Foreign Movie Night was one of the highlights of my college social life, and I sincerely wish we could have done it more than once. In fact, I'm going to reinstate it into my current social life and host Foreign Movie Night with my friends as often as I can.
This is the gist of the game: As a group, watch a foreign-language movie and ad-lib the script as you go along, based solely on what seems to be happening visually.
There are several tricks to a successful foreign movie night. The hardest for us was finding a movie that had no subtitles and was in a language that people in the group weren't familiar with. The more obscure the language, the better - the less you know what is being said, the less you will know what's going on. And this, my friends, is where the hilarity is born. It turns out that it is possible to figure out quite a bit of the plot just based on what is seen. But making up the specifics of what the characters are saying is still a lot of fun. And, if you have the right group of people for it, it can get really, really funny. And if you have people in your group who are good at doing character voices and whatnot, even better!
My group actually ended up going with a Mexican musical, because that was the only we could find that didn't have subtitles. Those in the group who knew Spanish just didn't pay attention or pretended not to understand. I actually liked the film a lot, from what I could tell. Too bad I haven't the slightest idea what the title was. I just know it was a black-and-white musical film from Mexico. I used to remember at least some of the plot, but that, too, has left my memory. Vague flashes come back if I really concentrate... but not enough to talk about. Oh, well.
Anyway, there are no rules to Foreign Movie Night - unless you really feel like imposing some. You could impose a no-talking-out-of-turn rule. We just let people shout out lines as they thought of them, but if you have a larger group it might serve you to have some sort of system. You could also have language restrictions or off-limits topics if there are younger people present or people who are more appreciative of clean humor. If you're group doesn't care where it goes, no restrictions are necessary. Hm, I can't think of any more rules you could have. That's one of the great things about games like this - people are totally free to use their imaginations and their humor to full capacity.
If I come across any films that would be good with this game, I'll add them here and/or on the Resources page.
This is the gist of the game: As a group, watch a foreign-language movie and ad-lib the script as you go along, based solely on what seems to be happening visually.
There are several tricks to a successful foreign movie night. The hardest for us was finding a movie that had no subtitles and was in a language that people in the group weren't familiar with. The more obscure the language, the better - the less you know what is being said, the less you will know what's going on. And this, my friends, is where the hilarity is born. It turns out that it is possible to figure out quite a bit of the plot just based on what is seen. But making up the specifics of what the characters are saying is still a lot of fun. And, if you have the right group of people for it, it can get really, really funny. And if you have people in your group who are good at doing character voices and whatnot, even better!
My group actually ended up going with a Mexican musical, because that was the only we could find that didn't have subtitles. Those in the group who knew Spanish just didn't pay attention or pretended not to understand. I actually liked the film a lot, from what I could tell. Too bad I haven't the slightest idea what the title was. I just know it was a black-and-white musical film from Mexico. I used to remember at least some of the plot, but that, too, has left my memory. Vague flashes come back if I really concentrate... but not enough to talk about. Oh, well.
Anyway, there are no rules to Foreign Movie Night - unless you really feel like imposing some. You could impose a no-talking-out-of-turn rule. We just let people shout out lines as they thought of them, but if you have a larger group it might serve you to have some sort of system. You could also have language restrictions or off-limits topics if there are younger people present or people who are more appreciative of clean humor. If you're group doesn't care where it goes, no restrictions are necessary. Hm, I can't think of any more rules you could have. That's one of the great things about games like this - people are totally free to use their imaginations and their humor to full capacity.
If I come across any films that would be good with this game, I'll add them here and/or on the Resources page.