MovieChat Forums > Last Action Hero (1993) Discussion > Easy as cake, piece of pie

Easy as cake, piece of pie

posted 3 years ago by avortac4 (3766)
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Why is it wrong to say 'easy as cake', but it's correct to say 'piece of cake'?

Why can't these be interchangable? If 'cake' is implied to be easy, by the saying 'piece of cake', then why can't you say 'easy as cake'? This is the MOST understandable mistake any foreigner has ever made in a movie, exactly because 'piece of cake' is already used to imply something is easy.

Why shouldn't it be 'easy as cake', if it can be 'easy' and 'piece of cake' are practically synonyms?

Why can't it also be 'piece of pie', if 'easy as pie' is already a saying? Logically, this should be just as common a saying, but I have never heard it.

Furthermore, how the heck is cake OR pie easy? Making either takes a lot of work, many very specific ingredients, lots of experience, precise information, and entails precision-toil with measuring and mixing, waiting, 'raising' the dough, being careful not to make noise so it won't flatten, creating frosting / covering / whatever it's called, and then covering the cake with it - or filling the pie with some filling material successfully, and so on.

It's REALLY, really cumbersome, difficult and bothersome, and anything can go wrong at ANY phase very easily, starting from buying the incredients to the measuring to making noise or waiting the wrong time, and so on. In some cases, you have to even cool it down after you have already created it, like letting it stay in the fridge for the night or whatnot.

HOW THE HECK is _THAT_ - of all things - considered 'easy'?

Who thought that makes sense??

Idioms.. they really drive me crazy.

I am mentioning all of this, by the way, because the 'bad guy' corrected the 'old italian man' in this movie, when he said 'easy as cake', when, according to the 'bad guy', he shouold've said, 'easy as pie'..

..just in case the reader is puzzled by this post.

[–] GreenGoblinsOck8 (7951) 3 years ago

Personally, saying piece of cake about something always seemed more to me like saying, "This thing is as easy as eating a piece of cake." Personally I think it is a bit easier to make pie. With cake you gotta mix eggs, milk, sugar, and the mix together. With Pie, you just make the crust, add some filling, put a bit more crust on top of it, then you're done. But maybe I'm more thinking of doing it the modern way where you buy the pie crust in a container already prepared. And use cans of stuff for the filling. Personally, I found that bit funny. To be fair if you don't like him criticizing him for that there is the later times he corrects him on things.

He really seems to not get sayings right through out the movie. Such as saying he doesn't want to be a 4th wheel instead of a 5th wheel or saying in front of the 8 ball report instead of behind the 8 ball. And my favorite, saying he's done a 360 on him instead of a 180.