Fun 80s movies

[zoemurr]

I recently watched the Back to the Future movies (my all time favorites.. to date myself) with my 9 year old and then I started thinking of other fun kid-friendly movies from that era I wanted to share with her: Big, Wargames, Karate Kid, Doc Hollywood, ET, any others? Good, clean "classics"?

It just seems they don't come out with many family type movies anymore. We saw HSM3 yesterday. It was so refreshing to watch a movie with out a crotch joke and the word "idiot".

 

[WDWBarb]

The Goonies!!

 

[kkheburn]

How aboot Goonies,The Dark Crystal,and Labyrinth. Will keep trying to remember some of my childhood favorites.

 

[TheZenMaster]

Some great movies on there. How about the Indiana Jones movies? Don't recall any bad language in that one and it's a heck of an adventure movie, which we all know kids love.

Gremlins? Goonies? Lucas? Planes Trains and Automobiles? Adventures in Babysitting? Field of Dreams?

 

[MrsNick]

E.T.
The Princess Bride
The Little Mermaid
The Star Wars trilogy

 

[Leader of the Club]

Weird Science

 

[Ladyw/theTramp]

Neverending Story I and II
I second the Princess Bride!

We tried to watch Ace Ventura with the kids and the language was AWFUL!!! I didn't remember that at all!

 

[Pooki]

How funny, DH and I were talking about the same thing the other day and were trying to figure out movies to get. Here is a list of either what we already own or whats sitting in my Amazon cart as my wish list: Little Monsters, Willow, Mac N Me, Batteries Not Included, Gremlins, Labyrinth, Mario Brothers movie, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Harry and the Hendersons, Kindergarten Cop, Ghostbusters, Addams Family, Casper, Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead (ok, thats not squeaky clean), Dunston Checks In, Edward Scissorhands, Legend (I don't know anything about that movie, so blame DH if its a bad idea...).

We've also been buying seasons of cartoons that we used to watch. Some of them are Chip 'N Dale Rescue Rangers, Tale Spin, Gummy Bears, Super Mario Brothers Super Show, Smurfs, Duck Tales. We also have Fresh Prince of Bel Air, which is so funny to watch now that we all have an image of what Will Smith looks like now.

Geez, its quite obvious that we are big movie nerds, huh?

 

[luckey-lasvegas]

We started doing this with our DD11 too. So far she liked the Backed to the Future series and Ghost Busters the best. We also watched Splash, Drop Dead Fred, The Great Outdoors, Jumangi,and the Indiana Jones 1 & 3 (I never liked 2)

 

[mlynn]

Mr Mom.

 

[DOOM1001]

Not too clean but my all time favorite is National Lampoon's Vacation,I mean it's about taking a road trip to go to an amusement park,my favorite thing to do,I must have seen that movie close to 1,000 times,in fact I'm watching it now on Bravo.I also have to agree with you about Back to the Future those are right behind Vacation in terms of my favorites.And here's one when I was younger and worked as a camp counselor that the kids loved,sure the star had an embarrassing arrest but in my opinion the movie is a classic,Pee-Wee's Big Adventure!!Some other choices would be Home Alone 1 and 2,and that Christmas Favorite A Christmas Story!!

 

[mskayjay]

Dirty Dancing
Hunt for Red October

agree on The Never Ending Story movies and BTTF. So many great ones back then.... Star Wars was also rolling in the 80's wasn't it?

oh and Top Gun! Wasn't that in the 80's also?

 

[KigerKat]

This is the perfect time of year for Ghostbusters!!

 

[chattyann]

The Last Starfighter, Teen Wolf, A Christmas story, Adventures in Babysitting, Annie, Better of Dead, One Crazy Summer, Great Balls of Fire, And Can't Buy Me Love to name a few.

 

[Pooki]

Wow, so many movies I completely forgot about! Remember Howard the Duck? I don't remember how "clean" it was, but I know I watched that one as a kid.

 

[griz_fan]

I think you guys might be looking back through rose-colored glasses here. Most of the movies mentioned here, while some of my favorites from that era, are far from clean, wholesome family fun. In fact, as my kids have gotten older, my wife and I have rented a lot of our favorites from that era to watch with them. We've both come to the conclusion that the motion pictures rating system is far stricter today than it was in the 80's. I've seen PG movies that would probably get at least a PG-13 or maybe even an R rating today. Heck, someone mentioned "Planes, Trains and Automobiles", but that was rated R. Adventures in Babysitting had some fairly strong language (such as "f--k," "s--t" "son of a *****," "*******"), there was the "***** breath" joke in ET, the list goes on. If the word "idiot" makes you uneasy, 90% of the movies mentioned so far would almost certainly cause you concern. And sadly, a LOT of these movies are pretty stupid. We may have enjoyed them as kids, but watching them again today, from an adult perspective and having seen a lot of more quality movies, quite a few mentioned here just don't hold up, and I think kids wouldn't really like them, either. And, I'm not saying that today's kids are too jaded and won't enjoy a movie without sexual content, profanity or violence, its just that these aren't particularly good movies and today's kids have access to much higher quality movies than we did growing up. Seriously, stack up Pete's Dragon against Wall-e.
I guess the point I'm making is that there are tons of family-friendly movies today, and that I would argue today's family oriented movies are MUCH better than they were 20 years ago and as parents, our choices are much better than what our parents faced.

Also, be sure to check out www.commonsensemedia.org to see if you want your kid to watch a particular movie. Netflix uses their reviews, too. These reviews breaks down the various areas where parents may have concerns, making it a lot easier to decide if a movie is appropriate for your kid or not.

 

[cdrn1]

Funny Farm with Chevy Chase, and that one with Diane Keaton raising an "inherited" baby (I can't recall the name) were favorites of my kids.

 

[DOOM1001]

Here's some more suggestions,Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure,Airplane 1 and 2,The Monster Squad, and a totally unknown movie that's totally hard to find called Midnight Madness!!

 

[branv]

For animated, how about The Last Unicorn and The Secret of Nimh?

There is Cloak and Dagger and The Navigator -- DH goes on and on about how much he loved those movies. There was also The Toy, but that may have some language I can't recall in it (I mean, Richard Pryor, y'know?)

Last Starfighter suggestion had me LOL -- we had that, Christmas Story, They Call Me Bruce, Strange Brew and Johnny Dangerously memorized backwards and forwards. We also loved Clue -- thankfully the riskier stuff went over our heads.

Edited to add, for "spooky" kids movies, there was Watcher in the Woods and the sillier Private Eyes (Don Knotts & Tim Conway...I rented that for my nieces and they liked it)

 

[lauradenise4779]

I think you guys might be looking back through rose-colored glasses here. Most of the movies mentioned here, while some of my favorites from that era, are far from clean, wholesome family fun. In fact, as my kids have gotten older, my wife and I have rented a lot of our favorites from that era to watch with them. We've both come to the conclusion that the motion pictures rating system is far stricter today than it was in the 80's. I've seen PG movies that would probably get at least a PG-13 or maybe even an R rating today. Heck, someone mentioned "Planes, Trains and Automobiles", but that was rated R. Adventures in Babysitting had some fairly strong language (such as "f--k," "s--t" "son of a *****," "*******"), there was the "***** breath" joke in ET, the list goes on. If the word "idiot" makes you uneasy, 90% of the movies mentioned so far would almost certainly cause you concern. And sadly, a LOT of these movies are pretty stupid. We may have enjoyed them as kids, but watching them again today, from an adult perspective and having seen a lot of more quality movies, quite a few mentioned here just don't hold up, and I think kids wouldn't really like them, either. And, I'm not saying that today's kids are too jaded and won't enjoy a movie without sexual content, profanity or violence, its just that these aren't particularly good movies and today's kids have access to much higher quality movies than we did growing up. Seriously, stack up Pete's Dragon against Wall-e.
I guess the point I'm making is that there are tons of family-friendly movies today, and that I would argue today's family oriented movies are MUCH better than they were 20 years ago and as parents, our choices are much better than what our parents faced.

Also, be sure to check out www.commonsensemedia.org to see if you want your kid to watch a particular movie. Netflix uses their reviews, too. These reviews breaks down the various areas where parents may have concerns, making it a lot easier to decide if a movie is appropriate for your kid or not.

I agree! Please be careful! I let me kids watch Goonies with me...it was my absolute favorite movie when I was a kid! Well, we didnt make it past 15 minutes into the movie. Remember the, um, "anatomy" issue with the statue? Yeah, neither did I. Needless to say, they haven't seen the whole thing. I can't believe I saw the whole thing, multiple times. I guess maybe that kinda thing wasn't so bad way back then??? If it wasn't so bad, it would be a great story...you know, adventure, friends, etc. Oh well.