Which films use fish-out-of-water comedy?

The African Queen (1951), Some Like It Hot (1959), Bananas (1971), Sleeper (1973), Dersu Uzala (1975), Popeye (1980) and 26 more films in the CineCode library.

What kind of technique is fish-out-of-water comedy?

It is a narrative technique. Related narrative techniques include Genre Collage, Deadpan Absurdism, Odd Couple Class Structure.

Narrative technique · used in 32 films

Fish-Out-of-Water Comedy

Dropping a character into a world whose social rules they don't understand. The comedy, and some insight too, comes from the constant mismatch between them and everyone around them.

Examples

32 films that use it

The African Queen
John Huston · 1951
Rose Sayer is a prim English missionary who becomes a river adventurer, military strategist and torpedo engineer. As cliche as it sounds, the fish out of water discovers she was built for exactly this water. Her trip from the rectory to river warfare is where the film gets its comedy, and it's also the case the film makes for the romance.
Where to see it: Rose's exhilaration after the first rapids. You can see the missionary change in her face. The woman who disapproved of everything suddenly finds out she loves this.
Some Like It Hot
Billy Wilder · 1959
Joe and Jerry are men in an all-female band. The comedy comes from keeping the disguise going for 2 hours. They nearly get found out, desire complicates things and they keep running into new rules of being a woman. Wilder makes the premise last by never letting them get used to it. They stay out of place the whole way.
Where to see it: Jerry/Daphne getting through life in the women's berth. The joke keeps running: a man has agreed to be a woman and is now finding out what that takes.
Bananas
Woody Allen · 1971
Mellish is a neurotic, blue-collar New Yorker dropped into a revolution he does not understand. He learns to fight clumsily, and the comedy comes from how little he fits in. His reason for being there is to impress a girlfriend, which makes the mismatch funnier.
Where to see it: Life with the rebels: Mellish is captured by the real rebels, Vargas declares him dead, and he has to fight with them for 2 months.
Sleeper
Woody Allen · 1973
Miles wakes 200 years after his operation in a society he does not understand, and the authorities have no record of him. To escape, he pretends to be a robot, which means acting like something he is not in a place that is already strange. The mismatch makes every scene funnier.
Where to see it: The robot disguise: Miles disguises himself as a robot and is assigned as butler to socialite Luna Schlosser.
Dersu Uzala
Akira Kurosawa · 1975
When Dersu's eyesight fails, Arsenyev takes him to live in the city. The rules of town life make no sense to a man who has always lived in the taiga. The mismatch is gentle and a little funny, and it's also heartbreaking.
Where to see it: Dersu in Khabarovsk. He feels caged in Arsenyev's house, and he finally tells the family he has to go back to the mountains.
Popeye
Robert Altman · 1980
Popeye is a stranger who does not understand the town's rules or its mean humor. The townspeople bark at him, rob him and ignore him, and he responds with confused politeness. The gap between his simple decency and their pettiness drives the jokes.
Where to see it: The engagement party: Popeye tries and fails to fit in with the townsfolk at Olive's party for Bluto. He leaves, and meets Olive outside.
Romancing the Stone
Robert Zemeckis · 1984
Joan has spent her life writing adventures, not living them. In the jungle, she is out of her depth at every step. Her mismatch with the terrain is where much of the humor comes from.
Where to see it: The bus crash: After the bus is diverted into the interior and crashes, Joan finds herself stranded in the Colombian jungle with Jack.
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Steven Spielberg · 1984
Willie Scott is a nightclub singer who finds herself in the jungle and then a palace in India. She doesn't know the rules and doesn't like them. The mismatch between her and everything around her makes you laugh.
Where to see it: The Pankot Palace banquet. The trio are hosted by the young maharaja, and the meal is full of strange dishes.
Back to the Future
Robert Zemeckis · 1985
Marty keeps mentioning things from 1985, like Ronald Reagan as president, Pepsi Free and Darth Vader. People in 1955 either don't understand him or are shocked. The joke goes deeper than the awkward situation. It shows how much of who you are comes from the culture you grew up in, and how strange the recent past was.
Where to see it: Marty performing 'Johnny B. Goode' at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance. This is 1985 crashing into 1955.
After Hours
Martin Scorsese · 1985
Paul is a mild office worker dropped into a downtown New York night where the rules keep changing. He cannot pay the subway fare and gets turned away from a club for not having a mohawk. Each place has a new set of rules he does not know.
Where to see it: Club Berlin: the doorman refuses Paul entry because he lacks a mohawk, in a scene Scorsese partly based on Kafka's Before the Law.
Rain Man
Barry Levinson · 1988
The film puts Raymond in a casino, in a Cincinnati diner and at an airport check-in. Each place gets its comedy from his rigid inner world running into the chaos outside.
Where to see it: Raymond dancing with Charlie's girlfriend Susanna in a stopped hotel elevator. He dances to match the only music he knows, and it is a moment of pure accidental grace.
Die Hard
John McTiernan · 1988
McClane is an everyman, and that drives both the comedy and the emotion. He's a regular cop in a Rolex building, barefoot on broken glass, talking to himself on the radio. He can be hurt, so his wins feel earned in a way a superhuman hero's couldn't.
Where to see it: McClane pulling glass out of his feet in the bathroom, talking to Sergeant Powell over the radio about his situation. It's the movie-cop version of a man complaining about his commute. His problem is so ordinary and human that the huge threat in the building seems more frightening.
Back to the Future Part III
Robert Zemeckis · 1990
Marty arrives in 1885 wearing 1980s clothes and speaking in 1980s slang. Everyone he meets finds him odd. The mismatch sets up many of the jokes.
Where to see it: Marty's arrival: In 1885, Marty is confronted by locals who treat his clothes and speech as strange.
True Lies
James Cameron · 1994
Helen has lived an ordinary life and is suddenly dragged into Harry's world of spies and guns. She does not understand its rules, and the mismatch is funny. It also shows how much she has been shut out of his life.
Where to see it: The staged mission: Harry arranges a fake spy mission around Helen, and both end up captured.
Jack
Francis Ford Coppola · 1996
Jack has the body of a 40-year-old and the mind of a 10-year-old, and he walks into a school full of kids his age. The kids and the adults don't know what to make of him. Most of the humor comes from the gap between how he looks and how he acts.
Where to see it: Jack's first days at school. He makes a friend, Louis, who brings him onto a team and into a clubhouse.
The Big Lebowski
Joel Coen, Ethan Coen · 1998
The Dude is completely unequipped for the world of wealth, crime and nihilism that he wanders into. The comedy comes from his refusal to get equipped. In every setting, he responds by being exactly himself. He is a fish that declines to admit it is out of water.
Where to see it: The Dude's meeting with the Big Lebowski. You have the unemployed bowler in the millionaire's mansion. The gap in class and culture is funny because the Dude totally fails to be impressed.
Small Time Crooks
Woody Allen · 2000
Ray and Frenchy become wealthy and are dropped into a world of art and culture. Frenchy hires art dealer David Perrette, played by Hugh Grant, to teach them about it. They do not know the rules. Their mismatch with the people around them produces the jokes.
Where to see it: David's lessons. Frenchy hires the art dealer to teach her and Ray about culture.
Catch Me If You Can
Steven Spielberg · 2002
Frank's cons only work because he really is out of place: a teenager in a pilot's uniform, a boy passing as a doctor. There is a gap between his actual age and the authority he pretends to have. Watching him find clever ways across that gap is the main source of the film's comedy and drama.
Where to see it: Frank posing as Dr. Frank Conners. He doesn't actually know anything, and he gets by on authority and confidence. He also relies on how willing institutions are to believe what a person's costume tells them.
Lost in Translation
Sofia Coppola · 2003
Bob Harris can't find his way around Tokyo. You see it at the Japanese whisky commercial shoot and at parties where he can't follow the conversation. The film plays this as gentle comedy and never talks down to anyone. The confusion is Bob's problem and never Japan's. It mirrors the bigger trouble he has connecting with his own life.
Where to see it: The Suntory commercial shoot. The director gives long, excited instructions in Japanese, and the interpreter boils them down to a single English sentence. Bob can't make the 2 match, and the comedy comes from that mismatch.
The School of Rock
Richard Linklater · 2003
Dewey knows nothing about teaching and the school knows nothing about Dewey. He shows up as "Mr. S" and behaves so erratically that the class has no idea what to make of him. The gap between his slacker habits and the school's rules drives the early jokes.
Where to see it: Dewey's first day as Mr. S: After answering a phone call meant for his roommate Ned, Dewey impersonates him, gets hired and walks into class acting erratically.
Hellboy
Guillermo del Toro · 2004
FBI agent John Myers is a rookie who joins the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense and is put with a demon and a fish-man. The film uses him to show you the strange world, and the jokes come from how out of place he is.
Where to see it: Myers joins the Bureau: at Broom's request, he is paired with Hellboy and Abe Sapien.
The Terminal
Steven Spielberg · 2004
Viktor does not speak much English and does not know the airport's unwritten rules. He learns by watching signs, travelers and television. The jokes come from his sincere reading of a world that is not sincere.
Where to see it: Learning to live in the terminal: Viktor makes a bed in an unused gate and learns English from travel books and the news.
A Good Year
Ridley Scott · 2006
Max is a fast-talking trader who knows nothing about village life. He drives while fumbling with his phone and knocks the café owner Fanny off her bike. Then he falls into an empty, filthy swimming pool. Fanny lets him sit there until she turns the water on. His London habits keep failing him in Provence, and the mismatch is the joke.
Where to see it: The swimming pool: while taking photos for the sale, Max falls into the empty dirty pool, and Fanny fills it with water so he can climb out.
Cars
John Lasseter · 2006
A cocky racer is dropped into a sleepy desert town with slow rules and odd neighbors. He has to learn to work, to wait and to listen, and the laughs come from how badly he fits.
Where to see it: The road repair: the town's judge sentences McQueen to repave the road he tore up. He rushes it and the result is a mess that he has to redo.
Whatever Works
Woody Allen · 2009
Melody arrives from a fundamentalist family in Mississippi, and later her mother and father follow her to New York. Marietta, who is disappointed in Boris, gets drawn into photography and an open relationship with two men. John admits he is gay. The comedy comes from how fast the Southerners adopt their new world.
Where to see it: The photography exhibit. Marietta's opening shows how far she has come since arriving in New York, and John sees it.
The Tourist
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck · 2010
Frank is a Wisconsin math teacher who has no idea how to behave around gangsters. His fumbling gives the thriller its jokes. He is polite when he should run, and he gets into trouble in ways a trained spy would avoid.
Where to see it: The chase through Venice. Shaw's men chase Frank, and a corrupt inspector tries to sell him to them, while Frank stumbles through each escape.
Thor
Kenneth Branagh · 2011
A god who thinks he rules the universe lands in a desert town, where nobody bows to him. His old habits clash with ordinary life, and the jokes come from that mismatch.
Where to see it: The diner scene: Thor finishes a drink, smashes the mug on the floor and demands another. The waitress and customers stare at him as if he has lost his mind.
To Rome with Love
Woody Allen · 2012
Milly gets lost in Rome, loses her phone and ends up at a film shoot. A prostitute is sent to Antonio's hotel room by mistake. The couple from a small town is out of its depth in a big city.
Where to see it: The hotel mix-up. Anna is sent to Antonio's room by mistake, and he asks her to pretend to be Milly in front of his relatives.
Hail, Caesar!
Joel Coen, Ethan Coen · 2016
Hobie Doyle is a singing cowboy cast in a sophisticated drawing-room comedy. His thick accent makes every refined line sound wrong. The director keeps trying to coach him, and the distance between the actor and the part is where the laughs come from.
Where to see it: The coaching scene. Director Laurence Laurentz tries to get Hobie to deliver a polished line of dialogue and cannot get past his accent.
A Rainy Day in New York
Woody Allen · 2019
Ashleigh arrives from a small college to interview a famous director and quickly gets swept into the film crowd, from his screenwriter to a movie star. She does not know the rules of that world, and the comedy comes from how far each person gets carried off. You laugh at the mismatch and at where it leads her.
Where to see it: Ashleigh's interview day: she goes from the director to his screenwriter to dinner with the star Francisco Vega, and ends up at his apartment.
Poor Things
Yorgos Lanthimos · 2023
Bella Baxter has an adult body and a mind that is only just developing. Nobody has taught her how to behave, she feels no shame and she doesn't see why she should act as expected. Her trip through Victorian society is fish-out-of-water comedy at its most radical. This fish is philosophically free, which is different from naive. She refuses to take on the water's conventions, and that shows how arbitrary they are.
Where to see it: Bella's first encounters with social convention. The comedy comes from the gap between what she does and what she is expected to do, and from the fact that she is never embarrassed.
Barbie
Greta Gerwig · 2023
Barbie and Ken arrive in Los Angeles sure that everyone will love them. People stare and laugh at them. The jokes come from how confident they are that Barbieland rules still apply. The same trip shows Ken a world run by men, which sets up the second half.
Where to see it: Venice Beach. Barbie and Ken roller-skate along the boardwalk in matching neon outfits, get stared at by everyone and end up arrested.

Questions

Quick answers

What is fish-out-of-water comedy in film?: Dropping a character into a world whose social rules they don't understand. The comedy, and some insight too, comes from the constant mismatch between them and everyone around them.
Which films use fish-out-of-water comedy?: The African Queen (1951), Some Like It Hot (1959), Bananas (1971), Sleeper (1973), Dersu Uzala (1975), Popeye (1980) and 26 more films in the CineCode library.
What kind of technique is fish-out-of-water comedy?: It is a narrative technique. Related narrative techniques include Genre Collage, Deadpan Absurdism, Odd Couple Class Structure.

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