I’m talking about movies you enjoyed as a kid and continued to enjoy as an adult, and not simply for nostalgia. These tend to be movies that have some gimmick that works for kids but also have adult content that you don’t get until you grow up. I’m talking about movies that are liked by children but not childish.
The first one I’m going to mention is Ghostbusters. I swear I’ve seen this movie dozens of times and it just doesn’t get old. As a kid, the idea of people running around zapping ghosts and trapping them in a containment unit was just so cool. Yet as an adult, the action is still enjoyable and the scripting is golden. You couldn’t ask for a better cast. With dialog like this:
“Egon, Ray has gone bye bye. What have you got left?”
“I’m sorry Peter. I’m terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought.”
(Going from memory. May not be word-for-word accurate.)
what’s not to like about this movie? And while most adults would consider the basic premise of the movie ludacris and based on pseudoscience, it’s easy to get over.
The next movie is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The concept of turtles being mutated into more humanoid forms who can talk who go around fighting crime is as ridiculous as people capturing ghosts with portable proton accelerators, yet for some reason it doesn’t matter. Maybe that’s because I saw it as a kid when it really didn’t matter. I wonder if I’d feel the same if it came out in the last few years. But anyway, this series of movies and cartoons was obviously conceived for kids, but as an adult I still laugh at the jokes and get into the action and drama. The characters have personalities that you can’t help but love. It’s simply been too long since I’ve seen this movie.
So what are movies that you liked as a kid and continue to enjoy to this day?
The Nightmare Before Christmas is still one of my favorites. Maybe because it still manages to evoke for me the spirit of the two holidays that enthralled me as a kid. Maybe because I still have all the songs memorized. Maybe it is some kind of nostalgia effect, where I don’t still like it because I liked it as a kid, but because it reminds me of being a kid.
For me, it isn’t autumn unless I’ve listened through the soundtrack at least once.
For quite a while, The Lion King, because of the music.
The Incredible Journey which was on TV last week. Sassy is my very own breed of cat. And I cried buckets at the end just like the 1000 other times I’ve seen it.
I’ll add the Princess Bride. As a kid it’s a great action-adventure-love story. As an adult it’s… well the same. And damn funny, too.
Ferris Beuller’s Day Off is another great one. Granted, I was probably a little young for watching it. My parents had taped it when it came on TV when I was maybe 5 or 6, and my sister and I watched it all the time, to the point that I could probably spout out lines of dialog even though I haven’t watched it in a year or more.
I would have said Willow, but I watched it with a kid recently and boy, is that movie dated. How could I ever marvel at those special effects ?! The twin-headed dragon is just…ugh. The kid didn’t seem to mind - there were bad people getting hacked with swords after all, other considerations come distant second
War Games was a cool flick when I stumbled upon it in Dad’s VHS stash 15 years ago. It still is. Is my geek showing ?
Ok, ok, how about this then : James Bond movies. Sure, they’re camp, sexist and don’t make a shred of sense. But I still don’t expect you to talk, mister Bond. I expect you to die.
Any Miyazaki film.* Totoro, Mononoke, Chihiro, Porco Rosso*… they never stop working, even though they work for different reasons maybe.
*Shrek *- the kid gets a fairy tale, the parent gets an incredible satire of fairy tales rife with pop culture shoutouts. And fart jokes.
The Last Unicorn. There definitely is some nostalgia, but I don’t think this can be avoided; and reliving the way the little kid felt when Schmendrick conjures up the images of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, or the butterfly relates the unicorn’s story is something the (so-called) adult would never want to miss. But still, it’s also a good movie with a lot of heart.
The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad – and practically all the Harryhausen films, but I saw this one in the theater, and it’s special. And I love Bernard Herrmann’s Score.
There are a lot that I’ve always loved and always will (like Wizard of Oz. Which I know is a big surprise) but there are a few I hadn’t seen in a while that I still thought were great.
Mary Poppins, I liked when I was little, but not enough to memorize it or anything (unlike, say, Lion King or Wizard of Oz) and then I saw it on TV a couple weeks ago. I put it on while I was doing schoolwork as background noise (yes, I’m one of those people) and spent the next couple hours just absolutely delighted at how fun and clever it was.
Matilda is another one that I liked when I was little and got excited and recorded it the first two or three times I saw it on TV (but it’s on practically every week, so I don’t record it anymore)
Coneheads… I LOVED this movie when I was little and recorded it again recently. I was 99% sure it was going to be painfully stupid and I was going to be embarrassed for having loved it at age 6 or 7. And it was kind of stupid, but still cracked me up. I would watch it again.
