What’s Aged the Worst?
Baseball scenes; boyfriend’s racing subplot; rosy final act; Kevin’s school handling; tower-shooting fantasy and bomb-threat joke; Leaf Phoenix credit; limo stunt double; Cool’s treatment; Larry’s gambling talk; Martin as a 35-year-old
In the discussion (10)
Approx. transcript time · 00:53:13Read transcript
- Moved forward: all the baseball scenes are poor, especially the Cardinals nostalgia montage, where research says the runner pulled a hamstring over twelve takes.
- Beyond the baseball scenes, the boyfriend’s shoehorned racing career and crash, after which he walks away and gets a job, is called the worst part of the movie.
- The last twenty minutes are too rosy; the writers needed a closer like Rivera or Bill Goldman, as with City Slickers; killing the grandmother could have supplied a funeral, though ending with a birth may be why it is rewatchable.
- The school ambushing the parents with a therapist and effectively expelling Kevin would not happen now and seemed extreme even then; Kevin’s portrayal would spark lengthy online backlash today.
- Kevin’s tower-shooting fantasy and a throwaway joke about a school bomb threat have aged badly, part of a 1980s motif also seen in Full Metal Jacket.
- The Leaf Phoenix credit is joked about, with a suggestion to recut a trailer touting Academy Award winner Joaquin Phoenix.
- Larry being thrown from a limo uses an obvious stunt double, though the scene is loved.
- Cool’s treatment is mentioned again as rough.
- Larry’s gambling dialogue lacks sports-betting fluency despite Tom Hulce’s greatness in Amadeus; late-1980s films did not know gambling language, with Pete Rose and a later 90210 gambling plotline recalled.
- Steve Martin not looking 35 is added as a final item.