Bad Birthday Parties In Film – In Honor of ’21 and Over’ In Theaters Today

The Omen (1976)

If you’ve ever planned a child’s birthday party, then you know how much it sucks when this happens:

But, while nanny-suicides can be a downer (unless we’re talking about Fran Drescher) that party was still better than 2-hours of Chuck E. Cheese.

Of course, if you name your kid “Damien” you have to expect things like that happen. It’s pretty much guaranteed that your child will be the spawn of Satan if you give it a name like “Damien” or “Maleficent” or…“Honey Boo Boo”. You really have no one to blame but yourself.

The Game (1997)

So what do you get the uber-rich, titan of industry who has everything? How about an elaborate episode of Punk’d where the entire world conspires against him in a ruse that is as intricate as it is impossible to achieve?

Directed by David Fincher, fresh off the success of Se7en, the film has more plot holes than a season of Glee but that doesn’t stop it from being a fun and moody head-trip. And if you look closely enough, there are plenty of signs that the filmmakers are in the joke. Which goes a long way towards preventing you from punching this movie in the face.

The Birds (1963)

A child’s birthday party is always tension-filled. There are so many potential chances for drama it’s hard to predict where the problems will start – a crazy family member, an ex-spouse, a swarm of birds going all kamikaze on your ass, bratty kids….wait, wait, wait, what was that third one?

Look, birthdays are supposed to be fun. So never hire Alfred Hitchcock as your party-planner. Ok, Hitchcock is dead so that’s not going to happen. How about…don’t hire M. Night Shyamalan as your party planner? No, that doesn’t really work either. I mean, you shouldn’t hire him but that’s because the first party he planned was awesome but all the parties sense (see what I did there) have gotten progressively worse.

Ok, new rule…don’t hire Lars von Trier as your party-planner. I think that works.

Harold & Maude (1971)

Harold is obsessed with death even though he’s young. Maude, at the age of 79, is staring death in the face every morning she manages to wake up. So of course, they fall in love. But even at 79, she’s younger than he’ll ever be and encourages him to “trying something new every day”.

And just to reinforce the idea of living each day to its fullest, she celebrates her 80^th birthday with a fistful sleeping pills.

Which totally makes sense in a “1970s/art house/we really needed a poignant ending for this film” kinda way. They even wrote a song about it but were forced to scrap it when they realized that “If you wanna eat a fistful of pills, eat a fistful of pills” didn’t fit the meter.

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