20 Supposedly Brilliant Characters Who Are Actually Dopes

Most of the time, it’s just not very fun to watch stupid people. The occasional Dumb and Dumber or It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia comes along, but you meet enough idiots in your day-to-day life, so when you go to the movies, you’d rather see people who are better than you. That’s why it’s so frustrating when a movie presents a character as this slick genius and they proceed to do the thematic equivalent of stepping on a rake for 120 minutes.

For example, in Fatal Attraction, Michael Douglas’ character is portrayed as “this high-flying professional with an important job,” Redditor feedthebear told r/Movies. Despite being responsible for such critical decisions at the office, though, he’s a total dummy when it comes to letting “this unhinged woman played by Glenn Close” into his life. Honestly, we’d be pretty nervous to have our jobs in his hands.

“He fails or falls short every step of the way, even in killing Close’s character,” they went on. “His poor suffering wife, who he cheated on and who had forgiven him, even has to shoot Close’s character dead in the end. Douglas spends the entire film either playing catch up or oblivious to what’s going on.”

They then asked, “What character was held out as being impressive but was totally incompetent?” and their fellow Redditors responded with wave after wave of stupidity.