Rachel Paige
December 04, 2014 6:00 am

Have you ever found yourself flipping through television channels when you stumble upon a movie you remember just loving back in your kid days? That scenario seems to be modern par for the course, thanks to endless TV channels which make sure nostalgia never dies. (We are SO thankful.) You might simply be looking for a background movie to do your work to, when you’re lured in by a 1991 classic. Suddenly, you find yourself quoting lines from a movie you haven’t seen in 15 years. Sure it might be a little grainy and the characters a little ridiculous — but that’s why you liked it then and that is certainly why you still like it now.

Does your ex-fave movie boast a plot that doesn’t really make sense? A strange musical interlude? Way too self aware anthropomorphized animals? If you said yes to all (or any) of the above then it’s likely you wore out your VHS of these great bad movies back in the day. Here are some fondly remembered movie classics from our childhood that, sure, may look a little silly with our grown up glasses on, but we will sure as heck never stop loving them.  

Once Upon A Forest

First off, Once Upon A Forest is actually a terrifying movie for children. It’s about a group of cuddly cute animals that live in the forest together — until their forest is overtaken by poisonous gas from an overturned truck and they have to evacuate their home. One of the animals, a badger named Michelle, breathes in the gas and gets sick (the gas has already killed both of her badger parents, like that’s not traumatizing for a target audience of 3-7 year olds). Michelle slips into a coma. The other animals have to head deep into the forest to find magical ferns to save Michelle. It was a lot of feelings then. It is a lot of feelings now. And it’s actually still SUPER scary.

Blank Check

First sign that this movie was made in the early ’90s: a kid is given a blank check and only fills it out for $1 million. Back then, our child check-cashing hero, Preston, was able to buy a castle-like mansion, complete with a water slide from his bedroom down to his pool below — we won’t even hypothesize how small the Manhattan one-bedroom is that we could buy with $1 million. Oh to live that ’90s sweet life.

The Pagemaster

Oh man, was this movie great. The Pagemaster was part live action, part animation, and all awesome. Macaulay Culkin played a boy trapped in a library who has to battle his way through literary stories to exit the library. It had a cast that included Christopher Llyod, Whoopi Goldberg, Patrick Steweart, and Leonard Nimoy. Nobody won an Oscar for their role, but this is PURE nostalgia. Breathe it in.


The plot of North is this: a boy decides to “divorce” his parents in search of more perfect parents (PS his parents are George and Elaine from Seinfeld so we actually couldn’t think of better parents). North — played by a young Elijah Woods — travels the world and meets all these other families, each time realizing that they’re not more perfect than the last. It’s a deliciously cute movie, that really drives home the idea of family, until you get to the third act of the film which involves an assassination attempt on North. Plot twist! Also, Bruce Willis plays seven different roles.

Operation: Dumbo Drop

Based on a true story. This movie was literally about trying to move an elephant through the jungle during the Vietnam War. Don’t worry, all the soldiers, along with the elephant, make it to their safe location in one piece. How much of what was happening did we actually understand back then? Like 7%? How much do we understand it now? Like 7%. But we love it all the way.

Rookie of the Year

Boy’s a baseball player. Boy breaks his harm. Once boy’s arm heals, it’s discovered that he can now throw a baseball really fast and is recruited by the Chicago Cubs to play ball. Boy has to juggle continuing to go to school, and playing major league baseball. That is a lot to juggle! Rookie of the year is a champion!

Man of the House

Jonathan Taylor Thomas is here which rights every conceivable wrong. Chevy Chase plays a guy who just wants to date JTT’s mom, Farrah Fawcett, and JTT basically makes him join a father-son YMCA program as punishment, I guess. This is another kid movie that includes a plot to murder one of the main characters. The ’90s were a much different place.

Any and all movies involving monkeys as main characters.

Dunston Checks In, there’s a monkey. Ed, there’s a monkey. Monkey Trouble, obviously it has a monkey in it. Mighty Joe Young has a big monkey in it. Monkeys: the true heroes of the ’90s.

We loved this movies so much and we’re determined to keep on loving them. You can’t stop us!

[Image via.]