Common or lazy cliches in Hollywood films

[El Unicornio, mang]

Grocery shopping is always packed in brown paper bags and will have a baguette sticking out of the top. If the bag splits, a good-looking person of the opposite sex will help you to pick up your items, usually an orange that has rolled towards them.

Having lived in the US for 8 years, I've only once used brown paper bags at a grocery store. They do usually ask if you want plastic or paper, but who on Earth wants paper? They're as annoying to carry stuff in as they appear in movies, but sadly don't often result in hooking up with a sexy stranger. And if it starts raining you're totally fucked. I guess they look better on screen than plastic bags though.

[Nobody Soup]

people taking off their glasses to express disbelief at seeing something, because you know, it's better to look at stuff with your natural blurry vision just in case the spectacular sight you're witnessing is being projected onto the lenses.

[El Unicornio, mang]

And girls taking off glasses to suddenly become sexy, cos y'know glasses make every girl look ugly as fuck.

[Blumf]

It's always an open casket funeral.

Having lived in the US for 8 years, I've only once used brown paper bags at a grocery store. They do usually ask if you want plastic or paper, but who on Earth wants paper?

It can be really inconvenient when out buying celery...
http://www.lileks.com/institute/frahm/art1.html

[Default to the negative]

Computers having improbably flashy user interfaces so that the audience can understand what's happening on the screen while the hacker battles his way through red radar blips, ticking clocks and rotatable 3D portraits of terrorists. Despite the emphasis on making things as easy as possible for the casual observer to understand, there will still be columns of code in the margins, crunching away at a speed no human could hope to read.

[Dead kate moss]

It doesn't matter how many close friends/family members/population of the planet have just been horribly killed, the main characters can kiss and/or make jokes at the end.

[Default to the negative]

Dogs and cats hate bad guys, and bad guys always hate dogs and cats.

[Nobody Soup]

strange things being discovered in remote locations getting investigated by means of a checkered shirt loner prodding them with a shot gun.

[Famous Mortimer]

Somebody mentioned this one on a podcast (Comedy Bang Bang maybe?) and since then I've not stopped noticing it. When a detective visits a person at their place of work in order to ask them about a murder, that person always continues to do their work while the interview is conducted. Often they are stacking crates or filing paperwork. 'Bob's dead, huh? Yeah I knew him, although not well enough for the news of his untimely death to interrupt my working day for even one second'

John Mulaney has this bit on his excellent CD, "The Top Part".

[Jerzy Bondov]

Yeah that was him! Very funny. Here's just that bit, think I'm going to have to track down the rest:
http://www.myspace.com/video/d-dub/john-mulaney-law-order/7382000

[Default to the negative]

Equally, say a straight character finds himself faced with vampires or werewolves, and coming to terms that they really exist. He will ask if they really drink blood or whatever, and at some point ask a 'dumb' question - 'Can you turn into bats?' or 'what about silver bullets' and the vampire or vampire expert will laugh and say he's seen too many movies or this isn't the movies. Hey, everything about you is from and in the movies, how is anyone supposed to know where the line stops?

This one annoys me because it's used a shorthand for: "Hey, we know those old films were a bit silly, but we're doing a more realistic take on things here," but when they jettison the traditional rules they always have to fill the gap with new, even sillier ones. The more lines they draw the more questions you're left with. Crosses don't work but garlic does because, well, chemistry and stuff.  And then you have all these legs and tails like the "daywalker" idea in Blade.

[lipsink]

Techno-savvy giving less savvy action hero instructions over walkie talke:

"Okay, we need to destablize the pressure by polarising the defribil...
"In English!"
"(pause) Pull the red lever!"

Recently used in The Avengers.

Also, when a person gets repeated calls from an abusive caller so when the phone rings again they pick it up and shout "Listen, asshole..." only to discover it's their mother/husband calling to check they're okay. When this was inverted in Scream so it was the killer again it really made me jump.

[El Unicornio, mang]

Also, something will usually happen which involves another character having to go to an engine room or something to fix some bad wiring, so that we have two race-against-time sequences running parallel to each other.

"Whatever you've gotta do, do it fast!"

[the midnight watch baboon]

Any maverick cop will at some point go on an exciting pursuit of someone in a market stall thwacking, water hydrant bursting, yet pedestrian avoiding car chase that ends in him (always him) being told by a suit that he's "destroyed half the city!".

[El Unicornio, mang]

But luckily for him, just as he's getting a dressing down, the suit's superior will interrupt, looking annoyed, and say: "I've just got one thing to say to you [name of maverick cop].....job well done". And the suit will get all flustered.

[Dead kate moss]

All ex-wives of the male lead are hostile.

All ex-husbands of any woman the male lead is interested in are total assholes.

[the midnight watch baboon]

But luckily for him, just as he's getting a dressing down, the suit's superior will interrupt, looking annoyed, and say: "I've just got one thing to say to you [name of maverick cop].....job well done". And the suit will get all flustered.

Yes! and this suit will be under the control of a belligerent chief suit- whom the original suit sucks up to initially, but gradually he lightens up as the story progresses and perhaps ends the film doing something charismatic, like drinking cocktails with busty blonde twins and telling chief suit to eff off or somethin'.

[Nobody Soup]

or the version were the stuffy character that was essentially on the right side but resented the heroes free wheeling ways at the end will overcome his stuffiness in a minor way and give the hero a sly nod to show he's won his heart.

like a grumpy by-the-book cop partner misleading the chief of police so the hero can get on with his highly illegal plan to save the day with attached dialogue, something like:

"just go!"
"give them one for me."

[the midnight watch baboon]

Billy. We gotta talk.

[The Duck Man]

Obvious one, but in horror movies you're now required to have a bit stating that the characters' phones don't work. As this nice compilation illustrates.

[Old Nehamkin]

All ex-husbands of any woman the male lead is interested in are total assholes.

See also: The current husband of the male lead's ex-wife.

[Sam]

Jim Jarmusch does a few of these in the film Blue in the Face, the highly enjoyable follow up to the masterpiece 'Smoke'. Louis CK also talks about the one where someone gets stopped from saving someone who is flatlining: 'no stop...even though there's a 1% chance you'll save him.
In Family Guy there's the hardass with a heart of gold who gives his salary to 'orphans with diseases'. In fact isn't a cliche for comedians to point out cliches? Come up with your own material instead of relying on the inherent humour in other people's!

I would also add step-parents being useless and all moppets being pulled by the gravity of American traditional family values to the biological parent. Most egregiously in  'Liar Liar' where mommy's new boyfriend is shown to be incompetent and the creepy Carrey is of course the real natural. In Hollywood there are no shitty parents unless they have a redemptive character arc.

Also, I've mentioned it before but all pwning speeches are crap. The Erin Brokovich one where she 'remembers her clients addresses' to a doubter made me cringe my face off. I had to order a new face.

Obligatory Malick reference: hardass  Sean Penn being really brave on the battlefield but getting angry when someone tries to notice it and praise him. Not sure if it's been in other films but of course the mark of true cliche is that it feels like one without being able to remember other instances.

[Nobody Soup]

well, there are some I dunno if I feel ok about criticising, one that irks me because it sticks out like a sore thumb is when a piece of dialogue from earlier in the film comes back later on quoted by the character it was originally told to. but I kinda guess that it's necessary sometimes, plots do need narrative counterpoints and those little echoes help sign post these, it's a bit like saying comedy should never have call backs. this is used well at times.

still, virtually every fucking film? maybe not.

[Blue Jam]

Computers having improbably flashy user interfaces so that the audience can understand what's happening on the screen

...and anyone at a computer will just be using it to type in a long string of numbers and letters before hitting the Enter key VERY HARD, unless they're busy using that amazing piece of software that can take any blocky lo-res CCTV image and miraculously make it sharp and bring out the exact bit of fine detail needed to solve whatever mystery is being investigated.

[Hank Venture]

When the teen hero is around the nerds house, which as it turns out is a hyperintelligent genius, and he's got some sort of incredibly lethal and advanced device casually laying around that "isn't finished yet".

[Blumf]

some sort of incredibly lethal and advanced device casually laying around that "isn't finished yet".

Or, slightly more mysterious...

[Hangthebuggers]

Hackers just need to stick a USB pen drive (or disk) into the computer, type a few words and then they've hacked into the system. Failing that they will almost always guess a password based on a hobby or pet of the persons computer.

High schools seem to consist of gangs consisting of: A nerd (usually a virgin) , A jock (and his dumb blonde g/f), a square kid, his older brother, a fat kid and one kid who is either mexican, chinese or black.

Cars will always explode.

All security guards are incompetent and will leave their post at the slightest sound of a dropped coin or an impromptu visit from a beautiful woman.

Air vents provide access to even the most secure areas of a building.

Sewers are often just full of clean, running water (and the odd rat should there be any women tagging along) - they also provide access to even the most secure areas of a building.

In any crisis you should immediately split up into two or three groups.

Androids and robots will develop strong human-like qualities JUST before sacrificing themselves for the greater good.

[Hank Venture]

You will get past any security check point with the threat "alright, but Mr Boss isn't going to be happy about missing his morning meal"

[MojoJojo]

Sewers are often just full of clean, running water (and the odd rat should there be any women tagging along) - they also provide access to even the most secure areas of a building.

Are a large enough to stand up in, rather that being a 12inch diameter tube.

[spock rogers]

- a leader giving an inspirational speech, accompanied by stirring music on the soundtrack.

- a hero who has no weapon and is about to be shot by the bad guy, closes their eyes as the shot rings out. But our hero slowly opens their eyes and turns around to see their sidekick standing there with a gun pointed at the bad guy. Hero turns back around to see the bad guy, clutching their chest, fall to the ground.

- upon being told the hero has succeeded, a room full of army generals will start whooping, punching their fists into the air, and high fiving.

- if the hero is in a vehicle (usually a flying one ) that has crashed, it will be followed by several seconds of silence over the speaker at the control room, with people looking sad, only for a crackling over the speaker with the hero announcing 'I'm okay', followed by the above cliche.

- if two people are exploring a haunted place, one of them will inevitably walk silently up to the other person from behind and slap their hand on their shoulder.