Neither clock nor orange. Discuss.
Today our parent site JTA reported that a woman has filed a lawsuit against the makers of the movie Drive, alleging that it is anti-Semitic.
In her lawsuit, she also complained that there was “very little driving in the motion picture.”
So not only is Drive anti-Semitic– its title is also not a literal representation of what the movie is actually about. Damn you highbrow writers and your metaphors!
While I can’t say for certain if any of the charges leveled against the film and makers are true since I haven’t watched the movie (though it is inevitable that I will since it stars Ryan Gosling), this totally unfrivolous lawsuit has made me wonder — what other films have misled viewers with their non-literal titles?
Here are a few examples:
Clockwork Orange: There were neither clocks nor orange in the film. This sounds like a topic for Coffee Talk with Linda Richman.
The Thin Red Line: I don’t remember seeing the American or Japanese soldiers painting red lines in the sand. That would’ve been a bad idea for camouflage in the jungle.
Winter’s Bone: To my knowledge, no one boned in that movie.
Moneyball: The ball was not made of greenbacks.
Reservoir Dogs: Who let the dogs out? No one — cause there were no dogs in the film.
Those are just a few examples of movies that have forced us to think beyond the literal meaning of titles. I know that there are many other films out there that have similarly misled audiences. Tell us what they are in the comments!
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