The 25 Most Ridiculous Movie Premises of All Time

Image via Complex Original

Screenwriters: Blake Snyder, Colby Carr
Plot synopsis: A precocious 12-year-old finds a blank check, cashes it in for $1 million, and unknowingly becomes the prime target for some bumbling mobsters.

Tell us this flick's concept isn't every imaginative kid's fantasy? For that, we salute Blank Check, but anyone who's over the age of, say, nine, won't be able to buy a single scene here. Sure, all grown-up bank tellers will let an 11-year-old cash a $1,000,000 check. And why shouldn't every adult in the kid's life wait for days to do a thorough background investigation on his check-cashing alias, Mr. Macintosh? If it were really that easy, we'd all be millionaires.

Screenwriters: Willard Huyck, Gloria Katz
Plot synopsis: A humanoid duck alien gets sent to Earth, where he (or it?) plays rock music, has sex with a human woman, and, just for kicks, saves the world.

Starting off as an obscure Marvel Comics character, Howard the Duck should've stayed in the funny pages. In illustrated paper-form, it's a perfectly acceptable, Donald-Duck-on-acid character, but in this George Lucas-produced cinematic bomb, Howie's too clearly a dwarf in an embarrassing costume to ever let the film work. Which makes the sight of Howard getting in on with cutie Lea Thompson unacceptable for even beastiality fiends.

Screenwriters: Charles Chiodo, Stephen Chiodo
Plot synopsis: Aliens invade Earth, dressed in hideous clown makeup, and trap humans in cotton candy cocoons.

Had the filmmakers publicly accepted the cheekiness on display throughout Killer Klowns from Outer Space, they would've gotten a pass here. Just give the film's DVD commentary track a listen, though, and you'll hear the sounds of self-serious filmmakers who talk about a movie in which chubby clown aliens jump out of pizza boxes armed with ray guns as if it's Citizen Kane.

Screenwriter: John Payson
Plot synopsis: These aren't your typical New York City cockroaches—they're obnoxious little insects who sing, dance, crack jokes, and cock-block poor Joe.

As a short film for MTV, Joe's Apartment was crap, sure, but it was reasonably likable crap. As a full-length movie, on the other hand, it's cause for any struggling screenwriter and/or director who's determined to create high art to throw his or her hands in the air, start swigging Hennessy straight, and complain that "Hollywood has the shittiest ideas."

Screenwriter: John Patrick Shanley
Plot synopsis: It's that age-old tale of self-discovery—you know, the one where a dying man volunteers to have his body thrown into a volcano and learns the true meaning of life along the way. Yeah, that old wheeze.

What's a wacky screenwriter to do once they realize that adult coming-of-age dramas have already exhausted every sports backdrop or blue-collar profession imaginable? Have their main character accept his mortality—and, yes, also find love—by concocting a plan to hurl himself into an active volcano. Apparently, Joe Versus the Tornado Cloud would've been too much.

Screenwriter: Peter Hedges
Plot synopsis: What's so "odd" about young Timmy Green? Well, it could be the fact that he wasn't conceived by humans—rather, he sprung out of a box of wishes in a couple's backyard.

Maybe husbands and wives who aren't able to have children in real life can understand the what-the-fuck scenario behind the Walt Disney's company's strangest and schmaltziest live-action movie ever. For everyone else, they'd be forgiven for thinking that The Odd Life of Timothy Green's plot was a rejected E.C. Comics pitch, one that Tales from the Crypt editors thought was too lame-brained.

Screenwriters: George Zaloom, Shawn Schepps
Plot synopsis: Two teenage nobodies become BFFs with an unearthed caveman.

What's worse, the idea that the Missing Link would ever refer to drinking a Slurpee "wheezing the juice," or that then 24-year-old actors Pauly Shore and Brendan Fraser could've ever passed for high school students? There's no wrong answer here.

Screenwriters: Bonnie Hunt, Don Lake
Plot synopsis: A grieving widower falls in love with a waitress who just so happens to have received the man's dead wife's heart in a transplant.

Romantic comedies, for the most part, suck, sure, but there's something to be said for how reliable the genre is, to the point of spoon-feeding the tasteless goons who'll pay money to see Katherine Heigl deflect Gerard Butler's shameful advances. Return to Me, however, takes the term "high-concept" to such a high level of goofiness that its inevitable fall from tolerability is Humpty Dumpty status.

Screenwriters: Neil Landau, Tara Ison
Plot synopsis: A stuck-up girl becomes a fashion industry tycoon and a reluctant mother-figure after her family's old babysitter croaks.

Apparently, the Crandell family doesn't have one single relative who cares enough about the fam's children to check in on them while mom's away and they're in the care of an older-than-dirt, crotchety woman, one whose body ends up at a funeral home, no less. Don't tell mom her extended family members are all douchebags.

Screenwriter: Tom Sierchio
Plot synopsis: Shy man saves outgoing woman from being raped. Man and woman fall in love. Man also has a baboon's heart. Or so he says. Either way, it's ridiculous.

This one's a shame. In terms of romance, Christian Slater and Marisa Tomei actually have solid, endearing chemistry throughout Untamed Heart. It's just too bad that the powers that be felt the need to give the former one of the lamest conflict devices in date movie history.

Screenwriter: Charlie Peters
Plot synopsis: Having irresponsibly spent tons of grant money, a white anthropologist has his family pose as a lost New Guinea tribe.

When one sees Richard Dreyfuss, of course he or she thinks, wow, he could definitely pass for a native tribesman. Especially when he covers himself in makeup and perpetuates one indigenous stereotype after another. Krippendorf's Tribe makes The Air Up There look like a Discovery Channel documentary.

Screenwriter: Jennifer Lynch
Plot synopsis: An obsessive surgeon kidnaps a beautiful female car crash victim, amputates all of her limbs, and makes her fall in love with him.

There's a perverse kind of appreciation one can have for Jennifer Lynch's much-maligned debut Boxing Helena, assuming one's favorite movies include Audition and Tod Browning's Freaks. But even the sickest of cinephiles should scoff at the film's heightened level of absurdity. Especially since Boxing Helena tries to play things romantically, albeit dementedly.

Screenwriters: Michael Gottlieb, Edward Rugoff
Plot synopsis: A lovable loser falls in love with a department store mannequin that takes the form of a long-dead Egyptian beauty.

Admit it, fellas, you've daydreamed once or twice inside the local Macy's about those inanimate models draped in lacy evening wear. We've all been there, but here's the thing: Within minutes, any rationale guy realizes how lame it is and quickly snaps out of it. Andrew McCarthy's character in Mannequin starts dating one.

Screenwriter: Michael de Guzman
Plot synopsis: Never one to drop a grudge, Jaws—yes, the shark—follows Ellen Brody all the way to the Bahamas in order to killer her entire family.

Look, we're all for suspending our disbelief when it comes to horror movies, particularly monster-centric ones. But give us a break—Jaws traveled from the shores of Massachusetts all the way to the beaches of the Bahamas just to chomp down a couple of people? Why not, then, Jaws: The Burial, in which the oversized fish helps the funeral crew dig their graves and also speaks at the eulogy?

Screenwriter: Randall Frakes
Plot synopsis: Humanoid amphibians capture sexy, fertile women in hopes of reproducing in an infertile world.

Imagine searching far and wide for a porno movie where a bevy of stunning women wear revealing jungle-lady attire and have to adhere to every sexual demand they receive. And then imagine that the "men" giving those orders are human-sized frogs—even the world's most chronic masturbator would stop and say, "Now that's where I draw the line." Now imagine that movie isn't of the adult variety but, rather, of the theatrically released type. And, get this, it cost $7 million.

Screenwriters: Randi Mayem Singer, Leslie Dixon
Plot synopsis: A divorced actor transforms himself into a beefy, looks-nothing-like-a-woman nanny in order to hang out with his kids and avoid custody disputes.

It's not that Mrs. Doubtfire's storyline is totally unbelievable—Robin Williams' character's scheme doesn't seem out of the question for fathers desperate to spend time with their children. It could happen. The problem here is that Mrs. Doubtfire herself looks more like Mr. Dangerfield with a wig on and none of the character's family members notice.

Screenwriter: Tom Six
Plot synopsis: A pair of vacating coeds unwillingly become two-thirds of a mad German doctor's ass-to-face, three-person experiment.

In writer-director Tom Six's defense, at least he came up with a truly original concept, which is a rarity in the horror genre. Sometimes, though, creativity begets illogical overdosage, and The Human Centipede, as audacious as it is, is too unintentionally funny to ever be the least bit scary.

Screenwriter: Sam Harper
Plot synopsis: A freak little league accident turns an unathletic teenage spaz into the next Nolan Ryan.

In 1944, Cincinnati Reds pitcher Joe Nuxhall pitched in a professional game at the age of 15, so it's not complete bullshit that Rookie of the Year's 12-year-old Henry Rowengartner throws fastballs on the pro level. Yet, it is utter poppycock, that Henry's broken arm, once healed, allows him to exceed 100 mph with his heaters. And that the Chicago Cubs would be in a pennant race.

Screenwriter: Robert Klane
Plot synopsis: After they discover their asshole boss' dead body inside his beach house, two overlooked insurance company workers must make it seem like the corpse is alive long enough to evade becoming his murderers' next targets.

A sketch comedy show skit, maybe. But a 97-minute feature film? Fuck out of here. Weekend at Bernie's stretches its already absurd storyline to the breaking point of acceptability, which happens right around the scene where Bernie's lifeless body not only has sex with a woman, but somehow manages to make her walk around the next morning like it was the best rumpus of her life.

Screenwriters: Kevin di Cicco, Paul Tamsay, Aaron Mendelsohn
Plot synopsis: The world's cutest Golden Retriever shows off his Michael Jordan-esque hoops skills en route to leading a middle school's basketball team to victory.

Why single out the harmless Air Bud amongst the plethora of animals-doing-human-things kids movies out there? Because, both incredibly and despairingly, the athletic Golden Retriever's magical sports repertoire has spawned four equally disbelief-straining sequels. What's more ridiculous than that?

Screenwriter: Carol Black
Plot synopsis: The only way a spoiled white kid can get into Harvard is if he paints his skin black and poses as a "brother." Which, unfortunately, he does. Egregious racial humor ensues.

Forget about the abhorrent use of blackface makeup throughout the reprehensible '80s comedy Soul Man, and let's focus on what happens around that walking, jive-talking body paint specimen. One look at the picture above makes it clear that C. Thomas Howell looks as authentically black as a piece of licorice, yet everybody in his character's world accepts him as a legitimate black dude. Even his (black) girlfriend, who has sex with him and still doesn't why his Johnson is all smeared after they've, you know, done the nasty.

Screenwriters: Dan Gordon, Neal Israel
Plot synopsis: When they're not hanging-ten on some gnarly waves, two teenage brothers from Los Angeles defend an ancient kingdom against an evil ruler named Colonel Chi.

In Hollywood, no idea's original, not even…3 Ninjas? A year after that silly yet innocent enough kids action flick made some coin, along came this shameless knockoff. In it, amongst other ludicrousness, Leslie Nielsen plays a villain with an Asian last name and three harmless-looking youths including the horribly cast Rob Schneider) take down an entire empire. Cowabullshit!

Screenwriter: M. Night Shyamalan
Plot synopsis: Angry about pollution and other forms of eco-destruction, the world's plant life releases a toxin into the air that makes people kill themselves.

If translated by a much better filmmaker, one who didn't creatively peak with his or her second film, The Happening's nature-gone-wild concept could've resulted in some outlandishly inventive sci-fi/horror. By the time the now-laughable M. Night Shyamalan made this catastrophic misfire, he could've misdirected a silent movie about paint drying. Thus, this film's lofty conceit was doomed from the start, leaving star Mark Wahlberg helpless against a script that, in the movie's comedic highpoint, requires him to plead with a houseplant.

Screenwriters: Lee Frost, Wes Bishop, James Gordon White
Plot synopsis: In order to keep himself alive, a wealthy, older white man must have a large, younger black guy's head surgically grafted onto his neck.

The only way a movie as immensely ridiculous as The Thing with Two Heads could have ever avoided instantaneous and undesired laughter would've been to cast two of its era's biggest A-list stars, like, say, Gene Hackman and Sidney Poitier—in a Funny or Die skit. There was no Internet back then, though, so this gonzo garbage never stood a chance.

Screenwriters: John DeBello, Costa Dillon, Stephen Peace
Plot synopsis: It's just the film's on-the-nose title says: Tomatoes suddenly become sentient beings whose only interest is to kill humans.

Money has always been a precious commodity for some, so it would've been perfectly understandable for some financially strapped American citizens to locate writer-director John DeBello and smack him around for spending even one cent on a movie, about, that's right, murderous fruit, let alone the reported $90,000 it cost to make Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. That's cash that could've been spent on, well, throwing tomatoes at DeBello for suggesting the idea in the first place.