uh... you get paid in food, right?"
  Chris: Cake. Paid in cake.
  Andrew: "Patrick, you're okay with getting paid in cake, right, honey?"
  Eric: "Don't worry, Patrick — 3 slices of cake, SAG minimum."
  Andrew: "Patrick, we're going to need you to take off that baggy button-down shirt and put on this skin-tight polo."
  Eric: With horizontal stripes?
  Andrew: He — he looks like Jerry O'Connell in Stand by Me.
  Chris: "The bottom of your stomach has to be in 85% of this footage."
  Andrew: (Laughing) That poor fucking kid!
• Formula-Breaking Episode: Starting in 2018, the podcast renames itself We Love Movies for each month of December and reviews classic good movies like Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Batman (1989), It's a Wonderful Life and Back to the Future.
• Frothy Mugs of Water/Drunk on Milk:
  • In-universe, the guys euphemistically refer to bong rips, or any kind of weed consumption, as "having a tall glass of water," simply because it's funny^note although the fact using weed recreationally was still technically illegal in New York when they started the podcast may have helped, since they would have been technically admitting to a crime — note that they're more open about drug use in their Patreon episodes, which exist behind a paywall, than on the free-to-access feed. In at least one episode, they explain the joke to anyone who has never caught on. Steve even discusses having a couple of glasses, melting into the couch, and freaking out during Santa Claus: The Movie in their Supergirl episode. Beer, however — which they sometimes drink during taping — remains beer.
  • Since Tooth Fairy 2 is a family movie, Larry Guthrie isn't allowed to be the blissful raging alcoholic the character should be, so the love he would normally have for beer is instead transferred to chicken, which gets a fair amount of mockery ("those are beer calories if there ever were any"). As they note, he even once believes he's hallucinating from the sheer amount of fried chicken he had for dinner.
    Steve: How much chicken do you have to eat before it alters your brain chemistry?
• The "Fun" in "Funeral": Discussed in the Going in Style episode; the alternative better movie the guys devise, Funny Funeral, revolves around a hybrid of this plot, The Big Chill and The Expendables starring a bunch of gruff older actors. Naturally, it spirals into its own cinematic universe hinging around "Detective Dad", played by Alan Alda.
• The Grinch: Eric engages in a lengthy anti-Christmas rant in the episode on Gremlins. After a few minutes of arguing the point, however, Chris eventually notes that most of Eric's gripes about Christmas actually seem to stem from a general hatred of social interaction.
• Hangover Sensitivity: The "hangover movie" recommendation is based on this premise; the idea is simply that they're movies which can be recommended if you've partied too hard the previous night on the basis that they won't make you think too hard and/or feel even worse. Interestingly, this means that they've given recommendations to movies that they otherwise hated simply because if you have a hangover they'll provide some soothing background activity for you to lightly focus on, while movies that they otherwise uniformly love will be rejected as hangover movies because they're too stimulating, intense or complex.
• Harpo Does Something Funny: Invoked as one of the central complaints with Mrs. Doubtfire, where Robin Williams does that for almost the entire film. Not only does the story try to give his character a half-baked reason^note Out-of-work professional voice actor for riffing like he does, but the ad-libs and impressions happen so frequently and go on for so long that they become annoying rather than entertaining, so entire scenes contribute nothing to the plot other than killing time; even more so, when almost every line is delivered in a different voice, Sean mentions that some form of "visual justification", like the Genie morphing into other people, would at least help to make the change less jarring.
• Hearing Voices: Pops up in the discussion of The Fan. Andrew, who watched the movie while listening to it via headphones, insists that the film contains an audio-effect suggesting that the film's Stalker without a Crush is hearing voices as part of his overall insanity. None of the others heard anything like this, however, leading to the running gag that Andrew is the one who hears voices and he's just projecting it onto the character.
• The Heckler: The guys conclude that the only possible explanation for David Hyde-Pierce signing on to narrate The Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human is that he somehow found himself in a test screening and started shouting insults about the movie’s terrible quality from the back row, leading to Let's See YOU Do Better! from the filmmakers.
• Honor Before Reason: In one episode, we learn that despite graduating several years previously Andrew still does not have an official copy of his diploma certificate, solely because of a $10 library late fee that he stubbornly refuses to pay. Andrew insists that he returned the item in question back by the due time but the library was closed due to flooding. The others — who have clearly heard this rant on several occasions — wearily advise him to just suck it up and pay the fine.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • One letter sent in by a fan details how her friends brought along an obnoxious third wheel, "Frank", when going to the theater as teenagers; being unable to get into their preferred movie, 30 Days of Night, she suggested going to see The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D, but Frank dismissed the idea, claiming they were "too old" for such stuff... before immediately deciding the group should watch the Dwayne Johnson vehicle The Game Plan, a family comedy about a pro quarterback bonding with his estranged ballerina daughter. None of the guys can quite understand Frank's leap in logic, with Steve only able to theorize that when you have the mindset of a dumb teenage boy, all animation seems like it's for babies.
  • The infamous "THEY'RE CALLED PARADEMONS!" letter taking them to task for their slating of Batman Vs Superman Dawn Of Justice review snidely accuses them of knowing nothing about DC Comics, but as Steve — who actually is a big fan of superhero comics — points out, the letter-writer makes several elementary errors about DC Comics characters and storylines that clearly indicate that he doesn't know as much about the comics as he's making out.
  • In the While You Were Sleeping episode, Steve points out the film's heavy use of Cannot Spit It Out as a plot device, critiquing at length the fact that the if the protagonist had just had a bit less meek and had just explained the situation to the family of the man whose fiance she had been mistaken for, the movie would have lasted five minutes. Chelsea, Andrew's wife and the guest on the episode, immediately retorted that while this might be the case, she had personally witnessed Steve himself silently and passively sit through plenty of awkward and embarrassing situations without speaking up because he was too meek to do so, meaning he was possibly the last person who had the right to criticise anyone else on that score.
• I Am Not Spock (In-Universe): Unless the movie in question has a very iconic cast of characters, or the character's name is much easier to remember than that of the actor's, the guys will just use actors' names when discussing both their characters and performances, for clarity's sake; however, when they want to insult the character specifically without being cruel, they will often add the disclaimer "in this movie." In other cases, if they can't put a name to a face, they'll refer to them by the name of another character they've played ("Lloyd Braun" for Matt McCoy) — or, for extreme instances when even that's too much to remember, just a memorable line they had ("Weasin' the Juice" for Erick Avari, "Tell 'Im, David!" for Margaret Colin).
• I Gave My Word: If a film is mentioned as being a "stay tuned" more than once, it's guaranteed to eventually have an episode
  • For example, C.H.U.D. II: Bud the C.H.U.D.).
  • This eventually parleyed into "Stay Tuned Month", in which four consecutive weeks are devoted to films they've previously gone on tangents about, but have held off on doing.
  • After years and years of hemming and hawing, including a promise by Steve that "2015, we're doing it", the guys finally devoted two episodes in a row (#225 & #226) to Weekend at Bernie's and its sequel, respectively — and two weeks afterward, the much-referenced Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey.
• Informed Attribute: Joked about by Steve in the Sabotage review.
  Andrew: (As Arnold Schwarzenegger, promoting his J. Edgar biopic, "Super Hoover") "Dey vanted to put in de cross-dressing, but I threatened to valk! You'll never see me vearing a dress!"
  Steve: "I vas like, 'No, dat's not de kind of movie ve're making.' It's more like Intimidation Game, vhere we put all dat shit in a box, and forget about it."
  Andrew: You mean "Imitation Game".
  Steve: Ah, yeah.
  Andrew: Although "Intimidation Game" is what they would CALL Imitation Game if Arnold starred in the movie.
  Steve: (Laughing) Oh my God! [...] (As Arnold) "I vill only say dat I am homosexual two, or maybe zhree times, and it vill be referred to off-screen, and it vill be a huge boon for de LGBT community! Vhat a hero I am for doing zis movie."
• Insistent Terminology: A "tall glass of water" is used to describe a certain other substance (or substances) of questionable legality that our hosts may have been under the influence of why watching the movie in question.
• Joke and Receive:
  • In the episode on The Core, Andrew notes a scene where Aaron Eckhart's character freaks out over losing a friend and derisively wonders what it would be like if the MTV Movie Awards had a prize for "Best Temper Tantrum." What he probably didn't realize is that the Teen Choice Awards actually do have a category for "Best Hissy Fit."
  • In Demolition Man, Eric is disturbed by the huge (chronological) age gap between Spartan and Huxley and suggests that the movie should have revealed Huxley to have been his now-grown daughter, with Andrew remarking "Now that's a twist that I would have liked to see!" In early versions of the script, Huxley was in fact supposed to have been eventually revealed to be Spartan's daughter.
  • In the Gleep Glossary for Greedo, after the latter's infamous end at the hands of Han Solo, Andrew jokes that the owner of the Mos Eisley cantina will grind him up and serve him as food. Eric then relates that the owner did take his corpse...to make high quality booze. Andrew is utterly delighted.
  • In the Once In A Lifetime for Stalked By My Doctor: The Return, after noticing Dr. Beck's nearly completely empty apartment, they propose making a sequel where Beck hides out in an empty house's attic and starts stalking the daughter of a family that moves in. By the end of the episode, Eric discovers that's exactly the premise of the then latest movie in the series, Just What the Doctor Ordered.
• Laugh Themselves Sick: Discussed and named "The Dom De Luise Wheeze-Laugh" (after one of cinema's greatest on-set corpsers) in the episode on The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, to describe the moment where someone begins to laugh so hard that their chest constricts and no sound can come out.
  • Invoked again years later in the Jungle 2 Jungle episode as the guys amuse themselves discussing Frenemies of the State (a.k.a. The Ex-Pats), a theoretical sitcom in which Gerard Depardieu, Edward Snowden and Stephen Seagal share an apartment in Russia.
    Andrew: I'm doin' it! I'm DeLuise-laughin'!
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: In the Secret Window episode, Andrew relates the story of when the others went to see the movie after getting preview tickets. Andrew himself was unable to go due to class commitments, prompting a lot of mockery over how he was going to miss what the others assumed was going to be a great movie because he was too nerdy to cut class. When they came back home, having not enjoyed the film in the slightest, Andrew innocently asked how the movie was only for this to be the rather sour response he was met with. Chris then jokes that, in true movie/TV style, they should have then all stormed off to different rooms and slammed the doors in unison.
• The Load: Deconstructed in their The Karate Kid Part III episode, where the guys discuss how Daniel LaRusso ("this gaijin asshole") has more or less been joined at the hip with Mr. Miyagi for 16 in-universe months over three movies, and is slowly ruining his life in the process — Daniel-san keeps forgetting his training and constantly has to get Miyagi to either teach him karate again or bail him out of simple fights; he imposes on Miyagi's sensitive personal business by accompanying him to Japan to settle his blood feud; he uses the money he was saving for college to instead involve Miyagi in a doomed-to-fail small business, then moves in with him; finally, he kills Miyagi's beloved bonsai tree, one of the few living reminders of his dead wife, in an idiotic attempt to earn some quick cash when the bills start to pile up. Even their rivalry against Terry Silver, the central conflict of the movie, started because Daniel-san joined that first tournament and humiliated John Kreese.
• Men Don't Cry: One of the letters from the mailbag read out on air concerned a young man who was unexpectedly overcome with emotion while watching The Lord of the Rings trilogy with his friends, went upstairs to the bathroom to cry, and ended up spending so long up there the only thing he could think to do to explain the length was have a shower — which promptly caused his friends to think that he'd soiled himself and had to clean himself up. Much the bemusement and flabbergast of our hosts, the writer of the letter decided he'd rather allow his friends to think he'd shit his pants while watching a movie with them than admit to crying.
• Memetic Badass (In-Universe):
  • If a movie has a truly fearsome, impressive main villain, the guys will often gush about them for most of the episode; notable examples include Silverio and his wealthier, non-Brazilian equivalent, Terry Silver.
  • The Volcano episode sparks a discussion about whether or not the L.A. Metro should feature a bronze statue commemorating John Carroll Lynch's amazing Heroic Sacrifice (throwing a grown man over a field of molten lava before dying), much like the statue of Ralph Kramden outside the N.Y. Port Authority.
• Memetic Molester: Invoked when discussing Twister; Dusty Davis is a little too grody-looking to be talking about the "suck zone" like that.
• Moff’s Law: Invoked and subverted, in a sense; the guys don't really disagree with this law, but they do acknowledge that several of the movies they watch and slam are nevertheless a lot of fun if you don't really think about them too hard. In particular, they often use "hangover movie" as a recommendation, on the general rule of whether or not you can enjoy the movie in question if you're suffering from the morning-after effects of a fun night out and just want to watch something vaguely enjoyable that you don't have to put much mental effort into.
• Mood Whiplash: One of the reasons the guys both loved and were utterly incredulous while watching Tuff Turf was the fact that the movie swerved wildly between various different tones and genres; at various points it's a lightly angsty teen coming-of-age drama, a wacky high school musical comedy, a gang conflict straight out of West Side Story and the harrowing tale of a young woman trapped in an abusive relationship filled with borderline rape, before finally concluding with a fight scene straight out of a superhero movie akin to Batman (1989).
• Mugging the Monster: Briefly discussed and argued about in the Wolf (Mike Nichols) episode, wherein Steve critiques the trope after mentioning its use in the film in question, arguing that it tends to create a Designated Hero effect because the character being "mugged" is arbitrarily given license to kill people. In defense, Andrew argues that the "victim" is usually just minding their own business and the muggers start the fight, meaning that the victim is acting in self-defense, while Chris points out that, as in the trope name, the "victim" is also usually a monster, and so isn't particularly concerned with the morality of killing to begin with. Steve concedes the points.
• My Biological Clock Is Ticking: Kate Winslet suffers from this to an obnoxious degree in the treacly "Christmas" movie Collateral Beauty, leading to an extended riff about Steve's new fertility company, How 'Bout Gettin' Fucked?! (Promo code "gettin' fucked." 1-877-FUCKIN-AROUND.)
• Never Trust a Title: Despite the name of the podcast, the guys are clearly movie buffs, and although the podcast specifically focuses on bad or trashy movies, the subjects are often ones that they nevertheless love.
• No Dead Body Poops: Discussed in the Judge Dredd episode, during a tangential discussion about Demolition Man (which also starred Sylvester Stallone as a future cop). They note that the society in the latter film, which issues punishments to the citizenry for use of foul language, would probably give them the death penalty for their potty mouths, and that their last meals would likely be Taco Bell, also established as the sole remaining chain restaurant after "The Fast Food Wars". They conclude that this would lead to some rather unpleasant circumstances for the unfortunate soul who was tasked with cleaning up their bodies after execution, which in turn leads to Eric vowing to, in the event that he is ever faced with the death penalty, make his last meal as much Taco Bell as possible "to really stick it to my executioner".
  Steve: Citizen Szyszka, are you sure you want sixteen bean burritos?!
  Eric: [Smugly] Just you wait...
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: This is the reasoning behind their "See It To Believe It" recommendation. These aren't necessarily good movies, but movies that they recommend you see at least once in your life because they're so jaw-dropping in some way (usually stupidity or ineptness) that their descriptions throughout the episode in question simply don't do them justice.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: As is perhaps to be expected of lifelong friends with a tendency to rib each other, old embarrassments tend to be gleefully brought up at any given opportunity.
  • Steve will probably not be allowed to forget that he once accidentally spat water on an audience member in the front row of a live gig any time soon.
  • For Eric, "he look like Shrek."
• Once per Episode:
  • Every podcast will (at some point) begin with a roll-call with whichever guys present calling their names out. This is then followed by Jupin affirming "And we... hate movies." However, the "And We... Hate Movies" bit is occasionally subverted:
    • Easy Rider: The Ride Back earned scorn, with Andrew emphasizing "And we... hate this movie."
    • During the intro for the Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day episode, Andrew's rendition of the catchphrase is immediately followed by Chris Cabin affirming it with "We sure do".
    • For North, Andrew instead yells out "AND WE HATE NORTH SO BAD!"
    • "And we... hate apes."
    • "And we... are defeated."
  • For many years, the podcast used the same recording of their product endorsement for every episode. "Hey everybody! This episode is brought you by SQUARE Space! Now Square Space, everybody... uh... is- is-... a place you can go... to do it yourself!"
• Parents Walk In at the Worst Time: Frequently discussed. Any scene that is surprisingly sexual or strange compared to the rest of the movie is invariably when your dad walks into the room and asks, "What are you watching?"
• Person as Verb:
  • According to the guys, to "be Schiffed" or experience "a Schiffening" is to be torn in half, as Richard Schiff's character memorably experienced at the mercy of two T-rexes in The Lost World: Jurassic Park
  • To be "Farina'ed" is to be ignominiously forgotten or left out of the "In Memorium" tribute at the Academy Awards, as infamously happened to Dennis Farina in 2014.
  • In a slight modification of this trope, Steve occasionally uses This Boy's Life, referring to the 1993 coming-of-age drama film, as a verb referring to egregious physical child abuse, e.g. "He's This-Boy's-Lifin' him!"
• Precision F-Strike:
  • Discussed in the Seventh Son episode; every PG-13 movie gets at least one usage of "shit" or non-sexual "fuck" in, and Jeff Bridges cussing out witches is the best way to use it.
  • Also discussed in the episode on She's All That, where they note that the movie saved it for Cook's character incredulously shouting at Freddie Prinze Jr..'s for making her "a fucking bet''. However, Steve complains on the choice to cut to Prinze's reaction shot during the moment, feeling that it reduces the effectiveness (even though it would be helpful in editing for network TV re-runs).
• Running Gag: Now has its own page.
• Seinfeldian Conversation: The recaps of the movies tend to get easily derailed by the hosts going off on tangents and bringing up old jokes, which is perhaps to be expected as they're usually just sitting around having a few beers talking about the film. In general, you can get a sense of how much they enjoy (or didn't) a particular movie by how many Running Gags and tangents they keep going off into; the more they keep distracting themselves, the more they clearly would rather be talking about something — anything — else.
• Self-Deprecation: The hosts poke fun at themselves almost as much as the movies, whether it's their current status as "quintessential New York assholes" or "cynical fucks", having embarrassing hobbies/interests, or growing up as little fat kids in short pants. They also enjoy poking fun at how overweight and weak they are, and will frequently bemoan how much time they've spent watching absolute schlock while also having failed to complete or even start some of the great works of western literature and film, such as Casablanca or Moby-Dick.
• Sequel Hook: They're fond of using "You're not gonna believe this!" to mock bad films with over-confident or hubristic hooks for sequels which, as perhaps should have been seen sooner by the filmmakers, were never going to happen.
• Sequelitis (In-Universe):
  • Naturally, brought up quite a few times. Undercover Blues is definitely the strangest example — although it isn't actually a sequel to anything, Steve notes that the seriously low stakes, lack of any real danger until the very end, and strange level of familiarity with its main characters all make it seem like it's the uncreative second entry in a non-existent franchise, returning to have some more fun in the world they've created rather than tell an original story.
  • Ghostbusters II gets hit with this hard, in the guys' opinion, and the episode as a whole serves as something of a "nostalgia-buster"; in addition to the first movie being a classic comedy and setting a very high bar to clear, they note that — save perhaps Peter MacNicol — nobody, least of all Bill Murray, wanted anything to do with it. Worse still, the film further reduces the role of Winston Zeddemore, already greatly cut back in the original, to almost nothing, rather than using the chance to flesh out the character and give Ernie Hudson more to work with. In the end, they end up praising Ghostbusters: The Video Game as a more worthy continuation of the franchise.
• Serious Business: It is often mentioned that Chris Cabin takes movies very seriously, has very strong opinions on movie quality, and will not hesitate to argue with you at length if he happens to disagree with you regarding the quality of a given film. The others, who are more willing to just let someone else's opinion slide when they disagree if it avoids an unnecessary confrontation, have (only half-jokingly) accused him of getting into fistfights with elderly relatives at Thanksgiving over disagreements about whether a movie was good or not. It is perhaps worth noting that unlike the others, who enjoy movies and have jobs within (or connected to) the industry but are otherwise not professional reviewers, Chris is actually a professional film critic.
• Shout-Out: A mention of a deceased actor, crew-member, etc. who happens to come up will usually be marked with "R.I.P.D" rather than just "R.I.P."
• Skewed Priorities: In the Only the Strong episode, the guys are a bit bemused that despite being the head of what seems to be a pretty major drug and organised crime cartel in the city, Big Bad Silverio seems to focus all his time and energies on bullying the staff and students of an anonymous run-down public school. They eventually reach the conclusion that he's hurt and left out by not being included in any of their capoeira-related activities and is lashing out.
• Springtime for Hitler: In one mailbag episode, Steve tells a story of a school dance he didn't really want to go to. He tried using the fact that his family was experiencing financial difficulties to beg out of going because he couldn't afford to pay the entrance fee, but unfortunately everyone at the school was so moved by his "plight" that they held a collection to buy a ticket for him, putting him in the awkward position of having to go rather than admitting he'd just been trying to get out of it.
• Stating the Simple Solution: Not in the film being discussed itself, but in the Pet Sematary (1989) episode our hosts repeatedly point out that 90% of the problems the characters face could be easily avoided through a combination of the town amending its traffic code to prevent massive trucks from speeding through a residential area at ridiculously fast speeds (as pretty much all of the non-supernatural deaths in the film are caused by trucks hitting people) and the main characters building a fence around their house to prevent their children/pets from either running into the path of nearby traffic or from exploring the nearby supernaturally-charged creepy graveyard.
• Surreal Horror: In the Secret Window episode, Steve relates a anecdote about how he and Chris attended a preview screening for the film in 2004, sitting next to an harmless-looking, unassuming old lady; shortly after the movie began, Steve noticed a pungent odor emanating beside him, and turned around to see the old woman casually gnawing on a large, raw fish wrapped in tinfoil. He even describes the moment as akin to "a David Lynch nightmare".^note (It happening early on also meant that Chris noticed her and began laughing his head off during an tearful on-screen confrontation about infidelity.)
• Take That!: Obviously, a good amount of the show is this; however, considering how much the conversations sometimes wander off-topic, there are times where the guys will end up doing this to unrelated subjects as well. They typically take the harshest aim at celebrities who are boorish or obnoxious in their personal lives, such as Alec Baldwin and James Belushi. The gang also notably has a very dim view of Stan Lee, and they will often do impressions of him as a self-promoting glory hound who stole credit from his colleagues.
• Television Geography: Often mocked in episodes with movies centered around New York, with the guys easily being able to point out inaccuracies or exaggerations of the landscape. Steve even notes that, despite his love of Daredevil, he does have to take some liberties with the plot's ongoing war over who will "run Hell's Kitchen," because he knows it as a six-block neighborhood that's been gentrifying since the 70s, rather than a sprawling tenement city returning to decay.
• Totally Not a Criminal Front: Discussed in The Boondock Saints 2 episode, when they mock the fan hysteria and love that the Saints get for murdering mobsters. In the real world, they point out, most people are relatively unconcerned and unaffected by mobster-on-mobster crime and violence, and the only time most civilians will encounter the mob (assuming they have no involvement in criminal activity) will be if they happen to wander into a coffee shop operated by unwelcoming Italian men that never seems to have any coffee in it.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Discussed under the blanket term "Fat Actor Syndrome", so as to include Kevin James, James Belushi, Larry the Cable Guy, et al. Steve even adds a corollary, mentioning that the much more attractive wife / girlfriend / love interest is often a schoolteacher or social worker of some kind, particularly in movies.
  Steve: It's just... "I have a nurturing vibe inside me, and this big fat baby-man — I need somebody that can't take care of themselves."
  Andrew: "I sit at work all day taking care of children, I should go home and take care of children, also!"
• The Unpronounceable: A source of some irritation for the boys in the Godzilla (1998) episode is the Running Gag of everyone being unable to pronounce Matthew Broderick's character's Greek name, since the name itself — Tatopoulos — is in fact incredibly easy to say, making this xenophobic on top of being a lazy joke. The gag probably hits a little close to home for some of the hosts, with names like "Szyszka."
• Verbal Tic: Apart from those of the hosts listed above, this mostly appears in their impressions.
  • "You stupid cow!" for Sir Michael Caine, after a very English incident of Cockney road rage in The Hand.
  • "Gawddammunt!" for the ever-cranky (Sir) Wilford Brimley. (Similarly, "Ah, goddamn it!" for Nick Nolte, based off the Patton Oswalt routine.)
  • "Hey, kewl!" for Larry the Cable Guy, to emphasize the child-like nature of his persona.
  • "Maaaaaan" for Bruce Glover, due to his lack of teeth giving his voice a bizarre, high-pitched "meth mouth" quality.
  • "...Jack!" for Jon Lovitz, usually delivered in the smarmiest tone imaginable.
  • "Oh hey, bro..." and ending everything with "bro" in a Boston accent when imitating Mark Wahlberg
  • "CANNONBAWL!" for James Belushi, referencing what they feel is his preferred method of entering a swimming pool.
  • Matthew Broderick's characters tend to have a Droopy-esque "Bawwwwwwwwwwww" to reflect their generally pathetic and self-pitying natures.
  • They tend to incorporate Christopher Lambert's sinister chuckle as Lord Raiden into all their impressions of him ("Ehhehhehhehheh'.")
  • Any mention of Owen Wilson will have at least one of them, usually more than one, saying "Oh wow" in an impression of his voice.
  • Lampshaded in the Freejack episode with their Jonathan Banks impression, as they freely admit that the only way they can make it halfway convincing is if they refer to every other character as "Walter" in his distinctive drawl.
• Wacky Fratboy Hijinx: Averted; the guys' shared college anecdotes (which usually get related in episodes on movies released when they were enrolled) all take place at SUNY-Purchase, a small yet prestigious liberal arts school in Westchester, and involve exceedingly mundane stuff like Steve spending two whole weeks trying to torrent Dreamcatcher off Kazaa, or Andrew's awkward date seeing "secret child-molester movie" The Butterfly Effect.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: A catchphrase of the show is "Hey, I got kids here!" in reaction to supposedly family-friendly movies sticking in very adult jokes and content.
  • When reviewing Look Who's Talking, Steve comments, "Hey, you know what's great? You know what my favorite part of most family films is? Dog cum!"
  • A bit blurrier, given the film's PG-13 rating, but the guys also make hay of it for Wild Wild West, talking about how you'd be taking your kids from Burger King, which likely had a tie-in deal for toys, to this merch-friendly big-budget blockbuster from the man behind Men in Black, only to find people getting slaughtered, Will Smith's penis, and Kenneth Branagh talking about making a steampunk dildo to use on Salma Hayek.

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"Take it easy."