20 Most Perfect Scenes In Cinema History

It’d be Big in 1988 that would make Tom Hanks a genuine star, but there were a few critical and box office misfires along the way. Richard Benjamin’s The Money Pit, co-starring Shelley Long, was one such - but it’s dated well, retaining a special kind of charm in the intervening three decades that better, more successful films of the time failed to keep.

The story of a New York couple who find their dream house, a mansion in the nearby countryside, which turns out to be falling to pieces, The Money Pit delivers a great line in slapstick, anchored by Hanks’ bravura comic performance as a man desperately out of his depth.

This scene is the culmination of all that farcical nonsense, one of the most perfectly choreographed comic spectacles in cinema, as a single missed step - wrong place, wrong time - sets off a chain reaction of events like an absurd Rube Goldberg machine.

Practically flawless in conception and execution, it’s almost impossible to spot the seams that join this set-piece together, all mischievously soundtracked to music from Donizetti’s Lucia (back when the ironic use of opera and classical music was a fresh take). And there’s no better capstone to farce than being urinated on by a cherub.