Tyler Durden: Would you like to say a few words to mark the occasion?
Narrator: mumbles...
Tyler Durden: I'm sorry...
Narrator: I still can't think of anything.
Tyler Durden: Ah... flashback humor.

I thought High Fidelity did it best by keeping us face to face with the main character through the movie, but The Jerk did it in an interesting way as well, by having Navin begin and end the movie by telling us his life story.

Fight Club as a whole is one big wink to the audience. God, I love the fuckin' movie.



-Doc

Darryl in Coming to America. You know, after Lisa's sister finds him outside in the rain and invites him in, then she says "Let's get you out of these wet clothes." That look he gives is priceless.

"Ocean's 12"

Doesn't she look just like...

Actually didn't like that one. I get what they were doing, trying to be cute. But it was one of those winks where, instead of letting me in on the joke, it just took me totally out of the movie.



-Doc

I agree. It sealed the fate of what, for me, had been an already disappointing movie up to that point.

I think Ferris Bueller is going to be the overriding winner in this discussion. Most of the time, breaking the fourth wall just doesn't work.

The other 4th wall moment in Superman:

Clark Kent shows the audience that he's caught the bullet that almost kills Lois.

Bill Murray-Ghostbusters 1/2 has always been my favorite example of this.

Hamlet

Did he? I thought he looked down at his hand, all proud of himself like the cat that ate the canary. I didn't realize he was showing us (From a filmmaking standpoint he was, just as in any movie where there's a reveal, the character is "Showing us" what had just happened, but it wasn't like he looked at the camera and then opened his hand, was it?)


-Doc

Yeah, that was just an insert shot, not breaking the 4th wall.

I don't know what my favorite one is, but I can tell you my least favorite.

Into the Wild, out of nowhere he just stares at the camera while he's eating an apple. I'm sure Sean Penn thought it was "cute", but it ruined the movie for me the rest of the time I watched it.

On a related note... Are there examples other than Blazing Saddles where the movie breaks the fourth wall almost literally, panning out to a soundstage and going fully meta?

Monty Python and the Holy Grail?

<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/fIXByCAIzos&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/fIXByCAIzos&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>

I guess we could also add the final shot of THE IRON GIANT--especially as I now see the connection between that and Superman's smile as referenced earlier.

Eddie Murphy in Trading Places is the best for me. A lot of them just hit you over the head with it too much.

My least favorite is at the end of Scrooged, when Bill Murray talks to the audience. When I watch it on DVD, I always stop just before it gets to that.

Rob

I'm glad someone else remembers this. I thought that scene was every bit as funny as the same one in Wayne's World.

How is that breaking the 4th wall?

When Peter O'Toole turns to the camera in "What's New Pussycat"and says, "As a man's life goes down the tubes, You Are There." He has 3 girlfriends hidden in his apartment unknown to each other just as his fiance knocks on the door.

the end of 'the holy mountain'

Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Henry V (Branagh)

I haven't seen this in at least a decade, but I still remember that scene.