The 21 Most Awkward Dinner Scenes in Film

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The Most Awkward Dinner Scenes

Everett Collection; Everett Collection; Universal

Sure, the food is great and getting together with the family is nice, but it's rare to get through a Thanksgiving dinner without at least a little bit of awkwardness — it just comes with the territory. At least you can hope your Turkey Day feast won't be as cringeworthy as some of these wild dinners from film. Ahead, 21 of the most painful meals in movies.

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Lars and the Real Girl

George Kraychyk/ MGM

Having dinner with your brother’s new girlfriend might be a bit awkward. Imagine how much more awkward it becomes when you see that said girlfriend is clearly a sex doll, whom your brother believes to be a real woman. Yeah…

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Dinner for Schmucks

Merie Weismiller Wallace/ Paramount Pictures

A dinner party couldn’t get any crazier if you purposefully packed it full of kooks – and that’s exactly what the malicious businessmen in Dinner For Schmucks does. The meal is brought to an end after a fire breaks out and an important Swiss investor loses his finger to a bird. So all in all, not great.

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Meet the Parents

Universal/ Courtesy Everett Collection

Ben Stiller’s desperation to impress his girlfriend’s parents sets the bar for awkward dinner scenes in modern comedies. Stiller’s character of Greg does everything wrong: He tries to pass off the lyrics to “Day By Day” as a prayer, claims that he milks cats, and tops it all off by destroying the urn that held the ashes of his girlfriend’s beloved grandmother.

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American Beauty

DreamWorks/ Courtesy Everett Collection

Asparagus has never been so scary. What should've been simply an uneventful family dinner in suburbia becomes a sarcastic yelling match after Kevin Spacey’s character Lester quits his job and blackmails his boss. As his wife berates him, he throws a plate of asparagus against the wall and tells her that he’s going to do what he wants from now on.

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Edward Scissorhands

20th Century Fox/Courtesy Everett Collection

Happy-go-lucky Avon saleswoman Peg may be trying her best to keep this family dinner pleasant, but the pale man with sharp blades for fingers that she invited over can’t help but make things pretty weird as he constantly tries and fails to pick up even a single pea. Her son Kevin won’t stop staring, and her husband Bill insists on calling him Ed instead of Edward.

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Wedding Crashers

New Line Cinema/Courtesy Everett Collection

When the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury invites wedding crashers John and Jeremy to dinner, the two accept so John can spend more time with the man's daughter. But the dysfunction is evident right away, as a homophobic grandma, an emotionally sensitive son, some drugged wine, and an under-the-table sexual act make this dinner one that nobody will forget.

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Back To The Future

Universal/Courtesy Everett Collection

It’s hard to imagine anything being more awkward than eating dinner next to your mom while she hits on you. Understandably, Marty McFly darts out of his grandparents’ 1955 dinner when his mother touches his leg after suggesting he stay in her room that night.

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Beetlejuice

Being possessed and forced to sing a famous Jamaican folk song is definitely out of the ordinary for most dinner parties, but not those which Beetlejuice attends. To try to scare the Deetz family out of their home, he has them and their dinner guests involuntarily perform Harry Belafonte’s song “Day-O,” much to their confusion.

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My Best Friend's Wedding

Suzanne Tenner/Columbia/TriStar

Here’s another dinner that turns into a full performance of a classic song. Everyone at the table gets into singing their parts of Dionne Warwick's "I Say A Little Prayer" in the middle of the restaurant.

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Pineapple Express

Columbia Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection

A 25-year-old stoner showing up late and bloody to meet his high school-aged girlfriend’s parents is already a set-up for a disastrous dinner. From there, things only get worse, as Dale rambles on about a murder plot and his girlfriend’s father responds by telling him to leave before he gets his gun. Guess he's not staying for dessert...

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American History X

New Line Cinema/Courtesy Everett Collection

A discussion about police brutality at the dinner table is bound to be pretty heated, but it gets downright scary when it’s between a young neo-Nazi and a liberal Jewish professor. After going on a racist diatribe, Edward Norton’s character Derek nearly suffocates his sister, screams obscenities at his Jewish teacher, and shows him his swastika tattoo before kicking him out of the house.

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Mrs. Doubtfire

20th Century Fox/Courtesy Everett Collection

It’s never a great dinner when you find out your ex-husband has been disguising himself as an old female nanny. Robin Williams’ character Daniel is forced to jump between two important meals, one as himself for his job, and another as the nanny Mrs. Doubtfire for the birthday celebration organized by his ex-wife’s new guy Stuart. Of course, things go wrong, as Daniel’s facial prosthetics fall off in front of his ex-wife. As expected, she doesn’t take it well.

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Hannibal

Phil Bray/ Universal

It’s pretty safe to assume any dinner with Hannibal Lecter would be far from ordinary. In the follow-up film to Silence of the Lambs, Agent Starling wakes up drugged at a dinner table as Lecter removes the scalp of a Justice Department official, cuts out a piece of his brain, and feeds it to him. Not the most appetizing main course.

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Legally Blonde

Tracy Bennett/ MGM

Elle Woods goes on a romantic dinner date with her boyfriend Warner, expecting that this will be the night he proposes. She jumps the gun and excitedly says “I do” before realizing that he’s actually breaking up with her. Understandably, Elle is upset when Warner tells her she wouldn’t make a respectable senator’s wife, and begins to sob.

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Django Unchained

Andrew Cooper

Dinner is a bit bizarre when a plantation owner insists on examining the skull of a slave at the table. However it gets much worse when his henchmen pull guns on Django and Schultz and he rubs his bloody hand over the face of Django’s wife while threatening to kill her.

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The Break-Up

Universal/Courtesy Everett Collection

A big dinner with your ex and her family is already awkward enough, but it becomes downright cringeworthy when her brother talks passionately about his a cappella group and then tries to make you sing with him.

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The Rocky Horror Picture Show

20th Century Fox/Courtesy Everett Collection

There are always some surprises at Dr. Frank-N-Furter’s mansion, and dinnertime is no exception. Frank reveals that the meat they’ve all eaten has been made from the body of his ex-lover, Eddie. Hands down, the worst meatloaf dinner ever.

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Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

Columbia Pictures

Before the Bobby family can dive into their feast of Domino’s, KFC, and Taco Bell, Ricky begins saying grace to baby Jesus, which frustrates his wife and father-in-law who remind him that Jesus grew up. After the prayer, Ricky’s sons Walker and Texas Ranger threaten their grandpa. When Ricky encourages the insults, his wife gets turned on and they decide to use the dinner table in place of a bed.

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The Birdcage

Courtesy Everett Collection

Can a drag club owner and his partner/drag star get through a dinner with a highly conservative family without revealing their nontraditional lifestyle? Nathan Lane’s character Albert is able to convince the couple he’s a woman for a while, but it doesn’t last. That, on top of the homoerotic dinner plates and a soup full of hard-boiled eggs, turns dinner into an awkward mess.

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Eraserhead

Everett Collection

Nothing normal happens in David Lynch’s feature film debut Eraserhead, and that includes the dinner scene in which Henry sits down with his girlfriend and her parents. He’s given a miniature chicken to carve, but it begins moving and bleeding when he sticks his fork into it. Then, his girlfriend's mother convulses and leaves the table screaming. Maybe they should just order a pizza?

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National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

Warner Bros/ Courtesy Everett Collection

The Griswold family is known for turning every situation into a mess, and that's exactly what they did to their Christmas Eve dinner. After an elderly relative leads the family in the Pledge of Allegiance instead of grace, Clark begins to carve the turkey, only to witness it burst in a puff of smoke as he cuts into it.

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The 21 Most Awkward Dinner Scenes in Film

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The Most Awkward Dinner Scenes

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Lars and the Real Girl

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Dinner for Schmucks

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Meet the Parents

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American Beauty

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Edward Scissorhands

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Wedding Crashers

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Back To The Future

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Beetlejuice

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My Best Friend's Wedding

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Pineapple Express

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American History X

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Mrs. Doubtfire

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Hannibal

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Legally Blonde

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Django Unchained

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The Break-Up

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The Rocky Horror Picture Show

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Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby

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The Birdcage

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Eraserhead

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National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

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