Film / Throw Momma from the Train

Owen asked his friend Larry for a small favor.

Throw Momma from the Train is a 1987 American Black Comedy film directed by Danny DeVito (his directorial debut), who stars along with Billy Crystal.

Writer Larry Donner (Crystal), suffering from severe writer's block, has taken to teaching writing to aspiring (if not necessarily talented) would-be writers, and thus meets simpleton Owen Lift (DeVito). Larry is wracked with jealous rage over his ex-wife Margaret (Kate Mulgrew), who became a world-famous author after stealing his book and publishing it as her own. Owen, meanwhile, fantasizes about offing his abusive Momma (Anne Ramsey).

After being instructed by Larry to see some Hitchcock films to help him learn how to write murder mysteries, Owen comes to believe Larry was secretly sending him a message to exchange murders after watching Strangers on a Train: Owen is to kill Margaret, and Larry is to kill Owen's monstrous mother in turn. Larry becomes entwined with the idiot "couch potato" when he goes on the lam due to being a major suspect in Margaret's murder, since Owen failed to tell him of his intent and didn't allow Larry to create an alibi.

Anne Ramsey earned an Academy Award nomination for her role as Momma, and passed away a year later.

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"Throw Momma from the Tropes":

• Actor Allusion: Anne Ramsey was better known for playing another evil "Mama"^note Fratelli who lorded over another childlike son.
• Adaptation Decay: An in-universe example of Owen's new book. A children's pop-up book version of the events of the movie.
• An Aesop: Dwelling on past mistakes and hatred towards people who wronged you will not lead you anywhere and is actually self-destructive. Let go of it, learn from your experiences and just go on with your life. Realizing this finally allows Larry to break out of his writer's block and make a new book, which turns out to be a bestseller.
• Affectionate Parody: Of Hitchcock mystery films, with Strangers on a Train central to the plot (and featuring multiple Plot Parallels).
• Ambiguous Innocence: Owen's a really naive Manchild, but he is eerily casual about murdering a complete stranger.
• Arc Words: "Criss cross!"^note An unusual variant in which the arc words are being spoken by a character in another film!
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: After Larry tells Beth that Margaret has been killed, Beth says that she feels nauseous. Larry's reply:
  Larry: Oh, great. Margaret's dead, I have no alibi, and now you're mad because I've upset your stomach.
• Asshole Victim:
  • Larry's ex-wife, Margaret. Ultimately subverted in that she didn't die.
  • Momma's not much better, being at best abusive of Owen. However, she's also suffering dementia. Also subverted, because while she does die, it's from natural causes.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!:
  Owen: (morosely) You're right. I'm a bad person. (sees dairy billboard) Look, cows!
• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Despite being My Beloved Smother, Momma really does love Owen. For example, when Owen manages to clear her ear canal (after fantasizing about shoving a pair of scissors through her brain, of course), she coos, "Owen! My little baby! My little baby!", kissing him on his forehead. During the final sequence, Owen decides he doesn't want Larry to kill her. It's never outright stated in the film, but Momma may be suffering severe dementia, and Owen - who isn't the brightest bulb in the box - is struggling to cope with it.
• Bad Liar: Owen, who attempts to present Larry as his cousin Paddy. His momma says he doesn't have a cousin Paddy, followed by Owen hitting Larry with a frying pan, exclaiming "You lied to me!"
• Bait-and-Switch:
  • Owen approaches slowly behind Larry in a laundromat with what looks like a garrote, looking like he's going to strangle him for giving him a hard time in writing class. He startles Larry, and apologizes, holding up a tie, saying Larry dropped it and he was worried it was going to get "rooned" in the rain.
  • Shortly before the finale, just as Larry is finished writing a new novel based on his experiences, Owen turns up and reveals he's already made — and published — a book based on events from the movie as well. Just as Larry is going in for the kill, furious that he was apparently robbed of his idea and work again, it turns out that what Owen has actually written is merely a children's pop-up book with kid-friendly retelling of what really happened.
• Bedroom Adultery Scene: Owen is hiding behind the couch upon which Margaret and Mr. Lopez are having sex...and takes the time to flip through an issue of Us Magazine. The phone rings, and Owen pushes it to where the oblivious Margaret can reach it leading to...
  • Coitus Uninterruptus: Margaret is able to have sex and carry on an intelligent telephone conversation with her agent at the same time.
• Berserk Button: Larry has many of them, including any mention of his wife becoming famous. It's even a Running Gag that he uses the Insistent Terminology that she's his Ex-wife. EX-WIFE. Another one is plagiarism — rather justified because of the aforementioned issue. He even immediately changes the way that he describes that It Was a Dark and Stormy Night in the book he's trying to write (and we spend a long scene seeing him trying to decide which word to use) when it turns out that Owen starts his own story using the same word. The film even briefly segues into a near-Here We Go Again! when he discovers that Owen also made a book based on their experiences in the film, until Owen shows him that it's a children's book with a wholly different ending.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Owen is an impossibly nice Shrinking Violet — but is perfectly willing to commit cold-blooded premeditated murder without blinking.
• Brick Joke: Mr. Pinsky, a student in Larry's creative writing class, creates a controversy in the class due to his planned coffee table book, titled '100 Girls I'd like to Pork'. The other students argue about it and Larry says that it 'isn't literature.' When the students are being interrogated by the police over Larry's possible involvement in Margaret's disappearance, Pinsky's police offer is too busy looking at his book ("It's a coffee table book", Pinsky explains.) Right at the end of the movie, we see Mr. Pinsky's published coffee table book sitting on Larry's desk.
• Buffy Speak/Department of Redundancy Department:
  • Mrs. Hazeltine's bad writing results in a less-than-descriptive short story.
    Mrs. Hazeltine: "Dive! Dive!" yelled the Captain through the thing! So the man who makes it dive pressed a button, or a something, and it dove. And, the enemy was foiled again. "Looks like we foiled them again," said Dave. "Yeah," said the Captain. "We foiled those bastards again. Didn't we, Dave." "Yeah," said Dave. The End.
  • Owen's murder mystery always involves "one guy in the hat trying to kill the other guy in the hat."
• Butt-Monkey: The universe is not kind to Larry. His ex-wife gets rich off a story she stole from him (and his agent signs her as a client), he's stuck in a dead-end job teaching a creative writing class to the worst aspiring authors out there, gets wrangled into a crime due to his student's stupidity, and suffers all kinds of pain and humiliation along the way. As if to illustrate this point, Momma hangs her shawl up on a basement door that's been rigged to fall and send her tumbling to her death down the stairs, and even knocks on it for good measure, to no effect. But when Larry tests it out, it collapses immediately and sends him hurling down the stairs!
• The Cameo:
  • Oprah Winfrey As Herself.
  • Rob Reiner as Larry's once and future literary agent.
• Cane Fu: Momma uses her cane to good effect beating up Larry.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: This exchange, while Larry and Owen are in a car with no brakes hurtling through a wooded area:
  Owen: Larry, Larry! Larry, you're originally from the East, aren't you, Larry?
  Larry: (nonplussed) Owen!
  Owen: We had a man on our block once was from the East, Mr. Brockman. He was in the button business.
  Larry: Is that right?
  Owen: Yeah. (points to the tree branches striking the windshield) This is good! It's like the Flintstones' car wash!
• Catapult Nightmare: When Larry is in the hospital after falling off the train, he dreams of strangling Margaret, and her face becoming his face while he's doing it. He cries out as he wakes up, rockets to a sitting position and, in a cold sweat, figures out what he's supposed to do to get rid of all the poison he's been carrying: Write a book about it.
• Catchphrase:
  Pinsky: It's.. a coffee table book.
  Larry: That's it, and that's all!
• Central Theme: Trains appear constantly in the film.
• The Chew Toy: Larry and Owen both.
• Coitus Interruptus:
  • Owen interrupts Larry and Beth's lovemaking on a kid's train.
  • Larry also busts in on his best friend Lester in bed with a girl he picked up, a "Mrs. Gladstone". Humorously, Lester's date destroys Larry's alibi, since she just happens to be a stewardess.
• Comically Missing the Point: And how. Owen gets the wrong message when Larry tells him to go see a Hitchcock movie. In fact, the first thing Owen says when Larry suggests it is to brightly ask like a happy puppy, "You wanna go to the movies with me?"
• Contrived Coincidence: Larry suggests that Owen go see a Hitchcock film to better understand how mystery/thriller stories are written. Owen does so the very next day, and Strangers on a Train just happens one of the films that is playing.
• Crazy-Prepared: Owen surprisingly had the foresight to purchase his plane ticket to Hawaii in Larry's name, thus preventing Larry from using the ticket as evidence against Owen.
• Deconstruction: The film shows how two people just meeting and exchanging murders isn't the perfect crime, contrary to a "Strangers on a Train"-Plot Murder.
• Determinator: Owen and Momma.
• Digging Yourself Deeper: Larry running around and telling everyone he has no alibi for Margaret's murder does him no favors, especially when the police interview witnesses. It makes Beth suspicious as well.
• Disappeared Dad: Owen lost his father when he was still a kid, and it apparently left a pretty big hole. The revelation comes during a rather touching scene where Owen shows off his "coin collection," consisting of the loose change his father let him keep when they would go on recreational outings.
• The Ditz: Owen drifts into this territory several times.
• Evil Old Folks: Momma to the End. Aversion: see Reality Is Unrealistic. She's also an Evil Matriarch.
• Fantasy Sequence:
  • Owen imagines killing his mother several times over the course of the movie, with poisoned soda, with scissors through her ears, and by bowling.
  • Larry has a fantasy of strangling his wife. He then imagines he's strangling himself.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: Owen's book Mama and Owen and Owen's Friend Larry ends with the trio having a picnic in a park. Cut to Larry, Owen and Beth having a picnic on the beach.
• Frying Pan of Doom: Owen lies and says Larry is his cousin Paddy. When Momma retorts he doesn't have a cousin Paddy, Owen looks at Larry and whacks him over the head with a frying pan, exclaiming, "You lied to me!"
• Gainax Ending: In-Universe, the way Larry ends his book Throw Momma From the Train: "Hate makes you impotent, love makes you crazy, somewhere in the middle you can survive."
  Owen: It's cryptic!^note Beth ends up agreeing with Owen.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: One of Larry's students who overheard Larry screaming, "That slut! I hate her, I wish she was dead!" tells the police, "He called her a very bad name, and screamed, 'I hate her, I wish she were dead.'"
• Groin Attack: Momma reveals she's Not Quite Dead from Owen's attempt to kill her with a trumpet by whacking Larry in the crotch with her cane.
  Larry: She's not a woman. She's The Terminator.
• Homage: Another to Alfred Hitchcock: Owen is Norman Bates, except his oppressive mother is actually alive.
• Idiot Ball:
  • In-Universe, Larry's literary agent blames Larry for not telling anyone about the book he was writing, making it easy for Margaret to steal it.
  • Larry really shouldn't have run around asking friends about having an alibi for Margaret's murder.
• Imagine Spot: Owen has a couple over the course of the movie, all of which are him fantasizing about killing his mom. First by poisoning her and watching her choke and scream to death, and again by impaling her head with a pair of scissors.
• Inspiration Nod: The movie is built around the same let's-trade-murders plot as Strangers on a Train. This is directly referenced in the scene where writing teacher Larry tells his hapless student Owen to watch some Hitchcock for inspiration. Owen watches the first few minutes of Strangers, immediately recognizes the similarity to his current situation, and runs off to kill Larry's wife.
• Intentionally Awkward Title: The title of Owen's pop-up book: Mama and Owen and Owen's Friend Larry
• I Should Write a Book About This: The epilogue shows that Larry decided to write a fictional account of the movie's events, titled Throw Momma From The Train. Owen makes one as well, Mama and Owen and Owen's Friend Larry, which is significantly Lighter and Softer (it ends with the three of them having a picnic in the park, for example).
• It Was a Dark and Stormy Night: All of Larry's attempts to write during his writer's block start "The night was..." Pointedly, when Larry snaps out of his writer's block, his story does not begin with that phrase.
• I Will Show You X!: Larry, as he's chasing Momma through the train:
  "'Sultry.' I'll show you something sultry, Mrs. Lift!"
• Jerkass: Momma and Margaret. The former is perpetually angry and abusive to her son, and the latter cheated on her husband and plagiarized his story without remorse.
• Karma Houdini:
  • Larry's ex-wife gets away with stealing his book, and all the accolades with it, and at the end is set to make more money with the story of how she survived falling off the ship. Larry's victory is simply that he learns to stop obsessing over her, which lets him write another great book. (Then again, her success may not last; she seems intent on milking the book for all it's worth, ie. benefiting from the film rights, but it's tough to follow an act that wasn't yours in the first place, and now that Larry's found success he would have an easier time proving she stole his work. Adding to that, even if Larry weren't successful in writing a new book, Margaret's plan still has 2 fatal flaws in it. 1: She's blowing through the money faster than you could say "bankruptcy", without a plan to make more once the hype of "her" book dies down. And 2: She keeps constantly saying in interviews that she not only has an ex-husband who was also a writer, but one in the same genre who has been published before, meaning sooner or later people are going to read Larry's work and find out they're a little too similar. It's not even wishful thinking to conclude that Margaret's only a Karma Houdini because of where the movie ended — though it's likely she'll simply be a One-Book Author which, for someone as self-centered and attention hungry as Margaret, is karma enough.)
  • A straighter example is Larry's literary agent, who knew Margaret stole his book and signed her as a new client — then after the In-Universe book Throw Momma From the Train, he's once again Larry's agent.
• Lack of Empathy: When Larry accidentally springs the trap set for Momma Lift, falls down the stairs and presumably dies. She merely says "Pain in the ass!" and walks away. Then when Owen finds Larry and mourns him, Momma mocks Owen, calls him a crybaby and tells him to bury Larry in the yard before he stinks up the place.
• Large Ham: Momma. Between this and The Goonies, we can see that Anne Ramsey surely loved chewing the scenery.
  • In-Universe, Mrs. Hazeltine is unnecessarily dramatic in almost everything she says.
• Lawful Stupid: Larry. He is so sensitive about plagiarism, he changes his story from "The night was humid." to "The night was moist." when he discovers Owen started his writing assignment the same way. Probably justified, in that his hateful ex-wife stole his novel, passed it off as her own and it became a bestseller, which would be enough to give anyone a complex about the subject.
• Life Will Kill You: How Momma ultimately dies.
• Loners Are Freaks: Owen. He gets better when he has friends in the end.
• Mad Libs Catchphrase: Momma. "Get away from me, you [insult]!"
• Made of Iron: Larry gets abused during the film, including getting hit over the head with a frying pan, getting his nuts crushed by a cane, tumbling violently down a flight of stairs, and pushed off a moving train. Momma even thinks he's dead after falling down the stairs!
• Mood Whiplash: A lot of it. One example has a depressed Owen talking about how evil he is for killing Margaret, then brightly exclaiming "Cows!" when he sees a dairy billboard.
  Larry: [listening to the news] Oh, poor, poor, Margaret... that SLUT! SLUT! SHE IS A SLUT SLUT!... I'm gonna fry!
• My Beloved Smother: Momma is probably the cinematic Trope Codifier, though part of it is that Owen is unable to handle his mother's dementia.
• Nightmare Sequence: Near the end of the movie, Larry has a dream where he attacks his ex-wife and strangles her with his bare hands. After a few moments, the face of Margaret is suddenly replaced by Larry's own face. This causes him to violently wake up in cold sweat.
• Nipple and Dimed: Margaret is wearing a robe when Mr. Lopez arrives and is shown lying on top of him when they have sex on the couch, though there is no actual nudity.
• No Antagonist: Margaret and Momma are just MacGuffins; the plot revolves around Larry learning to get over the past and Owen learning to cope with his mother.
• No Indoor Voice: Larry yells in this film. A lot. As does Momma.
• One-Book Author: In-Universe, Margret seems to be satisfied with milking the hell out of Hot Fire, and not even attempt to write another book. (Though she never even wrote this one to begin with.)
• The Paranoiac: Momma, thanks to her dementia. In separate occasions, she thinks Owen's book writing are "letters to her" or to have people come to "take her away".
• Pet the Dog: Momma shows some sincere affection towards Owen and calls him her "baby boy" after he cleans out her ears (in another failed attempt to kill her).
• Plagiarism in Fiction: A whole lot of the plot happens because Larry's ex-wife stole his completed pamphlet and managed to become rich and famous with it.
• Poor Communication Kills: All what Larry told Owen to do was to watch a movie made by Alfred Hitchcock in order to help him understand how to make a decent story for murder mystery. Instead, Owen got the bright idea that Larry actually wants him to reenact the plot from said movie by murdering his ex-wife — and expects him to do likewise to his Momma in return.
• Precision F-Strike: Mr. Pinsky's book was titled, "100 Girls I'd Like To Fuck". It was changed to "Pork" in ADR to get the film a PG-13 rating and avoid an R rating (Billy Crystal is very clearly mouthing the word "Fuck" when he reads the title and the audio is clearly a dub).
  • Two did manage to make the final cut of the film, though:
  Larry: Fuck it! (typing) "The night... was... humid!" That's it, and that's all! (big sigh)^note Using "fuck" in a sexual context is an automatic R rating, whereas if it's used as an expletive, the film stays PG-13 if it's used four or fewer times.
  Lester: (in a later scene) Whatever it is, you're fucking guilty, man.
• Product Placement: There are several obvious close-up shots of brand names throughout the film, including a Zenith TV remote (when Larry turns on the TV to see Margaret on Oprah), Scotch tape (when Larry starts putting tape on his face out of boredom), and a Pepsi bottle (during Owen's aborted attempt to poison Momma).
• Psychopathic Man Child: Owen is definitely a Man Child, but he is also willing to kill.
• Racist Grandma: Momma in one scene call Larry a "black bastard."
• Reality Is Unrealistic: Momma's behavior may seem extreme and unrealistic, but many older people do get paranoid and harsh in their later years for the same fears Momma has.
• "Reason You Suck" Speech: While at the hospital, Larry gets some much-needed slating from his fellow patient, who calls him out on his obsession with Margaret and total inability to simply move on with his own life. This (along with a Nightmare Sequence that follows) makes Larry finally shape up and get an idea for a new book.
• Recycled IN SPACE: Strangers on a Train AS A SELF-REFERENTIAL COMEDY!
• The Reveal: Margret was never pushed off the boat by Owen. She slipped off by herself trying to reach some fallen jewelry. Even more, she was rescued and never died in the first place.
• Rhetorical Request Blunder: Owen overhears Larry saying he wished his wife were dead. Guess what happens. To be fair, Owen doesn't get the idea to kill Margaret until Larry tells him to go to the Hitchcock films being screened at a local theater (to understand how a mystery novel works), and goes on about how his characters have no motivation to commit murder. Unfortunately, for Larry, one of the films being screened is Strangers on a Train, which is all about murder motives, and Owen thinks Larry intentionally wanted him to see that particular film which is very close to their current situation.
• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: Momma, who else?.
  Momma: Who the hell are you?
  Larry: I'm one of Owen's friends.
  Momma: Owen doesn't HAVE any friends.
  Larry: That's because he's shy.
  Momma: No, he's not! He's fat and he's stupid!
• Senior Creep: Momma, whom Owen wants to kill for this very reason. She even provides the page image.
• Shout-Out:
  • Strangers on a Train: The whole plot happens because Owen decides to copy the murder method of the film, without understanding the importance of the "strangers" part of the plot (or anything else, for that matter).
  • A Tale of Two Cities. Larry on the train talks to Owen about the perfect beginning of a novel and mentions A Tale Of Two Cities, "It was the best of times it was the worst of times..." Momma late in the film gives Larry a perfect opening for his abortive novel, "The night was sultry". This is a variation of the line, "The night was so very sultry" from A Tale Of Two Cities.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Mrs. Hazeltine, who lashes at one writing student that he's "a no talent little shit". She's completely oblivious to her own pathetically bad writing skills.
  Larry: And your metaphors... "His face oozed nice like a melted malted"...
  Mrs. Hazeltine: Too harsh?
  Larry: A tad.
• Smug Snake: During her appearance on Oprah, Margaret is at her most insufferable.
• Stalker with a Crush: Owen, and how.^note Considering the source material, it's pretty appropriate.
• "Strangers on a Train"-Plot Murder: The entire plot revolves around Owen being inspired by the actual film to kill Larry's ex-wife in exchange that Larry kill his mother. Roger Ebert even noted that while stealing from other movies was common, this one was at least blatantly honest about it.
• Suspect Is Hatless: While the Trope is played straight in Owen's murder mystery, said murderer is ironically described as wearing a hat.
  Owen: The guy in the hat killed the other guy in the hat.
• This Is No Time to Panic: Spoken by Owen after Momma recognizes Larry as the chief suspect in Margaret's murder.
  Larry: This is the PERFECT time to panic!
• Title Drop: The name of Larry's novel is Throw Momma from the Train.
• Titled After the Song: It's a play on the awkwardly-worded chorus of the 1956 Patti Page song "Mama from the Train".
  Throw mama from the train a kiss, a kiss
  Wave mama from the train a goodbye
  Throw mama from the train a kiss, a kiss
  And don't cry, my baby, don't cry
• Tranquil Fury: "Where are you going?" "I'm gonna kill the bitch. You want anything?"^note "Can you get me a Chunky?"
• Unnamed Parent: Momma's first name is never spoken.
• Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Beth thinks Larry had one with Owen.
  Beth: What did you say? "Please don't kill my wife, wink wink?"
• What You Are in the Dark: Larry's dream about killing Margaret near the end of the film.
  • Owen frequently has opportunity to either kill his mother, or allow Larry to do it. Invariably, he chooses not to, always out of concern for her.
• Whole-Plot Reference: Strangers on a Train.
• Win-Win Ending: In the end, Margaret got away with stealing Larry's story and got rich and famous off of it. However, Larry and Owen both write their own bestsellers, and it is strongly hinted that Owen and Momma had reconciled, with the latter passing away peacefully.
• Write What You Know: In-Universe, the hidden writing Aesop of the film. While Larry criticizes Mrs. Hazeltine for not knowing the names of the instruments on a submarine, and praises another student for using his experiences in the Naugahyde industry to write a compelling exposé, he doesn't conquer his writer's block until he writes of his experiences with Owen.
• Wrote a Good Fake Story: Mr. Pinsky, a middle-aged student in Larry's writing class, is working on a "coffee table book" called 100 Girls I'd Like to Pork. Larry and several students accuse him of just making a list of women he wants to have sex with, but others are somehow intrigued by the premise. By the end, we see that he has written a weighty coffee table book simply titled Pinsky, and Larry even agrees to write the foreword.
• You Are Fat: Larry does toss some fat jokes Owen's way, like calling him a "couch potato".
  Larry: (watching Owen in a bathing suit and ready to dive) Watch this, Beth. Have you ever seen a Weeble snorkel?

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