CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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Going Back to Childhood Faves That Don't Live Up

Sunday, March 15, 2009

this entry brought to you by bjork, "wanderlust"


I've talked at length about how Ghostbusters is a sacred cow to me, and that it's a movie I saw again as adult and came to appreciate it even more, even though I thought my love for it couldn't grow higher.

There have been other childhood movies that I've revisited as an adult, however, and wondered exactly what the hell was wrong with me when I was a youngster. I thought I was the kind of kid who wasn't like other idiot kids, who could see through the bullshit, and could tell what was a good movie.

I re-watched Short Circuit again as an adult. When I was a kid, I was nearly obsessed with Johnny Five. I frigging loved that movie, and couldn't stop talking about it-- I imagine I must've driven my mom absolutely bonkers with this movie. My mom enjoyed most of the things I did, but she never shared in my love for Short Circuit, and I never understood why.

My wife had said she'd always enjoyed it as a kid too, that it was one of her favorite movies, so for one of my birthdays she went out and bought a copy on DVD. And holy god this movie is bad. I was nearly floored that there was any way I could have fallen in love with it. Steve Guttenberg, who had gone on to become a punch line, wasn't actually that bad. He was charming in an inexplicable way and had no real business being in the movie, but then, didn't really have any business not being in it. He is just sort of there, and never really detracts from the film, but he adds nothing.

The real offender is Ally Sheedy, who is so awful, it's as if she's personally trying to be an affront to the film. She is so contemptuous in being in this hunk of junk, she goes out of her way to give a horrible, unenjoyable performance. Was Ally Sheedy always like this? I've never seen The Breakfast Club, and have only seen Ally Sheedy in movies where she got naked, and even then I wasn't actually watching the movie. It seems inconceivable that she could've been this awful of an actress and still shown up in this many movies, so I can't tell if this is a low spot in her career, or if this is just another case of The 80s, where things like acting really didn't get in the way of a solid career. Or even good looks, because Sheedy isn't even all that cute.

The worst part about Short Circuit is that it seems like such a blatant attempt to sell action figures, but the weird part is that I don't remember any Johnny Five action figures at all. It's not as if Johnny Five was a genuinely endearing character-- he was merely a thing that spat out pop culture references without any context. Johnny Five is like that annoying roommate who speaks entirely in quotes from movies that weren't all that good to begin with. How, but how was Short Circuit something that I attached to?

Short Circuit wasn't the real heart-breaker, though. I was obsessed with Johnny Five, but it was more a short-lived obsession once I hit junior high and got into comic books, which was right around the time Batman and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came out-- both awesome movies, by the way. Have you gone back and seen the original Ninja Turtles? It's really damned good.

What really broke my heart was watching Kentucky Fried Movie again. When I first moved down to Phoenix to be with Michelle, I did the whole "You haven't seen it? Oh my god, you have to see it!" thing with Kentucky Fried Movie, going to far as to buy it for her birthday. I remembered absolutely loving Kentucky Fried Movie when I was a teenager. It was everything I liked about humor: it was subversive, it was satirical, it had random gags, as well as gags that made you think. It was awesome, and unlike Short Circuit, it was a movie that my mom loved as well.

And as I sat there and watched the movie with my wife, I was almost uncomfortable with how little laughter there was in the room. What the hell happened? Was this movie always unfunny, and I just didn't know, because I was young? Or had my sense of humor just developed so much that what was satirical and subversive in the late 70s just seemed silly and watered down to me as an adult? There were still gags that I liked, and I did enjoy most of "A Fistful of Yen" (although as an adult it seemed to drag on far too long, a problem I didn't have when I was younger), but seriously, what the hell went wrong? Maybe I'd just watched the movie so many times as a young one-- five or six total-- and as an adult I've fallen out of love with watching a movie more than two or three times, and there was no appeal in watching gags I'd seen half a dozen times before. Maybe had I watched it totally fresh I'd still get a kick, but even that seems like it might not be true because my wife didn't seem to be enjoying it much either. Maybe we both had a headache?
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with love from CRS @ 11:42 AM 

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