When people think of the most iconic food scenes set in movies, that one in Pulp Fiction where Uma Thurman drinks the $5 shake is definitely at the top, but what are the most hilarious scenes featured in comedies? The ones mentioned here range from the incident in Some Like it Hot where Jack Lemmon, dressed as a woman falls out of bed after someone stuffs ice cubes down his back, to the one in Mrs. Doubtfire where Robin Williams, also dressed as a woman, sets his shirt alight while he’s leaning over the hob. Here are 10 of the funniest movie scenes that contain food and drink.
Top 10 Disgusting Foods Westerners Eat
10 Groundhog Day
This film was released in 1993. When Bill Murray finds out he’s living the same day of his life over and over again he realizes he can do whatever he wants without having to deal with the consequences. This includes shoving a whole slice of cake into his mouth in one go. A range of biscuits, ice-cream, donuts and milkshakes can also be seen around the table where he’s sitting and Andie McDowell doesn’t look very impressed. While he sits there with a cigarette in one hand and a whole pot of coffee in the other she asks him whether he worries about cholesterol or lung cancer. He simply replies:
“ I don’t worry about anything anymore.”
At the moment it might feel like we’re all living the same day over and over again but watching this film will cheer anyone up.
9 Pretty Woman
An up-to-date version of the classic film ‘My Fair Lady’. Instead of the ‘guttersnipe’ played by Audrey Hepburn who is shown selling flowers on the street, Julia Roberts plays a prostitute hired by Richard Gere as an escort, attending a range of business and social functions. While Audrey Hepburn learns to talk correctly by singing ‘The Rain in Spain’, in Pretty Woman Julia Roberts has to be taught how to use a wide range of knives and forks properly for a dinner party.
She becomes confused because her salad doesn’t arrive at the right time and she’s forgotten which fork to use. There’s also the point where the snail she’s trying to eat flies across the room with the waiter smiling and letting her know: “Happens all the time.”
8 Bridget Jones’s Diary
In this modern comedy version of Jane Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’, Renée Zellweger is a 32 year old woman who starts writing a diary to reflect her social life and two men she’s interested in, played by Colin Firth and Hugh Grant. In this scene she’s making a birthday dinner for friends with Colin Firth as her assistant.
After leaving the blender open and covering herself with the contents after they fly out, she wonders what to make instead and creates some blue soup, colored by the string she has left around a leek in there. This is the first time that Colin Firth makes a joke in the film, eating it and saying “this really is the most incredible shit”, while laughing.
7 Meet the Parents
With Ben Stiller playing a young nurse named ‘Gaylord Focker’, travelling out to meet his future father-in-law for the first time, this film really shows the full potential of Robert De Niro as a comedic actor. One of the funniest moments in the film is before dinner when De Niro reads a sad poem around the table about his dead mother. To try and cheer people up, Ben Stiller comes into the room with a bottle of champagne. When the cork flies out of the bottle, it hits a large urn holding the mother’s remains. If this wasn’t bad enough, the cat then walks over, sniffs the ashes and pees on them. Ben Stiller has already told the family about his experience in milking cats and saying ‘Oh you can milk anything with nipples’. Then there’s that funny line where Robert De Niro replies: “I have nipples. Could you milk me?”
6 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
There are so many funny food moments in this film from 1971, like the part where ‘Augustus Gloop’ falls into a river of chocolate, gets pulled into a pipe and then stuck. There’s also the funny scene where the young girl ‘Violet Beauregarde’ grabs a piece of chewing gum from Willy Wonka who warns her not to eat it. After enjoying the three course dinner taste that comes off it, she then starts to balloon and her face turns blue, with Willy Wonka sighing and saying “It happens every time they all become blueberries.” Some of his other funny, memorable quotes include:
“If the good lord had intended us to walk he wouldn’t have invented roller skates.” “Hurry please. We have so much time and so little to see. Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it.”
The second version made in 2005 and starring Johnny Depp has some funny moments but no one can outshine Gene Wilder as the original Willy Wonka.
10 Crazy Times People Used Food As A Weapon
5 Mrs. Doubtfire
In this film, Robin Williams is hilarious, playing a divorced man who turns himself into a female nanny so he can keep seeing his children. There is a funny scene where Robin Williams is learning how to cook for himself but trying to do this while he’s dressed up as a woman. Forgetting about the fake breasts he’s put on, they’re set on fire as he leans over the hob. Two saucepan lids seem to be the best way to put the fire out. There’s also the scene where he throws his face into a cream pie to hide his identity, pretending it’s a face mask.
Reviews may have been mixed when it came out in 1993 but since then Mrs. Doubtfire has been voted by the American Film Institute as one of the top 100 comedies of all time.
4 Some Like it Hot
First released in 1959 and often named one of the greatest films of all time, Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon’s characters are still hilarious, working as musicians and then dressing themselves up as women after witnessing a massacre. They both have their eyes on Marilyn Monroe and in this scene she’s having drinks with Lemmon’s female character in the sleeping berth of a train. As the other women decide to join in, food and drink is passed around, with some being put into hot water bottles. Then someone throws ice-cubes down Lemmon’s back. Accidentally pulling the emergency break the women are all thrown out of the sleeping birth and onto the floor of the train.
This film may be over 60 years old but the last line has been voted one of the best in movie history, where Lemmon admits to a man he’s seeing that he’s not really a woman. The man simply shrugs and says: “Well, nobody’s perfect.”
3 The Breakfast Club
The whole of this high school comedy from 1985 is set in one place, the school library where five students are serving out their detention. When it comes to lunchtime they’ve all got very different tastes . While Molly Ringwald takes out chopsticks to eat her sushi one of the boys says, “you won’t accept a guy’s tongue in your mouth but you’re gonna eat that?”
The school wrestler, played by Emilio Estevez, pulls out six big bags of food to eat. Everyone’s eyes then turn to the girl at the end of the room who throws the meat from her sandwich into the air where it hits a modern work of art. Then she opens the coke can before leaning over and licking the fizz off her desk.
2 Julie and Julia
Made in 2009, in this film Meryl Streep plays a chef taking lessons in Paris who is the only woman in her class. Wanting to impress the teacher and meet the same standards as the men she needs to practice quite a lot and is absolutely delighted with herself when she flips an omelette for the first time. Learning to cut onions quickly and carefully Meryl Streep is still practicing when her husband comes home one night and is not even able to come through the front door because his eyes are watering so much. Asking him if he is hungry, he quickly says “No” before storming out with his hands over his eyes.
1 Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
This 1984 sequel to Raiders of the Lost Ark is set in India in 1935 where Indiana Jones is asked to find a mystical stone. This disturbing but humorous banquet scene is set in a palace where he’s staying as a guest with two others. Some of the delicacies include a snake which is sliced open to reveal lots of live ones and seems popular among the guests. The soup might appear normal at first but once the steam has cleared away, the eyeballs can be seen floating on top.
Luckily for the actors, these pieces weren’t real. What were made to look like chilled monkey brains were actually made of custard with raspberry sauce. The beetles were not real but made of plastic with custard that slid out when someone bit into it.
10 Bizarre Origin Stories About Your Favorite Foods