Movie Cliches that Never Happen in Real Life

The Graduate (1967)
The only bride-stealing scene that
feels like it really could have happened.

In the movies:  The good guy interrupts a wedding in progress to plead his case to the bride.  She realizes he is the guy she should really be marrying and leaves the bad-guy groom at the altar.  

In real life: Studies show that public speaking is the number one fear among humans (cancer being second). Unless a guy is legitimately psychotic, his fear of public speaking, combined with his fear of social ostracism, will keep him from barging into a church full of people to make an emotionally demonstrative scene.

In the movies: Following a tryst, the woman gets out of bed and walks around wrapped up in a bed sheet.

In real life: Normal people tuck their sheets between the mattresses at the foot of the bed.  No matter how crazy the sex, the sheet is generally going to stay put.  The only way you'd be able to just pull the sheet off the bed to wrap around yourself is if you didn't make your bed properly to begin with.  In that case, who raised you, a pack of wolves?

In Good Luck, Chuck (2007)
Dane Cook makes it look
easy as pie. 

In the movies: Sex in the shower is a perfectly choreographed melding of limbs and body parts.

In real life: One, your height has to be compatible enough that vertical sex is possible.  It usually isn't.  Two, unless you have dual shower heads, one of you is always going to be left out in the cold.  Three, someone is probably going to have to kneel or squat on hard, wet tile, which means a probable loss of balance and a resulting tail bone injury.  More than one-third of accidents in the home happen in the shower.  I would lay good money down that a lot of these shower accidents are happening because two damned fools decided they had to have movie sex.

Piper Perabo & Melanie Lynskey
in 2000's Coyote Ugly

In the movies: The best friend is substantially less attractive than the heroine.

In real life: People generally form friendships with those who fall within a point or two of themselves on the attractiveness scale.  Blame atavistic instincts on this phenomenon. We are still wired to socialize with compatible gene pools. We don't want to compete with better-looking populations, nor have our gene pools weakened by the less attractive.  Thus, tens rarely socialize with twos.

In The Exorcist (1973), Ellen Burstyn heads up to the attic
to investigate the suspicious noise.  She thinks it's a rat
but it's actually Satan.

In the movies: The soon-to-be-victimized woman goes walking through the house in the middle of the night looking for the source of the suspicious noise.  As she goes from room to room, she calls out, "Who's there?"

In real life: No matter how idiotic she is, she's going to either conceal herself, grab a gun out of her night stand, or prudently attempt to flee the house.  All three reactions are motivated by another primitive instinct, the all-important drive to survive, and its sub-component, the need to "see, but not be seen."  Thus, the need to remain undetected is going to be automatic.

In the movies: While two men fight to the death, the woman cowers helplessly in the background with her fists to her face.  Sometimes she cries out, "Stop it!  Don't hurt him!"  She continues to do this even when a number of weapons are within her reach.

In real life: We've all watched Cops.  The woman almost always tries to bash her man's attacker with something like a mop or a tire iron or she jumps on his back and pummels his head.  She's following a primitive instinct to protect her mate, whom her instincts have identified as her protector/provider, even if he isn't either one.  In fact, if you've ever watched Cops, you know there's not usually anyone who resembles a provider in sight.  Instincts don't care; they just compel.

In the movies: People in restaurants place their orders in three or four words.  "I'll have the steak, rare."  The waiter says, "Thank you," and goes away, thus allowing the dialogue to move forward.

In real life: The waiter introduces himself, gives a recitation of the specials, asks if he can start you off with anything, takes beverage orders, asks how you would like your main course prepared, and lists all the side orders available.  Any pertinent dialogue has to wait until this lengthy exchange of information is complete.

In Braveheart (1995), the Scottish
Highlands provide Mel Gibson
with a handy scenic locale in
which to sort through his troubles.

In the movies: When someone is deeply conflicted, they go to a scenic location to reflect on their feelings.  They walk the beach at sunset.  They stand at the railing of a boat and look pensively out at the ocean.  They gaze out a window.

In real life: Our most constructive thought processes happen when we're engaged in activities that are familiar, routine and require little concentration.  Consequently, we do our deepest thinking when we're taking a shower or sitting on a toilet.  You know I'm right about this.

Death Wish II (1982)  In Hollywood, street gangs
adhere to politically correct protocols.

In the movies: All high school cliques, all social gatherings, and all street gangs are ethnically diverse. 

In real life: Instinctively, we gravitate toward people who look like us and are culturally similar to us.  If you see an ethnically diverse group of people socializing together, chances are, they're work friends.  Gangs are a microcosm of this primal instinct.  Their ethnic homogeneity is what draws them together in the first place and they actively repel those of differing "tribes."  When Hollywood portrays a racially mixed street gang, they're just overriding reality in an effort to be politically correct.

In the movies: Prostitutes are slutty but they're likeable and pretty. 

In real life:  Almost without fail, street prostitutes are malnourished and crack-addicted.  As a result, they're skinny, pasty, and have rotting teeth.

Yonda Davis in Street Kings (2008)
Prostitutes always provide the word on the street
for the cops and for us, lots of gratuitous cleavage.

Movie cliches that make me nostalgic

Barbara Stanwyck in
Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

Hello?  Hello?  Who is this?  Hello?  The heroine receives a phone call but there doesn't seem to be anyone on the other end.  We know it's the husband's mistress or an evil-doer.  Instead of hanging up, our heroine asks repeatedly, "Hello?  Hello?" and clicks the hook frantically.

Women fainting from shock.  Someone always gracefully catches the fainting woman, lays her on a loveseat and fans her with a hanky.  Sometimes brandy was called for.  Hollywood had women fainting right through the 1950's.  Through the 60's and 70's, women who were shocked would hyperventilate and breathe into a paper bag, but that was mostly for comedic purposes.  Nowadays, when women are shocked, they cry, scream profanities and throw things.  This makes me wish we could go back to the fainting and brandy days.

Gloria Graham & Humphrey Bogart
In a Lonely Place (1950)

The intimacy afforded by bench seats in cars.  Women could sit right up against their men.  Ahh, the days before those cock-blocking consoles, shifters, and coffee cup holders. 

Men lighting a woman's cigarette.  As she exhaled, they would have eye sex.  Lauren Bacall and Bette Davis were two actresses who smoked so provocatively that lung cancer felt downright inconsequential.

Tony Randall plays Rock Hudson's sidekick in
Pillow Talk (1959).  In movies, the bachelor pad was the single,
professional man's base of operations.

The bachelor pad.  From the mid-50's through the mid-60's, every single guy in every sex comedy lived in one.  They all featured a sunken living room, modular furniture, a well-stocked bar, champagne buckets, and sometimes even remote-controlled lighting and sound systems.  Did the full-blown bachelor pad exist in real life?  My guess is no, at least not for your average straight man.  If any man did go to the trouble to construct an elaborate den of seduction, he was probably so creepy that real-life women would refuse to be alone with him.

Stock characters I miss

The happy, accommodating flight attendant; the nurse in the white dress and cap; the traveling door-to-door salesman; the bachelor's cranky but caring housekeeper; the sassy Girl Friday; the wandering hobo, the loveable drunk, the nosy next-door neighbor; the patient, devoted WWII wife; the kindly doctor who made house calls; the gentlemanly Alpha male; and lastly, natural breasts.