“Angels in the Outfield”

Angels in the Outfield is a 1994 film starring Danny Glover, Tony Danza, Christopher Lloyd and a young Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The film’s plot revolves around the California Angels baseball team, and how they need help from a group of Angels to field a competent team to win the pennant.

The main character, Roger (Gordon-Levitt), is a young boy who is promised by his estranged father that if the Angels win the pennant, he will allow his son to live with him. After Roger prays for the Angels to win, an angel named Al (Lloyd) is sent along with other angels to aid the team in winning.

The movie is an updated version of the film of the same name that was released in 1951 that followed the Pittsburgh Pirates. While the film certainly has many good moments, its main problem is it’s overwhelming cheesiness. It tries WAY too hard to be heartwarming and touching, resulting in many an eye-roll from the audience. It could’ve benefited from fewer serious scenes and should’ve had more fun with its plot instead of insisting on always trying to illicit emotional reactions.

Regardless, it’s still a good movie to put on for anyone under ten, but wouldn’t be interesting for anyone over that.

The movie trailer from 1994.

 

 

“Cats & Dogs”

Cats & Dogs, a 2001 film starring Jeff Goldblum and Tobey Maguire, is a movie about the ongoing war between — you guessed it — cats and dogs.

This movie was a go-to film in my household when I was a kid. It was a completely harmless movie that both my sister and I could be entertained by for an hour and a half while my parents could relax on the couch. My sister thoroughly enjoyed all the scenes of the pets acting cute and furry while I enjoyed the villainous humor of the main bad guy, a cat named Mr. Tinkles.

The premise of the movie is that both species of animal have secret agents who battle each other in the shadows, unbeknownst to humans. The main character, a dog named Lou, is adopted into a house and is hastily swept up into the dog secret agency to fight against the cats, which progresses into a typical, “You need to save the world from some evil device,” plot.

While it wasn’t necessarily my favorite thing to watch, I remembered it fondly as I looked back on my childhood years, but upon a recent viewing, the truth was uncovered.

This movie is incomprehensibly stupid.

The CG is terrible and does not hold up well with age, the plot is stale and uninteresting and the dialogue is cheesy and becomes annoying after the first 15 minutes or so. The one thing you can say, though, is that the actors at least tried to bring it to life, even if it didn’t work.

This is a movie that’s perfect to play for a toddler, and that’s about it. Everyone else should proceed with caution.

Mr. Tinkles’ Introduction

“Inspector Gadget: The Movie”

Inspector Gadget, a 1999 film starring Matthew Broderick and Rupert Everett, was definitely a favorite of mine as a child.

When I was young, I went to a daycare called Kid R Kids. Since the people that ran the daycare just wanted us to be vegetables so they could relax, they did nothing but play movies on the old television in the main room.

One of the movies that ran quite often was Inspector Gadget. Although I had never watched the 1983 cartoon from which the ’99 movie was based, the gadgets and gizmos entertained me nonetheless.

Broderick plays the main character, John Brown, who is turned into Inspector Gadget after an accident (so original). The chief villain, Dr. Claw, is played by Everett, who loses his hand when it’s crushed by a bowling ball and replaces it with a menacing mechanical claw.

But let’s cut to the chase. This movie reeks. Really badly. It’s corny jokes are far more cringe-worthy and awkward than they are funny, and based on the actor’s performances, it’s obvious that they were only doing this flick for the money and not because they thought it would be good.

During the fight scenes, it’s hard to care who wins or loses, since none of the characters are sufficiently developed to the point where you’re rooting for them. The film simply throws a bunch of gimmicks in your face and hopes that it all works out for the best, which it doesn’t.

If you show it to a five-year-old, they’ll enjoy it because of the gadgets and silliness, but anyone else will be wasting their time watching this.

A scene where the Inspector covers a girl in toothpaste:

“Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones”

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones was an American blockbuster film released in 2002, and is the second installment of the much-maligned Star Wars prequel trilogy. As a 7-year-old boy, I was entranced by the choreographed lightsaber duels and the unending cool space ships and laser fights.

While I knew that there was an entire trilogy that predated the current movies being released, I hadn’t watched them yet, so I had no other context. Along with watching the movie, I had Lego sets of the ships from the movie and made a point of making my mom get the Star Wars Go-GURTS from the grocery store.

Later in life, upon watching the rest of the movies multiple times, this particular one pales in comparison to the rest. The main atrocity of the movie is main protagonist Anakin Skywalker, played by Hayden Christensen. It is painfully obvious that the producers chose the wrong actor for the role, as Christensen routinely overacts in every scene and makes Anakin seem like a whiny teenager that grates on your ears.

There’s also massive plot holes throughout the film that are left unexplained, almost like the writers just didn’t care about the integrity of the story.

I have to admit that the kid in me still loves the glitz and glamour of the lightsaber duels and extravagant fight scenes, especially that stupid fight in the battle arena between the Jedi and the servant monsters. Unfortunately, it’s not quite enough to save the movie. While I used to argue with people that called the film a disgrace, I now see their point of view and why they are frustrated with the final product.

Hopefully, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which will be the new installment in the series that comes out this year, will be more like the original trilogy and less like the inferior ones made in the 2000s.

The fight scene in the battle arena, for your viewing pleasure.

“Yu-Gi-Oh!”

Ah, “Yu-Gi-Oh!.” If you were an eight-year-old boy from the suburbs, it was basically standard that you watched “Yu-Gi-Oh!” on a weekly basis and avidly collected the trading cards.

Just to clarify, we will only be discussing the show that aired from 2000 to 2004, and not any of the truly cringe-worthy future adaptations that, in this author’s opinion, involved way too many card games being played on motorcycles.

As most people my age know, Saturday morning was the best time of the week when we were younger. You woke up early, ate some cereal and settled down in the living room to watch cartoons for the next three hours.

The show I most wanted to see each week was “Yu-Gi-Oh!.” The exceedingly flamboyant and ridiculous hairdos, the stupidly over the top accents, and, of course, the card game battles. All of the card monsters and the battles seemed like the coolest thing in the world to me, and they were the main thing that drew me in.

Of course, after I re-watched a lot of the show on Netflix with some friends recently, I got a much different picture. Many of the aspects that made the show fun for me as a kid were still there, but now I noticed all of the flaws of the show as well, such as the fact that it takes a whole six episodes for Yugi to defeat Pegasus in the card duel at the end of season one.

The English dub is also mostly atrocious. Joey’s half-assed Brooklyn accent grinds on your nerves and Tristan’s fake tough guy voice gets annoying within a few episodes. The only true exception is Dan Green, who plays Yugi and Yami. Every kid in America has tried to imitate his deep and authoritative voice at least once in their lives.

In short, “Yu-Gi-Oh!” really has little left to offer anyone who’s over the age of 12, after which it loses most of its shine.

The “Yu-Gi-Oh!” theme song, just to relive it.

“How I Met Your Mother”

As I’m sure most everyone that has watched television knows, “How I Met Your Mother,” or HIMYM for short, was a long-running sitcom on CBS that ran for nine seasons.

It’s hard to believe, but the show started in 2005, back when I was only nine years old. I watched it ravenously when I was a wee lad in my preteens, and I found it strikingly hilarious. But as I got older and the humor of the show began to fade, I started to wonder if my attraction to it was because I still found it funny or because I’d been watching it for years and felt obligated to see it through in honor of my younger self.

As it turns out, the answer was most likely the latter of these two. The appeal of the show when I was younger was the ceaseless fun and sexual humor the show provided. The show had a certain electricity to it that drew me in, and the characters were vibrant enough to keep me glued to my screen.

Where the show went wrong in later years, though, was that it lost its electricity by using the same tired old gags, phrases and jokes over and over again. After hearing Barney make a sex joke for the thousandth time, it’s not really funny anymore. The show probably lasted about four seasons longer than it should have; the creators could’ve wrapped up most of the important story lines by then.

Although it’s still fun to watch an episode of HIMYM from time to time for remembrance’s sake, it’s not a show that I’m interested in re-watching fully any time soon. I feel like I’ve already seen everything, and there’s no appeal in experiencing it all over again.

Here’s a taste of the infamous “Slapsgiving” holiday the characters partake in every year.

“Bleach”

Today on Questionable Nostalgia we will discussing the incredibly long-running action anime “Bleach,” which started running in 2004 and ended in 2012.

This was a show that was extremely relevant in my childhood. It aired every Saturday night at midnight on Toonami, the infamous block of programming found on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. It follows the escapades of Ichigo, an orange-haired 15-year-old who gets turned into a soul Reaper, which are spiritual beings that carry around massive swords.  Their main job is to fight off monsters known as hollows, which try to consume human souls.

The anime runs for an unimaginable 366 episodes, and like most other long-running shows in the same genre, such as “One Piece” and “Naruto,” it contains a massive amount of filler episodes, which are episodes that have absolutely no relevance to the main plot and only serve to waste everybody’s time.

As the story in Bleach progresses, Ichigo meets more soul reapers and continues to fight stronger and stronger enemies. As a young kid, this show seemed impossibly awesome. The cool black outfits of the characters, the massive weapons and powerful attacks, what more could a nine year old want? I made a point of always staying up late on Saturdays and sneaking out of my room so that I could go watch it.

However, nowadays I have to say the gleam and glitz of the show has not held up. The fact that it takes literally ten episodes to finish fights, and that about 150 of the 366 episodes are filler arcs and are entirely useless, really makes it kind of boring. I don’t want to have to sit through hours of boredom just to get to some entertaining moments. While Bleach will always hold a special place in my heart, I wouldn’t recommend anyone today to attempt to watch it, unless they have a LOT of time to burn.

Here’s the first episode of the show, just in case you wanted a taste of what it’s like:

“The Master of Disguise”

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Ahh, “The Master of Disguise.” One of many favorite movies when I was five or six years old. Of course today, the Master of Disguise has a 1 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, was the 18th worst reviewed film of the decade and is widely considered as one of the absolute worst films of all time.

So what was it that I found so appealing about it when I was younger? I’ll tell you what it was: the farting. Whenever the villain of the film, played by Brent Spiner, (who was Data in “Star Trek: The Next Generation”) gets too excited, he farts multiple times, and seeing as flatulence is the absolute funniest thing possible when you’re a kid, it makes sense why I enjoyed watching this.

There was also the cavalcade of costumes that main character Pistachio (yes, like the nut), played by Dana Carvey, donned in various situations. He’s everyone from Tony Montana to George W. Bush, though the most well-known costume he wears is that of the painfully annoying turtle guy, who goes around wearing an enormously over sized green suit and just keeps repeating the word turtle over and over again in an unfunny accent. As a six-year-old I found this to be massively entertaining, the sheer stupidity of the numerous gags is now mind boggling to the point where I’m legitimately irritated at my past self for enjoying garbage.

The biggest sin that the movie commits is wasting Dana Carvey’s considerable comedic talent. It takes his skill of impersonating other people, which had proven to be funny on SNL and “Wayne’s World,” and bastardizes it for its own uses. While Carvey does pull off some funny moments, most of the characters are just unfunny and excessively cringe-worthy. Even though I did have some terrific times watching this film in my past, I can now say without question that my admiration for it was completely incorrect and that I can live a long and fruitful life having never watched it again.

“That ’70s Show”

Hello, and welcome to Questionable Nostalgia, where I, your humble idiot Daniel Marco, will be discussing shows and films that I used to love and now make me cringe.

First up on the docket is the sitcom “That ’70s Show,” which ran for eight seasons from 1998 to 2006. In all honesty, this was my absolute favorite TV show when I was in grade school. I recently tried to get back into it, and I have to say that it fell flat.

Its worst grievance is that is breaks my golden rule in all shows and movies: you can never have more than one excessively annoying character. “That ’70s Show” has not only one, but two of these: glitzy, hyper-maintenance Jackie, played by Mila Kunis, and the sexually confused foreign exchange student Fez, played by Wilmer Valderrama.

I don’t know how anyone can stand these two. As I re-watched the show, I don’t believe I laughed even once when either of these characters went through their comedy shticks, especially Fez, who has the same sexual jokes for seemingly the entire series. In addition, Ashton Kutcher’s turn as Michael Kelso can certainly wear thin at times, though at least he can occasionally be funny.

However, one of the areas where the show does hold up is the performance of Kurtwood Smith as Red Foreman. Seriously, this man is freaking hilarious. Whether he’s tearing his son Eric (Topher Grace) a new one or sarcastically reprimanding everyone in sight, he is consistently funny.

Another character that was my favorite as a kid and is still funny is Steven Hyde (Danny Masterson), mainly because of his scathing critiques of the other characters’ actions.

Unfortunately a show that I used to love so much I now see as a shoddily-written series that tries way too hard for cheap laughs and mostly fails to pull it off, often in awkward and cringe-worthy fashion, which makes me sad. I should’ve just never re-watched it and kept it in my memory banks where it was still perfect.