Movies you thought were awesome when you were a kid but now cringe at

Yes, indeed – belongs nowhere in this thread. The Last Dragon is waaaay too quotable to age poorly.

Don’t worry. Alec Guiness thought the script was terrible.

For me, it’s Labyrinth. The plotline was even goofier than I remembered, and how on earth did I miss the potato stuffed into the crotch of David Bowie’s spandex pants? That bulge was terrifying.

Sorry corkboard, but I’m with PharmBoy. The Blues Brothers was a lot of fun to watch for a 12 year old kid, but when I looked back on it at 35, it was kind of embarrassing. I’m not sure about John and Dan’s actual intentions, but the whole thing came off as a vehicle to launch their musical careers. They were funny mugging and joking in front of the cameras, but they just weren’t talented musicians, and this was painfully obvious when they side by side with legends like Ray Charles and Cab Calloway. And their suits! I couldn’t stand the suits. Why not just wear jeans and sweatshirts with “POSER” printed on both sides. They looked and sang like two mormons on meth. As musicians, they were good comedians.

It was good seeing the real blues players, including the BB backup band (too many B’s), but I actually felt sorry for them seeing them relegated to second string behind those two clowns. The spontaenous dance numbers looked forced, the jokes were corny, and the whole movie was just a letdown.

OK, I laughed at a few places, and the car chases were OK, but they didn’t save the rest of the movie. FTR, my wife still loves it.

NOOO, IT GETS BETTER EVERY TIME YOU SEE IT - AND DON"T FORGET IT!

The first things I thought of were Battlestar Galactica and Red Dawn. Battlestar Galactica because of the acting, and Red Dawn for damn near everything. No part of that story makes any sense knowing what I know now. At the time, it seemed plausible. :rolleyes:

I think Clash ot the Titans is still pretty watchable, but I don’t think that I will, thanks. Cable played that a lot when I was a kid.

Highlander. ugh. I had thought that was probably gonna be a good memory until I tried it out a year ago.

Same thing with The Dark Crystal.

But surprisingly little of it really aged all that well. Considering that my house had only one TV as well, and it was tuned to whatever my dad wanted to watch most of the time, and that I complained about this: Thank you for liking PBS so much, dad, at least there were some facts and decent writing mixed in there.

And man, I watched Battle Beyond the Stars almost every time it was on cable…sigh

Yep.

Forgot to add my own.

Totally second Billy Jack. I bought the DVD for under five dollars in '05, and I’m still pissed off at myself.

When I was 15, I recorded SGT Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band with Peter Frampton and George Burns, and I loved it. I saw it two or three times on the VCR. I was ashamed of that fact until I Tivo’d it a couple of years ago and realized that the only thing I liked about it were the songs. Listening to actual Beatles albums had cured me of any love of this movie. I was actually relieved about that.

I saw SGT Bilko with Steve Martin in a theater full of soldiers on a Friday night when I suspect most of us couldn’t legally drive. It was the funniest fucking movie I’d ever seen to that point, thanks to audience participation. The scene where the soldier tells Phil Hartman that he doesn’t have to answer the question about whether the bra and panties belonged to him got a standing O. My wife and I rented it a few years later and didn’t even make it halfway through.

On edit: And Red Dawn was, is, and always will be an awesome flick!

The Last Starfighter. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it makes me cringe, and there are definitely parts of it that are still fun–I still go squee! at the thought of being recruited to defend the Frontier from Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada; I also loved Robert Preston as the recruiter.

That said, I watched it a couple years back, and the nostalgia was better than the real thing. The aliens at the starfighter base were really cheesy, and the whole thing had the feel of a made-for-TV at times. I won’t be watching it again–I’ll just enjoy my childhood memories of it, and dream of being recruited to fight an alien invasion in some distant galaxy. :smiley:

I totally agree with you, and yet I love the movie. I think I love it for the real blues artists; don’t forget, as mediocre as Dan and Jim were, the movie helped launch a small blues revival that gave a boost to Aretha’s, Ray’s, and Cab’s careers. So some good came out of it. But yeah, we’ve always watched it as a hilarious parody with some amazing cameos, and it works quite well that way.

And I have to agree about Star Wars. The underlying story is a good strong Hero’s Journey, but Lucas was a hack even then. Great at SFX, horrible at writing. I’ve heard that he’s working on a TV show, and has other writers visiting Skywalker Ranch. Keep your fingers crossed.

To be fair though, it still has 1 line in it that makes me laugh out loud In response to a question from one of the BB who asked what kind of music the redneck bar had, the waitress replied " Both kinds, Country AND Western".

Now that is funny. The rest of it? no…

Wellllll, there is the other scene with the two Nazis in their Hitler-Hoopty plunging to their deaths with Wagner in the background:

“I’ve always loved you.”

And the Good Ol’ Boys were pretty funny too:

“Well, tell you what. We don’t have our union cards, and we’re going in there and playing anyway, so whaddya think about that? You’re gonna look pretty funny eating corn on the cob with no fucking teeth!”

I guess it’s the delivery, not the dialogue, but OK, maybe I was a little harsh on this movie. :slight_smile:

No I wasn’t.

hangs head in shame I saw it twice in the theatre when it came out. I bought the DVD for under $10 a year ago sheerly for the nostalgic cheese factor but none of my friends will let me inflict it on them.

I don’t exactly cringe, but last time I watched it, Mel Brooks’ original “The Producers” just didn’t hold up.

ABOMINATION!!

Nahhh, I’m just messing with you. I’ve gotta ask, though, had you already listened to the actual albums Sgt. Pepper’s and Abbey Road, or was this your first exposure to the music? For me, that made all the difference with this movie. Well, that and Steve Martin’s dance number.

All this talk of SGT Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band made me remember another movie I thought was destined to become an American film classic – Can’t Stop the Music, featuring the Village People and Bruce Jenner, for goodness’ sake.

I remember seeing the coming attractions for this in the theater. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, I saw them in the theater showing Blues Brothers.

I was old enough to roughly understand the odds of this movie sweeping the academy.

Take your pick of pretty much any Sho Kosugi ninja movie, I loved 'em all. I think that “Revenge of the Ninja” was my favorite, but I probably ended up watching “Ninja III: The Domination” more often. That stuff’s so bad I can’t even MST3K it.

Holy crap, Sho Kosugi. There’s a name I haven’t even thought of in close to twenty years. And yet, “It has Sho Kosugi in it!” used to be all the reason I needed to rent a movie.

I’m sorry but Breakfast Club didn’t keep well.

When I was a kid, I really thought “Stripes” was up there with “Caddyshack” or “Animal House” as far as great comedy classics went…

While it still has several lines that are favorites, the movie as a whole is pretty weak compared to how much I used to love it.

Yes, it did.

Mine choice is Flashdance. I never tried to “dance” like her, but I did go home and rip up an old gray sweatshirt… But even then I figured that being a welder was ridiculous for her character (I heard later that she didn’t know how to weld and it showed. No clue if that is right).
Foxes, a movie starring a young Jodi Foster. It was terrible, IMS.
Little Darlings–ditto, starring Tatum O’Neil. Its one claim to fame? I was carded to get IN to the damned movie. I was 17 and humiliated beyond my worst nightmare…

Love Story I rented it for Daughter right after whichever Olympics it was that the Canadian couple got a (contested) gold for couples skating (their routine was to the theme of LS). What a horrible treacly drivel of a movie. I can’t believe it won anything. The acting is terrible–she’s a selfish shit; he’s a spineless wanker.

Buck Rogers, the movie. Total cheese, baby! But I saw it 7 times in the theater. I have no idea why. I blame drugs.

Oh yeah. Didn’t take long to age, either. I saw it when it came out. Then I saw it in college, 1972 at the latest. When the scrawny heroine started emoting like bad Little Theatre, “You killed Bobby Kennedy! You killed Martin Luther King!”, the microphone actually dipped down into to frame, very clearly visible. At that point I went from shocked disbelief to howling with laughter.