Quotes / Mood Dissonance

I want somebody use his fuckin' brain to not come out of a goddamn record that's up-tempo and I gotta talk about A FUCKIN' DOG DYIN'!

— Casey Kasem, during a rehearsal for a radio program.

Baby's Day Out was a film about a baby crawling through a city on its own. It was a schizophrenic mess that couldn't decide whether it was a movie, a cartoon, or a snuff film for toddlers.

—Seanbaby, "6 Real Video Games That Were Too Insane to Release"

Ever play with a dog that’s really happy and bouncy one minute, and the next minute he’s ripping your arm off and using it as a chew toy? This movie’s shifts in tone are kind of like that.

— The Agony Booth, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

This movie can't have it both ways. Either it's a silly, trivial work where random cool-looking things can happen for no reason, or it's a modern, dark, serious, psychological take on Batman and his adversaries. It's two totally different moods, vibes, plots, scripts... just going to war, and this film was the result.

—David Uzumeri on Batman Returns

Mike: [The film] had that kind of like, let's try and be a wacky, fun Marvel movie, or an Indiana Jones-type film. And the modern-day setting of Iraq, with like ISIS and terrorism and stuff just felt like a really big clash. Like I was like "Oh, this isn't 'fun'...(Jay chuckles) This is awful."

Jay: This is a little city being bombed now, ugh...

Mike: And then they bring in the air strikes...

—Half in the Bag on The Mummy (2017)

Helen tells Madea she did her best but Charles abused her both physically and mentally the past 18 years and due to the fact she signed a pre-nup she is not entitled to a dime. They go over and confront Charles and his skank and Madea chainsaws many of the pieces of furniture in half. Where Madea pulled a chainsaw out of I’ll never know... This is like watching an Ernest movie and having 10 minutes of Ernest with an hour and a half of melodrama about abortions.

—Miles Antwiler on Diary of a Mad Black Woman

Matt: It's parts like this that make me wish this whole movie was just pure farce. Jet Girl's plane having mechanical problems just seems so manufactured when Tank Girl's grilling hot dogs on top of her tank and we just had a Bugs-Bunny-style photo shoot gag.
Chris: Yeah, it's all over the map in terms of tension. Like, not ten minutes ago, we had a crazy musical number because she was holding someone's haircut hostage, which came right after a little girl was almost molested by pedophile Iggy Pop. It's not just inconsistent, it's bipolar.

—Chris Sims and Matt Wilson on Tank Girl

"So here the concept is that the Doctor is paralleled with Josef Mengele, only effective... The script tries to paper it over with the line about how "it would be so much simpler if I was just one thing," and this is a perfectly fair point when made at human beings, but equally, there's a perfectly reasonable response to be made, which is that, yes, it would be, because it would mean you could actually have been coherently and effectively characterized in the course of a forty-five minute story instead of just bouncing back and forth between two extremes."

— Dr. El Sandifer on Doctor Who, "A Town Called Mercy"

Of course the Hub has a ruddy great Pterodactyl flying about the place! Fucks galore, rape allusions, throats torn out...and Pterodactyls? You can't on the one hand shine a light on the least salubrious aspects of life on Earth and then try and suggest the wonder inherent in it too. Everything Changes inharmoniously switches its emphasis throughout, tearing me in two incompatible directions.

—Joe Ford on Torchwood, "Everything Changes"

Game Over YEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

—Sega Rally Championship

Eleanor: I have all of your sperm.
Charles: But you don't even care about it, Eleanor! Remember?! [Putting on an absurd high-pitched voice] "Oh hey, Charles! I'll never have a baby with you, because I don't love you, and a child's not going to fix that!"
Jake: [Taken aback] Oof. When he started doing the silly voice I thought it was going to be more fun, but... wasn't.

— Brooklyn Nine-Nine, "Hostage Situation"

It's a Comedy of Errors
With the violence of Macbeth
So cute and charming!
MURDER!
Zany, wacky, jokey!
DEATH!

— brentalfloss on Ace Attorney

Start [Sonic Frontiers] and you step into a washed-out, rainy landscape, carpeted with realistic overgrown grass that blows aside to reveal the forgotten ruins of a once-great civilization, haunting music plays, and we feel exposed in an atmosphere of loneliness and sorrow. And then, scene set, we take control of our blue cartoon mouse in sneakers with eyes the size of hubcaps. Sonic the Hedgehog has been the fucking emperor of tone issues for a long time now.
...
Thing is, though, when I pointed out that it felt tonally inconsistent to put Sonic the Hedgehog in fucking Death Stranding, the Sonic fans in the comments, who I would call, in the nicest possible spirit, "a unique breed", were all like, "oh, I liked the theming! I think it's good that Sonic can have a maturer, introspective atmosphere to express a more complex dramatic range". And in reply, I look at them, and then I look at Sonic, and then I look at them again. And then I hold out my hands and say, "HE'S A FUCKING BLUE CARTOON MOUSE! IN SNEAKERS!" I mean, if you don't get my point here, I don't think I can explain it to you. It's like having to explain why you shouldn't remake Children of Men with Clive Owen's character replaced with Mickey Mouse.

—We Need to Have a Conversation About Your Tone | Extra Punctuation

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