According to Andy Warhol, “Art is what you can get away with.” In the cinema, that varies from genre to genre. Moviemakers would not dream of offending a sailing buff, a submarine nut or the president of the Tolkien Society. But films featuring fine art are frequently among the most poorly researched, condescending and ill-conceived projects that Hollywood deigns to produce. Such films may, according to Warhol’s criterion, be art, but they’re rarely fine. Here are some chief offenders.

In “The Thomas Crown Affair”—a 1999 remake of the 1968 film of the same name—Pierce Brosnan plays a bored millionaire who amuses himself by swiping paintings from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The first work he steals, as a character helpfully informs us, is “the painting that started Impressionism.” Wrong. Although Claude Monet’s “Impression: Sunrise” was included in the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874, it certainly didn’t “start” the movement. However, its title—which critics mocked—contributed the word “impressionism” to the lexicon of art history. The trouble is this painting isn’t the one shown in the movie; that’s actually “San Giorgio Maggiore by Twilight,” which Monet painted 34 years later, in 1908. In a movie based upon the love, theft and recovery of valuable paintings, it’s but two technical blunders among many.

In the movie, the museum’s Impressionist Room contains many famous paintings, notably a self-portrait by van Gogh and Monet’s “La Promenade.” Inexplicably, however, it also contains a romantic painting of Arabs on horseback, 19th-century portraits of English aristocrats and no less than three neoclassic renderings of Napoleon! The director, John McTiernan, explains in the DVD’s director’s commentary that while those paintings may not be “strictly impressionistic” they served his purposes in other, important ways. That a first-year art student could have volunteered dozens of historically appropriate paintings is clearly irrelevant. Why go to all that trouble? So there’s a Gérôme in the Impressionist Room. A David. A Van Dyck. What does it matter?

Clearly, in the minds of some movie-makers, it doesn’t. It’s evident in many films that the writer didn’t bother doing any research at all; that the milieu of fine art was used simply to “smarten up” an otherwise dimwitted production. It’s a dangerous strategy, one that often backfires.

In “Entrapment,” also from 1999, Sean Connery’s character (a master thief named Mac) proclaims: “Did you know that Rembrandt lived with his parents into his 40s?” Mac has fine taste; he lives in a castle in Scotland and surrounds himself with great paintings (look for Modigliani’s “Madame Lunia Czechowska with a Fan” in the background). We’re supposed to be impressed with his depth and sophistication. The Rembrandt trivia—meant to emphasize the vast range of his knowledge—would be far more impressive if only … well, if only it were true. But it’s not. Not even close. Rembrandt’s parents had both died by the time he turned 34. He married at 28, while already living in Amsterdam. His parents lived in Leiden. But thanks, Mac.

Thankfully, screenwriters don’t always get it wrong. Sometimes, they outdo themselves. Consider a clever bit from Connery’s first outing as James Bond, in 1962’s “Dr. No.” Goya’s “The Duke of Wellington” was stolen from London’s National Gallery while “Dr. No” was in production. In a scene where 007 saunters through the villain’s elaborate, underground lair, he sees a painting on an easel. It’s impossible for either Bond or the audience to miss. The hero stops to examine it. It is, of course, Goya’s stolen masterpiece. Bond merely shakes his head and then walks on. No further mention is made. It was a joke for those in the know. It was subtle, imaginative and entirely appropriate: A bad guy who swipes a national treasure.