Yesterday, esteemed Pajiboverlord Dustin Rowles put together his list of 80s movies that have aged badly. Unfortunately, due to trolling the readership including The Goonies on that list, it is my sad duty to report that Dustin is in critical condition at Our Pajiba of Mercy Hospital, due to wounds that, according to his doctors, “resemble somewhat what one might expect from being mauled by a bear, except much, much worse.”
Now, it’s not my job to go amongst the commenters, one-by-one, inspecting them for bear-hairs like some lycanthrope-seeking Javert. (Pajiba has their own people for that, armed with salmon stuffed full of silver bullets. One can’t be too careful about werebears.) I’m simply going to attempt to resolve the situation peacefully by
drafting a list of 80s hits – massive, massively successful movies, every one culturally and financially important – that, in the fullness of time, have been revealed as massive piles of suck rather than the classics people thought they were at the time.
In no particular order but with a countdown nonetheless:
10.) Commando
Arnold Schwarzenegger has quite a respectable 80s lexicon. The Terminator, both Conans, Red Heat, Predator, The Running Man – classics all. But for some reason, with the exception of Terminator no Schwarzenepic is considered to be quite so iconic as Commando, mostly because Commando is supposedly the essence of Arnold: the baddies are bad and he kills them for being bad, for about ninety straight minutes. Here’s the problem: it’s boring and shitty. I could make that sound nicer, I suppose, but it would just be a lot of words that would all mean “boring and shitty.” Yes, I know Alyssa Milano is in it; it’s still boring and shitty. The action sequences have the slow, uneven pace of a retarded cow, the plot is nonexistent and even the explosions are somehow completely unsatisfactory. It’s a parody of 80s action movies and doesn’t realize it. In conclusion: boring and shitty.
9.) Mr. Mom
Mr. Mom relied extensively on shock value for its comedy, so it’s no surprise that it’s really not funny at all any more: the idea of a man staying home with the kids isn’t particularly odd nowadays, so an entire movie predicated on asking the audience “hey, look! Michael Keaton is taking care of children rather than going out and supporting his family! How emasculating is that, huh?” isn’t going to work like it did twenty-five years ago. (See also: the comic strip Adam, except that Adam wasn’t even funny during the 80s.) Mr. Mom could have been more timeless; after all, it’s got Keaton plus Teri Garr, Martin Mull and Christopher Lloyd, accomplished comics every one. (And even a very young Jeffrey Tambor!) But it’s not timeless: it’s a cheap hack comedy with good names trying to capitalize on cultural zeitgeist, and nothing ages a movie faster than tying itself to a given cultural shift or trend. (Unless it’s about breakdancing, lambada, or stunt skiing.)
8.) Three Men and a Baby
True story: once upon a time, Ted Danson was legitimately considered a sex symbol. No! Really!
7.) Platoon
It seems weird to include a Best Picture winner, and one that was rightly acclaimed at the time, on this list. But Platoon genuinely hasn’t aged well at all; in retrospect Oliver Stone’s script comes off as goofy and melodramatic rather than gritty and realistic as it did at the time, the movie seems to tread water in between often confusing battle sequences, and Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe and Charlie Sheen often seem to be trying to out-clench one another. But the biggest problem with Platoon isn’t even its own fault, really: it’s that Full Metal Jacket, Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam opus, came out one year later, and who the hell can compete with one of Kubrick’s best?
6.) Flashdance
Quick quiz: name the last thing you saw Jennifer Beals in. Right, you can’t. But you can sure as hell remember her in those leg-warmers and welding shit so that she could pay for her leg-warmers. And she danced a bit. Nobody on the planet remembers anything else at all about this movie. Did she have a boyfriend in this movie? I am not sure. Neither are you. If you looked up “inessential” in the dictionary, you would not see a poster for Flashdance, because that is how inessential it is. It made a hundred million dollars and not one person on the planet remembers anything other than “Oh What A Feeling.”
5.) National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
Actually, all of the Vacation films kind of suck, but the worst (other than Vegas Vacation, made in the 90s and therefore not eligible for this list) is Christmas Vacation, mostly because misplaced nostalgia constantly has people trying to tell you that Chevy Chase’s horrible mugging (his grins in this movie are so tight they form a kind of zombie-like rictus that is terrifying to behold) and a bunch of really horribly staged jokes makes for some kind of holiday classic, rather than the visual equivalent of a seasonal enema. Clark Griswold is the least sympathetic “hero” in Christmas movie history, and if the film had the guts to give Clark the giant “fuck you” that he clearly deserves it might be a dark, ironic classic. Instead, Clark gets his completely undeserved happy ending, surrounded by Beverly D’Angelo and Juliette Lewis and Randy Quaid as his horrible family. If they have Christmas in Hell, the only movie they show is Christmas Vacation, over and over and over again. (Well, that and Christmas with the Kranks.)
4.) Strange Brew
I’m Canadian, so I can say this with the righteous fury it demands: this movie is crap. Want more? Okay: SCTV‘s moments of genius were vastly outnumbered when compared to the innumerable sketches on the show that went absolutely nowhere and felt like they lasted forever. Rick Moranis is justly obscure nowadays, and Dave Thomas even moreso. Cult classic, my fucking ass: this movie just isn’t funny, and worse, you can lay the blame for all those Saturday Night Live sketches-turned-movies at this sucker’s feet. When your eyes travel over It’s Pat! in the video store (not the Blockbuster, but instead that seedy video store at the strip mall which has absolutely everything, which used to be your excuse to visit it when you needed to rent porn, but that was before the internet gave you free porn on demand), you have only Strange Brew to blame.
3.) Twins
If we can blame Twins for anything, it’s the true popularization of high concept as a raison d’etre for making a film. With nothing more to it than “hey, what if Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito were twin brothers?”, Twins made a shitload of money and taught Hollywood exactly the wrong lesson, which is that people will go see anything if you can sum it up in a single sentence. Twins isn’t notoriously awful like some movies on this list; it’s just there, sitting like the turkey sandwich you forgot to throw out two days ago. You could probably still eat it. But do you want to?
2.) The Big Chill
The Big Chill was one of Dustin’s honorable mentions and probably the reason he survived that dreadful bear attack. This is because if there is a single movie that encompasses everything hateful about baby boomers, the 1980s, yuppies, and pretty much everything else that ruined the world forever, it is The Big Chill. This movie was goddamned definitive as a Boomer cultural touchstone back in the day, which tells you something unpleasant. The characters are former activist liberals turned successful young professionals, and their complex inner lives are all marked by the fact that they are all conspicuously selfish assholes of varying degrees (except for William Hurt, who is impotent instead, and there’s a bit of a message there: sell out or lose your boning ability!). By the time they start dancing to Motown songs completely unironically, the modern-day viewer understands that there is only one rational response to watching this movie, and that is to say “fuck these people.”
1.) Top Gun
Come on, what the hell else was going to be #1? Top Gun made, adjusted for inflation, approximately one zillion dollars. It reintroduced the word “maverick” to the modern lexicon, and we owe Tom Cruise a kick in the nuts for that because maybe he couldn’t have anticipated John McCain but then again he probably should have, because Tom Cruise has weird mind powers. Top Gun is almost completely unwatchable, and there isn’t any societal shift necessary to explain why. It’s unwatchable because it fucking sucks. Maybe you’re thinking “but if it fucking sucks, how can it have aged badly?” And the simple answer is that sometimes a movie that sucks can still be something that enthralls you briefly and momentarily. For example: the first Michael Bay Transformers. I came out of that feeling entertained, and only over a period of about two hours did I come to realize that I had just seen one of the biggest shitburgers I would ever see. Top Gun is like that, except it took people a few years rather than a few hours to realize it was very, very bad.
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But Top Gun was awesome! I can see a lot of those movies being really bad but Top Gun I think is still a great movie. The rocking 80’s music, Anthony Edwards, Val Kilmer. It has some really great moments. It is in a league way above Transformers and for sure about most movies from the 80s
I cannot agree with Goonies and Batman being on that list you linked to (sure, Batman has its issues, and it’s no Batman Begins, but I don’t think it’s aged as horribly as some of the films listed there OR on this entry).
Everything else, though? Yeah, horribly aged. Ditto for this list, too. I watched Commando a few weeks ago on AMC, and it’s just plain lame.
There’s also one both lists may have missed: The Great Outdoors.
I expect to see a lot of werebears coming after you for what you said about Top Gun, but… Yeah. You’re totally right. I was the right age and everything when it came out. Every guy I knew in high school thought that movie was totally tubular. And, well…
I guess if you like looking at fighter planes, there’s a few minutes of cool stuff. Otherwise? Maverick is an unlikable jerk. His love interest isn’t sexy at all. And that part where Cruise and Edwards sing The Righteous Brothers to her? That part always sucked. But somehow, a bunch of teenagers were tricked into thinking it was funny and cool. And, as Cracked writers like to point out, the shirtless volleyball is really, really gay.
Edwards is by far the most likable guy in the whole movie and [spoiler alert!] he dies just to make Maverick look more sensitive.
Basically, all this movie really has going for it are a couple of Val Kilmer’s lines that became “iconic” catchphrases for some reason and that stuff about buzzing the tower.
I know it inspired a lot of guys to try to become fighter pilots and all that, but it was never a good movie. Arguably, the best thing about it was that darn Kenny Loggins song.
I’d say that “Christmas Vacation” is actually responsible for “Christmas with the Kranks” and all those other Xmas-related turd sandwiches that, these days, start arriving in theaters in late October. It was successful enough that everyone else wants to make the next movie that the whole family watches together every Christmas with a heartwarming message about family blah blah blah love blah blah blah nothing else but family and love matter at Christmas – thus, “Christmas with the Kranks,” “Fred Claus,” “Jingle All the Way,” “Deck the Halls,” “The Santa Clasue,” et al.
Jennifer Beals was in Roger Dodger a few years ago and was quite good. So was Elizabeth Berkeley, which feels kind of odd to type.
Rick Moranis is obscure only because he made a bazillion dollars on the Honey series and chose to retire young. Though it’s probably safe to say that the only thing on his agent’s radar would still have been the new Ghostbusters sequel.
I tried watching Krull recently. It . . . well, let’s just say there were problems that my nine-year-old mind hadn’t noticed at the time.
How is it possible, exactly, to dislike War Games? Difficulty: no faulting unrealistic depictions of technology like “accidentally dialing into NORAD.”
I watched Commando not more than two weeks ago and it was AWESOME. A pox on you Bird! A pox I say!
Yes, 1000 times yes on top gun. I had never seen that movie until about 2-3 years ago, and i can declare that hot shots is a better version of that film.
also, no red dawn? or are we supposed to recognize that that movie was shit to begin with?
and not to suggest column topics for you, but any chance that you’ll do an 80s movies that have aged well (i see number 1 being ferris bueller, but that’s just off the top of my head) and/or a 90s version of the list?
finally, i gotta say that the 2000s version of this list is going to consist of 9 will ferrel/vince vaughn/etc comedies and transformers 1 and 2.
Worse than Krull, try watching Neverending Story sometime.
Oy the pain, it does not stop, please make the synth music stop…
“an 80s movies that have aged well … list”
Back to the Future I will be on that list. The other two…maybe not so much.
I have more ranting, but the last entry was getting too long.
I agree completely about Commando. If you can make it past the first few minutes where Arnold is reacting really strangely to seeing a deer and the early, incredibly crappy action sequences… it becomes totally cartoony in a way that should only be appreciated ironically. The one good part in the whole movie is when Rae Dawn Chong is trying to use the rocket launcher to save Arnold.
Between this and the Teen Wolf movies, I’m having a hard time figuring out why anybody ever thought Jeph Loeb was a good writer.
You’re absolutely right about Twins (it has some funny parts, but it’s still not good enough to justify how much people loved it at the time) and Christmas Vacation. But your take on Strange Brew makes me want to say something obnoxious involving the words “knob” and “hoser.”
On the one hand, I can kind of see what you’re saying. The stuff with the haunted arcade game didn’t age well, and that scene where they think the floppy disc is a 45 single is only mildly amusing if you still remember when regular people had record players. Also, Mel Blanc providing the voice of their dad is weird and not in a good way. And the movie is a lot more uneven than it seemed back in the Eighties. But on the other hand, a lot of the stupid humor still works for me. And most of the cheesy Hamlet references are great.
I was going to try to defend The Big Chill, even though I found it really boring when I finally got around to watching it. And I’m not even sure if I watched the whole movie. But, really… About the best thing about it is that it must have had something to do with the creation of thirtysomething. I used to love that show back when I obsessively watched reruns of it in the early Nineties.
I don’t think we should hate all Baby Boomers, just the ones who now like Glenn Beck. So, maybe I just have fonder memories of that era than you do. It wasn’t all lameness and Jeff Goldblum being a massive douchebag.
You know, everyone likes to piss on Transformers as this terrible horrible movie that only became terrible and horrible once they took a moment to realize it had little plot and was kinda cheesy.
But take a moment and compare that to G.I.Joe, a movie that made you want to leave the theater shortly after the credits rolled. Compare it to a movie you took absolutely zero pleasure from even while sitting in the theater.
You’re thinking too hard. Don’t go watch a high budget action movie staring the latest pair of Hollywood tits and come crying to me because it lacked depth and detail and coherence. NO SHIT! Just take it for what it is – a Michael *boom* *zoom* Bay *cablowey!* film – and move on.
Quick quiz: name the last thing you saw Jennifer Beals in. Right, you can’t.
Dude, she’s in The L Word. And she’s freaking brilliant in it.
I know what you mean about G.I. Joe. With that cast and fond memories of the cartoon series to exploit, it should have at least been entertaining.
Instead, it was more like “The best parts are the flashbacks with Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow as kids. Why couldn’t they have just made that movie instead?”
I liked it a little more than you did, but yeah… By the time they finally got around to admitting that Christopher Eccleston was Destro, I became painfully aware that I was going to want my money back.
Yup, pretty bad whiff on Jennifer Beals. Even if she weren’t in The L-Word (and I’ve seen her a bunch in TV & movies, my favorite being Devil In A Blue Dress, playing the titular role), she gets a suckitude pass from me for pushing fifty and being even more stunning than ever.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=&search_query=gi+joe+resolute&aq=0&oq=gi+joe+res
Warren Ellis doing GI Joe: Resolute. Basically, done right.
I’m sorry, but Transformers was everything I could have reasonably asked for. T:2 less so, but still not deserving of all the flak it got.
I get the feeling that when someone complains about an action movie because it wasn’t cool after deep meditative contemplation, they’ve been spoiled by too many really good movies.
Peter Jackson and Christopher Nolan have been spoiling you people.
That’s a little weird, because I found GI Joe to be LIGHT-YEARS better than Transformers (which I was well aware sucked massively for every excruciating instant it sprawled across the screen). I mean, don’t get me wrong, GI Joe is still a hilariously stupid movie, but it actually has, like, action sequences. Which are coherent. And the GI Joe characters are onscreen most of the time. Transformers is about six hours of Shia LaBeouf mugging for the camera and 10 minutes of confusing, inpenetrable robot fights.
And yeah, Commando is AMAZING. I say that as someone who only saw it a few years ago. Of COURSE it knows it’s a parody of 80s action flicks! Or, even if it doesn’t (which I doubt–this is the same era that gave us “RoboCop”, leave us not forget) that makes it even more awesome. From the “deer moment” mentioned above throughout the rest of the running time, that movie had me in stitches. Boring? Really? To each his own, I guess.
And I won’t defend Strange Brew, which did indeed bore me as a kid, but the SCTV crew were all monumentally talented, Moranis included. It’s not Moranis’s fault that he got typecast as “fidgety nerdy guy”. Or, well, maybe it is, but he was actually capable of much more, as SCTV itself makes clear.
I watched Top Gun when I was twelve, mostly for the fighter-plane bits. I wanted gold-rimmed sunglasses and a bomber jacket, and to ride a motorcycle. A couple years ago, I thought back to what the actual plot of the movie was, and realized: “shallow prick loses his semi-hetero buddy in pointless training accident, bags dead buddy’s girlfriend afterward.” What the hell, eighties?
…Wait, Maverick sleeps with Goose’s girlfriend? Wasn’t she the one played by Meg Ryan? I think you’re getting a little mixed up.
I agree with most of this, especially Top Gun.
However, I challenge you on #6. I have to this day never seen the movie but I do own a copy of the soundtrack for Flashdance and it is one of the greatest things on this planet or any other. I cannot even say for 100% certain that I enjoy it ironically. Just talking about it now makes me want to fire it up.
I would gladly send you my copy to prove my point. With the exception of the possible ear-bleeder “Seduce me Tonight” by Cycle V, the rest of it is so incredibly awesome it has the potential to turn people gay. It’s just that good.
I found Strange Brew and Christmas Vacation hilarious, but that’s the problem with comedy- poll a hundred people, and you’ll find a hundred different opinions about what was funny.
Can’t really argue with any of the other selections, though.
Two points:
Burke, I don’t know what movie you watched, but it wasn’t Top Gun. Kelly McGillis and Meg Ryan are two separate people.
Also, I’m glad Rick Moranis took his “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids” money and quit showbiz so we’re not sick of him like we’re sick of people like Adam Sandler and Jack Black.
I forgot to mention that yes, Mr. Mom was terrible, but so is everything else Michael Keaton has ever done.
More on Jennifer Beals, and Flashdance in particular. She made public the “Taking off the bra without taking off the shirt” move. Also, she did have a boyfriendy character who gave her support when she auditioned in front of the very serious judges and brought her flowers when she was welding shit.
You have been living in a cave if you’ve missed her on The L Word (not that it’s a GREAT show, but it has its moments, when it’s not drowning in stereotype).
The last thing I literally saw her in was a Cinderella production on a very old video, in which she was Cinderella and Matthew Broderick was the Prince. (Flashdance was better)
Beals has also been in three episodes of Lie to Me, for whatever that’s worth. She plays Tim Roth’s ex-wife.
SCTV remains a classic. Even the sketches that aren’t really funny are entertaining in other ways. STRANGE BREW not so much, but “The Mutants of 2051 A.D.” makes the entire picture worthwhile. (Also, I think Moranis’ disappearance had more to do with the death of his wife than anything else.)
I feel like a visionary; I didn’t like most of these movies when they were NEW.(And ten years from now, people will be dissing Nolan’s Batfilms they way they now diss Burton’s and Schumacher’s. Trust me on this).
Y’know, I always thought Chevy Chase’s zombie-like rictus was part of the point.
Small note:
The song from “Flashdance” is “What a Feeling” (or possibly “Flashdance… What a Feeling”). “Oh What a Feeling” is the song by 1970s Canadian band Crowbar, and covered by Junkhouse.
For the record, I still enjoy Burton’s Batman movies, particularly Returns, which actually may be my favourite Batman movie. I don’t think they’re dated at all (it helps that the art direction is so incredibly stylized and retro) and they clearly revolutionized action movies in ways that still resonate today, particularly in regards to art direction and design. Burton’s movies made it OK for a blockbuster to be fanciful and expressionistic. Whatever their problems, they were pretty evident right from the moment of their release.
I find most of the bitching aimed at Burton’s films comes from the inflexible fanboy contingent, who can’t stand the idea of Batman not being taken VERY VERY SERIOUSLY. Burton’s movies are filled with imagination and humour and don’t pretend to be set in the real world, a trend that Schumacher obviously took way way too far. Nolan’s films, as well-made as they are, cater a little bit too much to fanboy self-importance for my liking.
Zifnab:
“You’re thinking too hard. Don’t go watch a high budget action movie staring the latest pair of Hollywood tits and come crying to me because it lacked depth and detail and coherence.”
Why can’t I have both?
I’ve never understood this attitude. If someone dares to point out that no, in fact, Dan Brown cannot write and his books are crap, Dan Brown apologists get terribly upset and insist that it’s just meant to be an enjoyable mindless book that’s fun to read, so it doesn’t need to be well-written. Someone dares to point out that T:2 is a horrible, horrible film, Bay apologists insist that you’re thinking too hard, it’s just meant to be an enjoyable mindless movie that’s fun to watch. As if this is an either/or scenario. Enjoyable / Well-crafted: Choose One.
That’s a crap argument. For two reasons.
Firstly, because it just so happens that I find incoherent plots, stupid and one-dimensional bad guys, and painful dialogue to be decidedly *not* enjoyable. Mindless isn’t fun for me, bad writing isn’t fun for me, boring characters isn’t fun for me.
Secondly, and more importantly, because it’s *not* either/or. You can have good writing and a solid plot and well rounded characters AND ALSO blow stuff up and have eye-popping CGI and the rush from big exciting whirlwind action scenes. You can have both. “District 9” has both. “Ironman” and “Dark Knight” have both. “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (which goes ahead of even Ferris Bueller on the “aged well” list) has both. Intelligent, well-crafted action movies are possible. Action movies can be excellent movies by any standard, not just good for “mindless fun” movies.
If I can have both, why oh why in the hell would I choose to be satisfied with anything less?
I think Burke is confusing Top Gun with The Irredeemable Ant-Man.
Fuck that noise, Strange Brew was tight. But Jennifer Beals should get punched in the face daily for that stupid ripped up off-the-shoulder sweatshirt crap, because without her bad example small town mousey community college girls would have to try harder to irritate me.
Top Gun is probably the best Unintentional Comedy of the 80s. Right now? I think it’s fucking hilarious.
The Goonies has aged really badly though. The truffle shuffle and the bits with Sloth in aside there is basically nothing to distingush that film from any other eighties kids adventure movie. I fell asleep the last time I watched it.
actually, strange brew is hamlet, which means that the story is good, even if the jokes are bad.
MGK: “For example: the first Michael Bay Transformers. I came out of that feeling entertained, and only over a period of about two hours did I come to realize that I had just seen one of the biggest shitburgers I would ever see.”
I’m sorry, but if you weren’t able to realize what a shitburger you were seeing while you watched Transformers, I don’t think anyone should take you seriously.
We all have our list of Movies We Once Liked But Then We Grew Up And Realized They Were Shit. I still think that Hawk the Slayer was rubbish… (that comic shop guy from Spaced jumps through a temporal vortex and slugs me) GAAAH!
Of your list, I actually think Platoon was still a good film (not great, definitely anvilicious with its plot) with good acting. I’ve actually had more problems with Full Metal Jacket (too many characters carrying the Idiot Ball at the wrong times, and the whole second half was a disaster).
Oh, and European Vacation was shitloads worse than any other Vacation entry.
If *I* had to make a list of Bad 80s films that didn’t age well… I wouldn’t stop at 10. Man, that was a crazy hairdo decade…
All you people talking about movies are missing the point entirely. What’s really notable about this post is that MGK seems to say, in the Big Chill section, that there something wrong with dancing to Motown.
WHAT.
Watching people dance to Motown, I can see how that might be irritating. But not finding Motown itself danceable…MGK, have you heard of this new invention called “rhythm”? It’s slightly relevant to dancing.
On a more serious note, good post. BUT MOTOWN IS GOOD AAUGH
I glad to see someone is finally giving The Big Chill the disrespect is deserves. I saw it on video a couple of years after its release and I really hated it. Those people were awfull, and I couldn’t believe how conceited they all were and nobody swooning over the movie seemed to notice.
I can’t believe, though that nobody has mentioned Robocop yet. That movie sickened me more than any other film I can ever remember watching. It is nothing but pure sadism.
* Bill and Ted
* Most of the John Candy movies, but The Great Outdoors in particular
* Dances With Wolves (1990, so arguably an 80s movie)
* Crocodile Dundee
* Ghostbusters II (1989), 345th highest-grossing movie of all time
* Porky’s
I take issue with Ghostbusters II, if only because this is movies that have aged badly.
Ghostbusters II was made of suck when it first was released. 😉
Strange Brew was and is great. You’re just wrong. It’s the first use in comedy of a guy farting while connected to a lie detector.
Aw c’mon. Commando is hilarious! We like it BECAUSE it comes off as a parody of 80s action movies. Plus it had that hot black chick with the rocket launcher.
Commando and Top Gun work because of the constant homoeroticism
My father was a Navy pilot once, and one of his instructors had something to do with Top Gun. He walked through the background of a scene or something.
Apparently the real fighter pilots all hated Tom Cruise; pilots, according to my dad, get these enormous egos and justify them by saying that they’re the best of the best, and they worked heard to get there. That’s why they’re fighter pilots.
And Tom Cruise, while working on that movie, would walk around in character (according to my dad according to that instructor), with that ego, and the pilots would all see that, know that he hadn’t worked like they had worked, and hate him with a passion. He hadn’t earned that pride, that ego.
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Wall Street? Peel on wallpaper bricks!
I think Commando has aged exceptionally well.
It was boring and shitty then and its boring and shitty now.
See? No problem in the aging department.
Commando is boring and shitty? I don’t want to live in your world any more.
“And Tom Cruise, while working on that movie, would walk around in character (according to my dad according to that instructor), with that ego,”
are you sure he was walking around in character, and not just as Tom Cruise?
I’d say Twins should be replaced by the ’89 Batman; Twins was kinda lame, but Batman was the signal to Hollywood that big names, huge ad campaigns, and a hot property could substitute for a good movie instead of promoting one. The line of descent through to G.I. Joe runs through Nicholson’s Joker.
And I have to disagree, Prankster. The fanboys who love the ’89 Batman love it because it’s so much more serious than Adam West’s Batman and it shows that they totally get that he’s the Dark Knight and it doesn’t have Robin in it because he is Teh Lame Kid Sidekick and it doesn’t have puns and Tim Burton Really Gets It.
Whereas those of us who dislike it point out that once you set that aside, it’s Michael Keaton standing there in an inflexible rubber suit and occasionally sticking his fist out very slowly so people can run into it. It features a Batman who is neither a detective nor a martial artist, and a Joker who’s 100 pounds overweight and is really just Jack Nicholson playing the same damn part he plays in every other movie.
I like Christmas Vacation.
“It’s a parody of 80s action movies and doesn’t realize it.”
Wrong. You’re so very wrong. I’m pretty sure it realizes it and fully embraces it.
Commando may have aged (well or unwell), but it’s never boring and shitty.
Compared to some of the other ‘classics’ that are run ad nauseum during the holidays, Christmas Vacation is one of those rare movies I can watch again and again and not get tired of it.
And apologies to all my fellow Canadians, but Strange Brew just isn’t funny, no matter how much we want it to be.
I love Top Gun and Christmas Vacation, and you can’t change my mind.
You don’t like Commando? I wasn’t aware that was possible for a human who hasn’t experienced the menopause.
I would have thought the first ‘SNL’ movie was Blues Brothers, and they’ve been trying to do that again ever since.
Hey, Krull is great! I just started rewatching it for the first time in years. I was enjoying it on both an honest and an ironic level. It’s never going to not be cheesy. It’s always going to be grainy with an 80s aesthetic, but it’s honest and does well with it’s massive aims.
On the other hand, Neverending Story was *PAINFUL* on rewatch. I felt embarrassed for it.
“And I have to disagree, Prankster. The fanboys who love the ‘89 Batman love it because it’s so much more serious than Adam West’s Batman and it shows that they totally get that he’s the Dark Knight and it doesn’t have Robin in it because he is Teh Lame Kid Sidekick and it doesn’t have puns and Tim Burton Really Gets It.
Whereas those of us who dislike it point out that once you set that aside, it’s Michael Keaton standing there in an inflexible rubber suit and occasionally sticking his fist out very slowly so people can run into it. It features a Batman who is neither a detective nor a martial artist, and a Joker who’s 100 pounds overweight and is really just Jack Nicholson playing the same damn part he plays in every other movie.”
I would actually have to agree with the second part, to an extent. The ’89 Batman isn’t without it’s flaws.
But the first paragraph? I think there are other reasons to like it. Burton’s Gotham was the best outside of Bruce Timm, a great blend of Gothic, modern, and gangster chic. The score by Danny Elfman was wonderful. Even playing his stock character, Nicholson works great as the Joker (I’d argue better than what they did in “The Dark Knight”). And there are great setpieces in the movie.
I call bullshit. Not the list, but the claim that Jeffrey Tambor was once young. EVERYONE knows that he came into the world fully-formed at the age of 55.
Danny Elfman’s score for Batman was good. Arguably, it was less good when I heard it again for the Flash TV series and then yet again for Army of Darkness and then yet again again for Batman Returns, but it was good. 🙂
And yes, the set design is wonderful, and emblematic of what I’m talking about; fans liked it not so much because of what it was, as what it wasn’t. They were all so freaked out about the possibility of a reprise of Adam West’s campy Batman TV show that simply seeing the atmospheric, gothic Gotham and a Joker who killed people felt like Heaven. But looking back (and really more in comparison to Batman: The Animated Series than TDK), it hasn’t aged well.
Which is what the list is about.
BATMAN is a good movie, but structurally and plot-wise it feels a bit like a first draft. Kinda messy.
BATMAN RETURNS isn’t exactly elegantly plotted, but it’s so wonderfully insane and savage that it doesn’t matter.
Anyone who thinks back to the Flashdance soundtrack and can’t come up with Maniac must not be old enough to actually remember the 1980’s.
The Big Chill only exists because of Return of the Secaucus Seven.
Which no one saw….
I wasn’t even born when most of these movies came out and even I know it’d be quicker to make a list of 80’s movies that have aged well than a list of those that have aged badly.
This being said: yes, Top Gun didn’t age well at all BUT that’s what makes it awesome. It’s like someone put all the best and worst of the 80’s in one single movie so future generation could discover Tom Cruise, bad pop, horrible fashion, black and white morality, the cold war during the Reagan years and of course gay subtext.
I take issue with this list, because half of it was crappy from the get go.
And Strange Brew is a cult classic, meant to be watched while drunk or stoned.
@Polar Bear: well said. Top Gun is so steadfastly of its time, it still works on a cheesy level.
I still enjoyed Strange Brew when I saw it 9 years ago (in a theatre no less); but were the last 9 years just too much for it I wonder…
I feel I must speak in defense of Top Gun, because it is a groundbreaking entry in gay cinema. I’ve read it joked about in the comments, but perhaps your readers aren’t aware of the in-depth analysis Q. Tarantino offered in the 1994 visual document Sleep With Me.
Top Gun, like no film before, transferred the inner struggle of the latent homosexual into a metaphor consumable by the general audience. By utilizing the tropes of the Simpson-Bruckheimer action template, the filmmakers communicated the closeted homosexual’s struggle to be honest with his world to a larger audience than the world realized. Perhaps, in consideration of these facts, we can re-examine a bloated recycling of a well-worn Hollywood formula, and recognize it for the subversive masterpiece it is.
If that was too long winded, just google “Top Gun Tarantino” and watch the video clip yourself. It’s funking hilarious.
I think that, if that’s how you feel about Christmas Vacation, you’re kinda missing the point.
The creepy grins are supposed to be him getting more and more stressed about the whole situation, it isn’t just weird mugging.
Also, you can think the jokes are horribly staged, but everything that happened in that movie (until the ending with the kidnapping) is grounded in reality. I know this because my family has gone through all of the stuff Clark went through on a lesser scale over the years.
Point: I still watch it every year, and I still genuinely laugh at it.