When I was fifteen, I saw Up the Creek, which I thought was one of the greatest movies ever. I caught it on TV last year, and… boy, has that movie changed! (Or maybe I have…?)
I saw Tron during its theater release and was blown away. I saw it later and I couldn’t sit though it. Same with Heavy Metal.
As to Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom centered around the Thuggee cult, which had been wiped out by the British years before the movie was set. Spielberg imagined that some of them had survived and were planning a comeback of sorts. The Thuggee worshipped Kali, goddess of destruction, and were responsible for the deaths of over two million people. I don’t know if the Thuggee ate meat, but the weird, scary meat that they were eating in the movie would only serve to defame the Thuggee, which I’m sure an Indian wouldn’t be bothered by. As a bonus, it served to give the filmgoer the impression that these are damned scary people, who are difficult to sympathize with. This wasn’t a racist depiction at all. It would be offensive only to the Thuggee, if there were any still around, and if anyone would feel sorry for them.
The Thuggee live on in the modern word thug, by the way.
Endless Summer. I saw it recently for the first time in 30 years, and it hasn’t aged well–amateurish and repetitive. And the Big Waves in Hawaii seemed a lot bigger when I was a kid than they did on re-viewing.
Back to the IJ&TTOD hijack: my take on the meal was that it was supposed to represent exotic/decadent fare, but not totally unrecognizable. And not “thugee cuisine”; everyone at the table seemed comfortable with the menu (except Kate Capshaw), and no one was a thug except the host. So…yes; marginally racist.
(but then, there’s a scene in Giant where Rock Hudson eats calf’s brains right out of the skull. Is that racist against Texans?)
Mary Poppins - Okay, admittedly a bit of time and maturity had passed between viewings, about 35 years, but I really expected to be more pleased with it as children’s entertainment when I saw it again but nope, it struck me as complete dreck.
I am Indian. Don’t worry, we make jokes about it all the time. There’s plenty of uptight people who don’t find it amusing, but mostly I took it to mean, “Really rich people everywhere eat anything.”
Smokey and the Bandit I and II. I loved these movies as a kid, and I was all set to be a truck driver when I grew up, outsmarting the mean old sheriff and talking to my buddies on the CB radio.
Fast forward many years…
I rented Smokey and the Bandit for my kids: Suck City!
Sorry for the double-post, but I didn’t answer the OP. While I loved re-watching Short Circuit 2 (not too long ago, as a matter of fact) *Short Circuit * was pretty awful. *Mary Poppins * was arrogant and snooty, although I do love Dick Van Dyke. And Never Ending Story - man those kids were whiny.
Really?! I have to agree with Johnny L.A. This was one of my favorites as a kid (I had it taped off of one of the PBS pledge drives). It was on AMC or something a couple of months ago and it is still really cool (other than some of the crap they did in Africa which we would consider blatantly racist today). Great surfing, great scenery, great soundtrack, even the jokes are decent.
Plus, it has all of that fantastic footage of Cape St. Francis.
Logan’s Run . I thought it was one of the greatest movies I’d ever seen when I saw it in the theater for the first time. I saw it again a year or so ago and the writing was cringeworthy – “Do those cracks in your face hurt?” Gaah!
My favorite 80’s sex comedy Class featuring Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Jaqueline Bissete, a John Cusack cameo, and a young Virginia Madsen’s bare breast. What’s not to love?
Well… let’s just say I’m glad I saw it first at age fourteen.
Hmm, interesting interpretations on Indiana Jones. In all the times I’ve watched it, I never came away thinking it was a cult dinner or a sign that something was wrong. I suppose it makes a little more sense that way. All that occurred to me was that Spielberg wanted yet another grossout scene (this movie was a collection of them), so he decided that this is how rich exotic foreigners eat. In fact there really aren’t many clues to suggest anything more than that.
To keep the thread going, next up is The Goonies. The big bad monster that turns out to be just a big lovable bunny rabbit was stupid. The kids were obnoxious and loud. And the one kid that turned out to be the only critical thinker in the bunch was also a moron, a glutton, and a coward – and it turns out that his critical thinking was wrong because, well, “It just HAS to be true!”
Rocky Horror Picture Show I thought it was fun when I was a teenager, but when I saw it again a few months ago, I thought it just wasn’t all that good.
The Brain from Planet Arous scared me witless as a child. When I saw it years later, it sucked like Dyson, which, as we know, “doesn’t lose suction”. :eek:
