Best comedy movie plot holes of 1980

Please vote as you browse around to help the best rise to the top.

Smokey and the Bandit II picture

Plot hole: Snowman manages to unload the elephant, summons twenty trucks to the middle of a desert and gets miles ahead of the Bandit for his approach, in what appears to be about ten minutes of time.

Gavin Jackson

More Smokey and the Bandit II plot holes
Private Benjamin picture

Plot hole: During the war games when Judy's squad captures the SGT. Outside red headquarters they demand the ignition key to the Duece which the SGT. promptly throws into the bushes, and the criminal hot wires the truck. Military vehicles are not started with a key they have a starter switch if you want to lock the vehicle you padlock the steering wheel.

More Private Benjamin plot holes
The Stunt Man picture

Plot hole: The film takes place around 1980, i.e. when it was filmed. But Steve Railsback appears too young for the Vietnam veteran he is playing, and in any case he has meant to have come back from the war, immediately committed a crime, and been on the run since. This would only be possible if he had been on the run for a decade, with the police in hot pursuit for all this time: that is extremely unlikely. These inconsistencies are actually a reflection of the fact that the film was scripted a decade before it was shot.

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: Cameron is not too young for the timeline of the film. Steve Railsbeck was born in 1945. The first US troops arrived in Vietnam in 1965. If Cameron did a one year tour of duty between 1965 when he was 20 and 1969 when he was 24, that gives him a year to be discharged, return to the USA, commit a crime, and be on the run for ten years or more by 1980. Wikipedia lists 120 criminals who have been on the run since 1970 - and that's just the famous ones.

More The Stunt Man plot holes
Popeye picture

Plot hole: The mysterious stranger brings the basket down with Swee'pea in it, and replaces Olive's basket with it. How can she have a basket painted to look like Olive's when she didn't know Olive had a similar basket of a certain color?

Movie Nut

More Popeye plot holes
The Gods Must Be Crazy picture

Plot hole: While Xi is running towards the goats, before being shot at, he already has blood on his left thigh. (01:08:50)

More The Gods Must Be Crazy plot holes
Midnight Madness picture

Plot hole: Never in the film do the police try to stop the teams from causing havoc. There is really no way Leon has that much influence in the game. In fact, the only authority figures who really try and stop them are the security guards at the Bonaventure Hotel.

More Midnight Madness plot holes
Stir Crazy picture

Plot hole: The six-year-old girl (who actually looks a few years older) apparently had seen and remembered a tattoo on the robber's hand well enough to be able to relate the details of it to Meredith, who is then able to visually identify the tattoo on the robber's hand in a strip joint. Not really credible - especially as the woodpecker costumes covered up pretty well the entire body! (Also, the robbers were constantly moving, making visual inspection even more difficult).

Lowdie

More Stir Crazy plot holes
Below the Belt picture

Plot hole: Given Rosa just started wrestling it seems unlikely she'd get a world title match so soon. That and when she bit Tommy on the lip she should've been disqualified.

Rob245

More Below the Belt plot holes
Bronco Billy picture

Plot hole: Antoinette Lilly makes headlines as being murdered and her husband is charged and sent to a criminal asylum...despite the fact that no body has been found and no one has even bothered to go to the hotel or town she was last at to investigate whether or not she's alive or dead. Not believable.

Gavin Jackson

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: John was framed by Antoinette's step-mother (who stood to gain Antoinette's inheritance). People have been arrested for murder without a body being discovered first though. Additionally, we find out that the lawyer who helped framed John also paid him to confess to the crime and admitted to being mentally unstable. So nobody was even trying to look for Antoinette.

Bishop73

More Bronco Billy plot holes
How to Beat the High Co$t of Living picture

Plot hole: The heist happens before 9 PM. Nothing in the movie justifies the fact that at dawn the two friends are still riverside in their wet clothes and Elaine is still dressed only with a curtain. (01:33:10)

Sammo

More How to Beat the High Co$t of Living plot holes
Used Cars picture

Plot hole: When the gang goes to retrieve all the cars from the guy living in the desert they determine they have enough cars for a a one car safety limit. As they discuss this Jim is measuring the length of the blue car Jeff will be driving but the license plate of that car is never taken into account when being measured, so they should have already known that even with enough cars in their possession they didn't have enough cars to make a mile.

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: They had a one car 'cushion", but it wasn't the blue Mercury, it was the car on the trailer the Jeep was towing. They had just enough with the Mercury, but he crashed it coming into the parking lot which shortened it ; the plate falling down added the extra inches.

More Used Cars plot holes

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.