Films That Have Aged Badly

"you wanna get nuts? let's get nuts!"

godzilla and the phantom menace had a lot to do with that....cause they were totally bitchin' and blew everything outta the water, yo!

exactly! how did grown adults tolerate that movie? I was nine! That's MY excuse!

yeah but turds start out warm and moist then dry out ya know!

I was 12!!!

Shapeshifting alien monsters, tits, and gore! the PERFECT movie for nerdy 12 year olds!

What changed?

GOT ONE GIRLFRIEND.

I don't think this was a coincidence.

Ten year old shouted “HE’S A JERK”

The entire audience knows it, but he doesn't know it. Being an unflappably self-confident, but totally repellent JERK, was the core of Murray's character in all his early comedies.

tbh I reacted the same way as your ten-year-old when I saw it at the younger age of six or seven. I didn't know who Bill Murray was, so I had no preconceived notions, but he came off as a complete ass all the time, and it was only when the end of the world was imminent and he got his shit together that I could root for him. Anyway, as funny as the best parts may be, I never thought it was a great movie even as a kid, it was just a long, uneven thing that was good for some laughs.

I'll insist that Murray comes across less badly than Akroyd getting ghost head

I actually didn’t understand that part then. Ah, to be so innocent again…

how is Straw Dogs holding up?

I'm sure Morbs would agree: "films that have aged badly" doesn't mean "not a good film you shouldn't watch"

So.. Song of the South?

all these 80s sex comedies always completely sucked, no aging required

Not a patch on Schlong of the South

Pretty Baby to thread, also Blue Lagoon...

There's a scene in the Brooke Shields doc from a couple years back where her daughters have a horrified reaction to their mother's signature films.

The thought of Brooke Shields reminded me of Stealing Beauty, a film from 1996 where the entire thrust of the publicity was that the very lovely and also borderline legal Liv Tyler took off her top.

It was directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, a 55-year-old man. The entire plot seems to have been "which of the cast will Liv Tyler lose her virginity to". "To whom of the cast will Liv Tyler lose her virginity". "Whom amongst the cast will Liv Tyler lose her virginity". "Of whom in the cast will Liv Tyler lose her virginity". Whom him. Whom him. Whom her. Whom her. Who he. Who he. Whom him. I can't do it.

I remember even at the time being unwilling to rent it from Blockbuster because I knew that the man behind the counter would judge me. A few years later Bertolucci directed The Dreamers, for which the entire thrust of the publicity was that Eva Green also took off her top, although by that time I had access to internet if, hypothetically, I had wanted to download postage-stamp-sized realmedia films of Eva Green.

Our kid's two kids had a hard time with Grease, to wit "Why are they all so mean to each other?".

You can blame Rizzo for that

I remember even at the time being unwilling to rent it from Blockbuster because I knew that the man behind the counter would judge me. A few years later Bertolucci directed The Dreamers, for which the entire thrust of the publicity was that Eva Green also took off her top, although by that time I had access to internet if, hypothetically, I had wanted to download postage-stamp-sized realmedia films of Eva Green.

The film also uses her menstrual blood for "erotic" effect.

Bertolucci's squeamishness about letting the very hot Louis Garrel and Michael Pitt hook up -- when this is where the picture was going -- infuriated me.

Speaking of Bertolucci.. Maria Schneider on Last Tango:

Marlon said to me: 'Maria, don't worry, it's just a movie,' but during the scene, even though what Marlon was doing wasn't real, I was crying real tears. I felt humiliated and to be honest, I felt a little raped, both by Marlon and by Bertolucci. After the scene, Marlon didn't console me or apologise. Thankfully, there was just one take.

more than that the movie operates in this world where the jocks are at the top of the food chain and the nerds are like some sort of oppressed minority. well guess what, now the nerds are in charge and the world is much much much worse for it

The concept of Revenge of the Nerds makes no sense. Jocks tormenting nerds is a high school thing, no one gives a shit about that by college.

all these 80s sex comedies always completely sucked, no aging required

The genre peaked in 1978 or 79 with Teen Lust aka The Girls Next Door aka Police Academy Girls directed by veteran character actor James Hong. At times comes across as There’s Something About Mary avant la lettre. A number of deranged set pieces, like the heroine coming home to find her alcoholic mother has set the mattress on fire and thrown it out the window where the rich kid next door (who is also her unwanted fiancé) is pissing on it. Scene where same kid has birthday party and spits all over the cake while blowing out the candles and overweight girl with bandaged nose (due to nose job) does hapless tap dance.

directed by veteran character actor James Hong

Things you were shockingly old... (never saw the film, but remember the VHS box well)

Also, Hong still with us at 96 years old.

There’s Something About Mary

i haaaaaatee this movie so much

whoa James Hong was in Blade Runner

I remember thinking Eva Green’s toplessness in The Dreamers was excessive at the time, which may have been a first.

The wife (50, white) was talking movies with a coworker (black, maybe just into her 30s). Coworker was talking about how much she liked Steve Martin and wife asked if she had seen The Jerk. For her, old Steve Martin is Father Of The Bride.

They both work in the arts and wife recommended it with the caveat that it would not get made today. I have absolutely no idea what a younger black person would think of The Jerk. Or Blazing Saddles. Comedy ages so fast.

Watched Airplane! with the kids recently. I explained a couple of dated jokes beforehand so we wouldn’t have to stop the movie. A lot of jokes missed but enough still landed.

Dumb and Dumber was painful.

xp: Sprague Hasn’t Seen, a podcast where a 50-something white former development executive / script doctor and 30-something black current jobbing television writer watch movies that one or the other hasn’t seen before, did it a few months ago. The 30-something was bothered by tonal shifts (ie some gags being surreal in scenes played straight) far more than race gags.

it must be difficult to explain how Mel Brooks was able to get away with some of this stuff because? because it's Mel Brooks!

I remember watching blazing saddles at like ten y/o (so ca. 1998), having heard how important and funny it was, and even then I remember thinking it was just dumb racist jokes and Not Funny. I didn’t exactly have high standards for either political scruples or humour.

Similarly, I also grew up a fan of the regularly-broadcast, iirc not overtly problematic, Revenge of the Nerds sequel (RotN 2: Nerds in Paradise) and was massively disappointed by the first, which was mostly just uncomfortable to watch. Same with animal house, now that I recall.

"double secret probation" was the best thing about Animal House. try as I might I can't recall anything else about it other than some togas, which I could never figure out. why togas?

The concept of Revenge of the Nerds makes no sense. Jocks tormenting nerds is a high school thing, no one gives a shit about that by college.

The Simpsons did a good parody of that.

it must be difficult to explain how Mel Brooks was able to get away with some of this stuff because? because it's Mel Brooks!

I thought that was the core of Mel Brooks films - brazenly outrageous jokes that were considered extremely distasteful. I never thought they "aged" badly because they were always considered "bad" by conventional standards - the studio met with him and told him to cut almost everything that's famously outrageous about Blazing Saddles (any jokes about race, especially in relation to sex, any jokes about religion, the medieval hangman, the farting scene, etc.) and he agreed to all of it but then simply blew them off. The other thing is, it's not just Mel Brooks - one of the main writers on that film was Richard Pryor, Brooks's first pick for the sheriff but the studio successfully vetoed that because Pryor was considered too much of a risk. Brooks did manage to get him in as a co-writer, and his contributions are enormous.

Im surprised no one mentioned MASH yet. Even when I saw it for the first time in the late 90s, it left a bad taste

Yeah, MASH is pretty vile. The highbrow Animal House, basically.

Yes. I don't know if MASH was the first "slobs versus snobs" comedy, but there is a lineage.

(And if you haven't read the MASH books, don't. The author might as well be the fairy godfather of P.J. O'Rourke and his alt-comedy descendants.)

To some degree this era was the result of the replacement of the Motion Picture Production Code (severely weakened during its last decade, but still providing some constraints) with the MPAA ratings system and the implosion of the golden-age studio system. U.S. filmmakers were free to pursue a market that enjoyed its smut with hefty helpings of misogyny, homophobia, racism, etc.

MASH was called out for its misogyny by at least a few major critics like Dave Kehr when it was first released. He actually never liked Altman’s work partly for that reason.

Altman was a pretty vile filmmaker in general. Misogynist, classist, just kind of a smug asshole across the board. A friend of mine just wrote about Nashville this week.

I dont think that's generally true at all, even those films noted.

I think Altman is still rightfully hailed as one of the greats - haven't seen Nashville but Long Goodbye, California Split, The Player, good stuff - but no one ever brings up MASH anymore. I saw it once in my early twenties; don't remember the misogyny (tbc I'm sure it's there, this is on 20something me for not noticing) but I do remember an overall feeling of "this is barely a movie", and not in a cool nouvelle vague way either.

Those Mel Brooks comedies used to get trotted out as examples of how to do satire right in contrast to right wing edgelord stuff back in the '10's a lot but that seems to have subsided.

"To some degree this era was the result of the replacement of the Motion Picture Production Code (severely weakened during its last decade, but still providing some constraints) with the MPAA ratings system and the implosion of the golden-age studio system. U.S. filmmakers were free to pursue a market that enjoyed its smut with hefty helpings of misogyny, homophobia, racism, etc."

There's also a subgenre of anti-war films from the 1960s and early 1970s, set in the Second World War, that tried to use that conflict to comment on the Vietnam War without directly commenting on Vietnam. How I Won the War, Kelly's Heroes, probably lots of others. Catch-22, which pioneered pubic hair in mainstream Hollywood. Probably a lot of Italian co-productions. Cross of Iron? Did that have a subtext, or was it just Sam Peckinpah being macho? Also it came out a bit late for an anti-Vietnam film.

The problem is that the Second World War was one of a tiny handful of armed conflicts that was morally unambiguous, where one side was irredeemably wrong, and where the fighting made sense. War is an abomination but there are instances where it's unavoidable. The Great Dictator came in for a lot of criticism in the 1940s because the notion that all war was morally unjustifiable was hard to take seriously when one side obviously wasn't going to back down.

M*A*S*H belongs to that odd period of 1960s, 1970s Freak Brothers / Robert Crumb humour where the main characters are free-thinking dope-smoking proto-rock-loving hippy white men who treat teenage girls like disposable sex toys and live in a world where African-Americans say "lawks-a-lordy" and "shit, cat". It's like they were progressive in their minds, but so totally conditioned by their upbringing that they weren't actually all that progressive.

I haven't read a single word of Jack Kerouac - I refuse to subject myself to new ideas or anything I'm unfamiliar with - but I have the impression that On the Road has the same problem. Free-spirited main character, but women are broads and Africa-Americans are plain-living hep cats who dig jazz.

Clint Eastwood's cop out of element movie "Coogan's Bluff" is almost hilariously sexist. Some of the scenes with the woman police psychologist and the other policeman is laughably terrible with modern eyes. It definitely has some McBain level of dialog.

Re: Altman, I think he's one of the greats, and he's had an uneven career that still resulted in some truly great films, but I do have reservations about his work. To be charitable, it's a mark of a great filmmaker when even their lesser work can be mighty impressive. (Nashville's perhaps the best example of that - I pretty much agree with Paul Schrader's famous damning take comparing it to a wide and shallow wading pool, and there are other annoyances like its regrettably poor depiction of what was country music back then, but it's still impressive to see him juggling all these disparate elements and keeping them in air with complete confidence and mastery.) When he won his honorary Oscar, the intro by Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin may have been the best I've ever seen for such an honor because they were able to capture what was an Altman film in their interactions with each other without the aid of clips or anything else - you immediately got what they were doing and it made Altman's filmmaking look all the more distinguished. But even his best films have something that leaves a bad taste. I'm tempted to say my favorites at least make those parts seem organic to the world or the story at hand. With M*A*S*H, as bad as the misogyny gets, it also takes place within the military - my earliest memory of military colleges in the news was the Citadel and what they did to the first female cadets. I can't say those elements of the film are edifying but for better and worse, they do come off as honest in some way.

Everything that's objectionable in the MASH movie was already there in the book, although Altman & Co. piled on a little more for unusual reasons. Namely, the taming of Hot Lips after the shower scene was added to give Sally Kellerman more material & screentime as they were shooting in sequence and the character was supposed to depart the story after that point.

Noted feminist filmmaker Paul Schrader.

i went on an extended Altman trip and O.C. and Stiggs rulez OK

Schrader is another filmmaker who didn't actually have a critical consensus in favor of his directorial work, it was much more of a mixed bag.

Here's an excerpt from the late Robin Wood’s essay “The Incoherent Text”: “The position implicit in Paul Schrader’s work . . . can be quite simply characterized as quasi-Fascist. This may not be immediately obvious when one considers each film individually, but adding them together (including the screenplays directed by others) makes it clear. There is the put-down of unionization (Blue Collar), the put-down of feminism “in the Name of the Father’ (Old Boyfriends), the denunciations of alternatives to the Family by defining them in terms of degeneracy and pornography (Hardcore), the implicit denigration of gays (American Gigolo . . . ), and, crucial in its sinister relation to all this, the glorification of the dehumanized hero as efficient killing-machine (unambiguous in Rolling Thunder, confused — I believe by Scorsese’s presence as director — in Taxi Driver).”

Jonathan Rosenbaum not only agreed with this, he argued in 1992 that much of Schrader's work since the publication of Wood's essay only strengthened his argument: "the misogyny and hatred of sex in Cat People, the overt celebration of fascist ideas in Mishima, and the capriciously ahistorical trashing of radical politics in Patty Hearst. Some of these ideological positions could be debated, of course — the production of Mishima in Japan, for instance, was under constant threat of attack by right-wing Japanese terrorists, and it might be argued that the brand of fascism the film celebrates is not exactly popular. (Unlike American Gigolo, say, Mishima probably can’t be accused of pandering to an audience’s sick biases — its psychosexual sickness is much too personal for that.)"

Schrader has been a great screenwriter for other directors, most notably Scorsese, but I've always had mixed feelings about his directorial work, even with films that I generally like. They're always interesting, I'll give him that.

I like a bunch of Schrader's movies from the 70s through the 90s. Blue Collar, Hardcore, Cat People, Mishima, The Comfort of Strangers, Light Sleeper and Affliction are all great, but First Reformed, The Card Counter and Master Gardener are all basically the same movie (and not in the Walter Hill "all my movies are Westerns" sense).

It's funny because Dave Kehr - a longtime Schrader skeptic - used to accuse Schrader's films of being blatantly derivative of Robert Bresson's work, above all Pickpocket. Schrader doesn't deny the debt he owes Bresson - as if to drive the point home, he lent Pickpocket to at least one person who worked on First Reformed, which relied heavily on newcomers in its crew (partly as a budgetary necessity but also because he wanted to work with people who wouldn't be too rigid in terms of how to go about their jobs). First Reformed is actually my favorite Schrader film, partly for that reason - instead of trying to find a new context to fit Bresson's ideas, he just goes all in with the kind of milieu that's often associated with Bresson's work, and at least to me, everything paradoxically works more powerfully and effectively than it did in Schrader's past films without being diminished by familiarity. The ending alone is a perfect, pure expression of the closing words heard in Pickpocket, except it's put over cinematically, not verbally. Schrader more or less said the following two films created a trilogy for him, and while they're not really favorites, they do work for me as an expansion of First Reformed.

First Reformed, The Card Counter and Master Gardener are all basically the same movie (and not in the Walter Hill "all my movies are Westerns" sense

In the Ozu sense, I'd say. That's all they got in common with Ozu, though

"double secret probation" was the best thing about Animal House. try as I might I can't recall anything else about it other than some togas, which I could never figure out. why togas?

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Friday, September 19, 2025 11:53 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Toga parties have a long history, but were especially big on college campuses in the 1950s and 60s, when Animal House took place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toga_party

I haven't watched Animal House in decades, but the most memorable scene is Donald Sutherland retrieving a snack from Karen Allen's kitchen cupboards.

https://media1.tenor.com/m/DqrRukZmgI4AAAAd/animal-house-donald-sutherland.gif

I knew that toga parties were a thing at colleges during the 50s and early 60s. What puzzled me was what the attraction was, what made a toga party better than some other kind of party? That wikipedia article at least helped me draw the connection between "greek" fraternities and togas. Still doesn't really get at their popularity and longevity. My sole guess in that direction is that the togas might have made it easier for the party-goers to grope one another.

Easier to get naked.

https://frinkiac.com/video/S04E05/OjwA6CMlzdx4ms9rJfQuYITLGXw=.gif

even the president of Delta Chi sometimes must have to stand naked

Still doesn't really get at their popularity and longevity. My sole guess in that direction is that the togas might have made it easier for the party-goers to grope one another.

Also, it's a costume requiring nothing but a bed sheet.

first post in this thread _has_ aged well! ok, they used different words - it _was_ more then 20 years ago - but thread starter was perhaps the rightest person in that thread, except for latebloomer