If you’ve ever finished a movie and thought, “This entire crisis could’ve been avoided with one seriously steamy hookup,” congratulations, you’re officially aligned with the internet this week. A chaotic, oddly insightful discussion has taken off on social media, where film fans are playfully diagnosing some of the meanest movie villains and protagonist meltdowns and boiling them down to one blunt solution: someone needed to get laid in a Heated Rivalry-level sex scene. Shockingly, the Grinch came up more times than I would have imagined.
Cinema’s Most Sex-Starved Protagonists, According to Reddit
The conversation popped up on r/okbuddycinephile, and the prompt was deceptively simple: “Movies that would be solved if the protagonist just got laid?” Paired with an image fromBlack Swan, the thread immediately chose violence.
Taxi Driver became ground zero almost immediately, with users arguing that Travis Bickle’s entire spiral might’ve been avoided with even one functional relationship. The King of Comedy caught similar heat, with one commenter wishing for “a movie like Taxi Driver and The King of Comedy combined,” a line that felt less like a joke and more like a sideways jab at 2019’s Joker — and yes, Joaquin Phoenix’s version of the character was heavily represented throughout the thread.
Misery fans argued Paul Sheldon’s real mistake wasn’t getting kidnapped, but antagonizing Annie Wilkes while literally immobilized. The thread bounced between half-serious film critique and pure chaos, reducing some of cinema’s darkest spirals to painfully simple hypotheticals — and just when it felt like the jokes had peaked, one character kept resurfacing in a way no one expected: the Grinch.
It all kicked off with a perfectly unhinged GIF of the now 25-year-old Jim Carrey take on the Grinch flailing around mid-meltdown. From there, the comments took off, and the internet more or less decided this wasn’t a reach at all — it was text. Some of the funniest takes included:
- u/herrcollin: “It’s actually the plot, basically.”
- u/GGPR_DrTan: “Hello, Martha!”
- u/Stoertebricker: “It’s the actual plot of the American Dad parody, where Roger steals all the sex toys because he is not invited to the city’s Christmas orgy.”
- u/valthonis_surion: “He was extra pissed because the Whos were down in Whoville having a key party. Seriously, go back and look. There is a party and whos are all putting their keys in a fish bowl when they show up.”
- u/Deep_Comparison5563: “And his d*ck grew three sizes that day.”
- u/ChironXII: “We are all the Grinch on this blessed day.”
- u/raspberryharbour: “That’s nothing a little extremely graphic fan fiction can’t solve.”
- u/whatdoestheregsay: “The whole town of whoville was horned up. Let’s not forget the key party scene in the live action movie.”
It’s ridiculous, it’s deeply cursed, and yet… the commenters kind of sold it. Still, there’s something faintly sacrilegious about wishing better sex lives on holiday icons. Then again, once you notice that Whoville key party, it’s hard to unsee it. “You’re a vile one,” Mr. Ron Howard. What were you thinking, sneaking a totally inappropriate joke for children, I’m just now noticing, in a Christmas cinematic classic?
If you’re considering washing your brain out with bleach after this Reddit thread, I recommend checking out our 2026 movie schedule instead and planning your next trip to the cinema.
