Is there a movie that you used to love, back in the day? Maybe you and your brother would watch it over and over and over, and you just knew it would be your favorite forever? Only now you’re afraid to re-watch, for fear it won’t hold up at all?
During last week’s discussion of the Best Picture Expansion Project for 1994, Gonzalo and Pristine both broached this subject, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Because lord knows, there are a few movies I am certain should live only in my memory.
Like, I used to love The Care Bears Movie, where this magician’s assistant gets possessed by an evil book at a summer camp (or something like that.) I remember thinking it was cool that there was an evil spell book that talked, and I remember having a serious crush on the magician’s assistant. (This is the only picture I can find of him, but trust me, when he wasn’t looking crazy, he was making my six year-old heart just melt.)
Something tells me, though, that The Care Bears Movie would be excruciating today. It features a character named Funshine Bear.
The film that started this whole discussion last week was Reality Bites, which I saw in the theatre in 1994. About three minutes in, I decided it was showing me the ideal vision of my future. I needed to be that cool when I was twenty two.
I watched the movie again over the weekend (I hadn’t seen it in thirteen years), and… it’s not a classic. Unlike Gonzalo, I don’t think it’s terrible, but it certainly feels like a movie written and directed by people who are just discovering the concept of pacing.
Also? Winona Ryder’s character should not turn down the offer to develop a show at a major television network, just so she can hang out with scuzzy Ethan Hawke. Ben Stiller may not be offering her a perfect world, but he is offering an amazing professional opportunity. She doesn’t have to date him, but she should sure as hell work with him.
But… of course I think that, right? I’m thirty, not fifteen.
So maybe I shouldn’t have re-watched Reality Bites. Maybe I should have kept listening to “Stay (I Missed You)” (still a great song) and let the movie live on in my heart.
How about you? Which movies need to stay in your past?
32 responses so far ↓
1 Gonzalo // Oct 15, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Right? Right? Why would you not take that job, even if it isn’t the perfect, artsy job you felt you deserved for yourself? That type of excessive self-important angst was what totally turned me off from that movie – once I got past my teens I could not understand why these people would make such stupid decisions and whine about *everything*. Interesting tangent: I think of this as the prototypical attitude of Gen Xers during their early twenties, likely because in Argentina “Reality Bites” was translated to “Generación X”.
Still, that soundtrack is still awesome through and through. Except when Ethan Hawke sings (whine whine whine).
I also fear watching Stargate again: I thought it was a sci-fi masterpiece (probably the first “non-kid” movie I begged my parents to take me to see at the cinema), I’m afraid it might actually be awful (all those low-budget tv show continuations haven’t helped).
2 stephanie // Oct 15, 2009 at 1:10 pm
the tall guy with jeff goldblum and emma thompson. L-O-V-E-D it. really quirky romantic comedy but i am afraid to watch it now. and maybe cinema paradiso. both have been so built up in my mind that i doubt they could live up to the hype in my head!
3 Casey // Oct 15, 2009 at 1:13 pm
I should probably have the good sense to keep this to myself, but I watched “Dirty Dancing” at least 35 (ok, 50) times. I had a poster of Patrick Swayze (RIP) on my wall. I LOVED that movie.
Granted, I was 10, and not really capable of irony. I’ve seen the movie since, and recognized its campy hilarity.
4 ferretrick // Oct 15, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Does Rent count? In my early 20s, I thought everything about it was SO brilliant and true to life. I still love the music, sometimes the life affirming messages can still pick me up on a bad day. But then there are also those times when I listen to Roger and Mark singing about how they aren’t going to pay their rent, like that makes them badass or something, and it just makes me want to scream “GET A JOB LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE, PAY YOUR RENT AND QUIT WHINING, YOU PRETENTIOUS BOHEMIAN WANNABES.”
Also, Clerks. When it came out, I was in high school working horrible fast food and retail jobs, and just thought everything about it was hilarious and dead on accurate (which, a lot of it is. Those jobs suck). But, now I suspect I would see two slackers with no direction or ambition, pretty much living off their parents and not making any effort to change that, all while feeling they are somehow better than the people that come in and buy coffee from them before going to their actual jobs.
5 Dustin L // Oct 15, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves comes to mind. Thought it was awesome at the time… and now I’m pretty sure it probably isn’t.
A movie I did rewatch as an adult and regret it: The Crow. When I was 15, that movie was the coolest thing that could possibly exist. Unfortunately, it turns out the acting is horrible, the “quotable” dialogue makes no damn sense, and the city was built on a table in somebody’s basement.
6 Sarah // Oct 15, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Oh man. Second on the Care Bears Movie.
Also, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I haven’t brought myself to go back and re-watch it, but that has got to be one of the most racist movies out there…
7 katy // Oct 15, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Since we had our kid, I’ve been rewatching a lot of kids’ films I adored back in the day … and it’s essentially having this experience again, and again, and again. (Not the Care Bear Movie though. Come on, even kid-Katy had better taste than that, Mark.)
One of my biggest rewatching disappointments was The Rescuers, an animated film that was my very favorite for years. I remembered it as an exciting, action-packed, moving and romantic film about two mice that rescue a little girl. Actually, it’s a very dated, dark, cheaply animated 1970s/1980s Disney movie that moves at a glacial pace.
The Secret of N.I.M.H. is similarly dark and slow, and it annoys me nowadays that Don Bluth added hokey fantasy elements to a very solid book. But that film is still better than The Rescuers. Trust me.
Others that haven’t aged well — and yes, I know these are beloved films, but have you seen them lately? — Peter Pan, American Tail, The Little Mermaid. (The Little Mermaid was surprisingly difficult to sit through, especially since it seemed so fresh and fun back in 1989. I think Pixar’s superior scripts have made that formulaic story look dated.)
On the other hand, some films I loved as a kid still hold up very well now. I still very much enjoy watching E.T., Annie, Disney’s Robin Hood, 101 Dalmatians, Mary Poppins, the Muppet movies.
8 katy // Oct 15, 2009 at 1:53 pm
I should also add that are a few movies I expected to be much worse upon rewatching than they actually were.
Because the mid-1980s Disney films get such a bad rap, I was expecting to really hate Oliver and Company and Great Mouse Detective as an adult, although I liked them both as a kid. But actually, I still find those films pretty fun to watch. (Oliver and Company especially: Billy Joel songs? Bette Midler? The 1980s Manhattan setting?) So go figure.
9 Stephanie // Oct 15, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Big Trouble in Little China.
Jenny and I used to watch the hell out of that thing when we were little, so my dad sent me a copy he found in the dollar bin at Wal-Mart for my birthday. He was so excited he bought himself one, too.
Needless to say, it left us both scratching our heads why (a) we loved it so much and (b) he and my mom had no problem with us watching really violent (among other things…) movies.
10 Gonzalo // Oct 15, 2009 at 3:08 pm
I disagree with Katy about The Little Mermaid. I still think it still holds up well – not as great as my holy Disney trinity of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King (omg, those three movies are still awesome), and probably not as adult-inclusive as the Pixar movies are, but the music is fantastic, the animation beautiful, and it entertains the heck out of my inner child.
11 Tara // Oct 15, 2009 at 3:27 pm
There’s this movie called ‘A Watcher in the Woods’ with Bette Davis and the girl from the movie with the blind figure skater who falls in love with Robbie Benson.
When I was a kid, this was the scariest movie EVER. I used to love it and beg my mom to let me watch it – which would then give me nightmares.
I found it in a bargain bin at Walmart and bought it. I watched it with some friends after hyping it up and you know what? It sucked. It was lame and terrible and NOT SCARY at all.
12 will // Oct 15, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Oh no! I was planning on rewatching Reality Bites soon, since I lost a trivia question about it this summer. Apparently Renee “scruntchy-face” Zellweger is in there somewhere.
You have to think of this movie in context, though. MTV dominated youth culture and grunge hadn’t reached the masses yet. Think about the clothing and attitude of Saved by the Bell and Blossom, mixing with the florescent and day-glo world of ’91-’93. This movie was breaking out of that and embracing a new direction for cool, which was not yet defined.
Besides, I will never turn my back on a movie that defined irony so succinctly: “when the actual definition is the complete opposite of the literal definition.”
Steve Zahn,
Rules
13 Julia // Oct 15, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Nicholas. The Magician’s Assistant’s name is Nicholas, and he turns out to be the nice old dude that runs the orphanage, at the end. I was hot for him as a six-year-old, too.
And yeah, it doesn’t hold up that well (although the scary parts are still pretty scary, but that might be the fact that my fear of circuses is as strong as ever).
As for my “don’t watch it again” choices…I think I’m going to have to go with the Leonardo DiCaprio trio from 1995/96, namely The Basketball Diaries, Romeo + Juliet, and Marvin’s Room. Why did I think that he was so very, very dreamy? He is not at ALL my type, then or now, and he’s kind of a jerk in almost all of those films. (Especially The Basketball Diaries. Dear Parents: I was 13. That film was IN NO WAY appropriate for me to see.)
14 Mark Blankenship // Oct 15, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Hey Will — You know, you make a really good point about the role that Reality Bites played in changing the notion of cool, and despite not loving it like I used to, it still holds a place in my heart… probably for that reason. And the soundtrack, of course. And your correctly defined awesomeness of Steve Zahn. (And the best-ever appearance of Garafalo.)
And yes, Renee Zellweger is in the movie for one hot second. She’s the girl that’s standing on the front porch while Ethan Hawke flees their one night stand. (He throws her number on the ground. Cold!) When I saw her name in the credits over the weekend, I couldn’t believe I’d missed her, then I went back and tracked her down.
15 Stephanie // Oct 15, 2009 at 7:35 pm
@Will and Mark: In your defence, Renee’s face wasn’t that scrunchy yet – harder to recognize. She still had her adorable Empire Records’ era baby fat.
The movie that I floved when I was younger that doesn’t hold up now is “The Craft”. I so wanted to be a badass teenage witch too. Watching it as an adut, it’s just such a silly movie. And Robin Tunney is awful.
16 Gonzalo // Oct 15, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Robin Tunney is still awful. Hey, I found something that holds up well!
17 ferretrick // Oct 15, 2009 at 9:03 pm
Ooh, Temple of Doom…when Crystal Skull came out our circle of friends had an all day movie party where we watched all three of the original movies. It was making everyone uncomfortable, how blantaly racist some parts were. And, on the not holding up thing? Last Crusade’s pacing is TERRIBLE. And so is Allison Doody’s acting.
Also, since I just bought it on DVD, Snow White? Ok, its still a classic, but actually? The “heroine” is actually a controlling, bossy, passive aggressive witch with a huge sense of entitlement, and dear holy God is her voice annoying. I mean, really, she breaks into these guys house, cleans and rearranges everything without permission, talks to grown men like they are slow children, and then blows them off all “See ya!” when a handsome guy comes along. And by “handsome” I mean-looks gay.
The Wicked Queen scenes still hold up though. She’s awesome.
18 D. // Oct 15, 2009 at 9:23 pm
I just saw A Bronx Tale the other day, which I remember as a sweet period piece. Parts of it are okay, but some of the acting is godawful and the movie is very badly directed — the fight scenes make no sense. I think after the complexity of the Sporanos it just comes off as trite and formulaic. Plus the fact that the actor is in real jail now.
19 Rube Goldberg // Oct 15, 2009 at 10:08 pm
A few months ago I caught Beetlejuice on TV. I remember loving that movie back in the day, but it really does not hold up well. All the characters are pretty shrill. And the special effects? Not so hot nowadays.
I saw Beetlejuice after the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie (thank you Saturday afternoon ABC Family). That one held up surprisingly well, except for the M.C. Hammer soundtrack. Even after twenty years (!) that movie isn’t as anachronistic as I would have expected.
20 Amy // Oct 15, 2009 at 11:37 pm
Adventures in Babysitting was one of my very favorite films as a kid. I’d seen it (well, the edited-for-TV version, haha) so many times that I knew all the lines. I rewatched it last year, and although I was expecting to find it cheesy and lame, surprisingly, I still really enjoyed it! The scene in the blues club is still awesome (it’s cheesy, but in an intentional way).
Other movies I loved as a kid but haven’t dared to rewatch now that I’m in my late 20s: Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, Outrageous Fortune, Big Business, Harry and the Hendersons, The Great Outdoors, and Uncle Buck. Why multiple Bette Midler and John Candy movies? I have no idea. All I know is that I had all of these films on VHS, taped off of the TV, and I damn near wore those tapes out.
…Now I’m actually tempted to procure all of these films and see how different the unedited versions are from what I remember! Even as a kid, I knew that the family in The Great Outdoors was not actually yelling “Blow it out your kazoo!” at each other during the argument scene. The fact that “kazoo” was in an obviously deeper tone of voice with no background nose was kind of a tipoff.
21 Michael // Oct 16, 2009 at 12:00 am
I must be thirty years older than everybody on this comment list, and am inclined to say “Coulda told you so” on many of these examples. (The Care Bears Movie horrified me as a young parent–I felt it was demonizing reading because it might distract kids from Care Bears. AAARGH!! A lot of the films mentioned here, Reality Bites certainly, seemed shrug-worthy to me from early on.)
SO: Any thoughts on how many of these films are about youth culture, and lose their appeal when you move into a time of reflecting back on that youth? Does this say anything about what happens to us when we are so driven by the need to identify with figures on the screen that other, aesthetic questions move aside? And is anyone nervous about the dangers of identifying with bad, bad movies? Or are you okay with it? (Don’t get me started on indie gay cinema . . .)
22 Mark Blankenship // Oct 16, 2009 at 12:51 am
Michael, I’d say these questions deserve to be discussed in their own post, which I will write for Monday. Of course, anyone who wants to keep it going in this comment thread should feel free. That’ll be more excellent grist for Monday’s mill.
23 Stef // Oct 16, 2009 at 12:51 am
Tara, thanks for sparing me the disappoint re: Watcher in the Woods.
I’ll just cling blissfully to memories of being terrified.
24 katy // Oct 16, 2009 at 8:54 am
@Gonzalo – I’m still sticking to my story about The Little Mermaid. At the time it seemed magical (a fairy tale with romance!) and hilarious (the goofy French chef in the kitchen with the crab!) and gorgeous to look at (the rainbow-hued under the sea numbers!). Now it really just seems tired and thin on story and magic. The main thing that does hold up is the music, which I admit is still fun. As for Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and the Lion King … well, I’m not a big fan of Aladdin as an adult either. I’ll grant you BatB and TLK.
Michael, you’re right: many of these films are either about youth culture or are just plain kids’ movies. I’m sure some of this has to do with leaving the point on the life course that the film most appeals to. (Lest we think this is generation-specific, my dad made the whole family watch “The Adventures of Spin and Marty” on DVD, a 1950s Disney TV series he’d adored as a kid. Wow, was it bad.)
But I also think some of it has to do with a film being from a particular moment in time, or representing a break with what had come before. Sometimes once-magical films lose their appeal when that sense of novelty is gone.
And for heaven’s sake, you’re not really 30 years older than me.
25 Karen // Oct 16, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Watcher in the Woods particularly spoke to me because the missing girl’s name was Karen. Spooky! And, I’m a wuss, so even though I found it scary, I could handle it fairly well. I re-watched it in my early twenties and still liked it, but now another 10 years later I probably finally have outgrown it.
Inexplicable loves from childhood that likely would not hold up: Mr. Mom, Harry and the Hendersons, and Ice Castles to start.
I agree that Reality Bites is rather painful now, but I’ve never been a Winona fan and it irked me in 1994 (18 year-old college freshman that I was) that Ethan Hawke was even remotely interested in her lying, stealing ass.
26 Rube Goldberg // Oct 16, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Ooo, I was just playing on Netflix rating movies and came across The Net with Sandra Bullock. No, wait, hear me out. I love the cyber-techno-thriller genre. The Net, Antitrust, Firewall — these movies were awesome in a “oh my God this is so goofy” sorta way. However, I have only watched each of those movies once, knowing full well that the second time would not be enjoyable. Like, at alll
27 Pristine // Oct 17, 2009 at 6:25 am
What a timely post! I just caught a fragment of A Bug’s Life, which I used to watch all the time with my sisters. In my memory, it was more colourful, more…well, life-like I guess. Now it seems so flat and shrill–all those tiny ants with their high-pitched voices…
A while ago, we watched Beauty and the Beast in film class. That scarred me. When I was four and thought about the romance, terms like “bestial” never came up. Now I wish I could see the romance as innocently as I once did.
In that spirit, I guess one of the romance movies I used to watch as a child, and probably shouldn’t now, is The King and I. When I used to watch it, it seemed so exotic and fun. Now I’ll probably only see polygamy, an egotistical tyrant and imperialism.
So, somewhat in answer to Michael’s question(s), I guess part of it is that as children, we didn’t necessarily have the vocab or knowledge to see these movies in context of the “real world”. When I rewatched some of my childhood favourites, it wasn’t so much being unable to see why I used to love these films. Rather, I’m now seeing all these other aspects of the films that I didn’t know were there before. I disliked Beauty and the Beast in my recent rewatch because I now know the meaning of sexual deviance. As a child, I didn’t know much about sex, let alone the notion of sexual deviance. In the case of the King and I, I probably used to see a loving father. I probably wouldn’t now, because over the years, I learnt that a good father is supposed to be dedicated and a good husband doesn’t kill his wife for adultery. (Again, adultery was one of those things that I didn’t understand as a child.)
28 Mike B. // Oct 17, 2009 at 4:50 pm
@ will: “You have to think of this movie in context, though. MTV dominated youth culture and grunge hadn’t reached the masses yet.”
I disagree a little with your assessment of that cultural time-period. Both Nirvana’s “Nevermind” and Pearl Jam’s “Ten” as well as the movie Singles predate reality bites, and are part and parcel of the wave of Seattle-o-philia that washed over the culture. By 1994, Grunge was definitely part and parcel of mass popular culture.
29 Rachel // Oct 17, 2009 at 7:18 pm
So, I’m a couple o’ days late on this , but the movie I’m currently avoiding on the re-watch is…
The Ice Pirates.
Yes. I know. I KNOW.
But I saw it in the theater at least three times and I looooooved it. It was 1984! I was 9! Looking at the IMDB entry, it would appear that there is SO much wrong with this movie (starting with Bruce Vilanch), but it’s on Netflix and in the ‘watch instantly’ queue. I’m just afraid to hit ‘play.’
30 B. Troll // Oct 27, 2009 at 9:18 am
I HATE when a movie isn’t everything I remembered it to be. I went online and found a weird DVD Canadian production of The Phantom Tollbooth which was my favorite movie when I was young. I ordered it, watched it, and absolutely hated it. It was so freakin’ boring.
But what I hate even more is when a movie does hold up for me, but when I try to show it to someone for the first time, they don’t get it… and I can see why. Like recently I played The Goonies for an adult who had never seen it. This movie DEFINED my childhood, and while it does hold up for me, I started to see all the plot holes and 80′s campiness of it. The person I played it for–he didn’t get it. And it was said to understand why.
My big fear now is Race for your Life, Charlie Brown! and Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown! I’ve been trying to find them on DVD because I remember them being so great, but I’m scared. I don’t want them to suck… hasn’t Charlie Brown been through enough?
31 Mark Blankenship // Oct 27, 2009 at 10:08 am
Hey B. — You have a friend who didn’t like The Goonies? Like, on any level? That’s so hard for me to comprehend! Is your friend made of wood? Or is he a pony?
32 B. Troll // Oct 27, 2009 at 12:35 pm
He’s a pony.
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