Entertainment

#MakeAMovieSmarter Is Twitter's Greatest Pun War

by Lara Rutherford-Morrison

In last night’s @midnight, Comedy Central’s late-night game show/talk show extravaganza, host Chris Hardwick challenged his guests and viewers to add a little intellect to their favorite movie titles. #MakeAMovieSmarter is the latest iteration of the show’s #HashtagWars segment, in which Hardwick picks a random topic for his guests to riff upon and then challenges his viewers to keep the gag going on Twitter. #HashtagWars is truly a battle royale: The best responder gets the glory of having his or her tweet read on the show. Previous challenges include such gems as “#badbroadway” and “#sadtoys” (is it bad that the response “Raggedy Anne Frank” made me laugh really hard?), but this latest challenge seems to have set off a particularly strong wave of creative tweeting, with users offering dozens upon dozens of punny examples, and some going so far as to make their own “smarter” movie posters. Once you get started, it’s hard to stop, even when your answers are terrible are as terrible as mine: Patrick Swayze in Unhygienic Dancing? Marvel’s Professor America? Pixar’s heartwarming Tolstoy Story? Hmm. Maybe I don’t have a career ahead of me as a professional pun-maker.

@midnight kicked off the competition with (much better) offerings from comedians Sarah Silverman, Scott Aukerman, and Steve Agee:

Twitter users then picked up the challenge with gusto. Here are some of the funniest and punny-est of the #MakeAMovieSmarter war:

And my fave:

Image: Universal