Kelly’s Heroes. A family favorite that I watched alot as a teenager but hadn’t seen in 25 years or so. What the hell is Donald Sutherland, WW2 tank driver, doing there as a kooky 60’s hippie stereotype? It completely took me out - the entire character seemed to stroll in from Festival Express while everyone else was filming a WW2 movie.
Of course, the protagonist of that one didn’t age very well, himself…
Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid with Redford and Newman didn’t hold up well. Which is odd because it is a period Western. But the hairstyles and even the acting seems to date it. It looks like a typical 60’s movie. Much like the Graduate. Same deal. Hairstyles and acting dates it.
Does that mean ET, which you thought would be a timeless classic when you were six, aged badly in six years, and at twelve you then realized how dated it was?
Or does it just mean that your tastes changed between six and twelve? And have you watched ET since? If you did, would/do you share the opinion of your twelve year old self?
Sometimes kid friendly movies don’t appeal to the “sophisticated” tastes of “mature” kids who hate “baby stuff”. And then they get a bit older and don’t have a psychological need to dismiss little kid stuff and can enjoy it again.
I haven’t seen ET in decades, so I have no idea whether it holds up or not. It was hailed as a classic at the time, but you hardly ever hear about it nowadays.
Yes, but “The Graduate” is set in the 60s, so the 60s hair and costuming are totally appropriate. A period piece is supposed to evoke the time of the setting, not the time the movie was made. And you can tell whether a movie set in ancient Rome is in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, or 80s. And in 30 years you’ll be able to spot a movie made in the 10s because of it’s telltale ridiculous fashions and attitudes.
“The Graduate” really hasn’t aged well, but did anyone expect it to be timeless? The point of the thread isn’t about movies that haven’t aged well, but movies that seemed timeless at the time, that you could expect to age well, but that didn’t.
I find a lot of Mel Brooks films are like that. The slow pacing. The obvious puns and goofy humor.
Falling Down.
I think at the time it was billed as a “Yeah! Stick it to the man!” movie.
Holy shit. Watch it now. Michael Douglas’ character comes off as a fucking self-entitled, immature, psychopathic brat.
“I want bweakfast!”
I want him to blow his own brains out.
I didn’t think it terms of timeless classics back then, and, truthfully, I don’t typically think in those terms today. Nor do I think that aging badly necessarily means a movie was dated. It’s just that even at the ripe old age of 12 I was shocked by how boring E.T. was when just a few years earlier I absolutely loved it along with the rest of America.
Essentially this thread is all about individual tastes. It isn’t so much whether or not a movie ages well as it is how our tastes change over the years.
I wasn’t that kind of kid. There were things I certainly outgrew but at that age I was still watching cartoons (the good violent syndicated ones not that crap on network TV on Saturday).
I saw it again when I was 14 or 15 and a group of my friends wanted to watch it. Still boring. If someone I knew now just had to watch it I’d watch it with them but it’s not something I’d choose. But it’s been a while since anyone I knew wanted to see it. It’s odd for a movie that was just so damned big in 1982.
Falling Down came up in the “movies that weren’t as advertised” from a few years back. You’re right, it was billed as a “stick it to the man” movie but Douglas’ character was mostly unsympathetic and mentally ill. I believe that was completely intentional on the part of the filmmakers.
I still do a Chamberlain imitation on occasion. Of course, no one gets it but me, so I might as well be talking to the voices in my head. That’s OK. Some jokes I do just for myself.
MMMMmmmmmmMMMMMMMMMMmmmMMMMMMM!
The opening sequence was brilliant in both concept and technical execution. The rest of the movie was a letdown as you slowly discovered MD’s character was not an oppressed individual but a nutcase.
Best avoid Highlander, but there’s no real reason to say why it should have aged well… It didn’t.
I would agree with this. I haven’t been able to make it through a single-sitting viewing for as long as I can remember. Slow… Painfully slow.
I don’t really think so. Sure, whether something holds up is about taste, but a lot of these movies don’t hold up not because our tastes have changed as we’ve gotten older, but because the tastes of the movie-going public have changed.
Okay, maybe not a lot in the thread, but that does seem to be what the OP had intended, at least. As it is, I could bring up the live-action Babes in Toyland starring a young Drew Barrymore. I never thought I would ever hate that movie, but I do now–it’s way too slow even to watch for nostalgia’s sake.
No mention of Monty Python movies?
Ok, sorry, I’ll cut down a tree with a herring.
I watched Sneakers recently for the first time in many years and had basically the opposite reaction. I felt it had held up pretty well in large part because it’s basically a heist movie and the actual technology isn’t that important. It’s the only hacker movie I’m familiar with that seems remotely realistic in its depiction of the hackers themselves, and the tech stuff didn’t strike me as obviously wrong/stupid the way it often does in other movies.
Pulp Fiction is still one of the greatest movies ever, but these days it does come across as a relic of the '90s. (A five-dollar milkshake? What a bargain!)
Yeah, one of my favorite moments is when Redford is confronted with an electronic door lock when he was expecting one with a keyhole lock he could pick. He gets advice from his tech crew on what to do, listens through his earpiece for a moment, shrugs… and kicks it open. No dated tech there!
How much do milkshakes cost where you live?
The “Raindrops” sequence seemed like a holdover from movies from the early sixties. Doesn’t ruin the movie, but definitely takes it out of its time.