Trust me: Lazy filmmakers love clichés

Holiday cliché spotting

As the holiday movie season slams into high gear this week, it might be a good time for a refresher course on how to pick out really good movies that don't rely on visual and verbal clichés.

How?

By revealing the top 10 visual and top 10 verbal clichés that Hollywood movies constantly recycle.

No matter what kind of movie Hollywood produces — horror, epic, romance, comedy, action, science-fiction, fantasy — lazy filmmakers love to reuse the same identical lines of dialogue as a crutch.

Plus, they love to reutilize the same lame enhancements to prop up the visuals on the silver screen.

Ready? Here come the top 10 verbal crutches. Listen for them in your next Hollywood movie:

10. “You're funny!”

9. “Let me get this straight” (always said just before a character delivers an internal summary of the plot to bring slower viewers up to speed).

8. “It's show time!”

7. “Why are you telling me this?” (usually a preamble to explaining why a character babbles personal information to a complete stranger thereby communicating essential plot points the screenwriter can't figure out how to otherwise convey).

6. The tandem scream. (Two or more characters in a moving vehicle scream simultaneously as they're about to crash, fall over a cliff, sink, meet up with a monster or some other sort of impending calamity. This is not a verbal crutch but certainly an oral one.)

5. “That's what I'm talking about!”

4. “This is crazy!”

3. “I can't do this!”

2. “Trust me!”

1. “Awesome!” (in all of its various applications)

Ready? Now come the top 10 visual crutches. Watch for them in your next Hollywood movie, too:

10. Potential romantic interests always move in slow motion.

9. The fashion montage (where characters try on different outfits in a quickly edited sequence set in front of a mirror while a funky pop tune accompanies them).

8. Spit-takes (where one character reacts to a joke or something shocking by spewing a drink in the face of another character).

7. The “thumbs-up” gesture (because characters want to suggest to viewers that they're watching a critically approved film).

6. The shoes introduction (the camera introduces characters by showing us their shoes first before tilting up to their faces).

5. Strip clubs (the preferred location for meeting cops or witnesses).

4. Amusement parks and carnivals where people meet or pass through during a chase.

3. Large ceiling fans (or large fans mounted on walls with strange blue light emitting from behind them).

2. Brightly colored party balloons (because they're cheap).

1. Fireworks (the easiest, most crowd-pleasing attention-getter in the movie universe).

Happy crutch hunting!

• Daily Herald film critic Dann Gire's column runs Fridays in Time out!