To me it seems like everything in life now is unoriginal and trivial. Even the three LotR films. Sure, I enjoyed them very much. But thet don’t leave a lasting impression.
Lately I have been wondering if this is simply the way I am percieving things as an adult. The films I watched as a child might have had the same effect (or lack thereof) on me if I had watched them as an adult. And today’s films might have a profound effect on a child watching them for the first time.
The films that I watched as a child that seemed somehow better were films like Flight of the Navigator, Goonies, Back to the Future etc…
Is it just a perception thing? Or are films (and other entertainment forms) really getting less creative and more bland and, cliched (is that the right word?) as time goes on?
What films stuck with you? (that you watched as a child)
I’ve just recently watched the** Goonies** with my two little sisters (9&10) for the first time in over a decade and we all loved the hell out of it!
I mean come on, hearing Chunk tell that story about the fake puke in his jacket or Chuck going “you’ve been BAAAAAA-AAAAA-AAADD!” still brings a smile to my face.
I thought what was ironic is how its a kids movie, but clearly has PG-13 elements. The penis breaking off the statue, the swearing, the drug jokes (gotta love Corey Feldman as Mouth) and whatnot hasn’t corrupted my little sisters at all in light of the overly politically-correct climate of this decade.
They’ll never make movies like that anymore, at least they didn’t replace guns with radios in the DVD re-release. God bless the studio for that at least.
On topic, I’ve also watched Breakin’ recently, that one hasn’t aged too well. But I think it would be more appreciated as a stoner’s flick than anything
When I was much younger, my favorite movie was Unidentified Flying Oddball. I also enjoyed The Black Hole. I saw part of the former a few years ago, and the latter in its entirety within the last six months. Clearly my sense of taste did not begin to develop until I was much older.
When I was an early teen, my two favorite movies were The Manhattan Project (the one with the kid building a nuke out of stuff stolen from John Lithgow’s lab) and WarGames. (Noticing a trend?) Again, I’ve re-watched both recently. The former hasn’t really held up, especially the first hour, but the big climax is still a killer suspense scene. The latter, on the other hand, is dated only in the specifics of its technology (cradle modems, voice synthesizers, monochrome monitors, the obvious VIC-20 screen on the WOPR). Other than that, it’s a winner all the way. I guess that’s where my taste began to wake up.
A lot of the films I loved as a kid are films I still love to this day:
The Wizard of Oz
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (when I heard they were planning to do a remake of this wonderful classic, I was disappointed. To me, Gene Wilder will always be Willie Wonka)
Sleeping Beauty
Beauty and the Beast
To Kill A Mockingbird
The Miracle Worker
The Blob
All the old-time monster flicks, particularly Frankenstein
All the Marx Brothers
The Wizard of Oz
Born Free (shut up…it was a real tear-jerker)
Gulliver’s Travels
Camelot
It occurs to me that most of the movies I really loved as a kid became “enduring classics” not only because they were quite good… but because they were shown annually or so on TV when I was growing up, thus strengthening the association with my childhood.
The Wizard Of Oz Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory Miracle on 34th Street
Nearly every Abbott and Costello movie ever made
Nearly every Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movie ever made
It also occurs to me that some of these movies weren’t very good, notably the later Tarzan films with Weissmuller… man, how many times DID he wrestle that same durned alligator?
Nowadays, whether or not a movie is shown annually or regularly is irrelevant. If a kid really likes a given movie, in America, most parents will simply tape the thing or go buy it on VHS or DVD.
Are today’s movies less creative, less “good?” I don’t think so. Sure, Wizard Of Oz was pure magic, but I don’t think I could say less about any of the LOTR films, or the first couple Batman movies… and I noted that a fair number of my teen students about wet their pants over the first Spider-Man movie… NOT the CGI battles, but the scene where puny Peter Parker, having gained his superpowers, finally stands up to the bully in the school corridor, dodges every punch, and then finally flattens the guy.
Nearly everything Disney ever did when I was a child stank… its glory years behind it… and then, around the time I hit adulthood, all of a sudden, they got good again.
Kids are kids, and movies are movies, regardless of what year it is. And magic is where you find it.
Ooo! Ooo! I forgot to mention The Dark Crystal. That was an amazing experience for a wide-eyed kid. Why don’t we get anything like that today? Only Pixar’s work and the first couple of Spy Kids movies come close.
I loved that movie. I was stunned to realize I was 9 years old when I saw it and loved it – somehow I assumed that I must have had some taste when I was 9. Turns out not to have been the case.
But the movie I remember being an absolute favorite was, get this, Oh, God! Book II. I saw this again a few years ago, suspecting that it wouldn’t be good, and it was – what’s the word? – wretched. The contemporary adult me hates this movies on so many levels that it’s embarrassing to realize that I was a sophisticated 10-year-old when this came out.
My tastes obviously matured between 10 and 13, because I managed to be blown away by the genius of Rear Window in 1983, and that’s held up to a degree many earlier favorites just don’t.
Animated movies I loved and still dearly love are Gulliver’s Travels and Hoppity Goes To Town, both by the same artists, I believe. Now that I’m thinking of them, it occurs to me that I’ve seen neither for years, so I’m going to click up Video Library and see if I can rent them.
Neverending Story - Dragons, scary monsters, cute monsters, pretty much everything a kid could want in a movie. This is probably where I first started to love fantasy stories.
Who Framed Roger Rabbit - I’m sure my parents hated this movie. I got it for christmas on vhs, and watched it every single day for a couple months. Eventually I wore the tape out. For some reason I haven’t picked up the dvd yet, I may have to change that.
Between the ages of, say, 4 and 10 these are some of the films I remember liking…
The Bad News Bears Sinbad (any of them… that Ray Harryhausen stuff rocked) The Love Bug The Man Who Would Be King The Three Musketeers & The Four Musketeers (70’s version) Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory The Wizard of Oz
