Monday, March 08, 2010

Science one-liners

I've always felt that some of the best movie one-liners have been uttered by fictional practitioners of Science (yes, with a capital S!). For a long time, my favorite was "Back off man, I'm a scientist!" by Peter Venkman (played by the inimitable Bill Murray), which has the extra advantage of being part of the fantastic movie that is Ghostbusters.

On my last plane ride, I sat through the very so-so "Land of the Lost," which features Will Ferrel as paleontologist Rick Marshall. The movie itself was pretty lame, but people sitting next to me were jarred awake when I burst out laughing when he screamed: "Science shows no mercy, and neither do I!". It's not quite on the level of the Venkman one-liner above, but I thought it came pretty close. Anyone have any other good ones that come to mind?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

One of my favorites is the grossly underappreciated 'The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra'. Some selections:

"Seriously, Betty, you know what this meteor could mean to science. If we find it, and it's real, it could mean a lot. It could mean actual advances in the field of science."

"Ranger Brad, I'm a scientist, I don't believe in anything."

"I might just be a test-tube-tipping lab jockey who's looked at too many shiny rocks for far too long but something tells me you know more about this than you're letting on."

There are more. It is awesome.

- Steve

Julien Riel-Salvatore said...

Steve -
"The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra" is indeed awesome, and one of my favorite movies, too! In fact, I even mentioned it on AVRPI a while back. The "I don't believe in anything" line is priceless!

Ingrid Ludeke Giffin said...

A personal favorite on the same tangent is Rachel Weisz's tipsy line in The Mummy: "I ... am a LIBRARIAN!"