I’m sure we, the Godolphin community, are no strangers to overused clichés - after all, did they not make our childhood? We cried when the quirky, book-reading main character discovered the popular, sport-playing love interest’s initial attraction was only because of a dare, we gasped when the eternally-loyal best friend shockingly turned out to be the villain all along, and we laughed when the glasses-wearing comic relief character delivered yet another poorly-timed pun. Deep down, everyone’s hidden, guilty pleasure are clichés, infamous for a level of cringe-worthiness capable of making even the stoniest watchers groan and cover their faces in embarrassment. In this article, I’ll be delving into four of the most overused, generic clichés coming-of-age film producers dish out on the daily - and why they just wouldn’t work in real life.
1) Airport Chases
Often incited by the main character’s sudden, tumultuous realisation that they are, indeed, head over heels for the love interest they spent the entire duration of the film falling in love with, the Airport ChaseTM is a classic. From Christmas-favourite Love Actually to other timeless rom-coms such as How To Lose a Guy in 10 Days, the Airport Chase is perhaps the perfect example of an unfeasible cliché. Apart from the seemingly obvious traffic/distance problem - the momentum of any desperate chase would suffer a severe anticlimactic blow if we were shown a full 2 hours of the chaser sitting silently in the backseat of a taxi, listening to the driver make small talk about the M25’s outrageous traffic, waiting for cars in front to eventually roll by - the ultimate deflator of the romantic-airport-chase balloon is simply: airport security. As Fleabag’s Claire helpfully points out, the whirlwind of information that anyone other than the flight-taker themselves would need to know (Terminal, Gate - Airport?!?!) is not only near-impossible to obtain, but also slightly stalker-ish to somehow have. Then of course there’s just the miniscule, teensy-weensy problem of being unable to get through security without a boarding pass. You are literally not allowed through without one. So, quick recap: you’d need to buy a ticket from the correct airport, so that you then have a boarding pass to get through security, and then you’d need to know which terminal your love interest is departing from in order to discern whether or not an airport shuttle needs to be taken to arrive at said terminal, on top of that you’d need the correct gate, flight number, etc - and, frankly, if you have ALL of that, you’re in urgent need of a good sit-down, a cup of tea and perhaps the following, gently-posed question: Are you insane?!?! Of course, this is all irrelevant in the wonderful world of Hollywood romantic comedies, and we blissfully follow the desperate chases without second thought.
2) Lover or Stalker?
On the topic of romantic comedies and love interests in general, many of our long-standing favourite movies seem to curiously blur the line between adoration and obsession - almost to a ridiculous level. The classic example? Twilight. Before I go on, I feel it is important to diffuse any potentially enraged Twilight fans amongst our readers and therefore humbly state the following: please don’t send us paragraphs of flaming hate mail. No, Edward Cullen is not the “#standard” who’s just “sooooo cute!” (real convo I had the misfortune of overhearing in the courtyard). Apart from the umpteen cringe-induced spasms Edward’s whole character evokes, his so-called love language needs some serious revision. Exhibit A) “I like watching you sleep.” ...Enough said. Exhibit B) Edward follows Bella as she leaves town to go prom dress shopping with other friends. ???. Follows. F-o-l-l-o-w-s. Many more examples could be provided. Edward is the embodiment of an obsessive stalker - shadowing Bella’s every movement with a scarily-intense fixation. Not very romantic - and yet, this formula of lover-stalker hybrid has been reused, repeated and recycled (#SustainabilityCommittee) throughout many of our much-loved favourites. Will Smith’s Hitch and even the Notebook’s “I want to go out with you!” scene blur the boundaries between romantic and stalker-like actions. But, alas, we fall for it every time.
3) The World’s Best Hacker
The ultimate cliché character - the so-called bespectacled ‘nerd’ with a natural passion for illegal hacking and coding. How one comes to discover they possess a natural gift in violating numerous cyber-security laws is mystifying, yet clearly a common experience judging by the repeated appearance of this character trope throughout cinema. The worst enemy of international governments and bank-vault security systems alike, these characters’ faces have been plastered along the corridors of innumerable maximum-security headquarters, from the Pentagon to MI5, in the format of ‘Top Ten Most Wanted posters. This character’s most lethal weapon? Their fingertips. As streams of green, Typewriter-font letters and symbols fly across the screen before them (visit hackertyper.net and start typing for visual demonstration), this character’s eyes frantically flit from keyboard to screen and back again, uttering five crucial phrases as they do so: “Just a second”... “Just need to jump over this firewall”... “Rewrite a few of these lines of code”... “Aaaaand.....” (efficient suspense-builder for the most paramount catchphrase of all) “...We’re in.” What chance could such silly institutions as the British Government possibly stand against the (often teenage) Hacker character? Absolutely nothing, obviously. What a stupid question.
BONUS - The few lines this character (very rapidly and quietly) voices are often met with confused stares from the rest of the cast, and the occasional: “In English, please?” is heard.
4) The Wise Old ManTM
An all-time favourite, from the Dumbledores to the Gandalfs of the movie world, the Wise Old ManTM is probably one of the most revisited tropes to exist, ever. It’s a classic - the young, troubled protagonist spends the first quarter of the movie wishing and yearning for some way to get back at those bullies, to get over (or with) that girl, to find who they themselves truly are...whatever that actually means...but how to go about all this? The answer is simple. Wait for a wrinkled, walking-stick-wielding, sometimes magic-practising old man to stride into your life, take you under his wing, put you through a number of strenuous and confusing trials, and enjoy the experience of being taught a strong moral message and achieving whatever objective you had at the beginning of the movie. A tried and tested recipe for success. The stubborn, short-sighted main character might doubt this process and even aim slight digs at their infinitely older, infinitely wiser counterpart but, to quote the Karate Kid’s Mr Miyagi: “You trust the quality of what you know, not quantity”. One Wise Old ManTM easily outweighs twenty similarly-aged friends. Part-time skilled mentor, part-time unpaid therapist/psychiatrist, the Wise Old ManTM somehow always manages to extract the main character’s innermost secret fears and doubts, and then offer precise, exact answers and advice. However, I’m not so sure many elderly residents in Hammersmith going about their day would gladly devote days, hours or even minutes of their time to a West London, private-school-attending teenager, and, let’s face it: no person on earth could possibly be equipped with the patience nor skill required to attend to the innumerable, cumbersome myriad of problems a regular Dolphin faces on a day-to-day basis - the most pressing issue being the urgent need to appear casual, unbothered and alluringly mysterious at the annual Boys vs Girls netball match.
So yes, despite the whiplash we receive from having the same 4 tropes shoved onto our screens over and over again, we all know there’s no better way to brighten up a damp day than with a classic, overused cliché.
Xoxo
Unpublished
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