MetaChat - Name that word!

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Pandering to an audience? Patronizing?

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Mawkish.

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

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

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Good tries though!

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Maybe this is too obvious, but tear-jerker?

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Maudlin?

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cloying?

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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.

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Cloying. Saccharine.

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Lachrymose?

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glurge

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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.

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

Just call me Phyllis Stein.

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Emotional pornography.

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

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

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Sob story? Weepie?

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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.

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(schmaltz is just yiddish chicken fat.)

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yiddish for chicken fat.

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Tear-jerker.