Five movies everyone loved as a kid that really don’t hold up when you’re an adult
When you’re a kid, it’s not hard to look past anything slightly questionable in a movie.
A storyline involving racism, sexism, or incredibly inappropriate narratives might not register as something problematic when you’re young, but looking back at many beloved movies from childhood can be a shock to the system.
That doesn’t mean you still can’t enjoy them – nostalgia has a strong hold over most of us – but it’s interesting to look back and see just how things have changed. The thing is, as we get older, we realise just how much went over our heads when we were kids, and an alarming line in a song or the depiction of a certain character can really take on a different meaning when you’re an adult.
Sometimes, you don’t realise how poorly-made a movie is until you’ve grown up and watched a lot more films. Then you’ll discover that a childhood movie you loved was actually riddled with terrible special effects or awful filming and editing choices, which can be quite a disappointing realisation.
So, from the eyebrow-raising instances that define John Hughes’ Sixteen Candles to the uncomfortable love story at the heart of Never Been Kissed, here are five movies everyone loved as a kid that really don’t hold up when you’re an adult.
Five beloved childhood movies that don’t hold up as adults:
Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis, 1994)
The quotable and lovable Forrest Gump, directed by Robert Zemeckis, is a childhood classic for many. As we follow the kindhearted titular character through his tales of witnessing some iconic moments in American history, it’s easy to see why people hold the film close to their hearts. It won various Oscars and became one of the most beloved movies of 1994, but looking back, Forrest Gump just doesn’t have the power to hold up when you’re an adult.
It’s incredibly sentimental American propaganda condensed into almost two-and-a-half hours. It’s far too long, far too sugary-sweet, and far too whitewashed. It’s one of those films you can only truly enjoy as a child because the movie’s lack of nuance isn’t evident to you then. As an adult, it’s hard to move past some of Zemeckis’ very questionable narrative choices.
Sixteen Candles (John Hughes, 1984)
Many of us grew up watching the teen comedies of John Hughes, from The Breakfast Club to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but Sixteen Candles might be the worst offender in terms of ageing badly. Sure, Hughes depicted teenagers in a way that they simply hadn’t been before, creating a cinematic world of coming-of-age struggles with relatable themes such as finding love and friendship – popularising the use of specific high-school archetypes in the process – but Sixteen Candles promoted some pretty awful ideas to impressionable viewers.
Two characters suggest taking advantage of a girl who has passed out after drinking too much, and this potential for rape is merely played for laughs. Then there’s the racist depiction of the Asian character Long Duk Dong which is certainly hard to watch without cringing in your seat. It’s a film riddled with issues that is much better remembered as a distant childhood memory.
Scary Movie (Keenen Ivory Wayans, 2000)
What sleepover was complete without a copy of Scary Movie playing on a portable DVD player when you were a kid? The ridiculous parody of movies like Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Matrix and The Blair Witch Project amused many of us – even if we hadn’t seen the movies they were making fun of – but watching it as an adult, it’s just not the same. Unless you’ve still got the same sense of humour as a teenage boy, most of Scary Movie is a chore to sit through, revealing a period in time when cheap gags, toilet humour, and a sprinkling of misogyny was all it took to make a hit comedy.
Homophobic, transphobic, and ableist jokes can be found throughout, and sadly, this readiness to make fun of marginalised groups purely because of a sense of difference continued to appear in many awful parody movies of the coming years, like Epic Movie and Disaster Movie. The film has its moments, but for the most part, it’s a relic of 2000s comedy best left in the past.
Never Been Kissed (Raja Gosnell, 1999) <br>
The teen rom-com boomed in the late 1990s and 2000s with movies like Mean Girls, The Princess Diaries, and Never Been Kissed, although the latter featured a storyline that is certainly less romantic and more ‘this teacher should be put on a register’ when you’re an adult. In the film, Drew Barrymore plays a journalist who pretends to be a high-schooler to research an article, but she inevitably falls for one of the teachers, who falls for her, too.
The only problem is – he thinks she is a teenage student. Thus, even though she isn’t, the fact that she ends up with him in the end – kissing in front of the whole school at a sports game – is highly questionable. This man fancied one of his students, he just got lucky that she was actually of age. Gross.
Grease (Randal Kleiser, 1978)
Grease basically set the precedent for teen movies to feature adults who look like they have a mortgage and three kids instead of football tryouts and exams on their minds. When you’re a kid, it’s easy to fall for the catchy songs, that cartoon intro, the car-racing, and the burgeoning love story between Danny and Sandy, but as an adult, much of it appears in a strikingly different light.
Not only do the characters look far too old, but there are many worrying plot points, like Sandy ditching her good-girl image and donning a super sexualised outfit to gain Danny’s attention. Then there’s the line “Did she put up a fight?” in the sing-along hit ‘Summer Nights’. I know it was the 1970s, but how did that actually get into the final cut?
