Gail, that’s one thing about so many comedies. They date way faster than dramas, IMO.
That’s how I felt about Arthur. I knew it was a comedy, but I thought it was a rather sad movie about a drunk.
And I agree with Dracula. The thing is, Frankenstein, the Boris Karloff version, was a far superior film that came out the same year. Dracula is just laughable, almost like Ed Wood directed it. Which is probably why he was such a big fan. 
When I first saw MASH the movie, I thought the irreverence and verbal sparring of Hawkeye and Trapper John was way cool. When I saw it again recently, they came across as smartass jerks, even when dumping on Maj. Burns who, as played by Robert Duvall, is much less of a buffoon than the TV version. It still has it’s moments, but dosn’t carry the punch it once did, for me at least.
I’d vote for How the West was Won. Loved it when I was little. Rented it recently & was amazed at how awful it was.
I agree with many of the other responses - esp. Arthur, West Side Story [alsotry revisiting South Pacific; ugh], Gone with the Wind, and ET. I’d add Return of the Jedi - Just can’t watch that one again.
As for part of an old movie that’s become bad to me over time - There’s that part in It’s a Wonderful Life where Jimmy Stewart is horrified that Donna Reed became (gasp) a librarian. It doesn’t ruin the whole movie, but almost.
I guess I’m one up on a couple of you, I thought ET and Red Dawn sucked when they first came out.
I’m not sure if this counts, but I loved Godzilla movies as a kid, now I can’t sit through them, even for nostalgia effect. That could just be a maturity thing.
Exactly what is it that it celebrates that was bad?
I thought it was hilarious but it didn’t ruin the movie for me.
HPL asks about Gone With the Wind, “Exactly what is it that it celebrates that was bad?” Well, it celebrated the world of the pre-Civil War South, which, with its slavery and general unequal distribution of wealth was pretty bad and not really worth celebrating. Right?
Back to the topic at hand - we also rented American Grafitti recently, and I couldn’t sit through it. Found it didn’t age well at all.
I agree. It almost ruined the show for me because the Hawk and Trapper were such raging assholes.
And I don’t think GWTW celebrates anything “bad”. If we were mean to “celebrate” anything, Scarlet wouldn’t be such a self-centered, emotionally crippled, drunken, sad girl/woman. We are, after all, viewing the world she lives in from her POV.
Well, extract the pre-War part of GWTW, and there’s no celebration of the Confederacy, really. It becomes a story about Scarlett. Most of the movie is not about the antebellum South and how wonderful it was, but it represents the Good/Bad Old Days for a lot of people, so I’m hesitant to admit liking the movie.
I found “Bridge on the rive Kwai” really hard to watch a second time, many years later.
It protrayed it, but it didn’t celebrate it, at least not in the movie I saw. The characters saw nothing wrong with it, but remember the characters were mostly Slave-owning white people who had grown up knowing nothing else. To have them going on about how slavery was evil would make the book totally unrealistic. I don’t remember much of anything being celebrated in the book or the movie. It was a story about a 10-15 year period during and after the civil war from the point of view of Scarlett, who is in no way a perfect person by any means.
Sure, a lot of people want to go back to the good/bad old days before the war, though scarlett considers them just silly and useless. She also has a more modern attitude about some things (wanting to get into relationships for fun, not for marriage, as well as doing business no holds barred), which is ofset very much by her personality flaws.
Well, the problem I have is that after reading the book, I realize that they dumped out a few important plot threads and characters in the movie just so they could focus on the love scenes and put in some title cards to show the war was still going on.
With all of her flaws, Scarlett was still a strong woman.
Any Susan Hayward movie gets on my nerves now. I used to love her movies but they all seem so melodramatic now.
I’ve mentioned beore that for me the movie Annie Hall has a very strong “70s vibe” that makes it not as enjoyable as some of Woody Allen’s later comedies. It still has some great moments, but parts of it haven’t aged well IMHO.
It must be part of the phenomenonZeldar mentions, about comedies not aging as well as dramas. Also W. A. 's later life has kind of soured the image of the lovable nebbish he played in most of his early films.
Recently rented Silk Stockings and returned it having watched most of it on fast Forward. I recall loving this movie as a kid, watching it with my grandparents when it would show up on the “Million Dollar Movie” I can’t even say why but this time it seemed flat, and Fred looked bored and the dancing wasn’t so very fabulous. Perhaps the lack of a Communist threat took the punch out of the Communist jokes.
I too watched Gentlemen’s Agreement recently. I didn’t think it was too dated. SO and I did notice that there was an awful lot of something you don’t see too often in movies anymore (or real life ever). The couple kisses then both roll their faces toward the camera and, with cheeks still pressed together they carry on a conversation. All with fabulous lighting, of course.
I recently had the interesting experience of watching “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” dubbed into Japanese. IIRC, NHK did cut out most of Mickey Rooney’s parts, but the parts they left in were dubbed in an over-the-top fashion.
Oh, I know what my husband would nominate. Robo Cop. It was on TV a few weeks ago, and I had never seen it. He insist I watch it with him because it’s just “so good” and he “loved it.”
Half way through, he was apologizing profusely. “It was great when it first came out, I swear!”
This is exactly how I felt about It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (I may have gotten the number of Mad’s wrong). I made my wife watch it with me, telling her that it was the funniest movie ever made. About 20 minutes into it, I was wondering what the hell I ever saw in it.
pepperlandgirl
I experienced that exact feeling this past week! Fortunately, I was watching it alone so I went ahead and saw it all. Glad nobody else was around.