As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.
- "GO GET MY GODDAMN PHONE BOOK! GET THE BOOK! GET THE BOOK! GET THE BOOK! GET THE BOOK!"
- And just before that, when Dottie comes barging into the observatory to bitch about him not coming to dinner.Dottie: Carl! Your Stouffer's pot pie has been on the table almost ten hours! I want a divorce!
- And just before that, when Dottie comes barging into the observatory to bitch about him not coming to dinner.
- "Beg'n your pardon, sir, but it's a big-ass sky."
- Naming the asteroid.Carl: I want to name her "Dottie," after my wife.
Dottie: [starts to smile]
Carl: She's a vicious, life-sucking bitch from which there is no escape...
Dottie: [calmly raises middle finger]
Truman: That... That's sweet, Carl. - Harry's Establishing Character Moment: hitting golf balls at a boat filled with Greenpeace protesters."Rise and shine!"
- Followed right after by some banter:
Harry: I give you fifty thousand a year in donations! What do you think they're so mad about, Chick?
Chick: Well, I think they feel that drilling for oil is an evil thing.
Harry: [to the protestors] D'you know how much diesel that clunker boat pumps out an hour?! - Harry chasing A.J. with a shotgun for catching him in bed with his daughter...and periodically shooting at him:
- After Harry finds Grace's bra in A.J.'s room, A.J. says "I'm at a loss for words."
- Trying to get Bear to stop him:Bear: [steps in Harry's path, hefting a positively gigantic pipe-fitting wrench] What's going on there, boss?
Harry: [gestures with shotgun] You don't want none of this, Bear!
Bear: [smirks] Just trying to give my boy a head start, that's all. [steps aside] - A.J. yelling to Harry that "This isn't funny anymore!", only for Harry to shoot at him again, causing him to cry out "FUDGE!"
- A little Conversational Troping between Chick and Harry:Chick: You really don't wanna go killing the best man on your team right before we strike oil.
Harry: Aw, shucks, Chick, I ain't gonna kill him, I'll just blow off a foot. A man can work with one foot. Remember old Frank Marshall, worked with one hand all them years?
Chick: Yeah, but he wasn't very good. - Even Rockhound tries to be a voice of reason:Rockhound: Whoa, Harry, man! This is illegal!
Harry: I'm temporarily insane, Rockhound. It's alright.- Ending with...A.J.: [cowering] Harry! Please! I'm serious! Man to man. [pause] I love her!
Harry: WAY WRONG ANSWER! [shoots, catching A.J. with Just a Flesh Wound in the leg, which makes A.J. Freak Out]
- Ending with...
- The entire Gondor Calls for Aid montage is loaded with laughs:
- When Grace suggests they bring in Max...
Harry: [beat] You got a weight limit on the shuttle?- Bear is less than cooperative with local law enforcement bringing him in...
Bear: [roaring down the freeway on a motorcycle] Come and get Papa Bear! - Rockhound breaking the tension after Harry tells them they have been chosen for a dangerous mission to save the world.Rockhound: [beat] I don't mean to be the materialistic weasel here, but... You think we'll get hazard pay outta this?
- The best scene for laughs is when the gang goes through the training exams.Max: [reacting to an immense hypodermic needle] Who's that for? Mr. Ed? You stick that thing in me, I'm gonna stab you in the heart with it. You ever see Pulp Fiction?
Rockhound: [carelessly tossing aside a solved Rubik's Cube] Piece of cake. You wanna compare brainpans? I won the Westinghouse prize when I was 12, big deal. Published at 19, so what. I got a double doctorate from MIT at 22, Chemistry and Geology. I taught at Princeton for two and a half years. Why do I do this? Because the money's good, the scenery changes, and they let me use explosives, okay? [smile]
Oscar: Hey, Freddie, you doing alright, man?
Freddie: [Hunched over, with an enema bag pouring into his ass] Does this look "okay" to you? Does this look okay?!
Max: [Happily trotting by] It's not so bad. It's kinda tingly!
Nurse: Mr. Chapel? You're next.
Chick: Aw, gee, lady. I just came here to drill.
Nurse: Oh! So did I. [pulls out a very ominous medical probe]
[Chick widens his eyes in horror as he hurries away]
Bear: I am not crazy! [begins crying] I'm just a little emotional right now, okay? Y'all throwing all this stuff at me, man! Look, I mean, after this is over, can I like get a hug from you or something?
Rockhound: Okay, Cyclops Lady's starting to bug me.- Can't forget the nurse singing the Star Spangled Banner as she gives Rockhound an enema.
- NASA's physicians reviewing the results of the medical tests and finding at least one had been using sedatives. Ones used on horses.Harry: [mass of stares by Truman and his staff] Some of these guys are pretty big.
- Then the doctor rattles on about just how unhealthy the drillers are as a whole, Truman pipes up:Truman: Can they physically survive the flight? That's all I'm asking.
Doctor: Personally, I don't know how they survived the tests!
[Cut to a pile of dossier papers getting slammed with a big "APPROVED" stamp]
- Then the doctor rattles on about just how unhealthy the drillers are as a whole, Truman pipes up:
- Rockhound's less than confident reaction to the assisted slingshot (called an Oberth maneuver
in real life)Rockhound: Yeah, I remember this one. It's where the, uh, the Coyote sat his ass down in a slingshot then he strapped himself to an Acme rocket. Is that... is that what we're doin' here?
Harry Stamper: Rockhound...
Rockhound: Really, because it didn't work out too well for the Coyote, Harry.
Truman: Well, actually, we have a lot better rockets than the Coyote. - Some of the drillers looking over pictures of Lev's family. Lev then very calmly describes the one (his uncle) that designed the warheads of the Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal, and how they were designed to seek out specific cities. American cities. He's very giddy about it. The drillers... aren't.
- This bit of gold between A.J. and our friendly Cosmonaut.A.J.: Have you ever heard of Evel Knievel?
Lev: No, I never saw Star Wars.- Moments later, when something goes wrong during their vehicular jump, it's time for Lev to save the day.A.J.: What are you doing?
Lev: I'm going outside.
A.J.: You're going outside?
Lev: I AM THE ONLY CERTIFIED ASTRONAUT HERE, AND I AM SAVING YOUR AMERICAN ASS!
Bear: [after Lev leaves] Yeah. You listen to him. Right.
- Moments later, when something goes wrong during their vehicular jump, it's time for Lev to save the day.
- There's also this little gem.Rockhound: [sitting astride the nuclear bomb and humming the William Tell Overture to himself] YEE-HAW! RIDE 'EM COWBOY! YIPPIE KAI OH KAI YAY!
Sharp: [gawking] GET OFF. THE NUCLEAR. WARHEAD.
Rockhound: I was doing that guy, from that movie, you know, Slim Pickens? Where he rides it all the way in, the nuclear warhead?
Sharp: [Death Glare] Now!
Rockhound: ...you didn't see that one, huh?
Harry: We got 700 ft. of hole to dig, Rockhound.
Rockhound: Alright. Just wanted to feel the power between my legs, brother. [dismounts] Hey Sharp! [chanting] No nukes! No nukes! No nukes!
[Sharp sighs in disgust]
Harry: You got any more bullets in that gun, Sharp? - During the tense "drawing straws" scene, we cut to all of the characters' faces, and then Lev looks at the straw he has drawn."...Is this good, or bad?"
- Lev, the Russian Hero, has this to say to bitchy prima donna astronauts who disrespect the man who had kept Mir running for the past eighteen months. Alone.Lev: American components, Russian components, all made in TAIWAN!
- And when the cowgirl starts to panic, the cosmonaut then proceeds to repair the state-of-the-art spacecraft she couldn't. By wailing on the multi-million dollar engine control equipment with a hammer.
- Harry asks the guys where Grace went off to and they automatically respond "with A.J." and then remember that Harry doesn't want them together and try to retract the statement...badly.
- The sequence of NASA trying to round up the guys, particularly, "COME AND GET PAPA BEAR!"
- The team's "requests" before agreeing to go on the mission. Particularly the very last one:Harry: Yeah, uh, one more thing, uh... none of them wanna... pay taxes again. Ever. (chuckles, shrugs)
- Another one is to know who actually killed JFK. All Harry gets out of them on this one is a mass of silent stares.
- Grace's chat with her father about growing up with roughnecks.Grace: First time I got my period, Rock had to take me into Taipei for Tampax. And then he had to show me how to use them, Harry.
Rockhound: [off Harry's stern look] Ho-ho. I ju- No, I-I told her how to use it. I didn't show her, Harry. - "So we're going swimming on this asteroid? Is that what this is for?"
- Lev tells A.J. to pull a lever if the fuel gauge goes over 200. It starts going way over the limit, so A.J. yanks on the lever only to have it break off in his hands.Lev: Pull... lever!
A.J. [waving broken handle] THIS IS THE LEVER! - After Lev and A.J. have narrowly escaped the exploding space station:A.J.: Pretty intense, huh?
Lev: That's why I told you - touch nothing! But you're... bunch of cowboys. - After a very tense Wire Dilemma, Max has had enough of the crazy shit happening to them in space.Max: [groans and dejectedly walks away] Ugh. God it sucks up here.
- From the DVD Commentary, Ben Affleck's completely undisguised disdain for the movie's suggestion that it's easier to turn drillers into astronauts than to turn astronauts into drillers.Ben Affleck: I mean this is a bit of a logic stretch, let's face it. "They don't know jack about drilling?" How hard can it be? Aim the drill at the ground and turn it on!
- Roger Ebert's review of the film:Staggering into the silence of the theater lobby after the ordeal was over, I found a big poster that was fresh off the presses with the quotes of junket blurbsters. "It will obliterate your senses!" reports David Gillin, who obviously writes autobiographically. "It will suck the air right out of your lungs!" vows Diane Kaminsky.If it does, consider it a mercy killing.
