The Apartment
This is a 1960 rom-com starring Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. Though lust and adultery are common themes in cinema, this quick scene of an opera-bumbling Lemmon is a lighter one: preparing pasta in a cramped New York apartment kitchen, using a tennis racket as a colander for a meal in which the serve will be spaghetti and meatballs.
Elf
Will Ferrell, here as Buddy the Elf, wakes up to the most caloric, sugar-laden breakfast I’ve ever seen. It’s cute, I guess, but also revolting to watch the North Pole transplant pour maple syrup, marshmallows, and a crushed Pop-Tart over a plate of undressed spaghetti. It's like a dessert disguised as a dinner masquerading as a breakfast. That’s his brand, we guess.
Se7en
For all the exuberance we usually afford spaghetti, there's always space for the sinister. Enter the brooding and terrifying Se7en, David Fincher’s reimagined New York noir. Without giving anything away, all you need to know is that Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, partner detectives, happen upon a man who’s been killed by overeating—you guessed it—a plate of spaghetti. Why? Who? That, we won’t tell you. As for what’s in the box? We most definitely won’t give that away either.
Eat, Pray, Love
A plate of spaghetti can be transcendental. Life changing, even. For the central character in this tale of self-discovery and self-love, it is, in many ways, just what the doctor ordered. Julia Roberts slurps noodles to the tune of a very dramatic aria, and lunch suddenly becomes an extravaganza. Is there anything better than Roberts twirling away at a perfectly portioned plate of spaghetti? Is there anything better than Julia Roberts?
Lady And The Tramp
The jovial love story that is the film Lady and the Tramp comes into our lives long before movies portraying deceit and violence. It is arguably the film from which our first spaghetti memories are shaped, and it’s a memory tied to love and flirtation. The audience is moved as much by the cupid-planted butterflies whirling between canoodling canines as it is the gratuitous plate of spaghetti and meatballs they share. Dining al fresco to the song Bella Notte, it’s not just the food we adore watching the pups eat, but also the world-famous kiss.