Home Web Portfolio Events Original Music Movie Reviews Family Pics Golf Tales Chrissi's Crafts
 
Movie Blunders

Am I hearing things?

Review Categories
The Pantheon
Near Perfect
The Defensible
Nice Surprise
Disappointment
The Worst

Movie Blunders

Think the movie biz is the peak of perfection? Think again. Like any term paper that wasn't proofread by a literate friend, or a piece of software that was released with hundreds of bugs (hmmm.... Microsoft comes to mind), here are a few solid blunders that we have picked up in movies over the years.

Perhaps they might not be as funny to you, but I have to say that most of these have forced me to stop the movie, rewind and take a look at it again. The second time usually either makes me shake my head (at the Continuity engineer) or laugh my butt off. Here are my favorites in no particular order.

  • New! Movie: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
    Scene:  The Airship / Plane Chase
    Mistakes (2):  When Indy and his father are on the zeppelin, and the Nazi identifies his dad, Indy throws him out the window and he lands on a pile of baggage that is to be loaded onto the airship. This was clever for the stunt, but sloppy because the airship leaves without any luggage.

    Oh, and there is another one that will "no doubt" be fixed when Steven gets his greasy mitts back on this one. When Indy and his father are in the plane and Dad accidentally shoots the tail of the plane, he totally shreds it, but on the next shot (of a real plane flying) the tail is fixed. I just can't wait to check back in on this one when it is re-released. Oh yeah, and how are they going to shoot at them if the planes are equipped with walkie talkies?

  • Movie: Young Frankenstein
    Scene:  Playing Darts
    Mistake:  If you count the number of misthrown darts (1 in wall, 2 break window, 1 hits cat, and 1 goes behind him), you'll count 5 darts. But when the Commandant goes outside to his car, there are 10 errant darts. No doubt, the scene is still funny, but there are 3 darts in the front tire, 2 in the spare tire, 4 in the rear tire, and 1 in the helmet of the chaffeur.

  • Movie: Grosse Pointe Blank
    Scene:  The shootout at the UltiMart versus Benny "The Jet"
    Mistake:  This is ridiculous, but I know why they do stuff like this, so this one escapes from serious damage to my enjoyment of the film, but there are 3 here in this scene:
    1. There is no way in hell that kid working at the UltiMart wouldn't have gotten riddled with bullets, especially when you see Benny leaving, the bullets fly at the door, and yet that kid is unharmed.
    2. When Martin runs out of the store, there were 4 seconds on the Microwave Timer, and it took at least 6 or 7 seconds for him to run back in and drag the kid out, and 3 more for them to be the distance that they are from the store when the explosion happens.
    3. Apparently, C4 in the Microwave goes off when the bell rings. Personally I thought it was really cool to use a Microwave as a detonator, but the detonation happens from the metal sparking, not the timer going off, so it was a little silly to have it go off after the microwave shut off.

  • Movie: Jerry MacGuire
    Scene:  The Big Date: When Jerry goes to pick up Renee (sorry, her character name escapes me for the moment.)
    Mistake:  I still can't figure this out, but it appears that she is wearing two different dresses, or that she is wearing the same dress, but it rides higher on some angles than others within the same scene. I need to see this again to confirm it, but it was so noticable that I stopped watching the scene to figure it out. They must have filmed this scene in parts (closeup shots of her reaction, etc) and different days.

  • Movie: Wild Wild West
    Scene: Right after Will and Kevin go for a dip in the red mud and pretty much get covered.
    Mistake: Suddenly there is a ton of mud missing and they look much cleaner than they should have, especially since West sneezed a bunch of mud all over Gordon. I know its nit-picky, but they actually hire people to watch out for this kind of stuff. In a big budget like this, you expect better.

  • Movie: Galaxy Quest
    Scene: Allen and Weaver have to go through "The Chompers" and Weaver's character mouths the words "F--- that!", but the voice says "Screw that!" instead.
    Mistake: This is a post production voice over technique that I am seeing a lot more of. It appears that the producers might have wanted to maintain the PG-13 rating of the movie. So the voiceover was done.

  • Movie: Love Stinks
    Scene: The Date Night scene, when Stuart's character notices that the diamond earrings that supposedly got thrown in the ocean were now on his estranged girlfriend's ears. She says "While you weren't looking, I slipped them into my little pink bra." If you look closely, her mouth doesn't form the word "bra" but something entirely different. I won't tell you what it is, but you can do the math, since she was wearing a white teddy in the referred scene.
    Mistake: For comedy sake, the overdubbed word would have been more funny, but I think again they were attempting to keep the censors off their backs, and used the overdub.

  • Movie: Lethal Weapon
    Scene: The touching scene where Mel is crying and staring at the picture of his wife
    Mistake: This is a Foley or sound sync mistake, but when Mel's is holding his gun and crying, he hits himslef in the head with the flat end of the gun. The sound is about 1/2 second too late. This turned a relatively heavy scene into comedy.

  • Movie: The Hitcher
    Scene: C. Thomas Howell's car gets clipped by a bus
    Mistake: In this very intense scene, his car gets the rear end pretty much ripped off. The next shot of the car has the back end in perfect shape. Not comedy, just bad editing.

  • Movie: The Highlander
    Scene: Deleted scene In Nazi Germany, McCleod saves Rachel (as a little girl) from the evil Nazis
    Mistake: Pretty good scene, which may have added to the movie, but the scene is dark in one frame, and daylight in the next and then dark again. Pretty funny. Somebody forgot what time of day they wanted to shoot.

  • Movie: Commando
    Scene: Woodshed scene, Arnold jumps down from the inside roof and shears a bad guy's scalp with a circular blade
    Mistake: This is not technically a mistake, but it is funny as hell when viewed in slow motion. Watch closely as the top of the guy's head flips back those new caps on toothpaste. You really have to see this one but it is truly high comedy.

  • Movie: The Abyss: Regular Cut
    Scene: Not really a scene, but did you ever wonder why Ed Harris' arm was blue? As with many things in the released version, this didn't make any sense.
    Mistake: In the Director's cut, you see why his arm is blue. He threw his wedding band in the toilet after a fight with his wife, and then thought twice about it and retireved it.

I'm sure more will come in the future, I just have to think about the movies that made me laugh again.

-Brian

Home ||  ECommerce Home ||  Events ||  Original Music
Movie Reviews ||  Family Pics ||  Golf Tales ||  Chrissi's Crafts