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I Like to Watch The lusty ladies of "The L Word" take an early lead in our first On-the-Nose Dialogue Contest. Plus: Who's more dangerous, Jack Bauer or Jack Osbourne? By Heather Havrilesky [2007-01-14]

• I'm late enough to this game

  that I'm fairly sure no one will see this letter, but I wanted to chime in on a few points, just 'cause.

  First of all, I'd like to doff my hat to Ms Havrilesky for articulating my own feelings about The L-Word so much more beautifully than I probably could myself. That goes double for her gorgeous, concise treatment of the theme song. (My husband and I don't have cable in the house, so we're spared having to hear even a note of it, as we just fast-forward the DVD.)

  Second, I'd like to contribute to the On-The-Nose Dialogue Contest. Because of the abovementioned cable-free house we maintain, I don't have any TV examples. We just don't Netflix anything that sucks, which is nice. And to be honest, it's been long enough since I've seen the films I'm about to offer that I can't be sure they fit the specifics of the "On-the-Noseness" category.

  That being said, however, if you want to see some absolutely excellently, richly, awful dialogue in a filmic text, nothing beats the opening series of scenes from Dante's Peak. And most of the rest of the scenes where people talk, actually. But even the priceless, "Acid eats boats!" revelation that follows the realization that the erupting volcano has somehow made the water take on the properties of sulfuric acid can't beat the early scenes. These are the ones where the mayor of the threatened town (Linda Hamilton) and Our Hero (Pierce Brosnan) lay out all the contextual facts of the film in some of the worst, most awkward film dialogue of all time.

  Really, the Nature-Is-Evil-And-Wants-To-Kill-You genre is just chock full of this kind of thing. I love Twister sooooooo much, but nearly every line of dialogue in the film just sucks. (It's all redeemed by the ironic delivery of the players, but at base, it all sucks.) Volcano's great, too.

  And don't forget the Nicolas Cage/Sean Connery 'thriller,' The Rock. If viewed for the bad dialogue, that movie is a thing of beauty.

  :)

  -- bodhibound
  [Read bodhibound's other letters]
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