The legacy of a film, good or bad, often lives on through a quote (or multiple memorable lines).
Lines like May the Force be with you, You're gonna need a bigger boat, Here's looking at you kid, and There's no place like home are but a few examples of the greatest movie quotes. Films that don't need to be named and are easily recognizable from one simple line and usually evoke an emotion or memory.
Comedies, in many ways, are often remembered in this way. Chunks of dialogue, entire scenes, and even full movies are memorized. Animal House, Caddyshack, Blazing Saddles, Anchorman, any of the Vacation films, Airplane!, and so much more fall into this category. Comedies that dominated pop culture from the 1970s to the mid-2000s.
And then, for me, very little comes to mind. Were movies simply more quotable back then? Or did they happen to fall into a sweet spot of my film watching experience? Is it because I was in large groups of like-minded friends who always quoted these films and shared the experience with?
Time and importance certainly do play a part. Or is it comedies just aren't as memorable or built around one-liners? I can probably count on one hand the number of comedies released since 2010 I can cite lines from.
But films from the summer of '93? Well, those reside in my heart to this day.
Gems from films like Son-in-Law, So I Married an Axe Murderer ("My Name is John Johnson but everyone here calls me Vicki"), Hocus Pocus, Coneheads ("France. We come from France"), Hard Target, etc... still are part of jokes and go-to memes and gifs to this day.
Will a favorite quote carry a film to the winner's circle? Does a good line of dialogue make up for an otherwise horrible film? The round of 32 match-ups is listed below, with one surprise in the August region because of an unforced error by yours truly.
May region
The top earner from May, Cliffhanger, gave us the brilliant John Lithgow as the main antagonist and a litany of quotable pieces of dialogue. The film also gave us the great Michael Rooker, with such lines as, "If you're looking for Qualen, try about 4,000 feet south of here. He'll be the one wearing the helicopter.
To me, it was Hot Shots: Part Deux that occupied much of my lexicon at that time. It paled in comparison to the first film, and other films from those early 90s, but with classics like, "These men have taken a supreme vow of celibacy, like their fathers, and their fathers before them...", how can you not go wrong?
These two films could be headed to meeting in the round of 16, if voting holds true to seeding.
- 1) Cliffhanger
- 9) Super Mario Bros
- 4) Hot Shots: Part Deux
- 5) Sliver
- 3) Made in America
- 6) Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story
- 2) Dave
- 7) Menace II Society
June region
"Yeah, but John, if The Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don't eat the tourists." - Jurassic Park
Jurassic Park is the top overall seed and contains many classic lines, many of which are spoken by Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum). It was so hard to just pick one.
On the other side of the region, the romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle will hope to make some noise, and has five memorable lines that fans take with them to this day.
- 1) Jurassic Park
- 9) Orlando
- 4) Last Action Hero
- 5) What's Love Got to Do with It?
- 3) Dennis the Menace
- 6) Guilty as Sin
- 2) Sleepless in Seattle
- 7) Life with Mikey
July region
Selections from the July region have already been discussed. Honestly, I could knock out 3000 words just on the films from this region and the importance that had on my early teen years.
The Firm holds the top seed and perhaps you have greater memory of this film than I do. If not, here are some quotes listed on IMDB.
And the quotable Son-in-Law lost a close match to Coneheads, falling 56 percent to 44. But, the Pauly Shore film is number one in many of our hearts.
- 1) The Firm
- 8) Robin Hood: Men in Tights
- 13) So I Married an Axe Murderer
- 5) Rookie of the Year
- 3) Free Willy
- 6) Hocus Pocus
- 2) In the Line of Fire
- 10) Coneheads
August region
It's safe to say The Fugitive, the top-seed from the region (winner of the 1st round with 97 percent), is one of the most quotable films from this bracket, if not all-time.
"I didn't kill my wife." - Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford)
"I don't care!" - Deputy Marshal Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones)
A couple of double-digit seeds initially advanced in this region, with 10-seed Meteor Man winning by one vote. And now, a mea culpa. In putting this bracket together, I simply look at release dates for the year desired on Box Office Mojo. In failing to recall correctly, and do deeper research, I failed with Unforgiven. The page noted a release date of Aug 7, so I rolled with it, not realizing the release date should have been noted 1992. Unforgiven kept raking in money until July of 1993, and I debated back-and-forth whether to keep it in or not. Due to its popularity, however, I made the sad choice of eliminating the film to keep with the true spirit of this (hopefully) fun tournament. So, Surf Ninjas will move on. Apologies to the Unforgiven fans. But yay, I suppose, for those fans of Surf Ninjas.
- 1) The Fugitive
- 9) Manhattan Murder Mystery
- 13) Surf Ninjas
- 5) The Man Without a Face
- 3) The Secret Garden
- 11) Searching for Bobby Fischer
- 2) Hard Target
- 10 Meteor Man
What are some of your favorite quotes from the summer movies of 1993? Keep the conversation going and be sure to vote for your favorites to advance to the round of 16.
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
Comments