YMMV / Road House (1989)

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In one scene, Wesley has his Trophy Wife Denise perform a strip tease in front of Dalton at the Double Deuce so that he can... show how powerful he is? Show off how hot his trophy wife is? Other than trying to cause trouble towards Dalton, it's not really clear what he was hoping to achieve, and to cap things off, Denise largely disappears from the movie afterwards (save for one scene in Wesley's mansion where she's seen with a bruised-up face), the moment never being brought up again.
• Cliché Storm: Tropes Are Tools. The movie wouldn't be nearly as much fun if didn't play everything with a straight face.
• Cult Classic: It ain't Masterpiece Theatre, but it sure is easier to turn into a Drinking Game.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Cool Old Guy landlord Emmett is one of the more colorful and well-liked supporting cast members.
  • Hot-headed henchman Morgan is well-liked for his fighting style, funny dialogue, and how he's only working for the villains because Dalton fired him from the Double Deuce.
  • Wesley's girlfriend, Denise's Ms. Fanservice moments make her disproportionately popular for the amount of screen time and characterization she has. To put it in perspective, her famous striptease scene is also her last scene in the film (save for one brief scene in Wesley's mansion later on).
  • Carrie, a tough waitress and occasional singer at the bar, is pretty well-liked despite her relatively limited screen time.
• Foe Yay Shipping:
  • Jimmy tells Dalton "I used to fuck guys like you in prison!"
  • And then there's this gem by Wesley.
    Wesley: I see you found my trophy room, Dalton. The only thing missing... is your ass.
• He's Just Hiding: Some fans think that Morgan and O'Connor are only knocked unconscious and not killed during the climax. It helps that their fights with Dalton are offscreen.
• Ho Yay: There's plenty of stuff for the ladies in this movie, and by extension, for the guys, too.
• Memetic Badass: Dalton. You know how pain hurts, by its very definition? Well, it doesn't to Dalton. This man calls the dictionary a damned rotten liar, and he gets away with it!
• Memetic Mutation:
  • This movie inspired the filk song "Let's Have a Patrick Swayze Christmas" from MST3K.
  • *Kicks someone in the face* "Road House!"
• Moral Event Horizon: Brad Wesley having Wade Garrett killed.
• Narm Charm: The story, script and action are all cheesy enough to sprinkle over pizza, and that's why it's so entertaining. Even Michael J. Nelson has unironically praised it.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: Doc and Dalton are the Official Couple of the movie, and many fans praise their chemistry, but others find them unconvincing as a couple and ship Dalton with Denise.
• Signature Scene: Dalton tackling Jimmy off a motorcycle and tearing his throat out in a fight is probably the film's most iconic scene, albeit only by a narrow margin.
• So Bad, It's Good: Road House is not a good film by any objective standard: it takes a standard Western movie plot and transplantes it into the 1980s, with all the ridiculously cheesy dialogue, exaggerated performances and over-the-top action scenes the decade is famous for. It shouldn't work at all, but if you can tolerate all that '80s excess and don't take it too seriously, it's surprisingly entertaining. In the words of film critic Roger Ebert:
  Road House exists right on the edge between the "good-bad movie" and the merely bad. I hesitate to recommend it, because so much depends on the ironic vision of the viewer. This is not a good movie. But viewed in the right frame of mind, it is not a boring one, either.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Morgan's status as a guy who's only working for the villains because the heroes fired him could have been played up a lot more, and he doesn't even get to fight Dalton onscreen during the climax.
  • Many fans (even some who ship Dalton with Doc) think Wesley's trophy girlfriend Denise just disappears from the film too soon and could have had some scenes getting out from under Wesley's thumb.
• Too Cool to Live: Wade Garrett.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Tilghman brings all of his employees into a meeting where he has a display of the redesign he's making to the Double Deuce building and bragging to them that he's put alot of money into it, then he introduces his new head bouncer and bar manager, who promptly fires two of the employees present. We're apparently supposed to side with Tilghman (considering the aformentioned new head bouncer he brings up is our protagonist), but Tilghman knew he was wasting those two employees' time with his ostentatious display, because after Dalton fired them, he gives each former employee envelopes he already previously prepared with undoubtedly their final paycheck and probably whatever other termination paperwork would also be inside, making him come off as more of a Mean Boss. The one reprieve is that this was presumably to set an example to the rest of his staff, not for the benefit of those two employees—one of whom was an aggressive oaf who regularly started huge fights, destroyed property, and exposed the bar to all manner of civil suits, and the other was a drug dealer.

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