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Abhorrent Admirer / Film

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Animation

  • Pictured (on the main page) is Lena Hyena from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, who immediately pursues Eddie Valiant (to his dismay) in her only scene.
  • Disney's Aladdin has one of these (after he encountered attractive female admirers) during his song "One Jump Ahead", the one whose line is "Still I think he's rather tasty!"
  • Disney previously used it 42 years earlier in Cinderella, with the wicked stepsisters towards the prince. The third movie makes it more prominent with Anastasia, though in a slight subversion she is actually pretty sympathetic and the Prince and King do like her (the Prince just doesn't want to marry her and it turns out she doesn't want to marry him). This was also a conscious choice on the part of the filmmakers, as in the original story, the stepsisters were attractive.
  • Although the squirrel who falls in love with Arthur in The Sword in the Stone is adorable and innocent, if not somewhat annoying, the elderly fat one that pursues Merlin is rather repulsive.
  • Dragon initially qualifies as this for Donkey in Shrek, but he warms up to her.
  • In The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, from "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" segment, there is a gag involving a short, fat woman (Tilda) who wants to dance with either Ichabod or Brom Bones at the Halloween party. The underlying implication is that whichever of them fails to win the lovely Katrina van Tassel will be stuck with Tilda.
  • In The Black Cauldron, the hapless minstrel Fflewddur catches the eye of the portly Orwen, one of the witches. As she latches onto him and refuses to let go, she vouches to not turn him into a frog to be eaten, even asking if she can marry him on the spot. To be fair to her, though, she is the most normal-looking of the witches, though very forward in her attraction to the flustered Fflewddur.
  • Mole from Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire is this to Princess Kida during her introductory scene. She immediately punches him in the face after he whispers something to her in French that starts with "voulez vous".
    Dr. Sweet: Ooh, I like her.
  • Hal in Megamind was this towards Roxanne. He was inappropriate and awkward enough with his advances to make Roxanne uncomfortable around him. This was not helped at all when he gets superpowers.
  • In How to Train Your Dragon 2, Ruffnut isn't appreciative of Snotlout and Fishlegs' advances. On the flip side, Eret doesn't appreciate her advances. She at least warms up to the former two later on.
  • In Strange Magic, Dawn becomes this to the Bog King, courtesy of a love potion. Interestingly, she's actually a decent person and not at all unattractive; he's just thoroughly uninterested and she keeps throwing herself at him. The various women his mother tries to pair him with are also this. None of them show up long enough to get a personality, but most of them look inhuman enough to qualify.
  • Sadie Mae Scroggins in Scooby-Doo Meets the Boo Brothers to Shaggy. She's clearly not the least bit unattractive, got along with Scrappy pretty well, and defends Shaggy from her gun-wielding brother. Unfortunately, she comes off as too strong and clingy for Shaggy and he ends up being just as afraid of her as the ghosts. Sadie grabs Shaggy and kisses him off-camera several times presumably on the lips. Once in some bushes and twice in a barn full of hay.
  • Spies in Disguise: Lovey, Walter's pet pigeon, takes an instant liking to Lance's pigeon form (to his displeasure).
  • The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Not unlike the video games, Bowser's infatuation with Peach in unreciprocated. After spending years trying to conquer the Mushroom Kingdom, she already has a very low opinion of him, so his stealing the Super Star in his attempt to marry her was not going to work until he threated Toad's life. After she ruins the wedding, he tries to kill her and the rest. That didn't stop him though from begging for another chance after that fails.
  • Idrees, the ill-tempered, violent teenage zealot who joined the Taliban in The Breadwinner to the eleven-year-old Parvana. He claims she's old enough to marry and tries arranging things with her father on the spot. Even his fellow Talib is disgusted by this.
  • Beauty and the Beast: Belle admits that Gaston is handsome, but she's the only woman in the village who can see past his looks and identify his unappealing personality. His constant attempts to marry her only cause her to reject him even more. At first, this is a downplayed example as she was at least patient or civil with him at first, despite how clear it was she wasn't interested in him. It's only when he threatens to have her father committed in the asylum while he was sick does she end up hating him, playing it straight.
  • In Jonny's Golden Quest, one of the Mooks during the crane chase ends up in the arms of an overweight female American tourist who pretty much instantly falls in love with the guy. Ironically, as a result he's the only one of the construction worker thugs who isn't caught by the authorities.
  • Nymphomania is a wicked old witch who must receive 69 orgasms in order to become beautiful again in King Dick, and she's seen pursuing the hapless protagonist, Little Dick, for his impressive manhood. This also counts for two other women who decide to purse him, like an obese tightrope walker, and a sexually desperate Mother Superior.

Live-Action

  • In An Angel at My Table, Janet boards with a man named Patrick while living in England. Patrick constantly asks Janet if she’s "fancy-free", has prejudiced opinions about Black people, and discourages Janet from writing because he says, "there’s no money in it". Fortunately, Janet does not listen to him.
  • At the end of Bad Girls from Valley High, Danielle and Tiffany realise This Isn't Heaven as they are forced to forever endure the company of their school's most annoying dork, Jonathan Wharton, who is completely devoted to Danielle's every move. As such, he reveals that he committed suicide just to be with her forever.
  • Clifford for Moll in Beast (2017); he's not remotely subtle about him finding her attractive, constantly inserts himself into her personal space and states he will take care of her in a patronising manner, with an unenthusiastic Moll politely trying to get him to back off. She eventually makes it very clear that she doesn't reciprocate and finds him repulsive.
  • Ricky Smith, the obese, obnoxious neighbor in Better Off Dead who (with his equally grotesque mother) pursues in hideous fashion the gorgeous French exchange student Monique and with whom the audience is never meant to sympathize. By contrast, nerdy Lane Meyer (John Cusack) in the same movie is treated like a loser by most of the characters, but is the hero of the film and gets Monique at the end. The film offers a subversion in that Ricky is granted a happy ending as well, meeting a girl who is a little more his speed.
  • The corrupt, obese principal in Billy Madison overlaps with the Depraved Homosexual for the sake of two gags during Billy's graduation.
  • You can bet that Bollywood, being what it is, has done this many a time. Ridiculous when the Abhorrent Admirer is Madhuri Dixit whom even the parents of the hero love, as seen in Pukar...
  • Doctor... Series:
    • In Doctor in the House (1954), Milly's advances are too much for Simon, to the point where he has to move out and find a new place to stay.
    • Doctor at Sea:
      • Wendy is mad about Dr. Sparrow, but he wants nothing to do with her. It gets to the point where he takes a job at sea just to get away from her:
        Wendy: Oh, have you got a headache?
        Dr. Sparrow: Yes, I have, rather.
      • Miss Mallet often flirts with Captain Hogg, who can't stand her, and calls her "the one with the teeth".
    • Doctor in Trouble:
      • Roddy is to Dr. Burke and Basil, who are heterosexual and want nothing to do with his advances.
      • The Russian Captain is also one to Dr. Burke, who feels threatened by how forward she is with him.
  • Daredevil: The moment he first lays eyes on Elektra Natchios, Bullseye immediately gives off a Wolf Whistle. Knowing who he is and what he's guilty off, Elektra is visibly uncomfortable and has to take a deep breath to calm down before fighting him.
  • Detention Sander Sanderson regularly makes unwanted advances towards Riley Jones. Her rejection of him prompts him to commit multiple murders.
  • Virtually every woman in the Deuce Bigalow movies.
  • Dodgeball: Justin is in love with the beautiful cheerleader Amber and decides to become a cheerleader to try to attract her interest. Unfortunately for him, he ends up being forced to train with Martha Johnstone, a morbidly obese cheerleader who shamelessly flirts with him, to the point of telling him that she isn't wearing any panties on the eve of training. It ends up ending with Martha falling on top of Justin, much to his and the witnesses' (including Amber) horror.
  • White Goodman to Kate, When he says he's interested in her, Kate nearly throws up.It's made funnier by the fact that the actors are married in real life.
  • East is East has two young British Pakistani boys attempting to escape arranged marriages to the two hideous daughters of their father's acquaintance (the father is fully aware of how dreadful the girls look, but just wants the boys to settle into a traditional lifestyle and the imam introduced them so it's hard to say no). Meanwhile, their younger brother has a more typical version of this relationship with a neighbour played by a young Ruth Jones.
  • In Ella Enchanted, just like in Cinderella, Prince Char is disgusted and frightened by step-sister Hattie's advances. His reactions include shuddering and running away screaming.
  • Inversion in Epic Movie, where during a sex scene, the main character Peter gets a shapeshifter to transform into an overweight grotesque flabby grandma with a monobrow before they get it on because he prefers her that way... Said shapeshifter, by the way, to drive home the inversion... is a mishmash parody of Mystique, who is not only exceptionally beautiful herself, but can shift into any other beautiful woman she wants. Even in her normal form, she's played by the absolutely stunning and voluptuous Carmen Electra. She even shapeshifts a larger ass and bust size, even ready to shapeshift a Badonkadonk, before Peter throws it all out for the monobrow and fat flabby grandma body type.
  • In Fallen Angel, Stella has Pop who's pretty protective. He seems to actually care for her, but even so, Stella could do without him.
  • In Friday, Craig's girlfriend hooks Smokey up with a friend of hers who claims to look like Janet Jackson. She doesn't.
  • In George of the Jungle, the main villain, Lyle, is in love with Ursula, and spends the movie trying to force her into marrying him. At the end of the movie, he officiates a marriage between the them on a boat floating down the river. He gets a taste of karma when George swings in to save Ursula, switching her out with a female gorilla right before the boat goes through a dark tunnel. Lyle mistakenly marries the gorilla and is kissed by his unfortunately happy bride.
  • Wickedly subverted by Stockard Channing in The Girl Most Likely To (1973). Fat, frumpish Miriam Knight is viciously rejected by various fratboys, each of whom gleefully humiliates her for good measure. Following a Deus ex Machina car accident, Miriam slims down to a svelte college beauty and murders each of her former tormentors in suitably ironic fashion.
  • The fat, acne-ridden Eleanor Skepple in Good Luck Chuck starts out as an inversion, since Chuck has to pay her for a date in order to test whether he is cursed such that any woman he sleeps with to marry the next man he meets. But once he explains he wants to "get physical," she becomes terrifyingly eager about the whole thing, and he is shown frantically scrubbing himself in the shower afterwards.
  • Subverted in Hairspray and the 2007 remake. Tracy Turnblad's crush on Link, the hot male lead of The Corny Collins Show, is not only reciprocated, she also quickly becomes the show's most popular dancer. Tracy is not ugly like most of the other examples present here though; she is just fatter than most of the other women in the movie.
  • In The Heartbreak Kid (2007), Eddie is a lonely bachelor who meets Lila, a beautiful and sweet woman. He is in love with her and they get married, even though he only met her a few weeks ago. On the honeymoon, Eddie finds out that Lila is actually an immature, unpleasant, foolish woman who owes money to many people, is unemployed and is a nymphomaniac addicted to rough sex. For the rest of the movie, Eddie meets and falls in love with Miranda, a beautiful and friendly woman (and unlike Lila, this is her true personality), and tries to find a way to break up with Lila, who loves Eddie and doesn't want to lose him.
  • The Hottie and the Nottie is about this trope: an unattractive woman tries to find a date, unaware that she inhabits a universe where everyone is either a self-obsessed pig, Paris Hilton, or both.
  • Merry Christmas, Drake & Josh has Drake, dressing up as Santa at the mall. He is seen kissing a girl when all the kids are gone. Not long after, a rather large girl chases him around the mall asking Santa for a kiss.
  • Mastizaade: The chubby and Depraved Homosexual Das openly lusts after Sunny and constantly throws himself at them, who both act disgusted towards him.
  • The Spleen in Mystery Men comes off this way in one scene when he attempts to flirt with Janeane Garofalo's character.
  • Norbit: At the beginning of the film, Norbit (played by Eddie Murphy) is an orphaned and shy boy who ends up being saved from bullies by Rasputia (also played by Eddie Murphy), a fat and rude girl who forces him to be her boyfriend. Norbit does not feel any kind of attraction to Rasputia, but accepts it simply because he is afraid of her. As the years pass, Rasputia grows into a morbidly obese, obnoxious, bossy and sadistic woman, who forces Norbit to marry her and abuses him physically, psychologically and even sexually. When Kate, a beautiful woman who was Norbit's childhood friend, returns to his life, Norbit immediately tries to do whatever he can to get rid of Rasputia and be with Kate.
  • Nothing but Trouble: Eldona, an overweight woman played by John Candy in drag, wants to marry Christopher, whether he wants to or not (and her grandfather JP is more than happy to help her arrange this).
  • A scene in Nutty Professor II: The Klumps shows the grandmother lusting after Buddy Love, thinking he's the stripper hired for Denise's bachelorette party. Buddy's reaction when she drops her dress, and panties with it, is priceless.
  • In the Rudy Ray Moore film Petey Wheatstraw, the Devil's Son-in-Law, the title character dies and is given a chance to come back to life by Satan. The catch: he has to marry the Devil's daughter. Who was described by one reviewer as "having fallen out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down". Needless to say, Petey goes out of his way to try to weasel out of his end of the bargain.
  • Porky's Revenge: Porky's daughter is a butterface (if I may say so) who jumps Meat's bones, and who then gets her father to force Meat to marry her.
  • Robin Hood: Men in Tights:
    • Played straight with the witch/cook Latrine. It's also partially inverted, in that the sheriff DOES wind up marrying her... because the alternative was death. He starts questioning his own sanity afterwards, but she already has him in her clutches. Further irony is introduced when she shouts, "I always wanted to marry a cop!" despite most of what she does is in fact, outright illegal, according to period law (see: the original Costner version, or Catholic attitudes towards witches around that time).
    • Maid Marian's lady-in-waiting, Brunhilde, is another example of this trope, as she literally throws herself at a panicked Little John.
  • Nosy Neighbor Amy Nelson is this to Steve Marek in I Saw What You Did. She constantly belittles his wife and tells that he needs a woman, not a girl. The dialogue indicates they have had an affair in the past, but Steves seems uninterested in continuing. When Amy discovers that Steve has murdered his wife, she attempts to blackmail him into marrying her.
  • In The Searchers, Martin accidentally marries a homely Comanche woman named T'sala-ta-komal-ta-name (but you can call her "Look"). She's fairly clingy towards her new husband, even if she doesn't deserve the abuse she gets for her behaviour.
  • Played with in Shallow Hal, in which the title character has been hypnotized into seeing the "inner beauty" of an obese woman, Rosemary. She's so used to being treated like this that at first she thinks he's mocking her. When she realizes that his feelings are genuine, she immediately takes an interest in him and they start dating.
  • Richard Strickland The Shape of Water is the ultimate American father and soldier. Also, an abusive bully and sexually attracted to Elisa Esposito, the mute main character, because of a blatant fetish for her condition fueled by his jingoistic, control freak, misogynistic personality. Elisa goes from being scared to being utterly horrified by him.
  • Grace Lawrence is ready to divorce her husband, and marry Stanton much to his horror in Sin Takes a Holiday.
  • Lina Lamont in Singin' in the Rain to Don Lockwood. On the surface, she's a gorgeous movie star who seems to be the farthest thing from an abhorrent admirer — but Don knows that she's actually a vain, arrogant Dumb Blonde who has a voice like fingernails scraping across a chalkboard, a personality to match it, and an utter refusal to listen to his repeated insistences that they are not and will never be an item.
  • In SiREN (2016), Jonah is having his bachelor party in a private club when he discovers a beautiful woman trapped in the club. He ends up freeing her, only to discover that she is a winged demon whose true appearance is monstrous and she is hopelessly in love with him. It's not Played for Laughs at all, especially when Lily rapes Jonah (with her true monstrous face and even uses her tail as Ass Shove), who is horrified and traumatized by what happens..
  • There's Something About Mary does the male version with Chris Elliott's character, since he erupts into grotesque boils when he finally confronts the eponymous Mary. However, as befits the usual gendering of this trope, Chris Elliott's character already has an attractive, entirely subservient wife who does things like spontaneously bake him cookies and give him blowjobs while he watches football. ("Keep your head down, honey!")
  • The final scene of a villain in Trading Places has the villain in a gorilla disguise trapped in a cage with an actual gorilla. The gorilla is quite in lust with the villain, whom we finally see in a BSOD. Worse than that: The gorilla is male, and thinks the villain is a female gorilla. And then their clueless keepers ship them off to live in the wild together in Africa....
  • In Up Pompeii, a woman at Ludicrus Sextus' orgy grabs hold of Nausius and takes him away, much to his horror.
  • VHS: In the "Amateur Night" segment, Lily, a strange but beautiful woman, falls in love with the protagonist. Unfortunately for him, Lily is a succubus and her true appearance is monstrous. When he rejects her interest, Lily does not react well...
  • The plump, voracious doorwoman in Mel Gibson's What Women Want. Even her thinking about Mel sexually is enough for him to flee in the opposite direction.
  • In Youth in Revolt, the girl at Sheeni's French prep school becomes disturbingly attached to Nick after he sends her a few flattering letters (to manipulate her). Possibly lampshaded when she starts doodling pictures in her notebook. She appears to depict herself as an amorphous-octopus-blob... thing.

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