MetaChat - Name that word!

MetaChat is an informal place for MeFites to touch base and post, discuss and chatter about topics that may not belong on MetaFilter. Questions? Check the FAQ. Please note: This is important.

04 September 2007

Name that word! This has been bugging me all day...it's a word that I have most often seen describing a movie that's manipulative in it's sentimentality. Without making any judgments about these particular movies, I'm pretty sure I remember it being used to describe A.I. and Million Dollar Baby.

Any ideas?

post by: joshuaconner at: 02:15 | 22 comments

Pandering to an audience? Patronizing?

posted by miss lynnster 04 September | 02:24

Mawkish.

posted by BitterOldPunk 04 September | 02:28

bathetic (insincerely emotional)? maudlin? mawkish? tear-jerking?

posted by rob511 04 September | 02:29

It always describes a movie that's a set-up to get people crying at the end.

posted by joshuaconner 04 September | 02:33

Good tries though!

posted by joshuaconner 04 September | 02:33

Maybe this is too obvious, but tear-jerker?

posted by Brittanie 04 September | 02:48

Maudlin?

posted by chuckdarwin 04 September | 03:23

cloying?

posted by lalex 04 September | 03:46

Melodramatic. Histrionic. Overwrought. Baroque. Overacted. Hammy.

And beyond all that, A.I. in particular, suffers from some of the worst, "you can hear the gears grinding" deux ex machina machinations ever filmed. When Spielberg makes a stinker, the stench is hauled in by the truckload.

posted by paulsc 04 September | 03:46

Cloying. Saccharine.

posted by Eideteker 04 September | 05:24

Lachrymose?

posted by misteraitch 04 September | 05:55

glurge

posted by ROU Xenophobe 04 September | 06:41

hey, despite its flaws (and there were many), i rather enjoyed a.i.! i was just happy that the damn thing got made, after years and years and years of existing only in stanley kubrick's... um, wherever it was that he kept those ideas. (i wonder whatever became of the test footage that kubrick shot with douglas trumbull...)

but anyway, i've always used "manipulative" to describe flicks like that (forrest gump is another excellent example of this), but "glurge" works.

posted by syntax 04 September | 07:19

And here was me thinking 'A.I.' stood for 'American Idol'.

Just call me Phyllis Stein.

posted by essexjan 04 September | 07:36

Emotional pornography.

posted by AwkwardPause 04 September | 07:57

A phrase with the word hanky or tissue in it, maybe.

posted by iconomy 04 September | 08:38

I think the word you're looking for is Shmaltzy.
sentimentality, drippiness, mawkishness, mushiness, soupiness, sloppiness - falsely emotional in a maudlin way.

posted by seanyboy 04 September | 08:51

Sob story? Weepie?

posted by iconomy 04 September | 09:06

Shmaltzy, I believe originally meant chicken soup without the fat skimmed off the top, so it tasted all rich and filling, but in an artless way.

posted by StickyCarpet 04 September | 11:00

(schmaltz is just yiddish chicken fat.)

posted by small_ruminant 04 September | 11:38

yiddish for chicken fat.

posted by small_ruminant 04 September | 11:39

Tear-jerker.

posted by deborah 04 September | 14:41

← Tube strike misery is my silver lining || Mystery book from my childhood — can you name it? →

HOME || REGISTER || LOGIN