His posture, gestures, and stilted language are intentionally uncomfortable and awkward. Truffaut expressed disappointment with the often stilted and unnatural English-language dialogue. Despite the obvious charismatic interaction between Lemmon and Matthau, the film is oddly stilted. Smirnis's phrasing, awkward and stilted, left detectives uncertain whether to take her seriously. Other criticisms raised concern about redundant passages in the novel, stilted dialogue and poor grammar. A writer for Sheknows complained that the story was unoriginal and the dialogue was stilted. This is usually associated with a stilted or overly formal style. She wrote and directed the film "Principles", which was criticized as stilted and preachy. I didn't want him to appear stilted, stentorian or authoritarian as he's often presented. He uses quaint phrases and makes the heroes' acting stilted and ceremonious. Others have found Upfield's prose stilted. Her main criticism was with the dialogue, which she referred to as "stilted". He is the enemy of affected, stilted, contorted expressions. In the fifteenth century mules from Venice were stilted and resembled chopines. So the point is not to start talking to your spouse in some stilted psychobabble.