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People tend to associate great movie twists with dignified dramas like Citizen Kane, The Empire Strikes Back, or The Prestige. As excellent as those films and their twists certainly are, it’s wrong to assume that only movies like that are capable of effectively surprising an audience. Silly films can too, and they have.
“Silly” doesn’t necessarily mean that the movies are bad. But they are childish, cheesy, or lowbrow (or a combination of those) to such a degree that no viewer would ever expect a quality twist in them. Let’s explore the most impactful twists packaged within the most unlikely films. From the ‘unexpected bad guy’, to the ‘it was all a dream’, and even the ‘it was all a joke’. Set your faces to surprised…
‘The Notebook’ (2004)
The film begins with several shots that look like they were lifted directly from the cover of a 1980s romance novel (the only thing missing is Fabio). It’s a suitable preface for what would turn out to be a fairly clichéd romance film about a rich girl named Allie (Rachel McAdams) who falls in love with Noah (Ryan Gosling), a boy from the wrong side of the tracks. Forces keep them apart, but they eventually find their way back to each other. Noah and Allie’s tale is framed as a story which an elderly man (James Garner) is reading to an elderly woman (Gena Rowlands) who he shares a nursing home with.
Except that elderly man is Noah and the elderly woman is Allie. He’s regaling her with their love story in order to remind her because she sadly suffers from dementia. Not only is it a clever surprise, but it adds a genuinely touching and heartbreaking dimension to what otherwise would have been two hours of predictable sap. It’s the strength of this extra dimension that elevates the movie to a higher level, and it’s thusly regarded as one of the best romance movies. Of course, hats off to Nicholas Sparks who wrote the original novel.
‘The Lizzie McGuire Movie’ (2003)
This is a movie based on a Disney Channel TV show and so, predictably, it consists mostly of cheap laughs and moments designed to elicit an “aww” from teenage girls. While on a school trip to Rome, Lizzie McGuire (Hilary Duff) catches the eye of an Italian pop star named Paolo (Yani Gellman). It turns out that Lizzie bears a striking resemblance to his former singing partner, Isabella. Lizzie has fun pretending to be Isabella and living the high life with Paolo. She even agrees to join him on stage for an epic performance.
However, it’s eventually revealed that Paolo doesn’t care about Lizzie/Isabella at all. His plan was to embarrass them on stage in order to boost his own career. After decades of heroic Disney Princes, it was a major shock for Disney to give us a charming and handsome guy who actually turns out to be a selfish jerk. Remember that this was years before Frozen pulled off a similar twist, this movie caught audiences unprepared. Is it any wonder that the millennial generation has turned out so bitter and untrusting?
‘The Lego Movie’ (2014)
This movie takes us into the LEGO universe, the fate of which is in the hands of an ordinary minifigure named Emmet (Chris Pratt). Emmet embarks on an epic quest to stop an evil villain from gluing their LEGO universe together. Joining him for the ride is a mechanized pirate (Nick Offerman), a unicorn/cat hybrid (Allison Brie), and even Batman (Will Arnett). It’s all so random and childish, the film sometimes seems like it was written by a child. And there’s a very valid reason for that…
It’s revealed that the whole saga is in the imagination of a little live-action boy playing with his dad’s LEGO. It’s a twist that nobody would’ve seen that coming. Since the very first Snow White, audiences have been conditioned to accept everything they see in an animated film to be real, albeit within the universe of the film itself. But this one totally flips that by having the animated universe be just a figment of one of the character’s imaginations. This revelation also adds extra depth to the LEGO action, we can see hints of Finn and his struggles reflected in the adventure that he makes up. There’s also an appearance by a live-action Will Ferrell, adding a side of humor to the surprising twist.
‘Scooby-Doo’ (2002)
This live-action adaptation of Scooby-Doo sees our favorite mystery solvers – Fred (Freddie Prinze Jr.), Daphne (Sarah Michelle Gellar), Velma (Linda Cardellini), Shaggy (Matthew Lillard), and Scooby – summoned to an amusement park called Spooky Island. Its owner Emile Mondavarious (a surprisingly hip Rowan Atkinson) wants them to investigate why strange things keep happening to Spooky Island’s visitors.
Fast-forward through a lot of cheesy jokes and creepy creatures, it’s revealed that the main villain of the film is Scrappy-Doo. Yes, the despised, fight-loving nephew of Scooby. Mondavarious is a robot that Scrappy was operating in his quest to take over the world and get revenge on the Scooby-Doo gang who had ditched him. It’s a mind-blowing blindside that hits the viewers from so many angles: Mondavarious is a robot? Scrappy Doo is evil? Scrappy is also a technological genius? What makes it even more surprising is the fact that most audiences probably went into this film expecting the standard Scooby-Doo twist ending (“oh, the bad guy is the eccentric person we met a few minutes ago… in a mask”).
‘Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion’ (1997)
This movie introduces us to Romy (Mira Sorvino) and Michele (Lisa Kudrow), two fabulous but underachieving buddies. When their 10-year high school reunion comes around, they decide to extensively lie about their lives to impress their former classmates. While the deception works, the reunion also takes several very bizarre turns which threaten to tear the two besties apart forever. What have Romy and Michele gotten themselves into?
As it turns out, nothing. All of that was just a dream that Michele was having before arriving at the reunion. The average viewer wouldn’t have seen it coming, the movie’s general tone is so eccentric that the quirky dream sequence fits right in. Thankfully, the movie doesn’t end with ‘it was all a dream’ – that would’ve angered audiences no end). After waking up, Romy and Michele attend the reunion for real and what transpires is a surprisingly joyful affair which also includes an iconic dance number.
‘April Fool’s Day’ (1986)
We come to the peak of silly cinema: the 1980s slasher movie. Like most movies of that ilk, it begins with a group of young people innocently enjoying themselves. In this case, it’s a group of college students living it up on an island estate. The host of the party is Muffy (Deborah Foreman) whose family owns the estate. It isn’t long before a knife-wielding assailant appears and begins picking off each guest, one by one. We follow Kit (Amy Steel) and Rob (Ken Olandt) as they do their best to survive and figure out what’s actually going on.
It’s all an elaborate April Fool’s prank orchestrated by Muffy – nobody really died. Muffy explains that she wants to convert the place into a hotel which also offers murder-mystery experiences, the “massacre” was just a rehearsal. A cruel joke, but a savvy business move and one heck of an unexpected twist. People in the 80s didn’t go into a slasher movie expecting a twist, they only expected, well… slashing. The genre was ripe for a surprise ending and this movie delivered it. The simplicity of the twist and the fact that the movie’s title is an enormous clue just makes the viewers kick themselves for not seeing it coming.
‘Reindeer Games’ (2000)
In this case, “silly” does mean bad. Even one of the film’s stars admitted that Reindeer Games was “bad, bad, bad”. It stars Ben Affleck as a prison inmate named Rudy who is about to be released alongside his friend Nick (James Frain). When Nick is killed in a prison brawl, Rudy pretends to be him, so he can score with Nick’s beautiful prison pen pal Ashley (Charlize Theron). Rudy and Ashley’s romance is spoiled when her brother Gabriel (Gary Sinise) abducts them both and forces them to assist in a casino robbery. It later turns out that Ashley and Gabriel are lovers, and she’s in on the robbery.
That’s just the mini-twist. At the very end it’s revealed that Nick never died and both he and Ashley were actually behind the whole thing. The legendary online film critic James Berardinelli said it best: this movie’s final twist “comes from so far afield that it’s impossible to logically predict.” It’s true, and the unpredictability of it is what makes it so effective. The level of surprise that the audience is hit with when Nick reveals himself is something that many cinematic masterpieces weren’t even able to achieve. Some credit must go to Theron, she was very munch the linchpin for this film’s twists, and she plays it so the audience (just like Rudy and Gabriel) have no idea where her allegiance really is. A less capable actress would have given the game away well before the final act.
‘The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2’ (2012)
Twilight is a film series that many of us love to hate, and write strongly-worded lists about. Granted, the films are based on an absurd premise: a human girl named Bella (Kristen Stewart) falls in love with a vampire and a wolf is jealous about it. But there’s no arguing with the franchise’s success or with the huge bang that the series ended with. Basically, the Volturi (the elites of the vampire world) are angered by Bella having a baby with her beloved vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) which leads to a confrontation and ultimately a battle between the Volturi and the Cullens, plus the Cullens’ allies. It’s an epic battle with many brutal moments, including the grisly deaths of many main characters.
The final battle alone would have been a list-worthy twist. It wasn’t in the book, so it would’ve shocked diehard fans just as much as the non-fans that they dragged along with them. But the movie goes a step further… the battle never actually happened! It was just a vision that one of the vampires had. The series waited until the fifth film to do something surprising and shocking, and boy did they. According to the written accounts on Reddit and Buzzfeed, those who witnessed that twist ending have yet to get over it.
‘Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit’ (2005)
It doesn’t get much sillier than a cheese-loving clay man who runs a business with his dog. Wallace and Gromit‘s feature film debut sees the iconic duo working in pest control. Business is going fine until they find themselves up against a mysterious beast that only appears at night… the Were-Rabbit. The Were-Rabbit is ruining gardens across the town and must be stopped before it ruins the town’s Giant Vegetable Competition. Can Wallace and Gromit do it?
Yes, they can. But not before we learn that the Were-Rabbit is Wallace himself! What a blindside. This franchise had spent years establishing Wallace as one of the gentlest and most harmless people in animation history. The idea of him transforming into a monster at night was unthinkable, like if someone said Bob Ross was secretly a serial killer. Thankfully, Wallace’s condition is only temporary, and he’s cured of it. There should be no rabbit business in the 2024 Netflix movie.
‘There’s Something About Mary’ (1998)
There’s something about this movie. On the one hand, it’s a wall of profanity and gross jokes concerning body parts and secretions of all types. But it’s also a sweet and wholesome tale about a nice guy named Ted (Ben Stiller) trying to find his childhood crush Mary (Cameron Diaz). Ted also has to fend off competition from just about every man who has ever met the captivating Mary, and therein lies a surprising twist.
It turns out that Ted’s friend Dom (Chris Elliott), who assisted Ted in reuniting with Mary, is actually “Woogie” – Mary’s mysterious childhood boyfriend. According to Mary, it was Woogie’s obsessive behavior that led her to move far away and rearrange her whole life. Although Woogie is clearly an important character, the movie is wise enough to not place too much significance on him. Therefore, audiences don’t spend any time trying to guess who he is, and we’re genuinely stunned to see that he was right under our (and Ted’s) nose the whole time. It also adds another guy to the list of Mary’s admirers, there really is something about her!
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