Mine is a tie between The Last Unicorn and An American Tale: Fievel Goes West
I'm watching Fievel goes west right now, it's just such an awesome childhood movie.
Mine is a tie between The Last Unicorn and An American Tale: Fievel Goes West
I'm watching Fievel goes west right now, it's just such an awesome childhood movie.
I loved Matilda. I still watch it any time it comes on and I still enjoy it.
The Muppets Christmas Carol is still my favourite Christmas movie and probably always will be.
Land Before Time (no sequels)
Sandlot
All Dogues Go To Heaven
Back to the Future
I'm not sure if that counts as a "childhood movie" since it references sex, drugs, and alcohol, (I'm amazed it's only rated PG) but nevertheless it was my favorite movie as a kid. In fact it's still my favorite movie today.
in mildly unrelated news, I was watching the new GI Joe movie, and was amazed at the restraint of language in contrast to egregious violence. one scene at the beginning had a helicopter going down to explode and the pilot clearly says: 'oh my gosh!) followed by the helicopter exploding and Snake eye driving a knife into someone's eye. What the hell, Hasbro?
I was reading some of the original ideas behind the movie. Beetlejuice was supposed to be a winged demon that wanted to rape Lydia rather than marry her. Kind of cool it turned out for the best.
AND
My other two favorite childhood movies are The Neverending Story and The Brave Little Toaster.
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
Albert Einstein
i am a man of wealth and taste
aside from being my favourites as a kid, those were actually the best produced stories coming out for kids at that time
don bluth is a fuckin genius, and it showed with those two movies in particular, and the sandlot is, in my opinion, the best coming-of-age story that hollywood has ever come out with - it's well-produced, excellently written and sincere about what it is, which includes a healthy dose of fun
I am surprised by the lack of Pixar.
Toy Story
Cool Runnings (Received this in my basket for Easter one year and watched it, no joke, 8 times in a row. Terrible parenting, but I can now quote the entire movie)
Jurassic Park (I. LOVE. DINOSAURS. My memory of going to see this film goes as such; I don't recall much but I can remember my mom being like "Okay now TOGS, just remember that the dinosaurs in this movie are NOT real. So don't be too scared." Needless to say, I loved and still love that movie.)
Last edited by TheOriginalGrumpySpy; 12-09-2009 at 05:46 PM.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." -Anne Frank
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” -Buddha
Identity
i use to watch that movie often on the disney channel. as i remember it was a remarkably dark movie for one that was intended for children, though i probably was projecting my own unhappiness onto it as well.
damn, that was made in 1989... i didn't realize it was quite that old.
wow, and it apparently was released on the same day as the little mermaid, which i also didn't realize was so old.
and yeah, a lot of critics at the time did remark on its very dark material for a children's movie.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Dog...e_and_reaction
hell, pixar movies are some of my favorite movies now. forget about just when i was a child.
for a while around its release, i declared finding nemo to be one of the greatest films ever made in any genre. my praise is a little more tempered now, but it still is an awesome movie.
when i was a really young kid, i was addicted to the old 1971 willy wonka and the chocolate factory. my parents got very sick of that movie.
Pagemaster is amazing!
I adore that movie
I gotta say, we used to watch Page Master a lot in after-school and I never really got into it.
I will post my top 3, though the third one was just straight up replaced as I got older and more able to understand what was going on plot-wise:
1. GI Joe: The Movie (1986) (COBRA LALALALALALALA--also lol @ the scene that Duke definitely dies but they came in afterwards and thought that was too intense for children so they called it a deep coma and then in the epilogue character voiceovers clarified that he's gonna live. Who the fuck knows what a coma is at that age?)
2. The Land Before Time Dinosaurs. Duh.
3a. The Adventures of Milo and Otis I still to this day could not tell you what happens in this movie because I have never seen all of it in one sitting, but my dad took me to see it in the theater when I was 2 and a half like 6 times and I apparently loved it (in truth, I did like it, but my mom would need a break and want him and I out of the house, so my dad would take me to the theater, wait till I fell asleep, and then take a nap. Win win win.) They bought it for me on tape and used to play it for me and I would amuse myself right into a nap until I was like 6 years old.
3b. Star Wars: Return of the Jedi Around 7 or 8, I was into spaceships and all that crap, so my mom interrupted me and told me that was was gonna let me finish and was really happy for me, but that Star Wars was one of the best movies of all time. The first 20 times I watched it, I didn't really grasp the plot. I remember asking my mom to play Star Wars and she would be like "which one?" and I would name them based on whether I wanted Ewoks, the ice battle, or the garbage compactor.
Note: My dad told me from day 1 that Star Wars for nerdy shit for faggots and that he hated it. If only I had known he was 100% dead-on, I would have sided with him as a child.
Oh yeah when I was a kid a had a real hard on for the James Bond movies. I had all of them in a huge box set on VHS which I still have, somewhere. It's fucking massive and it only goes up to Goldeneye.
Her grave says yep yep yep
Oh hell yes. Goldeneye was on my top 10 played for sure.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." -Anne Frank
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.” -Buddha
Identity
The Silence of the Lambs
FUCKIN PAGEMASTER
also, Hook. fo' sho'.
Legend
Wait, gwahir was hat for matilda or the muppets? Or both?
Hook was pretty fuckin awesome
Also, I liked the Lion King a lot, but I never watched it anywhere near as much as my three picks
I have some fond memories of Once in a Blue Moon. The Indian in the Cupboard blew my mind.
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
Albert Einstein
Rock A Doodle was the only kids movie worth watching. Truth.
lol omg toy story damn you watched that like well over a million times mang.
also lol brave little toaster, i remember that.
Yeah, that's another one of those super dark children's films from the late 80's like All Dogs Go to Heaven... what's up with that?
It seems like a lot of the children's films that came out around that time were extremely dark. Not that I hadn't noticed this before, but I don't know if many others have, and I wonder why people were making so many dark children's films back then...
Yeah, fuck, Toy Story. I just looked it up and didn't realise I was only 8 years old when it came out.
seriously, mang watched it from the moment he woke up to bedtime, over and over, for at least a year.
can you blame him
yes, i can.
seriously, waking moment to bedtime, everyday.
i know that film better than my dick thanks to a young mang.
in the end we put another tv in his room i think so we could watch normal tv downstairs.
i am pretty sure anyway lol.
sycld you know that the real precedent was hans christian anderson and the brothers grimm, yes?
true, but there still seems to be a difference. watching these movies as a child actually made me feel sad because things don't start getting better to the main characters until everything they've loved in the world is destroyed and they are left in alone in dark, dangerous places. it's not even the sense of danger that makes these movies so dark, but rather the sense of abandonment and having everything you loved in the world destroyed, including other characters with whom the audience has also established an emotional connection.
in the fairy tales you mention (all or at least many of which were NOT written by either anderson or the grimms but were merely collected or adapted from folk sources), the darkness isn't so existential. i think it's because there really isn't as strong of an emotional connection made with the characters, and anyway the characters to whom most of the REALLY bad stuff happens are the bad guys. it's the evil witch in the original snow white that has to dance in the red hot iron shoes.
You say that like it's a bad thing, though. I mean, the major theme with that is people losing what isn't important when they thought it was, then discovering true value (friendship etc.), or it's a temporary loss of someone important who then shows up again later to save the day. I see value in them, because loss on that scale is a part of life, and coping with it, rebuilding from the aftermath isn't a bad thing to show children. Of course, they have to lose something of value (or perceived value) in order for the sacrifice to have any meaning, but it's always made up for by the end of it.
I'm aware that the Brothers Grimm and Mr. Anderson lifted most of their storys from folklore (again you say it like it's a bad thing... merely collected. It is a good thing to compile folk stories because it tells you of the people who knew them, and since the stories are part of an oral tradition, they can easily be lost), but the creepiness of the stories isn't just horrible fates for the bad people, it's horrible things happen to the good people too.Originally Posted by sycld
The Little Mermaid, in Anderson's original telling (it was an original story that drew on existing mythological archetypes, not a traditional folk-tale), was dark. It begins essentially like the Disney movie, (with the exception of the explanation that merfolk are long-lived, but have no immortal soul like Man) where the youngest mermaid daughter of the Sea King wishes to see the world, is eventually allowed, comes across a ship being wrecked in a storm and saves and falls in love with the captain (who turned out to be a Prince). The Prince sees her briefly as he gets carried away to shore while the mermaid returns to sea, where she can't stop thinking about the prince. So she goes to the Sea Witch and asks to go to land. This is where the darkness comes in. The Sea Witch offers her legs, at the cost of her voice (cutting out her tongue in the process) and with the price that every step on land would be like walking on knives and if the Prince didn't fall in love with her (thereby granting her a piece of his immortal soul) and instead married another, she would turn to ocean foam instantly as merfolk do when they die. She fails to win the heart of the Prince, who marries another princess (who he ironically believes to be the mermaid who saved his life in the storm, which he says in front of our voiceless heroine). The night of his wedding, the mermaids sisters appear, all looking grotesque without their hair (which they gave to the witch that they might help their sister), giving her a knife and telling her to kill the Prince that she may not be turned into foam when he gets married and can return to the sea as a mermaid. She goes to kill the Prince, but cannot bring herself to do so and casts the knife into the sea as the sun rises and she dissolves into mist. In a bit of a nice ending, she becomes a "Daughter of the Air" due to her self-sacrifice and can, in 300 years time (give or take some years depending on whether or not she comes into contact with good children or bad children) attain an immortal soul
Here is an excerpt:
The Little Mermaid [url
I won't lie, I've kind of forgotten what my point was, so I'll just finish up with this: darkness in kid's stories isn't really a bad thing and people who think it is are limp-wristed, bleeding heart pussies who shouldn't have children.
It might please you to note, sycld, that apparently Andersen's inspiration for the story was that it was an allegory for his unrequited homosexual love for an Edvard Collin (haha twilight) who was, apparently, the son of Andersen's first benefactor in Copenhagen.
Last edited by coqauvin; 12-20-2009 at 02:06 AM.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the kings horses and all the kings men
Could put Humpty together again.
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