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SLAP SHOT. Paul Newman tries to save the local hockey team and mill from closing. That's a plot.
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He wasn't trying to prevent the mill from closing, that was beyond anything he could do about it. And he wasn't trying to save the local team, he was trying to save the franchise and his own job by attracting an out of town buyer.
None of the elements of the supposed plot really fit. Newman didn't come up with the idea of enhancing interest in the team by turning them into brawlers, that happened after the Hansen's hit the ice and turned out to be brawlers.
Then Newman eventually learned from the owner that there never had been a chance of the team being sold, rendering all of what had gone on before without redemptive value.
Then Newman decides that as long as they are going down, they will go down like real hockey players. Then he learns scouts are in the stands from other teams looking for brawlers, so they go back to brawling.
Then they win the championship because an opposing player slugs the ref because the ref refuses to stop the strip tease dance on the ice.
There was a subplot where Newman wanted to get back together with his ex wife, but that went nowhere because she never showed the slightest interest in it.
Given the above, I'd rule that the movie didn't so much have a plot as it had an excuse for a plot. If one's enjoyment of the movie had hinged on the cohesiveness of the story, no one would have liked it.
El TOPO
THERE WILL BE BLOOD
TWO LANE BLACKTOP
THE APOSTLE
All of these movies have stuff that happens, but I wouldn't go so far as to call them plots.
The original MASH kind of meanders aimlessly through various vignettes.
If being incomprehensible counts, some of Peckinpah's later films, THE KILLER ELITE, and THE OSTERMAND WEEKEND would count. BRING ME THE EHAD OF ALFREDO GARCIA has a plot, but it gets lost for long periods of time in which nothing happens.
"Smoke" comes to mind first....just one long narrative without much of an actual story. Robert Altman's films often were just meandering side plots involving various groups of characters with no real coherent story...but can't say how much I really enjoyed them. "Kansas City" was interesting, though.
Return of the Secaucus Seven comes to mind, which just has friends getting together for a weekend. I love it, and the plotlessness didn't even register for a while.
SLAP SHOT. Paul Newman tries to save the local hockey team and mill from closing. That's a plot.
O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU. Three convicts escape prison and go on a quest for treasure across the Depression-era South. In the end, they find their real treasure. That's a plot.
CADDYSHACK. Young kid learns life lessons as he spends a summer working as a caddy. That's a plot.
CLERKS. No plot whatsoever.
True plotless movies are move common in European movies.
I've seen a few European plotless movies. I don't want to remember the names of those films.
He wasn't trying to prevent the mill from closing, that was beyond anything he could do about it. And he wasn't trying to save the local team, he was trying to save the franchise and his own job by attracting an out of town buyer.
None of the elements of the supposed plot really fit. Newman didn't come up with the idea of enhancing interest in the team by turning them into brawlers, that happened after the Hansen's hit the ice and turned out to be brawlers.
Then Newman eventually learned from the owner that there never had been a chance of the team being sold, rendering all of what had gone on before without redemptive value.
Then Newman decides that as long as they are going down, they will go down like real hockey players. Then he learns scouts are in the stands from other teams looking for brawlers, so they go back to brawling.
Then they win the championship because an opposing player slugs the ref because the ref refuses to stop the strip tease dance on the ice.
There was a subplot where Newman wanted to get back together with his ex wife, but that went nowhere because she never showed the slightest interest in it.
Given the above, I'd rule that the movie didn't so much have a plot as it had an excuse for a plot. If one's enjoyment of the movie had hinged on the cohesiveness of the story, no one would have liked it.
You've seen that movie more than once, haven't you?
You've seen that movie more than once, haven't you?
It is all ever do, at least four times a day, every day since it first came to home video. In the time I'm not watching it, I'm either writing Slap Shot fan fiction stories for my "Slapshot Forever" website, sending hundreds of daily e-mails to tv production studios urging the creation of a Slap Shot series, or attending the annual SlapCom. Nearly everyone in the cast have restraining orders against me.
Kentucky Fried Movie had no plot, it was a bunch of vignettes, commercial spoofs, fake movie trailers and fake news bulletins saying something silly followed by, "film at 11." It may sound bad but it is hilarious and I LOVE IT!
Caddyshack kind of had a plot but only for that one Caddy who had the issues with Judge Smales. Everything else was just B-plots if anything that ran together like Rodney Dangerfield's character with Smales and Chevy Chase's character chasing that girl.
Can you think of any movies that lacked any type of plot that you nonethless enjoy?
Don't most X-rated movies classify as such?
As it is (or was), most of them from the 80's and 90's did have some kind of plot, if even thinly presented. For example, "Miss Directed" was where the director got fed up with Tori Wells and walked out and Tori decided that directing was no big deal and she would direct and get the movie done. Or "Hard Sell" with Tracey Adams where she's a relator trying to get a house sold.......only the previous owner, a mad scientist, contaminated the walls with a substance that....distracts....anyone who enters in the house.
As it is, kind of hard to think of an enjoyable, plotless movie because often such things are so poorly made, badly acted, they don't last 20 minutes before they are turned off.
The closest thing I've recently seen to a movie that is plotless, ie fitting the definition "it never really got going" was "The Brotherhood III: Young Demons". The Brotherhood III: Young Demons (Video 2003) - IMDb
But, even so, even if the flick "never really got going", it did have something of a plot.........and no, I didn't enjoy it.
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Who own the Chiefs?
