Episode 7 Great Movie Mistakes

Hello, and welcome to Great Movie Mistakes,

the show that does for films

what people who mark exams do for exams -

i.e. basically looks for mistakes and then says

"Ahh! you made a mistake! Shame up!"

Films often play fast and loose with the laws of the universe.

They try and make us believe all kinds of things are possible.

Like noise in the vacuum of space,

surviving a nuclear blast by hiding in a fridge,

or that people will laugh at a film with Rob Schneider in it.

So, yes, impossible things.

To be fair, some impossible film things are really cool.

I mean, I believed for ages I could move things

with the power of my mind. Still do, a bit.

Deew!

Cool.

In the waste of time that's In Time,

we see a far too successful booby trap.

Stingers - strips of nails left on the road to puncture tyres - are

used by the police to bring naughty vehicles to a controlled halt.

However, when this former Mouseketeer drives over one,

his car has a massive hissy fit and tumbles over a cliff,

temporarily vaporising its passengers

before they reappear at the bottom.

Iron Sky now. A film which comprehensively

fails its Baccalaureate in Science, which of course means it gets

an A star in the totally made-up world of movie science.

Why don't you narrate along with me as we play

Things That Things Don't Do In The Vacuum Of Space.

Firstly, we hear the sound of the ship separating,

a massive blunder because - all together now -

there's no sound in a vacuum.

Then we see fires burning on the destroyed ship.

One, two, three - fires don't burn in a vacuum.

And as these banners unfurl, we can be pretty sure

they wouldn't do this, as there's no air an a vacuum either.

Rookie mistake - even I didn't fall into that trap when I made

that fake moon landing footage I'm not allowed to talk about.

In the insultingly bad Journey 2, these people are riding

on giant bees, and I for one don't believe a frame of it.

There's no way on earth anyone would cast that wrestler in a film.

Anyway, the birds chasing them are apparently...

That's a white-throated needletail.

..when in fact it's quite clear

that they're white-fronted bee-eaters.

I know that because I'm a dedicated twitcher.

Although the tablets are helping.

When giving a presentation,

the cardinal sin is not to walk through the beam,

otherwise all your PowerPoint stuff will get shadows on it.

You might want to splash out on the projector from the nostalgia-steeped

Super 8, however, as the kids sit right in the beam

without casting any shadow.

Luckily, in this shot, the kids have vanished anyway.

-What's up?

-Noah!

There aren't enough whistling kettles in films.

The sad reason for this is that

they are fiendishly scientifically complicated items.

For example, if the spout is open, they won't whistle,

a fact which is apparently news

to the makers of fat-boy laugh-drought The Sitter.

Sack the spout-wrangler.

Solid Gold. Do you have any idea what that's worth?

Matthew Broderick may be generally ace,

but he doesn't know Jack Bueller about the weight of cars.

He reckons a solid gold car would weigh about...

Must weigh 2,000lbs.

..but in reality they weigh something like a couple of tons

and you certainly wouldn't be able to fling them about the way they do

in brainless caper Tower Heist.

I should know, I've got four of them.

They give me one every time I do this show.

Any more and I'll have to move a couple onto the helipad.

Hallo?

Is anybody here?

Hallo?

I'm here to make Great Movie Mistakes.

Hallo?

Great Movie Mistakes.

I haven't heard those words in ten year or more.

What? Who's there? Who said that?

I said that.

They haven't made Great Movie Mistakes in nigh on ten years.

Not since that Robert Webb died so horribly and painfully.

But that's ridiculous. I'm Robert Webb, and I...

Horror Films. CREEPY LAUGH

Gruesome, mind-bending horror in The Cabin In The Woods now.

Doors in spooky houses have a mind of their own,

but this one's indecisive.

Here Dana leaves it open

but now it's closed.

However, in just a few seconds it's open again to let the gang in.

Honestly, if they just fitted creepy houses with automatic doors

it'd save all sorts of bother.

A flipped shot moment in the intelligence-insulting Piranha 3DD.

Not just any old flipped shot -

it's one with the Hoff.

Unless this badge is supposed to be in mirror writing. Poor show!

You don't hire the Hoff and then make him look stupid.

Insert punch line here.

David? That's pretty cool. That's my name too. Here you go.

Lacklustre and seriously flawed chiller Silent House now.

Like the 1920s version of the Hugh Laurie TV hit.

In this scene, we're asked to believe that what we're watching is

one continuous shot.

But that doesn't explain why the patterns of blood

on Elizabeth Olsen's clothes and face keep changing.

Maybe it's lupus. It's never lupus.

Underworld: Awakening?

Underworld: Snooze Button, more like!

Awful film, but it features an amazing catsuit.

Not only can you wear it in heels...

..and then seconds later wear it in flats...

..you can also hide a blooming great hand grenade

in it without breaking the skin-tight lines in the slightest.

Now look at the problem with the CCTV here.

Security cameras are in fixed positions,

they can't follow trolleys down corridors, can they?

Well, this impossible camera seems to be playing Race You To The End.

Unimaginative, uninspired gore shocks

from Final Destination 5 now.

The extras here are playing fast and loose with

the laws of public transport as this woman exits the bus more than once.

And the driver can't decide whether he's standing up...

..or sitting down.

He may just be all out of sorts because, you know, all the terror.

To Death-town!

Wolkim. Of you've just jooned us, mo noom is Rabert Wobb,

and this is Grot Meevie Mistakes Number Far.

Noxt on the faring loon os Spelling Mistakes.

It's hoord to belove thet multi-mollion poond Hillywold flims

would ever dee such a thong, but here they are, bild as briss.

Leckily, I have trooned my scropt wrooters to utolose the spoll-chock focolity on their liptips,

so they are vary unlookly to fick up the spolling on my lanks. Unjoy!

Right, settle down, class. I have the results of your spelling tests.

Cruise, leave Timberlake alone.

First of all, Abduction.

No, the character Nathan, that's not how you spell "disappeared".

You'd have thought you'd have known that,

in a film all about a person who has disappeared.

Captain America, put your shield down, please.

It was good of you to type out the credits of your film,

but that is not how you spell Adolf Hitler.

I see super spelling is not one of your powers.

J Edgar Hoover, you may well have invented the Dyson

but your spelling sucks.

That is not how you spell Garfinckel.

But to your credit, at least you noticed

and corrected it straight away.

No, the character Leo in The Vow. Don't sign that divorce document.

"My" has been misspelled as "may" so the whole thing may not be valid.

No, Goon, what do you call this in your credits?

That is not how you spell "tomahawk". What the hell is a tomahawak? See me.

And Swinton, we need to talk about spelling. That's the most

misplaced accent since Hathaway had a crack at Yorkshire.

Four out of ten.

Oh, hi there. You probably thought this was footage of me

attending a soiree with my showbiz pals

at the Groucho's or the Nando's.

In fact, these people here are supporting, or background artists.

They are only pretending to be my friends,

and have been paid to do so.

Which is different from my actual friends because...

Because...

Roll the VT.

General Patton has said...

Now the soulless superhero flick Captain America,

and it will shock you to discover that these aren't real soldiers

but actual background artists.

You can tell because here they walk behind Captain Phillips

but in the very next shot

they are marching again back where they started.

Our boys wouldn't do that.

In this daft but fun scene from The Muppets,

keep watching the anger therapy patients fighting.

One of them's not up to scratch with his brawling.

Thursday's another one of my trigger words!

You'll see the tall man with white hair

is clearly not hitting anything...

..as his punch misses by at least one foot.

Yet, we hear the punch and the other man falls down.

Also that's not a real animal.

Animal!

Not at night.

We Bought A Zoo was over-sensitive and syrupy,

but it's slightly better than the prequel

I Rented A Newsagent-Cum-Off-Licence.

Off-camera string-pulling is visible here

when two extras are waiting for their cue to walk forward,

which they start to do after a couple of seconds.

And action. Nice.

Guys, it's the other zoo film - it's Zookeeper!

Guys?

Here Griffin cycles past a man sat on a bench

wearing a blue blazer and cream trousers.

Then later, from Griffin's POV, we see he's about to cycle past

a woman in a light shirt and blue jeans

and a man in a straw-coloured hat.

But from the opposite angle,

he's just cycled past the man in a blue blazer and cream trousers.

It doesn't make any sense, I tell you.

Like the decision to green light this film in the first place.

Now, Wes Anderson's escapist, eccentric quirk-fest

Moonrise Kingdom.

When Cousin Ben is talking to Sam and Suzy

as they walk through the camp, a marching scout extra

in the background can be seen looking and waving at the camera.

He'll be earning his Ruin The World Of The Movie badge,

I shouldn't wonder.

Great Plot Hole Mistakes -

gaffes so massively bad an entire film falls apart.

This time, the outstanding, action-packed must-see

sci-fi classic Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

The story so far - in the first gripping and suspenseful

Terminator film, a robot comes from the future to kill Sarah Connor

and stop her from having a son who becomes a future revolutionary.

Kyle Reese, also from the future, trains Sarah

and gives her the knowledge she needs to defeat the robot.

She and Kyle get it on and conceive the prodigal son, John Connor.

Now - fast forward 11 years to 1995.

The robots are going to have another go.

They send a more advanced Terminator back this time

with the mission of killing the now 11-year-old John Connor.

Good plan, robots.

But wait! Why have you sent it back to 1995, the very place where

Sarah Connor has had over a decade to prepare for such an event?

Look, you've given her some time to

raise her son to be a leader of the human resistance.

Smart work.

I mean, guys, she's already

attempted to bomb a computer factory,

and she's got a huge arsenal of weaponry

stored in an underground bunker.

What they should do is send the Terminator back further in time

to when they don't know about any of this.

Why not go back to the '70s when Sarah Connor was in school?

Or they could go even further back and just take her out when she was a baby.

Or with a bit of imagination, they could go back even further

and kill off her grandparents,

and stop Sarah even getting born in the first place.

Or further still.

You get the general idea.

So, robots, not as clever as you think you are.

Because if you were, you wouldn't have had to make

Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

Which is why I hardly ever chat with my Roomba.

The end.

Oh, this is ridiculous. I can't make it sync.

Sync with laptop.

PHONE: Do you want me to call your Uncle Martin?

Sync with laptop.

Searching the internet for scuba-diving courses.

Sync with laptop.

That's great. Sync with laptop is now in your diary for April.

Do you want a reminder?

Technology!

This is the zesty but trivial What's Your Number?

And this clip is a little embarrassing for the production

as it obviously shows up the fact that they bought a knock off iPhone

copy from the Australian company Ipple

as when Ally answers it...

it's upside down.

Hi, Mom, can I call you right back? I'm in a meeting. OK.

One thing I really hate is when you're not sure

whether a text you sent has arrived.

Fortunately the bland and uneven Like Crazy has the answer.

All you need to do is send your texts on either May 28th or

December 1st because apparently they are interchangeable.

The catchily-titled Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1 now,

and here Bella is calling Rosalie

but we can clearly see her phone is in lock mode.

Or is it? Vampire phones are special though as they're always

unlocked for emergency orders of delicious blood sandwiches.

A good romantic comedy should make you feel like anything is possible.

Apparently so can middling ones,

as this clip from Salmon Fishing In The Yemen proves.

It tries to make us believe that you can successfully send

heartfelt text messages when you clearly have no signal.

In the slow-paced and depressing Young Adult,

Mavis is getting a cassette out of her bag.

It's fully rewound.

But when she puts it in the car it is halfway through a song

and she has to rewind it.

She wants to get at that cassette with a pencil.

Or a biro. Which did you use?

Oh, ask your mum and dad then!

Here's the man who is suddenly in all films answering a phone

in the so-so indie Jeff Who Lives At Home.

PHONE RINGS

But he doesn't press the button to answer it.

"A-ha!" think the boffins in the edit,

"We can fix that with a beep!"

PHONE RINGS

No, you cannot, boffins, for I, Robert Webb, have spotted it

and thusly foiled you.

Sometimes, a film is just

so damn good that the only thing to do is make it again, but different.

You know that feeling where you're watching a cracking movie

and you think to yourself, "I'd love to see this again with

"different actors and with some of the dialogue slightly changed?"

Well, no, neither do I, but presumably it's happened to someone.

American studios have a particular fondness

for making new versions of French films,

figuring that nobody could possibly have seen the original.

Next time you see something hoo-larious with Adam Sandler

in a dress or Cameron Diaz being amusingly coarse, bear in mind it

probably started life as a sensitive examination of personal identity

called Pourquoi Moi?

In Die Another Day, James Bond had an invisible car.

Here's there's two -

in this is lamentable spoof TV remake Dark Shadows.

You see? They're invisible.

Ha! Yah, boo, sucks, 007!

Now, that social taboo we're all uncomfortable talking about -

spontaneous combustion.

Luckily, the treatment's just a good dousing with water.

Special dry water that doesn't leave

a trace in the bucket once you've thrown it.

Vampires do DIY just like us regular folk.

Barnabas is inside a coffin with a separate lid,

but between here and the graveyard

they've clearly managed a pit stop at IKEA for some hinges.

They probably also picked up 500 tea lights for 50p

and gorged on Swedish meatballs.

The aptly-named 21 Jump Street now, a violent and naughty film

where characters jump from one location to another

without paying any attention to boring stuff like continuity.

For example, this door opens on three people

but only two of them walk in.

-Who invited you guys?

-I did. The party's here.

-What's up?

-Hi, buddy.

Delroy's probably popped round the corner to 21 Teleport Street.

A bona fide miracle, next.

Never mind loaves and fishes, some higher power obviously

decided that this tatty old newspaper on the church door

was making the place look untidy

because mere seconds later, it's gone.

Hallelujah!

It's hard to keep track of relations when you're from a larger family.

Like Ren in the semi-enjoyable but pointless Footloose remake.

His cousins can't stand still.

Here he's greeted by two of them.

How you doing? You guys are huge. Get off me. Attack of the cousins!

But then he's with just one.

The other's hanging out with Lulu.

Not that Lulu, alas, she's not in either of the Foots Loose.

This cross but charismatic young gentlemen played by not Kevin Bacon

gets all crossly into his Beetle and drives away,

showing the exposed engine.

ENGINE STARTS

But when he arrives at this warehouse,

the boot is repaired and the engine covered.

If you don't know what I'm talking about when I say,

"she sees a nun and falls off the bell tower"

or "it's his sledge," then congratulations!

You've just had the two top films of all time ruined for you.

In the latest BFI/Sight and Sound Poll of the greatest ever films,

Vertigo ended Citizen Kane's long run by pipping it to the top spot.

The rest of the top ten was made up of popular favourites like

Tokyo Story, La Regle De Jeu,

Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans and

The Passion Of Joan Of Arc,

because film critics aren't in any way up themselves.

Anyway, even being the best of all time

doesn't protect you from our beady eye.

The harsh and brutally dark war classic Apocalypse Now

features this cameo from director, Francis Ford Coppola.

He clearly loves the limelight, as just seconds before,

we see the crew filming in blatant silhouette.

Word of advice FFC, next time do it with jazz-hands.

Astonishing visuals, plus over-pretentiousness equals

2001: A Space Odyssey,

and in this scene which takes place some hours

before the plot starts, Dr Floyd is looking at pictures of ground.

However, now it's completely different ground.

That's what happens when you do 127 retakes,

Mr Kubrick, learn from the professionals.

I honestly think you ought to sit down calm.

Now, should I ever find myself trapped on an airless space station

trying to stop a malfunctioning AI from killing me,

remind me to make sure my spacesuit, essential in an airless environment,

is securely fastened, exposing no flesh,

otherwise I might get a bit breathless,

goggly eyed and generally explode a bit.

Meticulously crafted, and elegantly shot, it can only be Citizen Kane.

However, here you can see some animated pterodactyls

flying around some 20th century picnickers!

Apparently this was background footage nabbed from Son Of Kong,

but Orson Welles reportedly liked

the reptiles so much he kept them in.

Orson, you well-known perfectionist, you, of course you did!

Interior design now, and here's Jimmy Stewart in the exciting

and tension filled number one movie in the poll, Vertigo.

Look at the cushions he offers Madeline to sit on.

They're green, yes? Oh no they're not, they're gold.

Oh, wait a minute, sorry folks.

They're definitely, definitely green.

Ever the attentive host,

Jimmy's offering his lovely visitor a cup of coffee.

Well, to be more precise, just a cup.

Maybe she should pop next door

and borrow some from the hunky neighbour?

In this tense scene on the beach,

Madeline is getting in touch with nature and hugging a tree.

I'm walking down a long corridor, that once was mirrored.

And fragments of the mirror still hang there.

However, she manages to turn her back on it,

seemingly without moving.

I tell you what, that Alfred Hitchcock certainly knows

how to weave a web of mystery and intrigue.

You know when a film is about castles

and knights or Jesuses or Vikings or all of those?

Well, they didn't film them back then because they couldn't,

because long ago, people were stupid and couldn't plug things in.

But the problem with filming historical items is that

things that have no business being on screen sometimes turn up -

like mobile phones, digital watches or Danny Dyer.

Here's a selection of some of the most prominent

anachronisms of the year.

I'm actually wearing an anachronism right now.

I'm sure you've spotted it. Yes, that's right.

This shirt is from 2035.

More from Jason Mark-Of-Quality Statham here in Killer Elite.

Yeah, me neither.

In this thrill-packed scene set in 1980,

we can see a Superdry logo on his coat,

when in fact lads' mags readers didn't wander around

with that written all over them until the brand was founded in 2003.

Just have to slow him down, won't we?

Guy Ritchie will kick himself over this one.

In his naff Sherlock Holmes movie,

Moriarty listens to Schubert on his phonograph.

MUSIC PLAYS

When, as we know, in 1891,

Schubert's work was only available on download.

No, hang on a minute, that's not right.

But that type of record wasn't introduced until the 20th century.

This fish, you cannot cheat.

Everyone's favourite lovable rom-com kook Margaret Thatcher

in the impressive Iron Lady is getting her hair done.

But this scene is set in 1975,

two years before those tinfoil highlighty things were patented.

Maybe they're just bits of her iron head or something.

It's not like this film got any of its facts wrong.

Underwhelming remake The Thing now.

So, what's wrong with this troubling scene, do you think,

off the top of your head?

That's right, it's what's on top of her head - moulded

plastic headphones weren't available in 1982 when this scene is set.

Other proof that this isn't from 1982 is that nobody is

playing Simon or eating Ice Magic.

In this clip from the brilliant War Horse, we see our hero,

the warhorse, busy being a horse in a war.

See as he gallops magnificently down a long straight trench.

Problem is, trenches were built in zigzags

so enemy interlopers couldn't just pick off everyone with a few shots.

I'd go and see the stage version instead. It's got massive puppets.

An adventure begins.

We Bought A Zoo is set way back in June 2010.

It's a formulaic and nauseating film

about how some people open a zoo.

And about how Matt Damon invents a time machine.

Because the house listings he's following here

are from January 2011.

And later on he refers to his daughter as being...

I can't even find you, you're like a Chilean miner.

..When the mine didn't collapse until August that year.

Call the miners, you could have warned them, prescient Matt Damon!

Well, the time has come for film-makers to breathe a sigh of relief,

because we're done - for now.

But beware Hollywood.

If you try and get away with even the tiniest little error,

a misplaced hair, a shifting coffee cup or making John Carter, we will be watching. Good night.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd