Movies I Dragged My Mother To

Kids are strange, particularly when it comes to movies. Anyone who has spent any amount of time around a child will tell you that they can watch the same movies over and over and over again, and never get tired of them.

We, the current generation of film geeks, were also guilty of this as children. As a young child, every time we went to the video store (itself a novelty in 1985), we had to rent The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. As much as my family hoped I would, I never got tired of heffalumps, blustery days, or Tigger getting stuck in a tree. Remember, this was before buying a video was an option (my generation still remembers commercials advertising movies that were now “affordably priced to own,” which meant about $19.99).

Ah, Pooh Bear.

But that was video. My mother could put that movie in and leave me right there for the next eighty-odd minutes, knowing that nothing short of a nuclear war was going to interrupt my time in the Hundred Acre Wood. She could cook dinner, paint the house, vacuum, do whatever she wanted to. She didn’t have to watch it for the hundredth time.  

But, the theatre was different.

Going to the movies was a real treat. If a movie was coming out that I wanted to see, I’d start bugging her as soon as I could, letting her know in my oh-so-subtle way that I wanted to see this particular motion picture, and, since it was not on video, she had to suffer through it as well. I would be on my best behavior all week (as close as I got, anyway) so that she’d be sure to take me. I remember the real thrill that would go through me when we were finally sitting in the theater, waiting for the movie to start, I felt a great sense of relief, all my being good had paid off, and in two hours, when the movie was over, I could go back to being the unholy bastard that I was, until the next movie came along that I wanted to see.

Now that I have a son of my own, I feel compelled to sit down with him and show him the films that meant so much to me when I was his age. I’d like to tell you about three of these little trips down Movie Memory Lane.

First, when he was three, I showed him The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. His response: “Meh.” But, I found myself regressing to my childhood, remembering how the sight of Tigger, after Rabbit yelled at him, turning away in the snow, his large chin quivering in sorrow, broke my little heart. As an adult, you pick up on things you didn’t notice as a child, like, for instance, Christopher Robin’s voice changes between the episodes (it’s true, three different actors voiced him).

Yes, the heffalumps and woozles section does feel like something out of Hunter S. Thompson. Fear and Loathing in Disneyland, anyone?

I still have this one on DVD, but now my little one is too old for it, and would probably balk if I suggested that we watch it.

Oh, well.

Before going on to the next film, I have to tell you that when I was little, I loved dinosaurs. I had dozens of dinosaur books, tee-shirts, toys, curtains, bed sheets, anything and everything that had a dinosaur on it. My mother even crocheted a dinosaur rug for me.

Knowing this, it should come as no surprise that when I was seven, and The Land Before Time was released, I began my usual ritual of behaving myself in hopes of conning my mother to take me to see this one.

It worked.

I loved that movie.

For Christmas that year, I got all the stuffed animals, my good friend Christy also got them, and she went the extra step of making a “tree star” out of green construction paper, which, to my seven year-old self, was pretty sweet. Pizza Hut ran a promotion wherein you got Land Before Time hand puppets if you spent a certain amount of money.

Guess who begged to go to Pizza Hut all the time?

Flash forward many years, to when I put in the DVD of The Land Before Time for my son. His response: “I liked it.”

My initial reaction, after not having watched the film in maybe twenty years, was this: “Has this thing always been this short?”

It’s true. The Land Before Time clocks in and just over an hour (sixty-nine minutes, to be exact). I felt a little cheated and at once began inspecting the DVD packaging, making sure that I hadn’t rented some truncated version of the movie I so loved as a youth.

 Nope. It’s just a short movie.

And now, the bad one. The one that my mother, to this day, has not forgiven me for. Maybe it’s because I dragged her to not one, but three of these.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Now, before anyone accuses me of being an old fogie who has forgotten what it means to be a kid, I urge you to go back and watch them again. Right now. I’ll wait.

Back?

Pretty awful, aren’t they?

It’s okay, I forgot too. When I was nine, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was awesome. It was dark, Raphael said dirty words, the turtles kicked serious butt, and they said great catchphrases like “Bodacious!” Just like real teenagers!

Sorry.

But to a kid, they really were great.

My mother, who is apparently applying for sainthood, took me to see not only Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but also Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (also known as the one with Vanilla Ice and a dance sequence) and the really awful Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III (even as a twelve year-old, I thought this one stunk).

I sat down with my son a couple of weeks ago and watched these films for the first time in at least fifteen years (maybe longer).

He loved them, I found myself cringing more than once.

When they were over, I turned to my wife and said, “That’s why my mother never forgave me.”

Often, the films that we clung to as children, the ones that meant so much to our young minds, they didn’t age well. Some do, but, for every The Goonies, Monster Squad or Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, there are a lot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, Masters of the Universe and Mannequin. Sometimes, we need to leave the past in the past, because as an adult, there are few things worse than having “Ninja Rap” stuck in your head.

On the plus side, TMNT, the animated Ninja Turtles movie from 2007 is still pretty cool.