Narm / Film

"They're eating her! And then they're gonna eat me!
OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!"
(Note the fly on his forehead.)

Reginald Kincaid: The Shadow of Death. The gripping drama was the last play presented at the Orpheum. It closed after only one night, but not without garnering some praise. Harris in the Daily Telegram said, 'In an otherwise dismal evening, Reginald Kincaid provided some welcome laughs.'

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Wiggins: You said it was a gripping drama!

— Without a Clue

The plots of some films are treated as Serious Business by those involved. But sometimes, they are funnier than they were meant to be.

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Examples

• Film #-H
• Film I-P
• Film Q-Z
• Alien: Covenant
• The Amazing Spider-Man 2
• Avatar
• Battlefield Earth
• The Dark Knight Trilogy
• DC Extended Universe
• The Emoji Movie
• Ghost Rider
• The Happening
• Harry Potter
• The Hunger Games
• It (1990)
• The Last Airbender
• The Lord of the Rings
• Marvel Cinematic Universe
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians
• The Predator
• Rock-A-Doodle
• The Shining
• Spider-Man Trilogy
• Star Trek
• Star Wars
• Terminator
• Tom and Jerry: Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
• Transformers Film Series
• Twilight
• Venom (2018)
• Wish Upon
• X-Men Film Series

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Parodies/General

• Parodied mercilessly in Dirty Work: "Now he's taken my chainsaw, and he's using it on ME!"
• A good portion of the humor in Mystery Science Theater 3000 comes from the characters pointing out the Narm in such terrible movies.
  • Nor-mal view! Nor-mal view! Nor-mal view, nor-mal view, NOR-MAL VIEEEEEEWWWW!
  • Lupita, no!
  • Heh heh heh heh... heh heh heh.
  • So dinosaurs became extinct because they forgot how to love each other. Is that right?
    Pu-ma-man! He flies like a moron!
  • The Hitler Building.
  • MST3K's Spiritual Successor RiffTrax doesn't have to license the movies, so they can do any classics and blockbusters they like. They've since proven you can find Narm in any movie with the right observations.
• The Wilhelm Scream. Have a look (and listen) to the compilation here. It works as a funny scream, but seems out of place as a serious, pained scream.
• Trey Parker and Matt Stone did this a lot when they were doing live-action movies. Notable examples include dramatically turning away while speaking in Baseketball and a gang-banger shouting "CURSES!" after being thwarted in Orgazmo. Team America: World Police was explicitly stated to be a Jerry Bruckheimer film played dead straight, with the only sign of self-awareness being that everyone was played by a marionette.

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• In general it's harder to take the early work of Leslie Nielsen seriously since he later made a comedic career out of playing The Comically Serious, it makes watching him play serious roles feel like the set up to a joke.

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