Film / Screwed

Screwed is a 2000 film about a chauffeur by the name of Willard Filmore (Norm Macdonald) who, fed up with his boss' abusive behavior, concocts a plan with his friend Rusty (Dave Chappelle) to kidnap her precious dog Muffin in order to get a ransom from her. However, something goes horribly wrong on the night of the heist. The dog escapes their custody, but the damage caused during the heist lead authorities to believe that it was Willard who was kidnapped, causing the two would-be dognappers to struggling to find a clean escape from an ever exacerbating situation.

The film also stars Elaine Stritch as Willard's crusty old boss Virginia Crock, Danny DeVito as a less-than-stable coroner, Sherman Hemsley as Ms. Crock's greedy sycophantic partner, and Sarah Silverman as Willard's girlfriend Hillary.

This film provides examples of:

• Accidental Kidnapping: When Miss Crock's dog, Muffin, escapes from Willard and Rusty, the public think WILLARD was kidnapped.
• Atomic F-Bomb: Ms. Crock delivers one after the Chip tells her that the Danes are going to cancel their deal and walk if she doesn't save her company's reputation, leading to a Distant Reaction Shot of her letting out a single echoing "FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!" before cutting to a press conference of her agreeing to pay the ransom.
• Bad Boss: Miss Virginia Crock.
• Berserk Button: Willard loses it twice in the film. First, he gets a pie and cufflinks for Christmas instead of a new suit. Then, near the film's climax, he finally rages at Miss Crock for her mistreatment of him throughout the years.
• Bloody Hilarious: Willard gets bitten by Miss Crock's dog while trying to kidnap him, and his blood sprays all over the place.
• Born into Slavery: Willard lived in Miss Crock's house his whole life, taking up his father's position as manservant of the house.
• Butt-Monkey: Everybody.
• Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Nobody gets away with anything in this film, to the point where you could call this film "Can't Get Away With Nuthin': The Movie". Though at the end, Chip ends up taking the fall for pretty much everything, having been caught red-handed with the ransom money he swapped with cabbage for the initial drop. Willard gets a generous severance, and takes his friends to move to a tropical paradise, and Grover moves in with Ms. Crock.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Grover leads a Jack Lord fan club (of which he appears to be the sole member), is a coroner who likes to collect the trinkets he finds in dead bodies, and owns an M60 Machine Gun and RPG Launcher.
• The Coroner: Grover Cleaver
• Crooks Are Better Armed: Police are never seen with anything more than ordinary handguns. Grover somehow got his hands on an M-60 machine gun and a Rocket Launcher.
• Death Faked for You: Willard attempts to work with a coroner by the name of Grover Cleaver, but of course, this goes wrong when Grover picks a corpse whose only matching details are gender and skin color.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: After everyone thinks Willard is the victim, he and Rusty improvise more and more wild plans to milk the situation for more money and dissuade the cops from investigating further, which only serves to make things more troublesome for everyone involved.
• Fan Disservice: When the police arrest Chip, we get a nice view of sixty-year-old Sherman Hemsley in a Speedo.
• Gone Horribly Right: When Willard and Rusty find out Muffin escaped, the destruction (and Willard's blood) at the crime scene makes everyone think it was Willard that got kidnapped, and they're able formulate a new plan to get even more money from Miss Crock.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: This film LIVES this trope. Just about everything fails to go according to plan, resulting in an ever-exacerbating Gambit Pileup.
• Grumpy Old Lady: Ms. Crock. She's impatient, impolite to nearly everyone (especially Willard), and absurdly stingy with her considerable wealth.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: In the end, Miss Crock lightens up after coming clean with him why she was always so hard on him, letting him retire with a generous severance, and even sends Willard a new suit and her best wishes for Willard's time at a community college.
• Kavorka Man: Grover gets a happy ending as Miss Crock's new lover, after abducting her.
• Kids Are Cruel: See Satisfied Street Rat below.
• Large Ham: Just about everyone gets a chance to go over the top, particularly Ms. Crock and Grover.
• Loony Fan: Grover Cleaver is one of Jack Lord. He is the President and sole member of a Jack Lord fan club and the single full-sized cardboard figure of Lord as Steve McGarrett he owns, in contrast to his dusty and Spartan room, is as creepy as a full-blown Room Full of Crazy.
• Meaningless Villain Victory: Chip successfully manages to screw Willard out of the ransom money of faking his own abduction, but he reveals being a two-faced jerk to Miss Crock (who paid as requested, even when Willard believed she was not going to) and, because the police had a record of the ransom's serial numbers, he is eventually traced and arrested and (accidentally) turned into the Fall Guy of the abduction.
• Oh, Crap!: This film is FULL of these moments.
• Punny Name: Willard Fillmore and Grover Cleaver are both plays on the names of U.S. Presidents Millard Fillmore and Grover Cleveland.
• Running Gag: Rusty tends to hit people with whatever he can get his hands on (namely a desk lamp) when he's scared. First he hits Chip with a lamp from Ms. Crock's nightstand, then he hits the detective with his own desk lamp, and finally he takes out Chip with a lava lamp at gunpoint.
• Satisfied Street Rat: Willard encounters two after getting the suitcase with the ransom money. They behave like grown up thugs, demanding his suitcase, before stabbing him in the leg, kicking him on the ground, then tasing him.
• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: Ms. Crock has very little tact when it comes to anyone she isn't making a business deal. Even when handing over the ransom to the "kidnapper", she behaves indignantly and berates him for being a criminal. When the police question her on trying to figure out why anyone would kidnap her chauffeur, she can only answer "Not that I know of" to all their questions.
  Detective: Ma'am, this man worked for you for 15 years, and you don't know if he has any friends or enemies?
  Chip: Look, Detective, Ms. Crock has told you everything she knows.
  Detective: What are you talking about? She hasn't told me anything!
  Ms. Crock: [Gets up] Look! If it makes you happy, you go right ahead and find Willard Fillmore... As for me, it's time for my nap! [Leaves]
  • And later when Willard and Rusty release the "kibble" video to the news, and she's swarmed by the press at her house.
    Reporter: Your chauffeur was chained up like a dog! Don't you have any compassion?!
    Ms. Crock: I'll show you "compassion." GET YOUR ASSES OFF MY PROPERTYYYYYY!!!
• Serial Escalation: Once everyone else believes it was 'Willard that got taken, he and Rusty decide not only to roll with it, but to also suddenly and completely without provocation demand five times the initial ransom.
  Willard: Come on, Rusty, I'm better than a dog! I'm five times better!
  Ms Crock: [Reading a new ransom note] "FIVE. Million. Dollars?!"
  Chip: It's repugnant!
  Ms Crock: It's like a rise in stock! Why did he jump from ONE to FIVE?!
• Sharp-Dressed Man: Defied by the penny-pinching Ms. Crock. Willard's ratty chauffeur suit that's been falling apart for the last 15 years is the same one his father wore when he was Crock's chauffeur for 15 years until his death. And not only was the man buried in it, Ms. Crock convinced the undertaker to give it back so she could give it to Willard.
  Willard: Ms. Crock, it's Christmas, and I'm only asking for a new uniform.
  Ms. Crock: Only a new uniform? Then it'll be only a new broom, maybe? And pretty soon I will be only BANKRUPT!
• Title Drop: Grover sees that his face in on wanted posters everywhere and just goes into hysterics, running down the street shouting "I'm screwed! I'm screwed! I'm screwed!"
• Toilet Humor: "Sweet Jesus, we kidnapped a turd!"
• Too Dumb to Live: Arguably the main protagonist duo, but Grover is something special. First he picks out a corpse that is all kinds of wrong for the purposes of impersonating Willard (the only details he got right were the gender and skin color of the body), then he just dumps the body at a wax museum in broad daylight (giving police an incredibly accurate sketch for the wanted posters), then opts to just kidnap Ms Crock himself and writes a ransom note on his own personalize stationary. Then when a cop car arrives at his location (driven by Willard and Rusty), his first instinct is to ventilate the vehicle with a machine gun.