Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Orgasms Are Funny, Especially in the Movies

“YES!...YES!...YES!...YES!...YES!...YES!...Oh God!...YES!” – Sally Albright, When Harry Met Sally…

Hollywood seems to be kind of uptight about showing an orgasm at the end of a sex scene, but they have no problem throwing in an orgasm if it’s humorous, especially if it’s one where there are witnesses.  The pinnacle of these kinds of scenes is, of course, Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally.  When later movies had a funny orgasm gag they were invariably accused of ripping off When Harry Met Sally.  The thing is, it was hardly the first movie to have a scene like that in it.

The oldest movie I can think of is 1973’s Sleeper.  I saw it on broadcast TV way back when I was too young to even understand what those big silver balls that people were rubbing were doing to them.  It was only years later that I remembered that and realized that rubbing them were probably giving them orgasms.  It’s been far too long since I saw that film for me to review it, though, and I could be wrong about whether there was an actual orgasm scene.  Another film that predated When Harry Met Sally that had a scene like this is 1981’s Modern Problems, but it’s not good enough for me to recommend.

I’m going to do something a little different with this category header.  I'm listing all the movies I'm going to review ahead of time.  I am doing this so you can see which movies I thought of.  If you can think of a movie older than 1980’s Private Benjamin, or even other movies with funny orgasm scenes that I may have forgotten, please let me know in the comments.  If I’ve seen the film and like it enough to recommend, I may end up reviewing it.

American Pie and Amelie have been previously posted, but I did not refer to the scenes in my reviews.  In American Pie Tara Reid’s character is receiving pleasure from her boyfriend.  Her parents call her down to dinner, but she doesn’t hear them.  Her father goes up to her room, but just as he is about to open her door and catch her, she yells out, “I’m coming!”, and he figures she means down to dinner so he leaves.  In Amelie the title character imagines how many people are having sex in Paris at that very moment.  This is followed by a very quick montage of a bunch of couples in the throws of orgasm.  It comes back to Amelie, she smiles and then says, “Fifteen”.

As I post the reviews, I will come back and change the movie titles into links to the posts:

American Pie (1999) - (posted August 16, 2012)
Amelie (2001) - (posted May 4, 2012)

Meanwhile, this video is very fitting for the topic of funny orgasms.  I saw it way back before there ever was a Youtube.  I figured it had to be there now, because pretty much every video seems to end up there sooner or later.  I had a hell of a time finding it, though.  I hope you like it.  (Don't worry; there's nothing explicit in it.  Watch it all the way to the end.  There’s a big payoff, so to speak.)



On to the reviews…

6 comments:

  1. Ha. A FISH CALLED WANDA does make having sex seem like such a joke.

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    1. I agree. It makes pretty much everything a joke. It's a very funny movie. Thanks.

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  2. Haha, great idea! I love Alan Rickman's character's remark in Dogma about how ridiculous people's faces look when they are having an orgasm. That quick montage from Amelie was hilarious.

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    1. I had forgotten about that line from Dogma. Thanks for reminding me.

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  3. Hey!

    Nick from www.cinekatz.com here. Doing some scout work for the LAMB. We're wanting to make an email newsletter for community features as well as a list we're making similar to Sight & Sound's best movies of all time list. Just need an email! Email me at npowe131 at gmail.com

    ReplyDelete