Which of your favorite childhood movies have been ruined by watching them as an adult.

The underdog cartoons don’t hold my attention quite as much as they did.

Ariel pisses me off a lot. I used to idolize her, and now I just think she’s pretty bratty.

My husband and I are thrilled to show our son all the movies we grew up with. My parents got him The Velveteen Rabbit for Easter, but I’m afraid to watch it. I don’t know why, because I loved it as a child. My husband was telling me the plot (I asked him his take) and I got so upset because I didn’t remember it like that at all.

No movies have been ruined, but a lot of live action kids TV sure has.

I recently watched the first episode of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I cried/laughed/cried so many times at the awful cliched dialogs, the excuse of a plot, the atrocious acting, the fact that they pretty much did use the toys as the models…. such as the amazingly detailed backstory Zordon provides for himself (a quick one phrase “I’m an intergalactic being stuck in time… now back to these gadgets and dinosaurs”).

Disney’s “Fantasia”. What a bore!

Nonsense, they only get better with time!

I submit to you: The Princess Bride, The Goonies, and A Christmas Story.

I could not believe that Tim Burton remade the masterpiece of “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” into the dismal and hugely disappointing “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. What a travesty of filmmaking and a complete insult to the original.

@jeffgoldblumsprivatefacilities: There are some that are classics, you just can’t deny that!

@casheroo: I think you’d be safe with The Velveteen Rabbit. It is pretty classic.

@Bluefreedom Ok, touche’. The oompa loompas weren’t even orange!

The Never Ending Story-I watched that about a million times as a kid. I’ve watched it recently and thought it was actually a crappy movie.

@jeffgoldblumsprivatefacilities. I agree with your opinion that many get better with time. I still like The Goonies and A Christmas Story. Here are some more – Mary Poppins, Flash Gordon, Bedknobs & Broomsticks, The Explorers, and The Wizard of Oz.

@knitfroggy. I’m with you on The Neverending Story. Even though I liked it as a youngster, I watched it the other day with my wife and came away feeling rather disappointed.

The Beastmaster
Gremlins
Private Eyes

I loved all three of these as a kid. I can’t even sit all the way through any of them now.

Wow, maybe we shouldn’t let kids watch movies so, when they are adults, everything is better . . . or, maybe not . . .

Fern Gully, the Labyrinth, David the Gnome, The Pirates of Dark Water, Macross

Weekend at Bernies
Grease 2
The Pirate Movie

The 3 Ninjas.

That movie has NOT aged well

The Disorderlies with the Fat Boys.

Though I’ve never watched it as an adult, Song of the South certainly lost it’s appeal when I became an aware young adult. I loved Uncle Remus and that whole movie when I was a kid. :(

Drop Dead Fred
The Fox and the Hound

@casheroo I agree that Ariel is kind of bratty.

On the other hand, I recently watched The Secret of NIMH with my daughter and was surprised at how much I still enjoyed it.

@wildpotato GA just for Pirates of Darkwater, I used to love that show!
Watching old cartoons now makes me go “Why the hell was that entertaining?”
Silverhawks is a prime example. Loved that show when I was younger. Watched an episode recently and it was lame as shit haha

My brother recently added Transformers (the ORIGINAL tv show) to this list…

I disagree with Labyrinth being on this list…I still love that movie. Return to Oz is another one that has just changed with my awareness, but is still fun to watch.

Rock A Doodle is definitely one that hasn’t held up
Surf Ninjas complete rubbish as an adult
My Little Ponies all of them…the movies, the show…I have them all and they’re NOT good….but as a kid…they were amazing.

Most of the movies of my childhood seem to have held up pretty well though…

@Bluefreedom—SIGH. Tim Burton did not remake Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Tim Burton reinterpreted Roald Dahl’s book.

@hitomi I admit that the dancing scene with Bowie and the monsters is still great, especially because now I can laugh at the cocaine humor (see 2:13 in this video). And watching this YouTube video, I am fonder of it than I remembered – maybe I was just in an unforgiving mood when I saw it last. Thanks for getting me to give it another chance!

@wildpotato Glad I could help! It really is just FUN…it’s not the greatest movie ever created, but it’s funny and diverting and Henson’s puppet work is phenomenal.

So…watching this a MILLION times…never noticed the cocaine reference – the only excuse I can come up with is that I have always been terribly distracted by the criminally tight pants.

Is that really a cocaine reference? I distinctly remember that motion and thinking it was just Bowie “shushing.”

@ubersiren Look at how far to the side of his mouth he puts his finger, though. I guess it could have been an unintentional placement, but given the lyrics at that particular part of the song and Bowie’s backround, it seems plausible that he worked it in as a subtle private joke.

@wildpotato : No doubt! Crazy!

Everything.

@Bluefreedom – Additionally, Roald Dahl hated the original movie and refused to have anything to do with it. He thought that the Gene Wilder version was an insult to his book. We don’t know what he would have thought of the Johnny Depp version, but his widow approved.

Nowhere in the book does it say exactly what the Oompa Loompas look like other than being small.

For some reason I was absolutely enthralled by The Living Desert when I was a kid, but find it rather tame as an adult.

Any Elvis movie. But I still liked the beat.

The Amazing Colossal Man and Colossal Beast were faves as a child. When I saw them again, in my 30’s, I ended up making fun of them a la MST3K. I was so disappointed that I had remembered them being better.

@filmfann : lurve for MST3K.

@wildpotato Really? Labyrinth? I still love it. “Her Head Don’t Come Off”. Haha.
Although when I was a kid it did have more magic. I actually tried to wish my own baby brother away because I wanted to go to the magic kingdom (not to hurt him).

@Supacase I agree with Drop Dead Fred. I wanted my hubby to watch that with me and well it wasn’t magical but creepy. I absolutely adored it as a kid.

Here’s another note. I read the Peter Rabbit series as a kid and found it fascinating and full of magic. As an adult I think it lost some of that.

@MacBean. It doesn’t matter in the end because Tim Burton’s “reinterpretation” of the book into the movie was still horrible with a capital H.

@Darwin. I wish I could attend a seance so that I could talk to the spirit of Roald Dahl and confirm what I already know – he hated the second version of the movie more than he hated the first version.

@Bluefreedom I wish I could attend that seance with you so I could show off my smug smirk when you turned out to be WRONG.

@MacBean. I actually went through with it (the seance) last night after I posted my message on Fluther. Roald was visibly upset with Tim Burton’s work just like I suspected he would be. Sorry.

@Bluefreedom lol4rl. Thanks for that. <3

@MacBean. You’re welcome. Thanks for taking it so well. =)

I actually like Johnny Depp very much as an actor and even though I didn’t like that movie, I liked how eccentric he was as Willy Wonka in that movie.

@Bluefreedom – Have you actually read the book? In my opinion Tim Burton’s slightly creepy interpretation was much closer to the book than the cheerfully psychedelic early version. The only thing I would take issue with is that, although it was interesting, the background given to Wonka (the child of a sadistic dentist) was made up completely. In Dahl’s world some people are just peculiar without any reason given.

And at the time it was published the book was quite controversial as it was considered too dark to be a children’s book.

And if you read what I wrote, Dahl’s widow, who presumably knows better than most of us what Dahl may have liked, and who was there for the production of both movies, says he would have preferred Burton’s interpretation.

Also, have you ever read Dahl’s autobiography Boy? You can see where many of the elements of the book came from.

@Darwin – GA. That’s everything I wanted to say but was too damn tired to type out. (I’ve been awake for 28 and a half hours now. Can’t sleep. Not sure why. Bah.)

Also check out his second autobiography, Going Solo

Even though I agree with the assessment that Tim Burton’s movie was closer to the book and Dahl would have preferred it… I still liked the Gene Wilder movie much better.

I like them both, and I like the book as well. They are all separate works.

@Darwin. I absolutely love Dahl’s book and honestly, I’ve probably read it about 2 dozen times in my life. Now that you mention it, I did appreciate the fact that Charlie and the Chocolate Factory did follow the book more than the original did. I just didn’t like the kids in the movie, all the Oompa-Loompa’s being the same, and some other things.

I went to the Internet Movie Database and read up on some trivia of the movie and it was very interesting to say the least. Apparently, Dahl was so upset with the interpretation of the book, like you said, that he refused to give permission to make a possible movie sequel of “Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator”. I liked that book too but I don’t know how well it would have done as a movie.

I think I’m going to read Dahl’s autobiography too. Thanks for recommending that.

@Bluefreedom – His autobiography was fascinating and shows how very much of a writer’s inspiration comes from his/her own experiences. I think you will enjoy both books, but you can see the influence of life on his fiction best in Boy.

Don’t whisper your opinion, @augustlan! For pure entertainment value, I like the older version better, too. But I definitely think Tim Burton got the spirit of the book across better. And it’s one of my pet peeves when people call his version a remake of the older one.

I think the older version is completely creepy-it kind of scared me as a child. I’ve heard a lot of people say they think Johnny Depp is creepy in the Tim Burton version, but I personally could never find him creepy!

His teeth are creepy in the Tim Burton film.

I just realized that Peter Pan is a total player! He has Wendy, Tinkerbell, Tiger Lilly and the mermaids all hanging on the line. The mermaids’ “clothes” are scandalous for a kids’ movie! lol

Yet Peter Pan hangs with the Lost Boys, battles (butt) pirates, and there is obviously a lot of frustration from Tink.
I am thinking Peter is too gay to play.

I also hate that Disney has turned Tinkerbell into a “hero” character when she TRIES TO KILL WENDY…it’s like everyone forgets that she starts out the movie as an evil, manipulative bitch and only gets better at the very end.

@wildpotato Pirates of the Dark Waters is AWESOME!

i was just watching that last week because i saw a campground called camp dark waters so it put me in nostalgia mode :P

Recently my son reminded me of the Michael Jackson Captain Eo Disneyland show (Is that how it was spelt?) is not nearly as cool as he remembers. It’s also funny that he can’t find anyone born after 1984 who remembers it.

not quite an adult yet, but my teacher has already successfully ruined the lion king for me, which i remember i used to like. he paused it about every 5 minutes to ask us what kind of rock they were standing on, and what kind of strategist those animals are. sometimes i really hate environmental science