Gremlins
Melbourne International Film Festival, 06/08/2010
Status: Behind by 14 films
I was a bit worried about seeing Gremlins - JOE DANTE’s cult film from 1984 - for the first time as a 30 year old. There are some films that you have to see as an eight year old in the eighties if you’re ever going to love them (I saw The Goonies for the first time three years ago and I don’t get what folks love so much about it. It’s almost like the nostalgia for the thing is more important than the thing itself. I liked The Goonies, sure, but without the nostalgia of watching it as an eight year old something of the magic is lost.)
But you know what? Gremlins is great - it’s revolting, it’s funny, it’s inventive. It’s dated, of course, (terribly, terribly dated), but charmingly so.
It’s so entrenched in our collective conscious I won’t bother recounting the plot (a comic book I’m reading referenced it this morning, even), but I will say that if you’re over eight years old and at the video shop you could do worse than Gremlins (The Goonies, for instance).
