Let me be clear about something right off the bat: I have excellent taste in movies. I do. I’m not going to sit here and pretend otherwise. But even the most beloved films — the ones you’d fight someone over at a dinner party, the ones you can quote in your sleep, the ones that shaped who you are as a person — can be home to at least one character who makes your eye twitch every single time they appear on screen.
This isn’t about bad movies. This is about great movies that somehow harbored a truly insufferable person within their runtime, like finding a raisin in what you thought was a chocolate chip cookie. The movie is still good. The character? Needs to be launched into the sun.
Let’s talk about them.
1. Grandpa Joe — Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)
I will die on this hill. Grandpa Joe is one of the most infuriating characters in the history of cinema, and the fact that he’s generally perceived as a lovable old man only makes it worse.
Here’s what we know: Grandpa Joe has been bedridden for twenty years. The family is so poor that they’re sharing a one-room house and occasionally eating cabbage soup for every meal. Charlie’s mother is washing other people’s laundry by hand. They are, by every conceivable measure, struggling.
And then Charlie finds a Golden Ticket, and Grandpa Joe — this man who has been “too weak” to get out of bed for two decades — leaps up, dances around the room, and announces he’s going with Charlie to the chocolate factory. Not the kid’s exhausted, overworked mother. Grandpa Joe, who has been a drain on the family’s resources this entire time, decides that he gets to go on the fun trip.
And then — then — he nearly gets Charlie disqualified from the grand prize by convincing him to drink the Fizzy Lifting Drinks when they absolutely should not have. And when Wonka (correctly) refuses to give Charlie the prize because of this, Grandpa Joe’s response is to suggest they sell the Everlasting Gobstopper to Wonka’s competitor out of spite.
This man is chaos in a bathrobe. I don’t trust him, and I never have.
2. Jenny Curran — Forrest Gump (1994)
I know. I know. Jenny’s trauma is real, and her childhood was genuinely horrific, and the film is clear about that. I’m not dismissing any of it.
But the way the movie frames her relationship with Forrest — as this grand, tragic love story — requires you to overlook the fact that she treats him terribly for most of the movie. She shows up when she needs something, disappears when life is going well for her, and then comes back one more time when she’s sick and needs someone to take care of her and her son. Forrest, being Forrest, loves her unconditionally through all of it, which the film presents as beautiful.
It is beautiful. It is also a little heartbreaking when you realize Forrest deserved better. He really, truly did.
3. Kit Keller — A League of Their Own (1992)
A League of Their Own is a nearly perfect film. It is warm, funny, joyful, and genuinely moving. It also features Kit Keller, Dottie’s younger sister, who spends the entire movie being resentful, impulsive, and convinced that Dottie is somehow holding her back — when in reality, Dottie is the reason Kit got on the team in the first place.
Kit’s constant need to one-up her sister is exhausting to watch. Every scene she’s in becomes about her feelings, her frustrations, her jealousy. And yet the film rewards her with a triumphant moment at the end that honestly she did not earn. Dottie letting her win is either the most selfless act in baseball history or confirmation that Kit would have been impossible to live with otherwise.
I suspect both.
4. Rose DeWitt Bukater (Present Day) — Titanic (1997)
Young Rose? Understandable. Sympathetic, even. She’s trapped in a gilded cage and Jack Dawson shows her another way to live. Classic stuff.
Old Rose? Old Rose sat on that information for over eighty years and then — when finally given the opportunity to return the Heart of the Ocean, a priceless artifact that an entire research crew has spent significant time and money trying to recover — she drops it into the ocean. In the middle of the night. Without telling anyone.
That necklace could have funded scientific research, paid off debts, changed lives. Instead she tosses it overboard like she’s feeding ducks. The look of serenity on her face suggests she thinks this is a deeply meaningful gesture. It is not. It is jewelry vandalism on a massive scale.
Jack would not have wanted this, Rose.
5. Dolores Umbridge — Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
This one barely even needs an argument because the argument has already been won by everyone who has ever watched this film. Dolores Umbridge is not just a villain. She is the villain — more effectively terrifying than Voldemort ever managed to be, because she is instantly, recognizably real.
Voldemort is a monster you can point at. Umbridge is your worst boss, your most bureaucratic teacher, your most insufferable authority figure — wrapped in pink cardigans and speaking in that awful, girlish voice. She makes the rules and enforces them with cheerful sadism. She genuinely believes she is doing what’s right.
That’s the part that gets you. She doesn’t think she’s the bad guy. She never does.
6. Walter Peck — Ghostbusters (1984)
Full disclosure: Walter Peck and I share a last name. I want to be very clear — NO RELATION. I will not be accepting questions about this.
Walter Peck is the EPA inspector who shows up at Ghostbusters HQ, demands access to the containment unit, gets told no for extremely valid safety reasons, and then comes back with a court order and shuts down the whole operation anyway — releasing every captured ghost in the building and triggering a catastrophic supernatural event that nearly destroys New York City.
And then, in the aftermath, he still tries to blame the Ghostbusters.
The man has the energy of someone who has never once in his life admitted he was wrong about anything. He is every petty bureaucrat you have ever encountered at the DMV, except with exponentially more destructive consequences for his pettiness. Genuinely insufferable. We share a last name, not a bloodline. I refuse to acknowledge it.
7. Carter Burke — Aliens (1986)
Carter Burke is a corporate weasel of the highest order, which is actually a compliment to the writing because he is so effectively, comprehensively terrible that you almost have to admire the commitment.
He is the one who sent the colonists to investigate the alien site in the first place, knowing full well what they might find. He then, mid-mission, tries to get Ripley and Newt infected with facehuggers so he can smuggle specimens back for the weapons division. When caught, he acts surprised that everyone is upset about this. He is eaten by an alien, and the audience cheers.
Burke is proof that in any disaster scenario, the real monster is frequently someone in a business casual outfit who works on the fourteenth floor.
8. Jar Jar Binks — Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999)
Look, I acknowledge that this is not a hot take, and I stand by that acknowledgment. Jar Jar Binks is the most universally agreed-upon cinematic mistake of the late twentieth century. I don’t have anything new to add to the cultural conversation about him. He is loud, he is clumsy, and he is responsible for some of the most painful comedic beats ever committed to celluloid.
I’m including him anyway because leaving him off a list like this would feel dishonest. He belongs here. He has always belonged here. Meesa sorry, but it’s true. What I will add is that Ahmed Best, the actor who portrayed Jar Jar, deserved none of the hate he received for playing this role. To quote Patrick H. Willems, this is a franchise “about space wizards for children.” Jar Jar was there for the kids.
9. Sandy Olsson — Grease (1978)
Here’s where I have to be upfront about something: I had a very real crush on Olivia Newton-John as a kid. She was wonderful. She had a presence and a charm that made Sandy immediately likable.
But as an adult watching Grease, the ending of this movie becomes increasingly difficult to process. Sandy spends the entire film being told, in various ways, that she should be more like Danny’s world — and the movie’s resolution is that she changes everything about herself to fit in with his crowd. New hair, new clothes, new attitude, cigarettes, the whole transformation. Danny, to be fair, does attempt to join the track team for her — but when that doesn’t work out, he drops it without much struggle.
Sandy, meanwhile, shows up in in a leather jacket and spandex pants so tight that she had to be sewn into them as a different person entirely.
The movie presents this as triumphant. The song is catchy. I enjoy the song. I also think we should talk about what we’re actually celebrating here, because it isn’t great. You’re enough, Sandy. You were always enough.
10. Ferris Bueller — Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986)
This is the one that gets me in trouble every time I bring it up, so let me be measured about it: Ferris Bueller is a great character, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a great movie. I enjoy it. I always have.
But the older I get, the more I notice that Ferris is genuinely kind of a low-key sociopath. He manipulates everyone around him with total ease and zero guilt. He puts Cameron — his deeply anxious, emotionally fragile best friend — in situation after situation that could have serious consequences for Cameron, not for Ferris. He involves Sloane without ever really asking if this is what she wants. He breaks into a parade float and lip-syncs “Twist and Shout” and everyone acts like it’s a gift to the city of Chicago.
The movie knows he’s a little much. It even gestures at this through Jeanie’s storyline. But then it more or less lets him off the hook because he’s charming.
Charming people get away with a lot. We should probably think about that.
11. Albus Dumbledore — Harry Potter series
I will absolutely quote Albus Dumbledore at you without warning. “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” “Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.” The man had a gift for a meaningful sentence, and I will not pretend otherwise.
But keeping Harry in the dark — not for one book, not for two, but for essentially seven years of his life — about the nature of the prophecy, about the Horcruxes, about what Harry ultimately has to do to defeat Voldemort, is extraordinarily irresponsible. Dumbledore’s explanation is essentially that Harry needed to grow into the knowledge. That he wasn’t ready.
Harry spent seven years nearly dying on a regular basis. He was ready.
I love you, Dumbledore. You are one of literature’s great characters. You also made some deeply questionable decisions and then conveniently died before you had to answer for most of them.
12. Tony Stark — Marvel Cinematic Universe
Tony Stark is cool. Tony Stark is funny. Robert Downey Jr. made him one of the defining characters of a generation of blockbuster filmmaking. I understand his appeal on every level.
I also think it’s worth noting that Tony Stark is personally responsible for a staggering percentage of the villains in the MCU’s Infinity Saga. Ultron? Tony built him. The Mandarin/Killian situation in Iron Man 3? Tony’s dismissiveness created that. Whiplash? Tony’s father wronged his father, and Tony inherited the consequences. Even Thanos, in a roundabout way, is partly a problem that Tony’s ego helped along — if the team had been more unified, less fractured by the Sokovia Accords (which Tony pushed for), maybe the outcome looks different.
Tony spends the first several films making messes and then cleaning them up in ways that generate new messes. He gets a heroic arc, and it’s genuinely earned by the end. But let’s not act like the road to that sacrifice wasn’t paved with a remarkable amount of avoidable chaos.
He’s Iron Man. He’s also kind of a walking liability.
None of this means these movies are bad. They’re not. Most of them are genuinely great. But sometimes the best films in our lives are the ones honest enough to include a character who makes us want to throw something at our television screen — and then keep watching anyway.
That’s the magic of movies.
Even when Grandpa Joe is in them.
The Confusing Middle 