Films you see differently as an adult...

[LoveShitJokes]

I presume this has been done before but fuck it, it's Saturday night and I'm bored. So I'll start...

Mrs Doubtfire. As a child I saw Miranda as a boring, stuck up cow. As an adult I see her as a successful, independent woman exasperated with her man child husband who gives me The Ultimate Ick. And then some. I'm gobsmacked she ever married him. Stuart was a capable, equal partner not the villain I once thought him to be. Anyone else?

I hated Mrs Doubtfire.

I don't think Glenn Close's behaviour in Fatal Attraction was justified

but many posters on mn do and try to put the blame on him like wtf? I would love to see the reaction if people said this about a role reversal in a film or in real life.

It's like saying Katie Piper deserved to get stalked and attacked by her psycho ex because she dated him and then dumped him when he loved her.

Nah. In real life Duckie would have burst out of the closet waving rainbow flags ...

We will have to disagree on this. She really was, as compared to his twinset and pearls wife in that movie.

Kathleen Turner wanted to end the marriage and took what Michael Douglas saw as more than her fair share. She is 10 years younger than him and back then, looked a lot younger ( only a few years after Romancing the Stone).

To the person vilifying Brideshead Revisited, it's the catholic church that is the villain of the piece and the faith in it that causes the people to behave as they do. The fact that they behave the way they do in spite of or because of their faith is the point of the storyline.

Quite. Complaining about Brideshead or Jean Brodie because you don't like what happens is completely missing the point

We will have to disagree on this. She really was, as compared to his twinset and pearls wife in that movie

It's interesting you think Glenn Close's wife was hot in the film. There was a big forum on imdb that had posters asking why he cheated when the wife was much hotter and the reason Close was so bitter in the film was because she never could be like the wife in terms of attractiveness. She was certainly more glamorous looking than the wife but in terms of better looking aesthetics I think most people would agree on Anne Archer being more conventionally attractive.

I agree with you that his female costars were usually gorgeous looking but not Close.

He has a hot wife 25 years younger than him irl though so it's not really a massive suspension of disbelief.

I saw Johnny as having good basic ethics. He takes on responsibility for Penny although it isn't really his. He willingly admires Dr Houseman for saving her, even after the good Dr assumes he's the father and treats him like shit whilst accepting and welcoming creepy Robbie, who actually impregnated her. He doesn't even resent Houseman's actions, thinking himself fully deserving of his contempt 'because I'm nothing'.

If anything, Johnny was far more insecure and vulnerable than Baby was. He's devastated when she refuses to fight for him by telling Precious Daddy he's her guy. His string of women with rich husbands is more a mode of temporary financial survival than a means of bigging up his own virile ego. We learn this when Baby gives him an alibi which proves he isn't a thief but incriminates her for disobeying Precious Dad by spending the night with Johnny. His reaction to this is a giveaway: never in his life before has anyone ever cared for him enough to do a thing like this on his account.

Baby's also pretty politically left-wing. She wakes up, not only sexually, but in a sense that sees her dad and his mountain-retreat owning buddies treating the working-class like shit whilst sucking up to people who are complete arseholes, but have the right connections. You get the sense at the end of the film that Baby doesn't see her family and friends in the same way she used to, albeit the social status quo isn't likely to change that much (and the relationship with Johnny is obviously doomed from the beginning).

It's a good, uplifting movie - with a few cringeworthy moments - about kicking against the system. At the same time it's sad reflection of the ultimate futility of doing so, despite the euphoric end-of-season dance.

Didn't Close once have a relationship with Jeremy Irons? That said, you'd be hard pushed to find many women who didn't!

The kids had been through enough big life changes, they don't need to meet their mothers rebound straight away.
(And yes, I'd say the same if Daniel had a new girlfriend and had them around the children.)

It's a succubus, that's what they do. Interesting how much was more acceptable in the past because nobody ever questioned anything. The most important thing to teach is critical thinking. To not teach it is to get 'society' as it is today...

No, it’s Evelyn Waugh and his godawful snobbery and obsession with the aristocracy.

Sebastian is a wastrel and Charles Ryder is a crashing snob. EW really believed aristocrats and artists superior to everyone else. Fine at 12, toe-curling as an adult.

Where did I say my dislike was based “what happened in it”?

Evelyn Waugh may have been obsessed with the aristocracy but only to point out their appalling flaws in a sort of 'all fleshe is grasse' sort of way.

Waugh's Vile Bodies is a great book, though. And in this novel he's very scathing about the bright young things who get into all manner of self-inflicted scrapes, and is quite funny about the clash between newspaper reporters and elitist artists.

IMO, it ranks amongst his best work. Stephen Fry did quite a passable film adaptation using the novels' working title of Bright Young Things.

(His father, Arthur, was a godawful snob and traditionalist critic for the prudish Critical Quarterly. So you can kind of see where Evelyn gets it from).

As no one agrees with my Michael Douglas peeve:), can we move on to TV shows that have aged badly? I wonder if I am being too pearl clutching about Grey's Anatomy, which I am rewatching from S 1. I know it's Shonda Rimes and therefore everybody has to sleep with everyone else as part of their contract, but it jars when Christina and Meredith go on about how all they want is to be great surgeons, and then end up sleeping with their bosses in the first few episodes. The abuse of power by McDreamy and Burke is of course far worse, but I just expect better from Christina than to go on having ill judged affairs in the workplace. Did Shonda think she would be boring without constantly sleeping with senior surgeons?

Yes, the Catholic Church. It's all beautifully done isn't it.

He’s far too bedazzled to point out their flaws in any meaningful way. And anyway do they really need pointing out? I think we all know well enough.

Agreed. Dirty Dancing is as much or more about the ugly reality of class and money dynamics as it is the romance. Baby and Johnny were never going to dance off into the sunset together and the film knows it; but she'll be a better lawyer and judge in future because she's lost not only her sexual innocence but her innocence about money and privilege. That's the significance of Johnny introducing her as "Frances" for the last dance; she's not a baby any more.

And Dr. Housman has had his cosy assumptions about "our type" and about his daughter rocked as well; he has to recognise that Johnny, who he's looked down on, has acted better than he himself has and that his daughter is both a highly intelligent and a sexual woman.

Well said! I agree 👍

Listen to the song again and you’ll find he’s singing about someone he’s watched grow into a beautiful women and now he’s in a relationship with her, he’s having to work hard to hang onto her. Hardly thinking she’s a ‘shitty woman’.

The movie insinuates that they knew each other many years ago. He had no idea that she was married and had 3 kids, one who was almost a teenager. So it's pretty clear that Stuart had been out of her life for many years at that point. I'd wager he knew her briefly way before she had even been married.

The fact that Miranda was so spiteful and nasty and manipulative that Daniel had to have supervised visitation imo justified what Daniel did to see his children. The fact that a good, decent, caring, hands on father had to go to that lengths is an indictment on Miranda (who seemed to be all about her career and getting a nanny and who had zero maternal instincts).

I don't think 'Disney Dad' has anything remotely to do with this as Daniel never changed who he was all along. And the children related much better to him as their father, from the start, probably because he was more of a parent to them than Miranda was.

The fact that Miranda was bringing Stuart around her kids less than a coupe of months after she split from their dad and he was in the pool with them and lifting them up in their swimming costumes would disturb any mumsnetter who says you need to wait like a year until you introduce your kids to your new boyfriend. Say what you want about Daniel; Miranda was all kinds of an irresponsible mother who just wanted a fuck and didn't care about her own children's needs. Daniel was a far more responsible parent than she was.

Maybe you should get your eyes checked; Glenn Close looked at least, at least as old as Michael Douglas, if not 5 years older. She definitely looked older than Douglas.

Twas ever thus. In Jane Eyre it is strongly hinted that the main reason Mr Rochester is disgusted by his wife, Bertha, and thinks her to be mad & bad is because she enjoys sex.

In Victorian England, wives must be beige, demure and sexless.