What is the best movie title featuring a proper name pun?
Disney+ kicked off April by unveiling a coming-of-age story about a 13-year-old Pittsburgh boy named Nate who dreams grandly of becoming a Broadway star. The name of the movie? Better Nate Than Ever. (Two subversions of an idiom in the same title!) Nate-urally, our minds sifted through other source material for some pun fun: First came Never Too Nate, then Nate Expectations, and certainly Nate From the Heart, but also A Simple Twist of Nate, and, sure, let's push this exercise one step too far, 10 Things I Nate About You.
After exhausting ourselves, we started overthinking this question: What are some other movie titles out in the world that achieved excellence through proper noun punnery? Maybe we should whip up a poll and ask both our staff and readers what they think!
2004 zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead was a no-brainer choice for 52 percent of our staff, who enjoyed this Dawn of the Dead wink. "A brilliantly silly title for a brilliantly silly movie," raved staff writer Devan Coggan. "Something like John of the Dead just doesn't have the same ring to it."
Thirty-one percent of our voters felt that The Santa Clause — a 1994 comedy in which Tim Allen accidentally kills Santa and learns that he has to assume his role — was the right amount of naughty and nice. (It's also so subtle with just that extra "e," one almost glosses right over this winter wit.) "Truth be told, I don't particularly care for The Santa Clause as a movie, and I'm not even sure I've seen it all the way through," says senior news editor Oliver Gettell. "But there's no arguing with the cold, calculated perfection of the title. He's Santa, because of a clause. With puns, as with contract law, the devil is in the details."
There also was a fair amount of justice for Poetic Justice. Thirteen percent of our staff was well-versed in praising the literal literary genius of the title of this 1993 Janet Jackson-Tupac Shakur romantic drama, even if this one is rather reverse-engineered. "Look at me: her name is Justice. And she's a poet," says staff writer Lester Brathwaite. "Maya Angelou, who actually wrote Justice's verses in the movie, could actually never."
In fourth place, only four percent of us had to go see about 1997 Matt Damon-Robin Williams drama Good Will Hunting. In fact, a few of our staffers were unaware of the wordplay in the title, but when they realized what was happening, they did seem to enjoy those apples. "I... I never thought of Good Will Hunting as a pun," stammered executive editor Patrick Gomez. "It was always just Good Will Hunting. How have I lived this long with that being the case?"
Alas, we could only fit four options in this Twitter poll, which left out:
* Scrooged, a title that might be sharper than 12 sharp knives (but we only wanted one Christmas movie in the mix).
* Just Wright, in which Queen Latifah stars as just the character of Wright and no other character.
* You Don't Know Jack, the Emmy-winning HBO biopic starring Al Pacino as death-supplying Dr. Jack Kevorkian.
* Hot Rod, featuring Andy Samberg as death-defying stuntman Rod Kimble.
* Gnomeo and Juliet, an animated film starring James McAvoy and Emily Blunt. (Still waiting for the Halloween installment: Gnomeo and Ghouliet.)
* Me, Myself, & Irene, a Jim Carrey comedy about a man who develops a second personality and falls in love with a woman named Irene (Renée Zellweger). The film did more than split critical opinion: The National Alliance on Mental Illness blasted Me, Myself, & Irene as an inaccurate portrayal of Dissociative Identity Disorder and noted that "for millions of Americans, schizophrenia and other mental illnesses are no laughing matter."
* Knight and Day, a Tom Cruise-Cameron Diaz action comedy in which an agent swipes an energy-regenerating battery and hides it in a knight figurine. Want something even more on the nose? The agent's real name is Matthew Knight. But wait, you say, you never explained the "day" part of it? Well, theories abound, including that: the battery he steals is a replenishing energy source like the sun, or "day"; a key line of dialogue in the movie involves a reference to doing something some "day"; Cameron's last name derives from the Latin "dies," which means "days,"; it's a reference to the idiom "night and day," which can mean either "all the time" or "two things that are strikingly different"; and "are you actually still reading this"?
Actually, we hope you are because it's time to reveal how you voted. In a poll posted on EW's Twitter, Shaun of the Dead killed with nearly 45 percent of the vote, The Santa Clause sleighed with 31 percent, 20 percent of you thought that Good Will Hunting was wicked smaht, and there wasn't as much justice for Poetic Justice, which tallied 4 percent of the vote.
In case you don't have social media but do have opinions, here's another chance to vote in the poll below. And was there another movie title for you that leveled up with a name pun? Tell us in the comments which one had you happier than a Pam, grinning from Kier to Kier, or bursting with Roy. (So, so sorry about all of this.)
Check out our daily must-see picks — plus news, celeb interviews, trivia, and more — on EW's What to Watch podcast.
Related content:
- An oral history of Shaun of the Dead
- The Santa Clause: Where are they now?
- Ben Affleck and Matt Damon credit Kevin Smith with saving Good Will Hunting
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