High Stakes. No, raise the stakes higher! No, HIGHER!

quade

I think we've all heard the advice to make the stakes high.

If the X-men are up against something, they have to be saving the entire world . . .

Yet, I'm wondering about small stakes.

What are the lowest stakes you've seen in a good film?

For instance, in Tootsie, what's really at stake? If Michael doesn't make it or is discovered as Dorothy, is he really any worse off than when the movie started? That's pretty freakin' low stakes, yet Tootsie comes in as AFI's 69th best film of all time. Is it because it's a comedy? Can the stakes in a comedy be more trivial?

My Fair Lady, are there any stakes in that at all other than perhaps a bit of pride in being able to pass off Eliza as an aristocrat? Is it because it's a comedy (classic sense, which is actually a modern RomCom)?

Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (A movie I adore), if you think about it, they don't actually even have to go. I sure as hell didn't.

In Meet the Parents, does he have to? I mean, it's modern day America, he's just being a nice guy by asking permission; right? Nobody's holding a gun to his head, well, except dad, but at any point he could and does finally say, enough with this nonsense. I'm marrying your daughter. So really no actual stakes there either.

Hmmm...

Not even trying to buck the system here and say stakes shouldn't be high, just trying to figure out what have people actually gotten away with for purely taxonomic purposes.

Bryan Reeves · Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2012 12:55 pm Post subject:

Do you think we accept lower stakes if the story/actors make them credible to the characters?

I was thinking about Sandlot and the Babe Ruth ball in the mouth of the Beast... but the monetary value of that ball, even forty years ago, would've been astronomical for a bunch of kids. Even Squints risked drowning for a kiss. OK, bad example...

As you mentioned Tootsie, if we aren't led to believe discovery is curtains, it's not top shelf level stakes.

Just wondering, and waiting to hear other responses...

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Rachel T. · Ocelot Joined: 15 Jan 2008 Posts: 1917 Location: Michigan

I don't know about lowest, but some of the silliest:

Keeping his birth name secret for fear his girlfriend won't love him anymore in The Importance of Being Earnest.

Passing herself off as a guy in order to play on the guy's soccer team and get a college scholarship in She's the Man.

Trying to impress a hot chick by paying someone to date her older sister in 10 Things I Hate About You.

Now that I look at this list, Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde could make bricks out of cotton candy. Laughing

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