Someone Asked “Lines In Movies That Make You Cringe?” And Got 30 Answers From Movie Fans

Creating realistic and natural-sounding dialogue for a movie isn't a simple job. If people spoke in movies the way they do in real life, it would be very hard to understand the movie and convey its message. At the same time, the conversations can't seem fake, as they might have the same effect. So, when writers are balancing this line, sometimes, they fail. This way, lines that make people cringe are born. And some of them quickly turn into cringy cult classics (we're looking at you "Spider-Monkey" from "Twilight").

Today, let's take a kind of cringy trip through many general or specific sayings that people find embarrassing while watching movies.

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The word "cringe" is thrown around the internet quite a lot. Whenever you sign in to social media, you hear that this or that makes a person cringe. It might seem that this word is thrown around so much that it starts to lose its meaning. 

Well, to say that, we have to learn what it means, don’t we? Well, according to Wikipedia (because where else is there to go when you don’t know something, right?), a cringe is an action or thing that brings out feelings of discomfort or embarrassment. 

Others might describe cringe as a form of empathy, as a person puts themselves in the place of someone else and feels embarrassed for them. While the description doesn’t necessarily dub it as a form of empathy, it also includes a mention of embarrassment, which is basically what cringe is. 

Sometimes, cringe can manifest as a physiological and emotional response to something a person did or said in the past, or it can be a reaction to someone else’s behavior or words. The latter might cause one to feel secondhand or vicarious embarrassment.

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There’s a whole comedy subgenre based on the feeling of cringiness. Cringe comedy creates humor from social awkwardness, self-deprecation, guilty pleasures, and personal distress, which quite often is made in the form of TV shows. In it, the characters step out of and break social norms by basically acting in ways people might dub cringe. 

Such popular TV shows like “The Office,” “Fleabag,” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” are perfect examples of cringe comedy. And even though, theoretically, it might seem that people shouldn’t enjoy feeling cringe, the popularity of these shows tells a different story. 

Basically, sometimes, people like to laugh at their own and other people's behavioral standards and witness what it would be like to not meet certain social norms. 

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It's one thing to create cringe content on purpose and another thing to do it by accident. Today’s list of movie lines that make people cringe is full of examples of the latter. To talk a little bit more about that, Bored Panda reached out to film critic and host of the Girls On Film podcast, Anna Smith. 

She said that typically cringy lines are overused in movies but are rarely used in real life: “It might feel so unlikely and clichéd that it jars the viewer.” 

We can guess that the writers who wrote these lines likely didn’t intend to make viewers cringe – they maybe just wanted to joke a little bit or create a powerful saying.

Anna explained that these kinds of lines tend to take the audience out of a story and might even make them turn it off: “I have to watch films all the way through for my job as a film critic, but if I was watching a movie for fun, a cringy line might make me lose trust and interest in the film -- and it might make me wary that a whole lot more cringy lines were probably coming!”

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The film critic thinks that people are now more attuned to cringy sexist talk in movies, like romantic gestures that are actually more patronizing to women: “These will probably leap out if you watch films from the 70s, 80s or even 90s.” 

Anna said that she finds it cringe when movie characters overuse names, as it isn’t realistic. Well, as we said in the beginning, it’s hard to balance realism and fakeness. Sometimes, even the best effort to do that doesn’t work out as we anticipate, and the line you thought would be in a list of powerful cinema phrases ends up in a list of cringy ones.

After all, cringe is an inevitable part of life, as it’s simply a physiological reaction. So, as Taylor Swift said in her NYU commencement speech, we need to “learn to live alongside cringe,” as it’s way better than beating yourself up for the rest of your life. 

Therefore, let’s embrace these cringy movie lines and turn them into something entertaining instead of embarrassing. 

What movie lines make you cringe? Share them with us in the comments!

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I hate how any computer nerd can hack everything from the world's biggest banks, to missile silos, all with less than a dozen keystrokes on a Dell laptop. There's a hush as all the military brass watches the nerd do his thing. Then comes the line I hate...."We're in!".(Young, slightly-built woman single-handedly beats up a squad of muscle-bound marines.) "I had three brothers.".“Turn on the news! You gotta see this!” *Turns on the tv to the exact channel at exactly the right time to further an important plot point.*."I won't kill you because I'm not like you", any version of this line spoken by the protagonist to the big bad right after the epic battle where numerous foot soldiers have just been slaughtered.It's hard to be too annoyed because I understand why it's needed, but when characters use each other's names/relations way too often to establish it with the audience. "Dan, Kelly is on the line for you." "Thanks, Candice. You're the best assistant and ex-girlfriend a guy ever had....hi Kelly, how is my favorite sister-in-law?" "Not great, Dan. My husband, Tom, told me you don't have the tickets. Now, I know he's your big brother and all..."."We don't have any other choice." "We have no choice" "There's no other way" Usually it is just lazy writing to justify doing something stupid. If there really was no other choice it would be apparent to the audience from your storytelling.When characters are introduced as siblings by calling each other “bro” or “sis”."I can explain!" "Just listen to me!" And such, followed by copious amounts of not explaining and drama. Really the whole "liar revealed" plotline in many a movie and series is a very tired thing, even if it might be necessary for a plotline. It's merciful when they don't make it last long, at least."Zoom and enhance.".We’re not that different, you and I."Is that all you've got?".We’ve got company.“Do you know what happens to a toad when it's struck by lightning? The same thing that happens to everything else.”."You just don't get it, do you?!".Neo, an accomplished hacker and presumably tech savvy person: "What's an EMP?".Lame Scientist: “Okay so water is a liquid, and when it freezes it becomes a solid, but get it hot enough and-“ Regular Joe: “*E N G L I S H, N E R D” Also: Regular Joe: ”Did you say *wormhole*?” Cool Scientist: “[…] *Let me show you using this piece of paper*” Bonus: not a *line*, but whenever a film or television series wants to communicate how sneaky a character is, and they do that thing where they instantly—and inexplicably—vanish as a car or crowd of people pass by. edit: Bonus points whenever a sci-fi film does one of these demonstration scenes, and they grab something that the person listening is either actively using—i.e., a coffee mug, pen, etc.—or that makes them go “hey c’mon!” Regular Joe: “Did you say, *wormhole*?” Cool scientist: “Allow me to demonstrate, using only this pencil and your original birth certificate…”The wilhelm scream needs to die already. Unless it’s a comedic movie, Indiana Jones, or Starwars, it absolutely kills the mood for me in serious action scenes."We're the only species that makes war on itself" WRONG!Bane “You came back to die with your city” Batman “no, I came back to stop you” Awful."I think you should take a look at this" in basically a million movies."He's/she's/it's/they're behind me, aren't they?" "Who's there? [insert person's name] stop screwing around I know it's you!" / "HELLO? HELLLLOOOO? WHO'S THERE?" "Hahaha, [insert name] you son of a b***h! I haven't seen you since...".When someone is explaining something technical and they're told to speak in layman's terms to dumb it for the audience.“Do you trust me?”.Pearl Harbor " i think world war 2 just started".The spider monkey line in twilight.Uma Thurman saying “entropy” when she should have said “atrophy” takes me out of Kill Bill every time."I hate sand. It's rough, and coarse, and irritating, and it gets *eeeeverywhere*.".Anything that uses internet speak, because they always overdo it for effect. It’s particularly bad when it’s one of those movies that shows the text being sent on the screen. *So much* “srsly.”.Ginny Weasley : Open up you.Kitana: Mother! You're alive! Sindel: Too bad YOU! will die!