Loading ...
As part of our public service remit, I thought we could collect unnecesary euphemisms used commonly in various walks of life and expose them for the charlatans they are, starting with cinema-review-speak-type-stuff.
“Lavish” - only ever found before the words “adaptation” or “production”, and invariably applied to a costume drama. If you’re after a bunch of posh-talking women wearing those dresses which push their cleavage right up, and possibly a white wig, watch on.
“Epic” - fucking interminable. You’ll never get these four hours of your life back.
“Sexy” - very hard to define, this one, as critics appear to use it to describe at least 95% of all films released.
“Thoughtful” - a navel-gazing bore-fest, probably in a foreign language. You’ll get more enjoyment out of taking apart and reassembling a heavily-used chemical toilet. Also - “Thought-provoking”. As previous, but likely to include an element of sexual deviancy.
“Action-packed” - Steven Seagal alert.
“High-Octane” - as above, but starring Vin Diesel (guffaw…)
“Zany” - a shit American spoof. Statistically likely to be one of the 139 films in the Police Academy series.
There are many more of these cliches waiting to be named and shamed; feel free to chip in…
This entry was posted on Sunday, February 3rd, 2008 at 4:38 pm and is filed under Film / Telly / Books, Irritating Things. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
“Sweeping”–Might be true if spoken by Elmer Fudd (”I swept through the whole movie.”).
“Heart-warming”–Blood-boiling is more like it.
“Futuristic”–Not particularly informative. Is it Star Wars or A Clockwork Orange?
I liked the Vin Diesel gag…
Good work, K. I was going to do “heartwarming” myself - a blustery rant about being forced to sit through crappy films with soppy girlfriends - but thought that maybe I should sort the “girlfriend” aspect out first.
‘Heartwarming’ to me usually means there’s a disabled person in it.
Slightly off topic, but ever since I’ve lived in London, I’ve only ever seen new build flats that are either LUXURY or more recently LANDMARK.
Thanks bebebbebebbeb - there will be other euphemism-bashing posts in the future focussing on other areas of life (sport’s an obvious target, as is politics).
Oh, and you need to say what you think “Luxury” or “Landmark” are euphemisms for - something along the lines of “shitty structurally-unsound ex-council block in a vaguely central location built by communists in the GLC in the 1960s which has recently been bought up by evil property speculators who’ve refurbished it to look like an Ikea showroom in order fill it with self-important insurance company middle-manager pricks who think they’ve achieved something in life because they can park their 4×4 behind a big fucking electronic gate”.