50 Absurd but Technically Accurate Movie Thumbnail Descriptions

Every now and then—right before they learn their lesson forever—friends and loved ones make the catastrophic mistake of asking me for movie recommendations. Being the professional pain-in-the-ass that I am, I purposely never give a normal answer. Instead, I serve up a completely unhinged, absurd synopsis that is somehow still 100% true. Enjoy these cinematic fever dreams, that are still somehow more accurate than some of the synopsis’s you’ll see on Netflix these days…

Dirty Dancing

Watermelons and a botched abortion lead to a relationship between a statutory rapist and an underage resort guest, culminating in a hijacked dance number performed in front of a room full of befuddled, middle-aged Jews.

Titanic

A depressed, rich teenager tries to kill herself, and then gets her tits out for a starving artist, who she then drowns and steals his identity, all while harboring a stolen diamond that she doesn’t even want. 

The Lion King

An English speaking African lion cub watches his father get murdered, runs away, but ultimately returns after a hallucinatory conversation with a cloud, to throw his uncle off a cliff and steal his job.

Star Wars: A New Hope

A farm boy buys two used appliances, meets an old man in the desert, joins a terrorist cell led by his sister who he has the hots for, and is ultimately responsible for the death of millions of public employees.

Jaws

A day at the beach gets postponed. Three men in a boat get drunk and probably don’t get their deposit back on the rental. 

The Godfather

A quiet college graduate agrees to take over his father’s family business, after regretting teaching his wife how to drive during a vacation to Italy. 

Forrest Gump

A retarded man and an amputee start a shrimp business, and the former then agrees to raise an AIDS baby, after his drug-addicted crush shows up at his door years later once he’s a millionaire. 

The Shawshank Redemption

Posters of half naked women on a wall helps a banker with a spoon change his life, before moving to Mexico with his best friend. 

John Wick

A recently single man looks for a new dog after falling out with his employer. 

Good Will Hunting 

A janitor bonds with a psychiatrist over the man’s farting wife.

Interstellar 

A farmer leaves earth to live in a bookcase. 

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Two latently gay friends go on a long walk to return an unwanted piece of jewelry.

Rain Man

A mental patient is forced to illegally count cards, when he really would rather go to Kmart.

Mrs. Doubtfire

A recently divorced father becomes a transvestite when he can’t get over his wife leaving him.

Scarface

An immigrant fry cook gets jealous that his best friend is having sex with his sister.

Ghost

Rather than just going to heaven, a dead man possesses a black woman’s body to make out with his girlfriend.

Brokeback Mountain

Two Cowboys would rather eat pudding in a tent together, than be with their wives. 

The Exorcist

A pair of priests help a preteen contortionist deal with a food allergy. 

The Matrix

A computer programmer accepts drugs from a stranger, and then learns martial arts from a video game, before seeking advice from a black woman who bakes him cookies and tells him that cutlery doesn’t exist. 

Home Alone

The lack of a Paris family vacation turns a seemingly normal child into a sadist and murderer. 

Jurassic Park

A zoo has to cancel its grand opening. No one learns any lessons, and they attempt to open the zoo about six more times.

Twilight

A vampire decides to take high school chemistry forever, before entering a love triangle with a pale teenage classmate, and her werewolf bestie, who never seems to wear a shirt.

The Notebook

An old man visits a nursing home daily in an attempt to remind a female dementia patient how great their sex used to be.

Captain America: The First Avenger

A steroid-abusing virgin wins World War 2, but not before sending a Nazi to space and standing up his girlfriend. 

Goodfellas

Cocaine ruins a young man’s dream job, and he spends the rest of his life complaining about pasta sauce. 

The Silence of the Lambs

A renowned psychiatrist, shares insight on farm animals and recipes with an FBI trainee who he stays in contact with for the next several years. 

Back to the Future

A teenager desperately tries to make sure his parents fuck, while fighting off his horny mother who wants to have sex with him instead. 

Die Hard

A brash New Yorker loses his shoes, but forms a friendship with both a limo driver and a beat cop, after crashing his ex-wife’s Christmas party in California. 

The Thing

An Antarctic mining company dissolves after a mandatory blood test causes dissension. 

Fight Club

An exhausted office worker learns the joy of male bonding with a soap maker and several new friends before turning his attention to architecture. 

American Psycho 

After a disappointment involving a business card, a young Huey Lewis superfan helps a colleague move out of his apartment. 

The Sixth Sense 

A young boy befriends a psychiatrist who is having trouble with his marriage. 

A Beautiful Mind 

The monotony of a mundane government job leads a man to reconnect with a college roommate. 

The Goonies 

A group of unruly children kidnap an elderly woman’s disabled son. 

Looper 

A man helps a single mother with a troubled son with some farm chores, and then decides to not marry an Asian woman from the future. 

The Shining

A struggling writer befriends a friendly hotel bartender, while his young dyslexic son expands his own social circle. 

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

A group of road-tripping friends stop by a rural family farm, where a local artisan proudly displays his home workshop and tannery.

Pulp Fiction

An unfortunate dry cleaning mishap leads two friends to help their boss’s wife recover from an uncomfortable allergic reaction.

Rocky

Stairs and frozen cows help prepare a local dimwit to be punched in the face repeatedly, while his best friend’s weird sister watches. 

Robocop 

A murdered Detroit police officer is forced to return to work, despite being dead. 

Batman

Mentally ill trust-fund 1%er uses extensive inheritance to buy murder toys, and beat the shit out of the downtrodden, instead of using his money to prevent the poor conditions responsible for the crime in the first place.

Total Recall

Local construction worker would rather be lobotomized than spend a single second more with his wife.

Fifty Shades of Grey

Eccentric businessman subjects a doe-eyed  student to sex acts that are only hot because he’s rich, but would be investigated by the special victims unit if he was not.

Seven

An exhausted Fed-Ex worker probably doesn’t receive a tip, despite delivering an unusual package in the middle of the desert, after following exact instructions.

Alien

A commercial towing company eventually goes out of business, after a spaghetti dinner causes all sorts of problems. 

The Terminator

A naked German robot looks for a waitress, who falls in love with a man wearing a homeless guy’s stolen pants with no underwear. 

Raiders of the Lost Ark

A school teacher with a whip narrowly avoids his face being melted by a Jewish jewelry box, before returning to his standard day job, seemingly completely oblivious to the fact that he just saw real life God magic.

Superman 

A strongman who wears his underwear over his pants, completely ruins the real estate investment of an eccentric who lives in a basement with his girlfriend and an idiot. 

Pretty Woman

A wealthy businessman hires a whore to be his girlfriend for the week, because he’s too emotionally lazy to traditionally date.

The Wizard of Oz

A Kansas teenager murders a local woman’s sister and steals her shoes, and then proceeds to hallucinate for two straight hours.