10 Gen-X Movies We Loved As Kids That Have Aged Horribly
They were iconic in their time, but some of these Gen-X childhood favorites haven't exactly stood the test of time.
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Every generation has movies that were popular and significant to them during their younger years. It can be quite a surprise to rewatch some of these classic Gen-X movies as an older adult and wonder how certain scenes were considered funny or romantic or allowed to be in the movie at all. Here are some moments in movies from the era of Gen X that stand out as horrible now, but didn’t cause much fuss when they were released. Times have certainly changed quite a bit!
Here are the Gen-X movies we loved as kids that have aged horribly:
1. Revenge of the Nerds
Several scenes in this movie are appalling to watch now, but there is one that stands out above all the others. It's the scene that takes place during the carnival in the funhouse. We see Lewis following the woman he has a crush on into the funhouse while wearing a mask (the same mask her boyfriend had on earlier).
Lewis then confronts her, and she believes it’s her boyfriend because he refuses to take off the mask. He then is intimate with her in the funhouse, while she believes that he’s her boyfriend.
It is only after essentially assaulting her that he takes off the mask, revealing himself to be Lewis the nerd. Even more shocking is that the woman does not get upset for this violation; instead, she is over the moon by how “amazing” he was, and they end up becoming a couple.
These atrocious scene not only makes light of assault, but they also make it appear as though women welcome it after the fact as long as it was “good.” It’s no wonder that, statistically, Gen-X women are more likely to have kept quiet about assault than younger generations.
2. My Father the Hero
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In all honesty, this entire movie is wrong and horrible in so many ways. First, the premise of this movie is a 14-year-old girl going to visit her father and he takes her on an overseas vacation.
She develops a crush on a lifeguard (who is supposed to be 17 years old in the movie), and to try to get his attention, this 14-year-old girl decides to tell him and everyone on the island that her father is her lover. Now, for the most cringeworthy scenes in the movie, well, we can begin with the thong swimsuit that the 14-year-old wears at the beach. Yes, you read that correctly. It was a tush-baring thong swimsuit on a 14-year-old actress.
The next most cringeworthy moment is when her father sits up at the piano during a group evening and begins to sing “Thank Heaven for Little Girls,” while all the other guests look on in horror because they believe he is his 14-year-old daughter’s lover. Also, not to be left out is the moment the daughter tells her father that she lied and told everyone he was her lover.
Instead of demanding she set the record straight, he agrees to play the part of the pedophile to help her get the attention of this 17-year-old boy — again, the girl is 14 years old. This whole movie is wrong from start to finish and seems aimed at normalizing the objectification of young girls and them having relationships with older men.
3. Grease
While this movie was extremely popular and loved by many for years and years, watching it now gives a different vibe for sure. It has several scenes that are problematic, but there's one particularly unsettling scene.
It takes place at the drive-in where Danny takes Sandy for a date and gives her a ring, asking her to go steady. She’s over the moon with excitement as she gleefully accepts his ring, and this is where the scene takes a wrong turn. Danny takes the acceptance of the ring as her agreeing to be intimate with him there in the car, as he forces himself on top of her while she tells him to get off repeatedly, while hitting him.
He tries to quiet her by saying that it’s okay, “no one is watching,” but being seen is not what she is protesting over. She does not want what he wants, period.
He again tries to force himself on her, and she finally fights him off, then throws the ring back at him while she walks away in tears after being assaulted. The movie never shows him apologize to her for this, and she also does not seem to make mention of the assault.
Instead, she changes her whole look and persona to win his affection at the end of the movie. This movie once again speaks volumes about why so many Gen-X women stay silent about assault — it was something women were taught to accept as something that just happens.
4. Poison Ivy
Here, once again, we have another movie that was made for Gen-X, and it’s hard not to notice the common theme: a young teen girl in a relationship with a much older man. Not only that, she becomes obsessed with him, kills his wife, and almost kills his daughter (who is the same age).
This movie has several very explicit scenes that take place between the underage star playing Ivy, Drew Barrymore (she was 16–17 at the time of filming), and 51-year-old Tom Skerritt, who played the much older lover she seduced. That is the biggest and most cringeworthy aspect of this film; it makes every scene between these two actors very horrible and possibly illegal.
Even the tagline on the cover of the movie poster, 'Drew Barrymore Rivals Sharon Stone in Indulging Basic Instinct', fails to make mention of the fact that Sharon Stone was an adult, whereas Barrymore was still a minor. This movie portrays the teen girl as the seductress and villain who seduced the helpless adult man into having an intimate relationship with her, making him appear the victim, even though he was an adult and fully capable of understanding right and wrong in the situation.
Instead, it puts the blame fully on the teenage girl while the adult in the situation was helpless to resist the young temptress. Movies portraying teenage girls trying to seduce much older men were regular aspects of Gen-X growing up.
5. 16 Candles
This was the ultimate teen movie for Gen-X back in the day. It was so perfect — at least until it’s been watched now, and fans of the classic teen movie realize how wrong this movie was.
The fully racist moments involving the foreign exchange student are horrible enough, and, surprisingly, a generation of youth was conditioned to see that type of racism as comedy. There is another very horrid scene that shows the dreamy, perfect senior boy essentially giving away his girlfriend (who is passed out inebriated) to a barely a freshman nerd to do what he wants with her because the dreamboat wants another girl.
The freshman is shown taking multiple photos of himself and the attractive senior girl while she’s passed out, including several risky shots of her cleavage and her lying against him. While the film stops short of showing anything happening between these two characters, it is implied that she was assaulted while unconscious.
But the fact that the freshman was drunk too and doesn’t remember exactly what happened somehow makes it okay, even though he was having his way with her before being drunk himself. And to make it even worse, the girl tells the boy who most likely assaulted her that she “thinks” she enjoyed it.
6. Big
This movie was highly loved when it was first released. It was very popular and just seen as an all-around great, fun-loving movie. Tom Hanks played the role of a 12-year-old who makes a wish to be grown up and wakes up to find that his wish has come true.
He somehow lands a great job while he and his 12-year-old friend try to find a way to get him back to his real age again. Overall, the movie is still a fun, pleasant watch … until the love interest comes into play. Here we have an adult woman who ends up falling for this man, whom she believes is just naive and sweet.
In turn, the boy in the body of an adult man develops a crush on her, too, feelings way too complicated for him to truly understand with the mind of a child. While it would have been best for the movie to stop there and just have the crushing but no actual involvement occur, that is not what happens.
The worst moment of the film is when the adult woman and the 12-year-old boy are intimate. While he was in the body of a full-grown man, mentally he was still just a child, and the woman does not know this at the time she sleeps with him. She does find out later, but instead of being disgusted, she is more sad that she’s losing him as he goes back to his 12-year-old self.
7. Overboard
Surprisingly, this movie did get a modern-day remake, which was not much better, but it at least holds up slightly better than this original version does. The original movie is essentially about a widower who is raising his four sons himself, very poorly, considering he acts like a child most of the movie.
He does a job for a snobby rich woman who insults him, then fires him and throws him and his tools off her yacht. Later, he sees the woman on the local news as being found in the ocean and having no memory of who she is. So, of course, this man-child sees her lack of memory as his perfect opportunity to get revenge because that’s what adults do to resolve issues.
He recruits his four boys to pretend that this strange woman is their mother, and he, for lack of a better term, kidnaps her, holds her hostage, and convinces her that she’s his wife and the mother of his children. He makes her a servant in his home, having her wait on him, his kids, and his friends while telling her how much she “loved” this part of her life with him.
One of the worst moments is when she begins to suffer from a severe case of Stockholm syndrome and falls in love with him. They're intimate, which while it appears to be consensual at the time, can it be when she thinks she’s his wife and he’s lied to her about everything up to that point?
She does eventually regain her memory, and while you would think she would be upset and angry and file charges against him, instead, she realizes how much she loves her kidnapper and decides to stay with him. And he is rewarded for his lies because in the end, she reveals that she’s the rich one, not her soon-to-be ex-husband. So, kidnap a rich woman, and eventually she’ll fall in love with you — great premise.
8. Soul Man
The fact that anyone thought this movie was a good idea, even back in the 80s, truly speaks volumes for the mindset that existed in regards to racism and using it for entertainment purposes. This movie is horrible from start to finish, as it introduces a spoiled white law student who wants to get a scholarship to pay for his education.
Since it’s impossible for a white man to get any kind of financial assistance or grants in the universe this movie takes place in, naturally, the guy realizes his only choice is to pretend to be Black. Yes, that is the resolve he comes to get his education paid for. He goes full Blackface for the role, exhibiting stereotypical behavior to convince everyone that he is black, which just results in unfunny racism disguised as comedy.
While the movie attempts (horribly) to convey a message about acceptance and inclusion, it’s impossible to believe that this movie was intended to do anything but be racist and insulting from start to finish. And does this lying, cheating white man get any punishment or anything for his lies, deception, and fraud?
No, not really. In the end, he gets forgiven by those he deceived, he loses his scholarship, but still gets to return to school using student loans (which he could have done from the start), and he still gets the girl in the end. Another amazing life lesson for Gen-X — if you are a white man, you can lie, cheat, steal, and still get everything you want without skipping a beat.
9. Weird Science
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Here is another John Hughes film that once more engages in the concept that women are nothing more than objects for males to ogle and enjoy. This movie shows two teenage boys play Doctor Frankenstein by creating the perfect woman because they are tired of feeling rejected by the girls in school.
This creation is much older than the two teens and flaunts her body in front of them freely as they drool and see her as just an object. She has powers somehow, too, which are used to make these two teen boys appear to be more than they are. They go to a bar, they throw a massive house party, there’s alcohol and drinking involved, and it’s portrayed as being this great thing.
In the end, these boys who lied and used their creation to become something they weren’t still end up getting the girls that they had their eyes on from school. There is no punishment for any of the illegal activities, there is no lesson in women not being treated as objects, and once again Gen-X is shown that if you’re a white man, anything you do, laws you break, and women you exploit is okay as long as you have a reason that makes sense to you.
10. Zapped!
This movie was intended to be a fun teen comedy, but it suffers from the same issues that many of the Gen-X-targeted movies have — it normalizes teens and assault. This film is about a teenage boy who develops telekinetic powers, and he uses them to his advantage.
One of the more problematic scenes is when the boy, Barney, stares at a girl's chest, and it causes her top to burst open in front of everyone. He also later strips the clothing off of most of the other students during the prom, including the same girl whom he exposed in the scene above.
Several more scenes in this movie are horrendous, including one where Barney’s friend, Peyton, also a teenager in the high school, seduces the adult female administrator into sleeping with him. He also seduces the girl whom Barney exposed and takes explicit photos of her, which he gives to the girl's college boyfriend.
Despite all the illegal assaults and humiliation that occur in this movie, Barney still gets the girl in the end, and there is no consequence to all his actions. Nor for the administrator who was intimate with Peyton.
There are many, many more movie scenes not listed here, but these were the ones that seem to be at the top of the list in my memory as defining movies that I enjoyed and saw nothing wrong with back then. But watching them now, I found myself in utter disgust over these being normalized for my generation, and many being popular movies that people still defend today. These movies are just the tip of the iceberg in the movies that defined Gen-X — and not in a good way.
Luna Verity is a freelance writer who enjoys writing about personal and social subjects, as well as fictional works. She writes in her free time on Medium, Collider, Buzzfeed, and Vocal.Media.
