English Lessons: Movie Titles With Incorrect Grammar

As previously mentioned, English grammar is very difficult to get to grips with. From punctuation to capitalisation, it can be a hard concept to get your head around. However practice makes perfect and that means practicing your grammar outside the classroom. Instead of burying your head in grammar books and searching through idioms, make your way through this list of movie titles and see if you can spot the grammatical errors.

The pursuit of happyness

Real Title: The Pursuit of Happyness

Correct Title: The Pursuit of Happiness

The incorrect spelling of the title comes from a mural that the main character sees outside of his son’s school, where the word ‘happiness’ is spelled with a ‘y’. He complains that it needs to be fixed.

Honey, I Shrunk The Kids

Real title: Honey, I Shrunk The Kids

Correct title: Honey, I’ve Shrunk The Kids

The real title uses an incorrect tense. In order to be correct, the title should read either ‘Honey I’ve Shrunk The Kids’ or ‘Honey I Shrank the Kids.’

Inglourious Basterds

Real title: Inglourious Basterds

Correct title: Inglorious Bastards

Although the directors of the movie intended to spell the title as it is, both words are spelt incorrectly.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Real title: Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Correct title: Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

The simple mistake here from the original title is the absence of a question mark. If you are asking a question, a question mark should always be used.

Two Weeks Notice

Real title: Two Weeks Notice

Correct title: Two Weeks’ Notice

Although both the incorrect and correct version are pronounced the same, because ‘two weeks’ describes the duration of the notice, you need the possessive form of the noun, ‘weeks’ ’. This is the same as saying ‘a notice of two weeks’.

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The 40 Year Old-Virgin

Real title: The 40 Year Old-Virgin

Correct title: The 40-Year-Old Virgin

When a group of words act together as an adjective before a noun, they usually have to be hyphenated together. The main character is 40 years old, so he is a 40-year-old virgin.

You Got Served

Real title: You Got Served

Correct title: You’ve Been Served

‘Get’ is sometimes used to replace ‘have’ or ‘has’, and ‘got’ to replace ‘have been’ or ‘has been’ but this usage is not standard. The correct title would be ‘You’ve Been Served’.

Did you manage to spot the errors in these movie titles? Can you think of any more grammatically incorrect movie titles?