Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
The Movie Life Lesson: Live in the moment. It’s OK to skip school with your carefree bezzie and ruin your dad’s prized Ferrari in order to reach a teenage car-tharsis (ha!).
Why It’s Impossible In Real Life: Trashing your Dad’s car might seem like the ultimate moment of self-realisation with your ballsy best bud by your side, but give it a while. The wrath of Papa won’t seem worth it when he hands you the repairs bill.
Stand By Me (1986)
The Movie Life Lesson: The best way to cement a lifelong friendship and come to terms with the harsh realities of life, is to make a pilgrimage to visit a corpse.
Why It’s Impossible In Real Life: If you were ever to hear from a friend’s older brother that there’s a dead body lying near the railway, then chances are the transport police already know about it. That’s them plans dashed.
And if you were to see it, damn, that’d more than likely scar you for life, forever twinning your associations of your friends with that of a putrefying dead body.
Yes Man (2008)
The Movie Life Lesson: Say yes to everything life has to offer, and all of your quandaries will be solved.
Why It’s Impossible In Real Life: Depending on whereabouts you were “yessing”, the location would determine an infinite number of outcomes, determining what exactly would happen to you.
Crime, marriage, unwanted exotic pets, a curry mix when you really wanted a pea mix... approach this lesson with extreme caution.
Dead Poets Society (1989)
The Movie Life Lesson: Seize the day! Rip up your textbooks! Stand atop your school desks and defy the rigid academic world!
Why It’s Impossible In Real Life: Destruction of school property? Standing on desks? That’ll be detentions all round, then.
Back To The Future (1985)
The Movie Life Lesson: If your life doesn't turn out as you'd expected, fear not, you can always go back in time and adjust the situation to your liking.
Why It’s Impossible In Real Life: Time travelling cars haven’t been invented, so it isn’t exactly a readily-available option. You’d be better off making better decisions first time round.
Eat Pray Love (2010)
The Movie Life Lesson: After going through a post-divorce life crisis, it’s best to take off on a trip round the world for a year to “find yourself”.
Why It’s Impossible In Real Life: Asking your boss for an extra day off around a bank holiday is a conversation workers dread more than root canals. So asking for a year off? You’ve a better chance of getting the boss to go at your verrucas with an old nail file.
Not to mention how will you finance it, what will you do with your humble abode, who’s gonna feed the cat? etc.
Forrest Gump (1994)
The Movie Life Lesson: Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get.
Why It’s Impossible In Real Life: Anyone given the dreaded task of finishing the leftover Noisette triangles at Christmas knows that indeed, the majority of chocolate boxes come with a guide, detailing exactly what you’re gonna get.
The lesson here should be that if life is like Forrest’s hypothesised box of chocolates, then we’d know everything about our lives from the get go. Which, thankfully, we don’t.
Fight Club (1999)
The Movie Life Lesson: The only way to save mankind is to blow up the offices of major corporations, therefore freeing us from the shackles of a capitalistic society.
Why It’s Impossible In Real Life: The police would crash your post-demolition celebratory bash and you’d get locked up for destruction of property. The imprisonment would impinge on the freedom you so desired. Bummer.
Working Girl (1988)
The Movie Life Lesson: Telling lies will get you what you want. Even if you engage in some rather duplicitous activities along the way.
Why It’s Impossible In Real Life: When your boss is off sick, upper management would never allow a new entry level employee take over the commands of a such a prestigious position. Even if you have got Melanie Griffiths’ fabulous ‘80s hair.
What Dreams May Come (1998)
The Movie Life Lesson: Death is not the end. You can adventure through the afterlife to retrieve your dead spouse. Then hightail it back to Earth as reincarnated skipping children!
Why It’s Impossible In Real Life: As it stands now, there’s no proof of an afterlife, or of the ability to travel within it.
Or, for that matter, whether or not Cuba Gooding Jr. will be there.
