People Break Down Which Celebrated Movies Actually Have A Terrible Message

The movie musical Grease came out in 1978. For her 11th birthday that year, my older Sister and four of her friends went to see it at the local drive-in.

The film became a classic.

But what message does it send? Good girls have to redo everything about themselves to get the guy?

A number of classics prove problematic when examined with enlightened sensibilities. John Wayne dragging and throwing Maureen O'Hara around in films like The Quiet Man and McClintock and Clark Gable forcing himself on Vivian Leigh in Gone With The Wind doesn’t seem so wonderful anymore.

We classify those "romantic moments" as crimes now.

Reddit user toreadornotto asked:

"What celebrated movie actually has a terrible message?"

My Best Friend's Wedding

"My Best Friend's Wedding. So, I always loved this movie because it does a great job of showing us Jules is the villian of the film, at no point should you be rooting for the main character."

"She is a jealous, bitter woman who is actively trying to sabotage her best friend's relationship because he isn't in love with her anymore."

"Not even because she is in love with him, but purely out of jealously for no longer being the most important woman in his life. But what the movie does a TERRIBLE job of addressing is how utterly f*cking awful Michael is.

"Kimmy his fiancée is a 20-year-old college student who is about to drop out and stop following a desired career path to marry this man who is 8 years older than her with a shitty job in sports media that pays crap and disallows them to have a normal home life."

"And when she brings up the possibility (in a completely even toned and mature way) that he consider working for her extremely wealthy father's company to allow her to continue school and build their lives up, he flips the f*ck out in a public restaurant screaming and threatening to leave her till she cries and apologizes TO HIM."

"He tells her working at her Dad's company would make him a 'sell out'. Michael, you review sports, you don't work for a f*cking non-profit—calm down."

"He also proceeds to flirt and spend many an intimate moment with Jules ignoring Kimmy's feelings entirely. Literally tells Jules she looks good half naked 48 hours before his wedding."

"He lets her family pay for literally everything, but accepting a better job than the sh*t he took on in his early twenties is beneath him."

"I'm sorry, I give that marriage 6 years tops. Michael is an immature sexist little man who wants a wifey without the desire to be a matching husband."

"He is an a**hole and Kimmy is gonna grow up over her twenties and realize she made a huge mistake."

~ rachface636

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Never Been Kissed

"Never Been Kissed—the teacher was disappointed when he found out she was an adult?"

~ alizabs91

"It’s weird for sure. Emotionally stunted adult exorcises her high school past by forming relationships with minors based on lies and deceit."

~ Klmxmarf

"Also her brother, whom is also posing as a high schooler, hooks up with a high school student and everyone celebrates his act of statutory sexual assault."

~ goobermuslim

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She's All That, et al

"Most 90s teen Rom Coms. Get a makeover and you'll be worth loving!"

~ shelivesonlovestrt

"Nooo not Janey Briggs! She's got... Paint on her overalls! And her hair is in a pony tail!"

~ R50cent

"Now that she's not wearing glasses i can tell she's been hot all along!"

~ Zurich0825

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Jurassic Park

"Jurassic Park: Don't clone dinosaurs and put them in zoos."

"How in the world are we ever going to have awesome dinosaur zoos if we follow that message?"

~ NotMyNameActually

"One of the key messages for me was use round knobs instead of levers for your door handles. Raptors hate this one trick!"

~ Coca-colonization

"I agree, but isn't the REAL message of Jurassic Park to actually spare no expense, instead of saying you did while underpaying your one-man IT team?"

~ stryph42

"Yeah, the book version of Hammond was actually more of the human antagonist than the loveable naive foolish Grandpa in the movie. Like he's straight up huckster kinda circus salesman and ends up getting killed by the little dinosaurs—the compies—which you don't see in the movies till the second one."

"Hammond is cutting corners constantly and playing God, and doesn't give a shit like the animals in the park are like Velocriaptor 1.7 and Stegasoraus 1.4."

"Meaning there's been like 4-7 bad batches of messed up dying in infancy/horrible genetic deformities before he created a park version of looking like a healthy 'real' dinosaur. Like Hammond was straight up Tiger King meets Dr. Moreau in the book."

~ MaimedJester

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Sleepless in Seattle

"Sleepless in Seattle. If your fiancé—who loves you and is a great guy—has allergies, you should probably dump him because a stranger you heard on the radio might be better."

"To me it reinforces a false belief that if you don’t FEEL 'magic' with your partner, it’s perfectly appropriate to go find that feeling somewhere else."

"I’ve been married 25 years. There have been dry spells where there is nothing in the same universe as 'magic', but the longevity of our relationship and the security of growing old with the one person who knows every sh*tty thing about me but loves and accepts me anyway—well, there’s more magic in that than anything else."

~ Jayk-uub

"The best part of that movie was when she tells her fiancé 'I have to leave you' and all the reasons, and he's just like 'Cool beans follow your heart'."

"Bro just realizes he dodged a bullet."

~ JJMcGee83

"Better still, she tells him she doesn't deserve him and his response is literally, 'I wouldn't put it that way...but, okay'."

"My man Walter was self-assured and knew he deserved better. I'd watch his follow up RomCom."

~ thecustardisalie

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Twilight

"Twilight: Stalk her and she's yours."

~ BlackWidow1414

"Also weird that Edward was 100 years old hanging out with high school kids."

"I'm 30 and would shoot myself in the foot before hanging around with a 16-year-old."

~ Beneficial_Offer4763

"If you're immortal, go to the local high school and find Ms. Right."

"I used to work at an elementary school and the number of kids in 3rd and 4th grade with Twilight binders was TOO DAMN HIGH."

~ R50cent

"Ya, honestly the more you think about it, the worse it gets. The man is literally surrounded by his equivalent of veal—food source in adolescent form—but they're all alive."

"Like he's literally just surrounded by live cattle and he just falls in love with one because it's slightly different than the others. Man is the equivalent of the shepherd who was known to have sex with a sheep."

~ frustrated_pen

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Top Gun

"Top Gun movies... So many court-martials should have happened, just so many!"

"Also, Iceman is right. Maverick is a threat to everyone around him."

~ Reidar666

"There's a reason why in the sequels, Iceman became an admiral with a storied career, and Maverick is constantly at risk of being bounced from the Navy, with only Iceman pulling the strings to keep him in."

~ Uptons_BJs

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Christmas RomComs

"Any Hallmark Christmas movie where a girl boss goes to her podunk hometown and falls in love with the single Father Christmas tree farmer."

"Obviously, her successful finance bro/lawyer fiancé in the big city is a horrible guy for not letting her sleep with the dreamy Christmas tree farmer."

"They live happily ever after in the podunk town after she discovers the true meaning of Christmas."

~ arrghstrange

"I have an idea for a sequel to every Hallmark Christmas movie."

"It centers on a big city lawyer who travels from small town to small town providing post-holiday divorces for women coming down off that Christmas cookie sugar high."

~ Coca-colonization

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Grease

"Grease. At the end the main character learns she needs to conform to others in order to be happy."

~ GrimeyScorpioDuffman

"Don't forget she also has to take up smoking!"

~ Time-Cover-8159

"You're the lung that I want, oo-oo-oo-awr-hack-cough..."

~ Historical_Exchange

"The original stage musical is MUCH clearer that it's a parody of the 60s beach party teen musicals with Annette Funicello."

~ rad2themax

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The Parent Trap

"The Parent Trap. Who splits up twins and picks which child they'd rather have and to never speak to the other twin ever again. Terrible parenting."

~ bumblesami

"That being said, the message of 'if your parents divorce, you just need to make them love each other again' is also quite terrible."

~ MortStrudel

"I do wonder sometimes if some writer in Hollywood just really needs to go speak to a therapist about their parents' divorce."

~ Psychic_Hobo

"Me and my wife talk about this movie all the time. Like, the mom totally comes in and plays homewrecker to the dad and his new girlfriend."

"Also, yes, the girlfriend is awful, but I do understand her being pissed that these 2 girls not only are trying to split her and the dad up, but borderline torturing her."

~ ThatsALotOfNuts

"And that the dad never told her he had a second child until she just showed up."

~ Devilis6

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A message so nice, they made it twice!

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The Notebook

"The Notebook: 'If you don't go on a date with me, I will kill myself'. Sooooo romantic."

~ Electrical-Bear-7443

"It's OK to cheat on your fiancé if it's your ex and true love."

~ grimace0611

"This movie is on the list of examples of all the times James Marsden has played a perfectly wonderful man that gets left for someone worse."

~ rachface636

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The Switch

"Maybe not a celebrated movie, but The Switch has such a messed up premise."

"Guy replaces the donor sperm a woman plans to use to artificially inseminate herself forcing her to unknowingly have his baby."

"Years later they live happily ever after."

"I guess the message is sexual coercion or baby trapping leads to happiness?"

~ universalrefuse

"The convoluted way they tried to make Jason Bateman not a bad guy for switching the semen was just so ridiculous too."

"Oh, he accidentally spilled it. He didn't plan on switching it out. He just drunkenly decided to play around with the container, opening it up and loosely holding it while jokingly stumbling about."

"Then he couldn't just tell her what happened. Everyone at the party would ask him why he was messing with the sample. Better to just refill it himself, surely no one has or will have noticed his long absence."

"The average volume of a human male ejaculate is between 1.25 and 5 milliliters, which is roughly equivalent to a quarter to a full teaspoon. He'd require multiple emissions to fill that cup."

~ ramblinator

- YouTubeyoutu.be

Madagascar 3

"I don't know if I'd consider Madagascar 3 a celebrated movie, but the message to my 16-year-old mind was that animals like being in the circus, which is a worse message than animals liking being in the zoo."

~ raven_writer_

- YouTubeyoutu.be

Revenge of the Nerds

"Revenge of the Nerds. The hero literally sexually assaults the girl by pretending to be her boyfriend with a mask on. As well as the fraternity spying on the girls in their dorm."

~ SophieintheKnife

"This is the worst one so far. How was this even popular at all?"

~ BB_Arrivederci

"Somehow, Porky’s aged better than Revenge of the Nerds."

~ TheTrub

"Every person in that movie is terrible."

~ Red-Tail-Fox

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Raya and The Last Dragon

"Raya and The Last Dragon was lauded pretty well, but the entire thing was about trust and it made no sense."

"Sisu the dragon was meant to learn you can't blindly trust everyone like she trusted her siblings, because she got put in peril. But she STILL chose to blindly trust Namari and got herself shot for it."

"Raya was meant to learn the opposite, that you should trust a little to mutually build it with others. But she was right!"

"Namari betrayed Raya, and even again when Raya trusted her, Namari shot Sisu!"

"So really, Raya was right not to trust everyone and Sisu was wrong to trust everyone, there was no meeting in the middle, and it all ended up rainbows and sunshine for no good reason at the end anyway."

~ weirwoodheart

- YouTubeyoutu.be

What movie would you add to the list.