My son once asked me what a cliche was to which I quickly responded that it was a dead horse - a shamefully abused dead horse that people refuse to bury. They just keep beating it and beating it and beating it and have parties where they block off traffic, rent bounce houses, and invite their friends and neighbors and even strangers to come beat that horse like a verbal piñata.
Shame the kid didn't tell me he needed a real definition for a school paper. His teacher did not accept "dead horse" as a definition for "cliche". Perhaps, if he'd written "verbal piñata"?
Two cliche lines in film chap me more than others: one is "bingo" when a character finds an answer, prize, trigger, puzzle piece, blue wire or whatever else it is he needs in order to move him on his way and the other "fingernails on a chalkboard" moment for me is any derivative of "I don't even know who you are anymore" usually spoken by the disenchanted friend, lover, relative or co-worker of the protagonist when he's let them down.
By the way, these two nauseating lines were used in two of the most highly anticipated and highly grossing films last year. Seriously. They were. (Hint: One used the word "Returns" and the other "Begins" in the title.)
I thought I was off the hook this year. I really did. I made it almost through the entire summer without hearing either one of those cliche'd lines in a new release but then I started catching up on my films. But then I went to the theater every weekend, sometimes twice if I went to the dollar movies. But then, I also took full advantage of missed new releases by using my Netflix!
BUT THEN!
ACCCCKKK!
It's too painful to talk about. . .
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