5 Movies With Horribly Misleading Titles

If you’re expecting this week’s Battle Of The Year to be a kick-ass action flick, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

There are times in a young gentleman’s life when, through no fault of his own, he finds himself somewhat drunk, friendless, and standing alone outside a movie theater, with just enough cash in his pocket for admission and a bag of peanuts, and absolutely nothing better to do for the next two hours (we call those times, “10AM on a Tuesday”). “Aha!” he might think to himself. “A movie I shall see! But which one? All I have to go on is the title, because phones with access to the Internet that can tell me what these movies are about are oddly absent in this frankly rambling and incoherent hypothetical introductory scenario. I’ll just see the one that sounds kind of badass.” A sound strategy, you might think – until you accidentally go and see one of these movies, and discover that sweet, sweet action flick is actually about relationships, love, maturity, and other terrible stuff that makes no sense to your drunk, explosion-craving brain. Here are some of the worst offenders from recent years.

Battle Of The Year

“Hooray,” you might have thought upon spying this title on the side of your local multiplex. “It’s some kind of apocalypse-y, planet-explode-y film, one with a huge ensemble cast of mostly pretty good actors and one guy who used to be good but now owes a lot of taxes and has to take everything he’s offered, all of whom get heroically blown up in a variety of exciting ways. I shall watch this!” And then you find out it’s a movie about a fucking dance contest, and you die a little inside. Again.



Photo Courtesy of Screen Gems

Failure To Launch

“Now, that sounds like a possibility!” you may have murmured to yourself back in 2006. “A rip-roaring space adventure, perhaps! Or an action-packed account of some titanic struggle to fend off a Kamikaze attack from the deck of a stricken aircraft carrier during the Battle of Midway! Two tickets and a bag of popcorn, good sir, I am sold!” Alas, no. It was a romcom with Matthew ‘Spell Check Hates Me” McConaughey, one of those ones from Sex And The City, and 120 minutes of grueling, grating awfulness.



Photo Courtesy of Paramount Pictures

Monster-in-Law

“Now you’re talking!” said our oft-mistaken allegorical human male with a strangely old-fashioned British accent, in the long-gone year of 2005. “A wacky fantasy comedy, I’ll be bound – some Munsters-like shenanigans where a human boy marries into a family of werewolves and swamp creatures, enduring all sorts of ghoulish cultural misunderstandings and broadly amusing slapstick! Yes sir, and a sack of plums, please!” Dear God, was that young man disappointed when he discovered it was another romcom, this time with Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda, that not even the presence of Will Arnett or Adam Scott could redeem.



Photo Courtesy of New Line Cinema

Ten Inch Hero

“Look, this one has to be good,” you mutter, a lifetime of regret from previous past choices building up in your spleen. “It’s either about a very diminutive masked vigilante, which, clearly, has got to be hilarious, or it’s a fascinating documentary about a bigger than average penis that somehow managed to rescue a box full of kittens from an exploding milk truck while its owner slept. Either way, amazeballs.” Wrong again, buddy! It’s a girly comedy set in a sandwich shop. You’ve been tricked again, sucker!



Photo Courtesy of Blockbuster Video

The Iron Lady

“This terrible cinematic luck can’t last forever!” you cried back in 2011. “If this isn’t a saucy sex romp about a robot prostitute or, at the very least, a horror movie set in a medieval dungeon, I’ll eat my hat with a side order of hat and a big, cold glass of Chateau Le Hat 1972 to wash it down with. And don’t tell me it’s going to be a bloodless, hagiographic biopic of former Prime Minister of England Margaret Thatcher, played by Meryl Streep for some reason, because come on, that’s just stupid.” Surprise! It’s a bloodless, hagiographic biopic of former Prime Minister of England Margaret Thatcher, played by Meryl Streep! Look on the bright side, at least you’ll learn some very one-sided stuff about the Falklands. 



Photo Courtesy of The Weinstein Company

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