When I was 12, Breakin’ was the coolest movie ever. I don’t know how many times I rented that. I bought it for $5 at Target last year, and I couldn’t even watch it once. Apparently they were Breakin’ the rule that the people on screen should know how to act. 
The soundtrack is still great cheesy 80’s goodness though.
I just had a mental image of the herbivors rising up in violent genocidal rebellion against the carnivores, in a bloodsoaked campaign fought with everything from machine guns and claymores to tactical nuclear warheads and kinetic impact weapons, laing waste to the world and reducing their once-fertile valley to a smoldering wasteland devoid of life and populated by roving gangs of Mad Max-esque dinosaur biker gangs eking out an existance in the postapocalyptic Hell they created. Think Resident Evil: Extinction meets Mad Max meets Rambo meets Band of Brothers meets Independance Day meets The Land before Time.
Thanks you. I haven’t laughed that hard in quite some time.
Well, the dialogue WAS terrible. And I knew it at the time. But still love the movie.
I have to admit that I love a lot of the films listed here – Star Wars, The Last Starfighter, Clash of the Titans. I saw their flaws when I first saw them, though, and I was an adult (Star Wars came out the day of my last college exam). I think a lot of you saw them as kids, and your critical faculties adn’t been unpacked yet, or at least your catalog of Models for Comparison, so you thought they were better than they were.
Although I still love The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, another Harryhausen film, which I saw as a kid.
Annie was so awesome when I was in kindergarten that I somehow convinced my mom to suffer through it twice when it was in theaters. Now…I know better than rewatching it.
Someone mentioned Labyrinth, and while I still like that one, I couldn’t get all the way through rewatching the formerly cool Legend or The Last Unicorn. Why didn’t the stoned, singing butterfly annoy me when I was little?!
That was the entire point.
For me, “Return of the Jedi.” At 12, I just wanted to see shit blow up. At 37, I find the movie appalling.
You slimey, disgusting excuse for a human being!
The Flash Gordon movie is the work of the divine!
Your eyes should be plucked out for your blasphemy.
A Clockwork Orange
American Beauty
The Tracey Fragments
…many more I can’t think of at the moment.
Comcast on Demand free movies had “Breakin’ 2 Electric Boogaloo” available a bit ago. I started watching it for old times sake. It was soooo cringe worthy I felt embarassed for the people on screen. Pastel and neon clothed people smiling and dancing in the streets with jerky movements. I will never show it to my kids and admit I grew up with that generation.
I’m also not seeing how Labyrinth fits into this thread. I still like the music, the message, and the muppets. When my niece gets a bit older, I’ll be screening it for her, and I expect we’ll both still enjoy it.
The Blues Brothers is great for the musical cameos, and funny in spots. The final car chase drags on too long, but otherwise, it’s not too bad.
Flash Gordon? 
Cheesy as hell, but that was obvious even to a ten year old. Timothy Dalton does a good job with nothing to work with, and of course Brian Blessed always seems to be having a good time whatever his role. The work of the divine though? I don’t think you’re thinking of the same movie.
Any of the American Ninja movies, and their ilk. I’m including Cynthia Rothrock movies, but not Kung Fu movies.
When I was in elementary school there was an HBO Halloween special called The Worst Witch which I loved. I think I only saw it once, but I remembered for years what a great movie it was.
Then when I was older, maybe even in high school, I saw The Worst Witch in the TV listings and got really excited. I mean, I knew it was meant for little kids, but I thought it would be fun to watch it. Well, it was fun to realize that the title character was a young Fairuza Balk and to recognize Tim Curry and Diana Rigg in supporting roles, but the movie itself is pretty embarrassing.
When I was about 11 my best friend and I rented Labyrinth practically every weekend, but then I didn’t see it for years. When I was in college I had a friend who had just bought the movie on DVD and had a get-together with a bunch of other girls to watch it. I think we were all kind of surprised by how poorly it had held up.
Young Jennifer Connelly was lovely, but you’d never guess from her performance in this movie that she was a future Oscar winner. She was not only outacted by the Muppet characters, she barely held her own against David Bowie’s tights. (The actors playing her parents in the beginning were even worse, like something from a local TV ad.) Much of the movie is plotless, just a series of unconnected incidents. The very end doesn’t make much sense. And watching the movie as an adult, I couldn’t help but feel that the Goblin King was really kind of a perv and needed to stop sniffing around the bedrooms of underage girls.
I saw the eighth one YEARS ago while babysitting. At the time, I actually thought, “Look, they’re shitting on my childhood!” Having seen the original again, I think it would be fair to say “Look, they’re lightly kicking my childhood.”
Legend of the Lone Ranger. I loved it when I was a little kid, but I saw it on cable a few years ago and was shocked at what a horrible piece of shit it was.
*Clockwork Orange? *Really? Why? This remains a mystery to me. Many of the people I know are either love it or hate it. One friend refuses to ever watch it again, being scarred as a child having seen it only once. I don’t understand this. This remains as one of my favorites. Sure, it’s sadistic. Sure, it’s cruel, and most youngsters won’t understand the ethical issues, but I think it’s a classic.
*Blues Brothers * - I always thought this was great. Good exposure to blues and good music for a youngster in Texas. Because we only have both kinds of music in Texas - Country AND Western. 
The dialogue is great, almost deadpan and I don’t like that, but I loved this as a kid. The car chase scene is one of the greatest examples of overkill I’ve ever seen. Upon further review, I read that they had to get all sorts of special permits at the time to film the chase in real time at real speed (yes, they really did go that fast on South Wacker Drive.)
Back to the point: *The Hollywood Knights. *For some reason, mom thought it would be neat to school me about her youth and Friday nights spent at a 50’s drive in. She didn’t watch it with me and my friends. We were hooting and hollering at all the jokes. Mom just thought we were enjoying the movie. When she finally saw it the next day (as we were re-watching it), she was sooooo ashamed that she had allowed us to watch that movie that she called my friends’ mothers and apologized. :smack:
Nowadays, it’s all just toilet humor and sex jokes. Good for a pre-teen, but I can’t stand these kind of jokes today.
FWIW, I think that any re-evaluation of a movie can’t be justified by watching late night TV reruns. They censor out all the good stuff. The originals need to be re-rented. Or whatever. Don’t depend on TV.
They played it here in Cinerama about 10 years ago. The wide screen made the film.
Another vote for Billy Jack.
3 off the top of my head
**Jurassic Park **- saw it in the theaters twice, and also own the dvd. Popped it in last weekend, and couldn’t get through it. The dialog SUCKS, Laura Dern is terrible, the kids are annoying, and on and on and on. I turned it off after that kid (who is the child version of Pat), says “that doesn’t look scary. It looks like a 6 foot turkey.” What the fuck is that little bastard even DOING on a dig like that? But when I saw it when I was younger, I was amazed by the special effects.
**Return of the Jedi **- What a heaping pile of dung. I didn’t like it even as a kid, which is saying something, considering how much I looked forward to it coming out. But a forest full of fuzzy teddy bears later, I lost my interest in make believe. It’s suckage is still bad, but SWI makes it look like an Oscar winner.
**American Graffiti **- Lucas was laying turds on us long before we even knew it. The first pass through the movie was fine. But watching it as an adult, I wanted to reach through the screen and choke the over-acting Richard Dreyfus, the pansy Ron Howard, and the rest of the tomato heads. The only character I liked was John Milner and Toad, and both “died” at the end of the movie, meaning we wouldn’t see them in AG2!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2. The first one is still awesome, but the second one’s only saving grace is how goofy the Vanilla Ice song is. Yet I watched that movie every day after school for the entire 3rd grade. If I catch it on TV I watch it to see if I can still quote it line for line. I can.
I have to agree and disagree. JP was “that movie” for me when it was released. I was nine years old, and I was so ridiculously obsessed with it that it probably played some profound part in my growth as a person.
I agree in the sense that the movie will never be as good for anybody as it will be for a nine-year-old boy.
I disagree that it’s a particularly bad movie, though. The special effects largely hold up, it’s well-paced, and it doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s well-done goofy action, and it knows it. I still enjoy it when I catch it on TV.
Also, the kids are in the park because Hammond (their grandfather) is basically using them as a mini-focus group. Not all of their scenes are bad - the kitchen scene with the raptors is awesome and the galimimus stampede is cool.
I actually “loled” when I saw **A Clockwork Orange **mentioned more than once. Who let you watch that as a kid!? I had some pretty cool babysitter’s back in the day, but I don’t think they were even mature enough to ‘get’ the movie.
Well I wasn’t a kid but it was a long time ago