Two movies I saw recently made me think again how funny it is, in some unspecified way, that we might not know how many jokes we miss through not having all the right cultural references.

The first one, which made me think "Wow, I bet nobody in the USA even realised that was a joke!", was a scene in the Wallace & Gromit movie "A Close Shave". I saw it on video a few nights ago, for the second time. Watching the hysterical Thunderbirds satire sequence when Wallace goes through all the contraptions to get onto his motorbike, the garden pond flipping over, and all that, I suddenly recalled having to tell people on this forum about Thunderbirds because NONE OF YOU AMERICANS HAVE SEEN IT!!! Oh, the tragedy! And that was one of the funniest parts of the movie, too.

The other example approached it from the other direction. We went to see "Chicken Run" last night (awesome movie!) and there was a preview for "Rocky and Bullwinkle", which is apparently based on a US cartoon. It didn't look like a movie I'll be rushing to see, but the funny part was that it had these baddies called Boris and Natasha. I sat there thinking, "Gosh. So *that's* what that scene in "True Lies" was all about. Hmm, that was kinda funny, now that I get the joke."

Brunnen-"six or seven years to get a joke, I think that's a record"G