Daily Prompt 2859

What’s the last movie that made you cry?

I think the answer to this question might be better answered with another question:

What movie has NOT made me cry?

Let’s face facts. Kiki is a sap.

I’m an empath. Sure, I am strong like bull, but I am also chock-full of emotions. Filled right to the brim, actually, like an emotional piñata just waiting for someone to give me one good whack.

A well-written movie can move me to tears—the happy AND the sad kind. And please. It doesn’t even have to be a movie.

I am a marketing executive’s dream.

Give me a well-written commercial with a returning soldier, an elderly couple, a lost dog or a kid surprising his mother and I am DONE. There was an old Folgers commercial where the son comes home from the Marines on Christmas morning. “The best part of waking up is Folgers in your cup.”

Dear God.

I’ll never recover.

I don’t even drink Folgers, but apparently I’m emotionally invested in their entire family.

Sometimes these Daily Prompts show up at eerily precise moments. I’ll see something, hear something or experience something and then—BAM—WordPress comes knocking with a prompt that fits perfectly.

Such was the case this morning.

I had finished my shower, my daily meditation/inspiration track and was sipping my coffee while taking a quick stroll through Instagram. Guilty pleasure. No apologies.

An old cinema account I follow popped onto my screen.

And there it was.

The scene.

Robert Redford.

Barbra Streisand.

Hubbell and Katie.

The final scene of The Way We Were.

Their love story was never meant to be. Honestly, those two were doomed from the beginning. But still, after everything, when Katie reaches up and brushes Hubbell’s hair across his forehead in that final scene?

Holy Mother of God.

I lose it.

And I don’t just cry. Oh no. Amateur hour.

I recite the lines.

With inflection.

I am IN the scene. I may as well be sitting in a director’s chair just off camera wearing a headset and yelling instructions through a megaphone.

“Okay, Barbra…reach for the hair…beautiful…Robert, give me wistful…WISTFUL! Annnnd…CUE THE TEARS!”

The dialogue ends.

Cue Babs singing The Way We Were.

And Kiki is officially goo.

A big puddle of emotional goo sitting there with her morning coffee, sobbing over two fictional people whose relationship ended more than 50 years ago.

Such was the case this morning. As I tried to sop up the puddles forming under my eyes, I opened Jetpack/WordPress and Daily Prompt 2859 sprang to life:

What is the last movie that made you cry?

How apropos.

There have certainly been plenty of movies that have touched my soul over the years, but The Way We Were was one of the first—besides Old Yeller, which frankly should have come with a childhood trauma warning—that taught me just how deeply a movie could reach inside you.

So, what was the last movie that made me cry?

Apparently one I’ve already cried over about 847 times. Pass the Kleenex.

“Your girl is lovely Hubbell”

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Author: KikiFikar

Kiki Fikar is a native New Yorker who is passionate about taking the day to day life we all experience and sharing it in her tales from Suburbia. She will often be found at the gym, writing snippets each day for future story lines, listening to her two children create their lives, and building the perfect beachfront home and writing retreat in her mind.

23 thoughts on “Daily Prompt 2859”

  1. God, I love this on so many levels.

    First of all…love me some Folgers Christmas commercials. They were some of the best. There is some YouTube compilation that has all the old Christmas commercials from that time frame. I watch it every year like it is a Christmas special. Lol

    Second of all…love me some Barbra and this movie and that scene is perfect!!!

    Liked by 3 people

  6. Ah, movies that make you cry. The last movie that I saw where I was bawling was “Beautiful Boy” with Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet. I know the question is about movies, but the book “You Will Not Have My Hate” completely destroyed me. There is a part of the story where I just closed the book and cried like a baby for a few minutes. It was that powerful.

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  7. I remember the Folgers commercials. I’m watching all of friends episodes on Netflix now and the old yela episode came on where phoebe did not know about the dog. My wife is an empath too and I’m Jerry , yea pass me a napkin as I wipe and keep eating.

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  12. Oh Twinnie (shaking head)… another overlap on our Venn diagram of similarities… maybe it’s bc I’ve got three girls and the sea of estrogen that I’m floating in sometimes makes me into (Hans and Franz) “…a little girly man” but I sometimes “cough” or get something in my eye and need a Kleenex during certain scenes. Like you, even some commercials can do it.

    Gotta fall on the sword here and fess up that I never actually saw Babs & Bob in TWWW…but now it’s on my watch list.

    Loved the writing in this one… “emotional piñata waiting for someone to give me one good whack.” 😂👏❤️ ADHD moment: Raymond patiently coaching Robert on “Everybody Loves Raymond” when Robert goes through his ethnic crisis:

    “Man…that’s so WHACK!”
    “Robert… we’re Italian. We don’t use the word ‘whack.’” 😂

    Liked by 1 person

  13. I snorted again – you KNOW you get me if I snort. Oh the estrogen cycles are high in your house for sure!

    It’s funny the first time I ever saw my husband cry was after It’s a Wonderful Life. I couldn’t believe it. Of course he coined the phrase “I’m not crying – you’re crying”.

    Let me know if you check out TWWW. It’s still relevant all of these years later. I wonder what it was like to actually film that movie. Powerful actors for sure.

    Liked by 1 person

  15. OMGosh. I just commented on Tracie’s post… the one movie that always gets me is the ending of “It’s a Wonderful Life” when the whole town comes to the rescue. Don’t know if it’s the inherent kindness of the people, the rousing “Auld Lang Syne,” Clarence getting his wings… but I always get a little “coughing spell” at that point and need a refill on my eggnog stat 😂

    I’ll let you know when I watch TWWW 😎

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  17. You cracked me up with “Holy Mother of God”. 😂 I get it. I had an astrological consultation once where she told me “You are more than just cancer, you are WATER – PERSONIFIED” haha. And since it’s the element for emotion and intuition, I was sobbing after an episode of The Last of Us, and the postal commercials at Christmas. Heck, everything at Christmas! You are preaching to the choir, Kiki. Thanks for a good laugh. ❤️

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  19. Weirdly The Long Walk specifically the deaths of Hank & Art…yes it’s a brutal dystopian film but it is also an emotional gut punch…I have had that kind if an experience with what was marketed as horror is actually dialogue heavy heavy drama with the occasional bit of graphic violence.

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  21. I’m a weird cryer. I’ll go years and not cry at a movie. And then I’ll come across Marley and Me or Goodwill Hunting or Big Fish or Brian’s Song (the movie about football player Brian Piccolo dying and his friend Gale Sayers) and I’ll be a puddle. I didn’t cry over the Folgers commercials but I did love them for the writing . . . they told an epic story with only a few words.

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  22. 😂 I love this … You had me laughing with the “emotional piñata” and “Kiki is officially goo.” Some movies just hit that emotional place no matter how many times we watch them.

    I don’t really cry at movies, I usually make fun of Frances when she cries so that it doesn’t make me cry 😂🤣 But The Passion of The Christ and Rudy made me cry like a baby…

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  23. I cannot recall the last time I shed a tear over a movie, but I am positive whatever film it was it involved an animal. I get upset when pets or wildlife face a challenge they succumb to. Gets me every time. One movie I do remember watching through teary eyes the first time I saw it was E.T. The scene where E.T. is dying? Nope. Not watching THAT again.

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