The five worst fourth-wall breaks in cinema history
Movies are all about immersion, and it’s a filmmaker’s job to make an audience believe that what they’re watching is real and not some fabrication filmed on a studio lot and financed by some shady backers. Most of the time, this is absolutely the case, but sometimes you enter the fourth wall break.
Across all forms of entertainment, there are artists and creators who exist solely to blur the lines between fiction and reality, from a singer addressing the listener on an album to an actor whispering an aside to the audience on stage, so it can also happen in the world of movies.
Sometimes, a fourth wall break can be a good thing; for instance, just look at how successful the Deadpool franchise has become off the back of Ryan Reynolds’ numerous self-referential quips. Of course, not everyone is Reynolds, though (thank God), and sometimes the fourth wall deserves to be left standing and unbreached.
From subtle looks to the camera to entire monologues delivered directly at the audience, these cheeky departures from cinematic convention ended up doing more harm than good.
Five films with unnecessary fourth-wall breaks
“This never happened to the other fellow” – ‘On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’ (Peter R Hunt, 1969)
George Lazenby delivering this now infamous line directly into the camera at the start of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is kind of hilarious, making this the most divisive entry on the list. This was the first James Bond movie not to feature Sean Connery, so this was a fun way of stating the obvious, serving as almost the most concrete evidence for the fan theory that ‘James Bond’ is a moniker passed from agent to agent, explaining why 007’s face has changed so many times throughout the years, and while all that’s true, it didn’t exactly give this new era a promising start.
Audiences were always going to compare Lazenby to Connery, but the movie didn’t need to point that out, and by bringing up “the other fellow”, fans were immediately reminded of someone different and, in most categories, better. It also undermines the reality of the picture, slapping viewers round the face with the fact that what they’re watching isn’t real. I was somewhat reticent to place this on the list because of its pseudo-legendary status within the Bond community, but looking back at how spectacularly Lazenby crashed and burned in the role, you have to chalk this up as a mistake.
Go-go gadget bad joke! – ‘Inspector Gadget’ (David Kellogg, 1999)
One of the most common forms of fourth wall-breaking is a subtle glance at the camera when a character delivers a bad or overly cute joke. This is a very tired trope and one that very rarely pays off, and perhaps one of the worst examples of this gag can be found in the 1999 live-action retelling of Inspector Gadget. During a scene when the title character, played by Matthew Broderick, is being interrogated by the villainous Doctor Claw, played by Rupert Everett, the bad guy alludes to their humble beginnings in a painfully drawn-out fashion.
When Gadget tells his nemesis that he’ll “never get away” with his evil plot, Claw playfully dismisses his optimism, telling him that he watches “too many Saturday morning cartoons”. On its own, this would have been a neat and subtle reference to the fact that Inspector Gadget was a Saturday morning cartoon, but they just couldn’t let the joke go. Cue Broderick and Everett giving a knowing look right down the camera lens, with Andy Dick, who plays one of Claw’s henchmen, even sliding into frame to join his co-stars in this hideously obvious joke. However, what makes this even more egregious is that Broderick had previously nailed one of the best fourth-wall breaks ever in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and this one just felt like an awful recycling for the same effect.
He said the name of the movie! – ‘Hot Tub Time Machine’ (Steve Pink, 2010)
Family Guy has a lot to answer for, especially for the joke about characters saying the name of the movie in the movie. Ever since that episode aired, it’s become impossible to see an example of this in an actual film and not get distracted, but one movie took this gag to the extreme, and it didn’t even get close to paying off. The 2010 movie Hot Tub Time Machine is exactly what it says on the tin, wherein a group of goobers accidentally travel back in time via a magical jacuzzi.
Unfortunately, the screenplay goes out of its way to hammer this concept into the ground, such that when the protagonists realise what’s happened, Craig Robinson’s character delivers the line, “It must be some kind of Hot Tub Time Machine”, before glaring directly into the camera with a look that translates to, ‘Yes, I really did just say that’. It’s a super obvious, super lazy joke that feels super dated now, and while I can appreciate what they were going for, and that this isn’t the sort of movie designed to be analysed in any great detail, it comes across more cringeworthy than anything else.
Daddy to the rescue – ‘Bedtime Stories’ (Adam Shankman, 2008)
In this Disney-backed Adam Sandler vehicle, a hotel handyman named Skeeter discovers he has the power to bring the stories he tells his young niece and nephew to life. The film becomes even more meta when you realise that the whole thing is being narrated by Marty, Skeeter’s deceased father, played by Jonathan Pryce, and this is where the fourth wall break comes in, and it’s a weird one.
At the end of act two, Marty gives a gloomy summary of the events so far, and Skeeter then talks directly to this omnipresent voice, who gives him advice on how to save the day. We’re already in a world where stories come to life, so the idea that what we’re watching is also just a story being told by somebody is a step too far for what’s supposed to be an easy kids’ film. Also, this is the first time Skeeter has spoken to his dear old dad since his death, yet he never acknowledges him, which is weird because he should either be elated or, at the very least, freaked out about it, so while on paper, this scene had the potential to work, it ended up being far too clever for its own good.
What a dick – ‘Vice’ (Adam McKay, 2018)
Similarly to Matthew Broderick, Adam McKay also pulled off several stellar fourth wall breaks in the 2015 film The Big Short, which featured several out-of-context scenes in which celebrities explained various complicated financial terms. You’ve probably seen Margot Robbie describing what a mortgage-backed security is while in a bathtub sipping champagne, so for his next film, Vice, McKay attempted to go for the double, but ended up proving that lightning doesn’t strike twice.
Vice is about the life and times of one of America’s most notorious vice presidents, the late Dick Cheney (played by fellow Big Short alum Christian Bale), which ends with him being grilled over the Iraq War, where, instead of addressing his interrogator, he turns to the camera and talks directly to the audience, revealing he has no regrets over what he’s done and that, without people like him, the United States would cease to exist. This is clearly McKay attempting to hold people accountable for electing someone like Cheney, but it comes across as forced, and being the only fourth wall break in the entire movie, it feels wildly out of place. Now, if only he’d been in a bubble bath…
