Great Movies With Silly Plots

Have you ever found yourself completely caught up in a film only to find, after the lights come up, that the story didn’t make any sense, yet you loved it anyway? Today, we’re talking about great movies with silly plots – including The Martian, The Incredible Mr. Limpet, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 0:15Linda Holmes?

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• 0:48Speaker 02

  Have you ever found yourself completely caught up in a film only to find after the lights come up that the story didn't make any damn sense at all, yet you loved it anyway?

• 0:58Linda Holmes?

  We're talking about those movies that leave you with two simultaneous feelings. That was great. And wait, what? I'm Linda Holmes.

• 1:07Speaker 02

  And I'm Glen Weldon, and today we're recommending three great movies with very, very silly plots on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

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• 2:51Speaker 02

  It's just us today, so great movie, silly plot. That's the subject. Now, I want to be clear. We're not talking about like miniscule plot holes or weird little nitpicks.

• 3:01Linda Holmes?

  We're not doing IMDb Goofs.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  We're not doing the IMDb Goof page. We're talking about movies that manage to enthrall you from start to finish. You get caught up in the setting and the mood and the characters and the look, then you later realize that those characters you loved didn't behave the way that any real humans would, and weird things happened that never would or could or should happen, yet everyone just accepts it. Lynda, let's get right to it. What's your first pick?

• 3:27Linda Holmes?

  Well, you know, Glenn, I thought about coming up with a taxonomy of silly plots.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 3:32Linda Holmes?

  Because I really struggled with what exactly I meant by a silly plot.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:36Linda Holmes?

  Because my first thought was to go with something like While You Were Sleeping, which is a movie that I love, in which Peter Gallagher falls on the train tracks and is in a coma, and Sandra Bullock is mistaken for his fiancee by his family, and then she falls in love with his brother. It's an extremely silly plot.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  It's a high Jinx and Sue plot, yes.

• 3:56Linda Holmes?

  It is what I used to refer to as a hum-through plot,

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:59Linda Holmes?

  which means you just got to kind of hum to yourself through the story and not think about it too much. But I decided that what I really wanted to talk about was like genuinely great movies with plots that Are silly and yet it's not like built around the idea that the plot is silly. It's not self-aware about how silly the plot is.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:19Linda Holmes?

  What I wanted to do is talk about movies I genuinely love, despite the fact that if you hear it, is very silly.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:27Linda Holmes?

  So my first choice is The Martian, which is from 2015, directed by Ridley Scott. And the screenplay is Drew Goddard. It's from this book by Andy Weir, which is also, by the way, wonderful.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:39Linda Holmes?

  This is the movie where Matt Damon is on a mission to Mars, a crewed mission to Mars. And there is a sudden storm and the crew has to take off without him. So he is left on Mars all by himself. Now, the idea, you know, first of all, we've got the crew landing on Mars and functioning and all that is great. The thing that I love about this is that Andy Weir in the book, and then in the movie, they do the same thing. There is a ton of science that is real.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  Right. That's why that surprises me that you went with this, but keep talking.

• 5:08Linda Holmes?

  Okay, the science on a small level is enthrallingly genuine in many, many ways.

• 5:15Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 5:16Linda Holmes?

  I have a feeling an enormous amount of research went into this work. And so on a micro level, you believe it. Because on a micro level, it makes all the sense in the world. And yet, when you pull back, it is a story of a guy who is left alone on Mars, which is a silly plot in a way.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 5:37Linda Holmes?

  Because I just find it very hard to believe anyone could actually survive that, right?

• 5:42Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 5:42Linda Holmes?

  Because he survives for like years. He makes food. He plants potatoes. He figures out all of these things. The reason I love this movie so much is that on a micro level, it makes total sense. But on a macro level, it's a guy who's left alone on Mars, which is a foundationally, to me, silly idea. But because the movie is so good, I don't want this to seem like any kind of knock on the movie because it isn't. I love this movie. It's one of my favorite movies.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 6:12Linda Holmes?

  But if you pull back, the idea of being abandoned on Mars is kind of a silly plot. And the way they rescue him is kind of silly. It sounds silly. Do you know what I mean?

• 6:21Speaker 02

  I guess, I guess. I mean, like, it's kind of Robinson Crusoe on Mars. I get that. But this is such a great example of what we're talking about because, I mean, I was all in on this movie. And I think maybe I'm basing some of that on the fact that my memory of the book, my memory of this film, was all in the ancillary materials about how it's all grounded in research and reality and this is plausible. But when I try to think about this movie now, I just remember the poop potatoes. That's, that's really all I remember about this movie and the discussion of how that's actually plausible. I remember there being a lot of math in the movie and unlike you, I wasn't caught up in that. Because whenever characters start doing math in a movie, my eyes glaze over and my attention wanders.

• 7:00Linda Holmes?

  Right, sure.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  Because I always think, okay, this is the show your work part. And I just want to flip to the back for the answer key, right? I like process. I love process in movies, but when the process involves like, long division or cosines, I hate process. But that's so interesting to me because I guess you're right. Like, somebody stranded alone on my, in that sense, you know, Cast Away is, is silly, I suppose.

• 7:23Linda Holmes?

  Cast Away is silly.

• 7:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:25Linda Holmes?

  I was just trying to get my arms around, maybe what I love about a great movie with a silly plot is that it manages to make a silly plot into a story that's not silly, right? The plot is silly, but the story, because as you mentioned, you know, because of the characters, because of the mood, because of the, the attitude. And I think in this case with the movie, the screenplay is very witty.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:47Linda Holmes?

  I think the Matt Damon performance is very good and very witty also. And because of that, it's a silly plot, but it's not a silly story if we can split that hair.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  I like that. I like splitting that hair. I also like the three minutes of screen time that Donald Glover gets in that film.

• 8:02Linda Holmes?

  Oh, yes. He's wonderful in it.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  He is wonderful in it. Okay, so that is The Martian. That is a great pick. I'm gonna go watch that again. I'm, I'm inspired to go watch that again. My pick is intentionally silly. It's fully silly. I went with a kids movie and a kids fantasy movie, which is maybe a cop out here. It's exactly the opposite of what you're talking about because if we're defining silly to mean unlikely or absurd, then it's a kids fantasy movie. That's kind of what they're for, I guess. But Linda, there's kids fantasy movie. And there's this thing in which Don Knotts, wearing a straw hat and a bow tie and a Panzenez, you know, those glasses that rest on your nose.

• 8:41Linda Holmes?

  Uh huh.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  Is staring into the water off Coney Island. And he starts intoning what turned out to be, for no reason, the film ever bothers to tell you why, they turn out to be magic words.

• 8:55Speaker 04

  I wish.

• 8:57Speaker 04

  I wish I were a fish.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  There it is. There's your triggering action of the entire film. This is the 1964 film, The Incredible Mr. Limpit. And look, they knew what they were doing. This film is based on a 1942 book by Theodore Pratt, which was just called Mr. Limpit. Now, Linda, you know this film, right?

• 9:16Linda Holmes?

  I know of it. I'm not sure I've seen it.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Okay. Oh, good. I'm eager for this opportunity then. Because if I were to tell you, Linda Holmes, that Don Knotts plays a timid bookkeeper named Henry Limpit, who is husband to Bessie, played by the great Carol Cook. And Carol Cook is playing Bessie as a kind of domineering and abrasive and unpleasant.

• 9:36Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  Woman, because it's a very common trope of the time. We're supposed to see poor Henry as what was then called a henpecked husband.

• 9:43Linda Holmes?

  Henpecked, mhm.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Henry is a passionate lover of fish, not in the Troy McClure sense, but at least not yet. But he is kind of an amateur marine biologist, right? He is obsessed with fish. Like, again, this was before the cultural ubiquity of nerds. He was kind of like the ur nerd. He's certainly filling that vibe. So one day he sees a school of fish off a dock on Coney Island. And instead of joining his wife and his best friend, who are having a picnic just a few feet away in this little happy cloud of heteronormativity, he instead longs for a life under the sea. He is reverse Little Mermaid-ing it, basically. So he says his weird wish thing, and then he falls into the water.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Or does he jump? The film cuts away, is intentionally ambiguous on the score, and is promptly transformed into a cartoon fish. It's not because of any kind of powerful mutagens in the water off Coney Island, because that's not that film. This film is, it happens because of whimsy. And I hear you asking, Linda, what specific kind of fish does he turn into, Glenn?

• 10:50Linda Holmes?

  Well, yes, I was gonna ask.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  There are. Corners of the internet where this debate is still going. Like the consensus, it kind of resembles a tile fish, which is kind of like a grouper now. So what do we got so far? Don Knotts is playing A, a talking cartoon fish.

• 11:06Linda Holmes?

  Right.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  B, who is still nearsighted, so he still needs those little ponsnes.

• 11:10Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:10Speaker 02

  And C, he has, for no reason, the film bothers with, a superpower now. He can produce a loud underwater roar, which he calls his thrum. Oh, also, he gets a grumpy crab friend, so they are really Little Mermaid-ing it in a big way.

• 11:26Linda Holmes?

  Sure, sure, sure.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  He also falls in love with a female fish whom he calls Ladyfish. Because of course, she's a fish, and as she points out, she does not have the concept of names.

• 11:36Linda Holmes?

  Right.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  So he names her because patriarchy. Also, the crab, by the way, is a male, has a name, he's crusty, but the female fish, no, no, no names for her.

• 11:44Linda Holmes?

  She's just Ladyfish.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  She's just Ladyfish. So if I were to tell you, Linda Holmes, as I'm trying to do now, that Don Knotts plays a man who gets transformed into cartoon fish with a ponsnes and a superpower and a cartoon fish girlfriend that he cheats on his landwife with.

• 11:57Linda Holmes?

  I was just gonna say, he's cheating on his wife with a fish.

• 12:00Speaker 02

  Uh huh. You'd probably say, there's your movie, right? Die nu, it is enough.

• 12:04Linda Holmes?

  Yeah.

• 12:05Speaker 02

  What more could there possibly be to this movie?

• 12:08Linda Holmes?

  Nothing.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  To which I would say unto you, Nazis. Nazis, Linda Holmes. Don Knotts plays a man who gets transformed into a cartoon fish with a ponsnes and a superpower and a cartoon fish girlfriend he cheats on his landwife with, and he fights Nazis.

• 12:21Linda Holmes?

  Wow.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  Because this film was made in 1964, but it is based on a 1942 novel by Theodore Pratt.

• 12:27Linda Holmes?

  Right.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  In which Henry Limpett is what? 4F, because of course he is, and he wants to fight the Nazis. So he uses his mysteriously manifesting cartoon fish superpower to swim up to Nazi U-boats. He does his thrum, and he attracts American torpedoes.

• 12:45Linda Holmes?

  Oh, sure.

• 12:46Speaker 02

  And that's not all. He requests for this service a Navy lieutenant's commission and salary, which he has sent to Bessie, so.

• 12:54Linda Holmes?

  Oh, sure.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  It's not bad, right? Now, to go back to this discussion, I mean, this plot is fantastic. It's even incroyable, as one might say. But the studio knew exactly what it was doing, and here's how I know they knew exactly what they were doing. Here is a clip from the trailer of the film.

• 13:17Speaker 03

  A fish, is that so terrible? Yes, Mr. Limpet is sure to be the most incredibly delightful movie about a man who turns into a fish that you'll see this year.

• 13:27Speaker 02

  See, they get it.

• 13:28Linda Holmes?

  Oh, funny.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  They're on it, right?

• 13:31Linda Holmes?

  I get it. I get it. The thing that I love about this is that I went for a plot that is silly at its core.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  Macro level.

• 13:38Linda Holmes?

  But it is silly at its very basis.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:42Linda Holmes?

  But it is much less silly in its details.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 13:46Linda Holmes?

  And you went for a plot that is particularly silly the more details you consider.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 13:54Linda Holmes?

  Like, the more you consider the lady fish and the Nazis, you have like more and more and more and more silly. And I have, yes, the details make sense.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 14:04Linda Holmes?

  But when you go straight to the core of it, the idea of somebody being stranded alone on Mars is kind of a silly idea.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  You have a conceptual silliness and I have a execution silliness. Like, as you go further into the Wikipedia page, you're like, wait what, wait what, wait what?

• 14:18Linda Holmes?

  Right. Exactly.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 14:20Linda Holmes?

  Exactly.

• 14:20Speaker 02

  So my pick is The Incredible Mr. Limpet. Linda, what is your last pick? And does it share your ethos, your macro level silliness?

• 14:28Linda Holmes?

  It does. But I think it's a little bit more of a compromise between detail silliness and macro silliness. Now, this one is, if you were offended that I chose The Martian because you think it's a knock on the movie to say it has a silly plot, people are really going to be offended by this. But I, I repeat, not a knock on the movie. I chose Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 14:50Linda Holmes?

  Which is a brilliant movie with, in my opinion, a very silly plot in a lot of ways. This is a 2004 Michelle Gondry-directed and Charlie Kaufman-scripted story of these two people who have been in a relationship. And the foundational piece is, first she decides and then he decides to erase their, there's a procedure you can go through to erase your memories of another person. And it has this very soulful, very sad, very moving idea that, you know, you have to sort of decide if a relationship turns bad, or upsetting,

• 15:33Linda Holmes?

  or ends badly, would you never have had it at all?

• 15:36Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 15:36Linda Holmes?

  That's really what it's about, right? And it has this enormously spiritual quality, I find. And it's all about the nature of love. And it is really one of, I think, the best movies, very specifically about the nature of love and the nature of relationships. But it is all built around this idea that scientists can come to your house while you are asleep and do a procedure on you while you are asleep that gradually erases your memory of another person.

• 16:07Speaker 05

  Here at Lacuna, we have a safe technique for the focused erasure of troubling memories. Is there any risk of brain damage? Technically, the procedure is brain damage. It's not a par with a night of heavy drinking. Nothing you'll miss.

• 16:20Linda Holmes?

  That is a silly idea. If you heard that outside the context of this incredibly spiritual film, if you heard like, oh, this is about these people who they have a bad breakup. And so a scientist comes to their house in the middle of the night and erases their memories of each other. It sounds very silly. So this one I chose because it's really, to me, an example of transcending, like a plot that sounds whimsical in a way, right? To make a film that is profound in a lot of ways. And so I think also it has details that are funny, right? Because you do have details about the scientists and how they do their work.

• 17:03Linda Holmes?

  But foundationally, it is such an example of how you take something that sounds like a very odd idea and make something brilliant and incredibly resonant to me.

• 17:16Speaker 02

  It's interesting that we approach this in such radically different ways because the word you're tossing out here is sad, spiritual, profound, but nature of love. I would not find them in the same ballpark as silly. And yet you make the case for silly. Talk to me about the difference between a silly plot and a science fiction plot. Because to me, I put this into a box of, oh, well, I say this is a profound film, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's a science fiction film. So I just, I, I give it, I don't even question it. That's interesting.

• 17:44Linda Holmes?

  You're making such a good point because in a sense, a science fiction plot that is by its nature. I mean, there's a reason why they refer to this bucket as speculative fiction. Yes.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  Sure, exactly.

• 17:56Linda Holmes?

  It is to imagine something that is not currently true, right? It's one thing to have a science fiction film where, you know, like Alien, for example, right? I can imagine, you know, and Alien is a thing that I think a lot of people have thought about, right? There could be, there could be aliens. That makes sense to me. And it doesn't sound like it would be a thing they would do on the Jetsons. You know what I mean? Like a menacing alien. But the thing that's fascinating about Eternal Sunshine to me is it sounds like something that would happen on the Jetsons. Right? Like, we can erase your memories of this bad vacation that you took or something like that.

• 18:36Linda Holmes?

  It is, it is an idea that could be handled anywhere from incredibly sort of goofy to this execution of it. I mean, in a way, when we say great movie with a silly plot, it has a, an internal tension because if the movie is great, then by definition, in a way, the plot isn't silly.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:59Linda Holmes?

  The plot is beautiful in its own way. Maybe not the plot of Mr. Limpet, but you know, but it is, right? You talked about how this is about somebody trapped in a loveless marriage and, you know, finds a place to be accepted. And no matter how silly the plot, once it is part of a movie that you think really works and that you think is really moving, it sort of ceases to be a silly plot. But I think I thought about silliness in terms of like, if you sit down to tell somebody what the movie is about, it sounds silly. You know what I mean?

• 19:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I get that. I get that. It's just such a fascinating. Divergence of approaches here. So that is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Great picks. And I think now, when we do the call out, you know, we want to know what your favorite films with a silly plot are. I also want to know from folks how they're approaching it. Are they approaching it like silly in execution? Or are they approaching it like silly in concept?

• 19:53Linda Holmes?

  Right.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  In theme, maybe?

• 19:55Linda Holmes?

  Because, I mean, you could say Star Wars is silly.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 19:57Linda Holmes?

  You could certainly say Indiana Jones.

• 20:00Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 20:00Linda Holmes?

  Basically, everything Indiana Jones has ever done is in its way silly.

• 20:03Speaker 02

  I mean, could you put whimsy in there? Could you substitute for your definition of silly here? As it's working here, would you substitute words like whimsy and fantastical? Or not quite?

• 20:12Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, I mean, I think both of these, the plots for the two that I picked, have whimsical elements.

• 20:16Speaker 02

  Certainly.

• 20:16Linda Holmes?

  I mean, I think in a way, especially with The Martian, that's like what the appeal of it is, right?

• 20:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course.

• 20:20Linda Holmes?

  Is that it's this very simple, very kind of semi goofy idea of like, you know, I'm alone on Mars. Like, I mean, that's a thing that you would think of as a five year old, right?

• 20:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:31Linda Holmes?

  I'm all alone on Mars. No one here but me. I'm going to run my own planet. I'm the king of Mars. And there are times when he talks in the narration about that kind of feeling. And it's something you could think of as a little tiny kid. And that's what I love about it, you know?

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And certainly, that's, this is a different topic. That's the power of superheroes. That's the power of fantasy, science fiction. It's taking something rooted in reality and saying, what if? Well, we want to know not only what your favorite film with a silly plot is, but how do you define a film with a silly plot? Find us at facebook.com slash PCHH. That brings us to the end of our show. Linda Holmes, thank you so much for being here. I'm glad this wasn't just like a list, right?

• 21:13Linda Holmes?

  Yeah, me too, me too.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  I'm glad we got into this, kind of had a conceptual back and forth.

• 21:17Linda Holmes?

  Fascinating.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  This episode was produced by Isabella Gomez Sarmiento and Romell Wood, and edited by Mike Katzif. Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy, and Hello Come In provides our theme music. Thanks for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glen Weldon, and we'll see you all tomorrow.