Recently, Flavorwire rounded up some of our very favorite punchlines from our favorite funny movies — which was a bit of a job in itself, since there are so many great lines, and they’re funny in so many different ways. But perhaps the most reliable way to get a laugh is one of the oldest: a good old-fashioned insult. The best can come from anywhere (even a serious drama), prompting not only a quick, dirty, slightly guilty laugh, but also the jotting down of a particularly effective slam in one’s mental notebook. After the jump, 25 of the most cruel, funny, and effective cinematic put-downs.
The Ref
“You know what, Mom, you know what I’m going to get you next Christmas? A big wooden cross, so every time you feel unappreciated for all your sacrifices, you can climb on up and nail yourself to it.”
In the Loop
“You’re a real boring fuck. Sorry, sorry, I know that you disapprove of swearing, so I’ll sort that. You are a boring f-star-star-CUNT!”
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
“Hey! If any of you are looking for any last-minute gift ideas for me, I have one. I’d like Frank Shirley, my boss, right here tonight. I want him brought from his happy holiday slumber over there on Melody Lane with all the other rich people and I want him brought right here, with a big ribbon on his head, and I want to look him straight in the eye and I want to tell him what a cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-ass, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey shit he is! Hallelujah! Holy shit! Where’s the Tylenol?”
Bad Santa
“You are by far the dumbest, most pathetic piece of maggot-eating shit that has ever slid from a human being’s hairy ass… You’re an emotional fucking cripple. Your soul is dogshit. Every single fucking thing about you is ugly.”
Uncle Buck
“I don’t think I want to know a six-year-old who isn’t a dreamer, or a sillyheart. And I sure don’t want to know one who takes their student career seriously. I don’t have a college degree. I don’t even have a job. But I know a good kid when I see one. Because they’re all good kids, until dried-out, brain-dead skags like you drag them down and convince them they’re no good. You so much as scowl at my niece, or any other kid in this school, and I hear about it, and I’m coming looking for you! Take this quarter, go downtown, and have a rat gnaw that thing off your face. Good day to you, madam.”
Billy Madison
“What you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”
In Bruges
“Let’s face it. I’m not being funny, I mean no disrespect. But you’re a cunt. You’re a cunt now, you’ve always been a cunt, and the only thing that’s gonna change is you’re gonna become an even bigger cunt. Maybe have some more cunt kids.”
Anchorman
“Mr. Burgundy, you are acting like a baby.”
“I’m not a baby, I am a man. I am an anchorman.”
“You are not a man. You are a big fat joke.”
“I’m a man who discovered the wheel and built the Eiffel Tower out of metal and brawn. That’s what kind of man I am. You’re just a woman with a small brain. With a brain a third the size of us. It’s science.”
“I will have you know that I have more talent and more intelligence in my little finger than you do in your entire body, sir.”
“You are a smelly pirate hooker.”
“You look like a blueberry.”
“Why don’t you go back to your home on Whore Island?”
Chinatown
“What happened to your nose, Gittes? Somebody slammed a bedroom window on it?”
“Nope. Your wife got excited. She crossed her legs a little too quick.”
The Witches of Eastwick
“I think – no, I am positive – that you are the most unattractive man I have ever met in my entire life. You know, in the short time we’ve been together, you have demonstrated every loathsome characteristic of the male personality and even discovered a few new ones. You are physically repulsive, intellectually retarded, you’re morally reprehensible, vulgar, insensitive, selfish, stupid, you have no taste, a lousy sense of humor, and you smell. You’re not even interesting enough to make me sick.”
Scarface
“Even if I were blind, desperate, starved, and begging for it on a desert island, you’d be the last thing I’d ever fuck.”
Caddyshack
“Oh, this your wife, huh? A lovely lady. Baby, you’re all right. You must’ve been something before electricity… And this is your grandson, huh? Oh, wonderful boy! Yeah, he’s a good boy. Now I know why tigers eat their young.”
Full Metal Jacket
“It looks to me like the best part of you ran down the crack of your mama’s ass and ended up as a brown stain on the mattress!”
Gangs of New York
“I don’t give a tuppeny fuck about your moral conundrum, you meat-headed shit sack.”
There Will Be Blood
“Stop crying, you sniveling ass! Stop your nonsense. You’re just the afterbirth, Eli. You slithered out on your mother’s filth. They should have put you in a glass jar on a mantlepiece.”
Yours, Mine, and Ours
“I don’t quite understand. Am I being stupid?”
“No, you’re being a man, which is sometimes the same thing.”
Horse Feathers
“Baravelli, you’ve got the brain of a four-year-old boy, and I’ll bet he was glad to get rid of it.”
Tommy Boy
“Did you hear I finally graduated?”
“Yeah, and just a shade under a decade too. All right.”
“You know, a lot of people go to college for seven years.”
“I know. They’re called doctors.”
True Grit
“You give out very little sugar with your pronouncements. While I sat there watchin’ I gave some thought to stealin’ a kiss… though you are very young, and sick… and unattractive to boot. But now I have a mind to give you five or six good licks with my belt.”
“One would be just as unpleasant as the other.”
The Big Lebowski
“I don’t like you sucking around, bothering our citizens, Lebowski. I don’t like your jerk-off name. I don’t like your jerk-off face. I don’t like your jerk-off behavior, and I don’t like you, jerk-off. Do I make myself clear?”
Good Morning Vietnam
“You know, you’re in more dire need of a blowjob than any white man in history.”
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
“Look up ‘idiot’ in the dictionary, you know what you’ll find?”
“A picture of me?”
“No, the definition of the word ‘idiot,’ which you fucking are.”
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
“I don’t want to talk to you no more, you empty-headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!”
Swimming With Sharks
“What I am concerned with is detail. I asked you go get me a packet of Sweet-N-Low. You bring me back Equal. That isn’t what I asked for. That isn’t what I wanted. That isn’t what I needed and that shit isn’t going to work around here.”
“I just… thought…”
“You thought. Do me a fucking favor. Shut up, listen, and learn. Look, I know that this is your first day and you don’t really know how things work around here, so I will tell you. You have no brain. No judgment calls are necessary. What you think means nothing. What you feel means nothing. You are here for me. You are here to protect my interests and to serve my needs. So, while it may look like a little thing to you, when I ask for a packet of Sweet-N-Low… that’s what I want. And it is your responsibility now to see that I get what I want. Am I clear?”
Glengarry Glen Ross
“What’s your name?”
“Fuck you. That’s my name. You know why, mister? ‘Cause you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight, I drove an $80,000 BMW. That’s my name.”
And, because we couldn’t pick just one from this orgy of insult:
“You stupid fucking cunt. You, Williamson, I’m talking to you, shithead. You just cost me $6,000. Six thousand dollars, and one Cadillac. That’s right. What are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about it, asshole? You’re fucking shit. Where did you learn your trade, you stupid fucking cunt, you idiot? Who ever told you that you could work with men?”
Those are our favorite movie insults; be sure to tell us yours in the comments.