Open Forum Friday: Is It Wrong to Laugh at Old Movies Because They Are Dated?

Posted by on September 21st, 2012   Filed under: Open Forum Friday

It happens to the best of us. One day you’re a young whippersnapper and the next day you are running into people who have not even heard of the major movies that you grew up on. Or worse yet, they’ve watched them ironically and they’ve mercilessly mocked them. Some things never go out of style, but then again some things do, and that can make it difficult for people to appreciate movies that come from before their time. But what exactly makes a movie “dated” and when should we look past these differences in order to look for something more?

An interesting debate has popped up over at Press Play last week, where Matt Zoller Seitz recently attended a screening of the 1963 James Bond film From Russia With Love, and found a lot of people in the audience laughing at how dated the movie was. There are few things more infuriating than having people laugh at a movie that you genuinely like, but can they be blamed for finding unintentional humour in a movie that is almost 50 years old? Seitz insists that the problem was with the audience, not the movie, but something tells me if they were watching Troll 2 he might have reacted a bit differently. What do you think? Are some movies just so dated that they become laughable? Why can’t younger moviegoers connect with old movies? Is it disrespectful to laugh at a public screening of an old classic? Give us your thoughts here on Open Forum Friday.



  • Deven Science

    We played John Wayne’s The Fighting Seabees recently for a bunch of young Seabee troops that hadn’t seen it before, and I ended up enjoying it more from the total sexism throughout the movie. We were all laughing, including the girls that were watching. That’s the one way it really shows its age (well, and how they were actually getting shit done, because they didn’t have safety groups breathing down their necks during the construction scenes).

    In that case, the datedness of the movie made some stuff that supposed to be funny funnier, but for a different reason. It didn’t hurt it, and I still enjoyed the film.

    Dated movies can be hurt when they show obvious signs of the times that they were made, but honestly, I think most better films don’t date themselves like that.

  • Scott

    I don’t know why you would laugh. I really like watching old stuff and seeing how people used to live.

    Scott
    http://Www.reconditepictures.com

  • Kasper

    A lot of the old Bond movies are pretty dated. I remember watching one – I don’t know the name – where Bonds “gadget” was a tiny one-man helicopter, that could apparently fly for ages with just about no fuel tank + it had rockets and what not pop out, but there were no room in the helicopter for them to be hidden in to begin with. I had to laugh at this, and while my father didn’t appreciate it even my mother agreed that the movie had seen better days.

  • Adam Lenehan

    The only things I would laugh at would be the computers that that they had back then. I found it amusing that they took up the space of one whole room. I also found people smoking in hospitals kinda funny but not laugh out loud funny.

  • Adam Lenehan

    Did the audience laugh at the jokes at all?

  • el ohroy

    I think the internet has given birth to a generation of people who want to find ironic humor in everything, and are always looking for the next meme. Twitter makes everyone a comedian.

  • bullet3

    From Russia With Love is a pretty egregious case, cause it’s not very dated at all, and actually probably the most realistic and grounded James Bond movie of all time. It’s basically a straight-ahead gritty realistic spy film, with almost none of the crazy over-the-top set-pieces the series is known for.

  • Owozifa

    @7 Yeah I kinda agree on From Russia With Love. It’s actually my favorite Bond film for just that reason. It really shows next to even something like Dr. No, which is a lot sillier. I have no idea what part they’d be laughing at.

    My second favorite Bond film is Live and Let Die, because it just doesn’t care anymore.

    I think it’s hard to make an objective judgement about if it’s “right” to laugh at certain things in a movie. I will say when I personally watch a film with someone it can really annoy me. I watched an older movie with a classmate in college one time and she would not stop finding it hilarious that they shot a driving sequence with rear projection.

  • Good films don’t age. If you approach a film with an appreciation for the art and the context of the time in which it was made, things like rear projection or melodramatic acting won’t bother you or take you out of the movie.
    And is rear projection really that different then bad CGI? Most of the CGI-enhanced films from the 90’s and early 00’s already look terribly dated.

  • The Bond example goes pretty far back, as it’s something my parents grew up on, but I’m even seeing this happen with movies that I myself grew up on in the 80’s. I think it’s all about perspective and having been there for something, not knowing what was to come, because now, after advances in technology, special effects, and even sometimes the quality of storytelling or acting, I can watch some of the older stuff that I was around for and understand why younger people now might find it laughable, because in some cases it IS.

    For instance, look at a lot of the action flicks we grew up on in the 80’s. A lot of them weren’t very good THEN, but as a younger viewer that just wanted to see shit blow up and heads explode, it was awesome. Now I see it as maybe a cool moment or two in a movie where there’s really not a lot to like in the other 90 minutes, so I look for other reasons for it to be entertaining. What passed for decent action movie acting has changed quite a bit, so there’s usually some humor in that, and CG and budgets have raised the stakes considerably, so it’s funny to see what passed for a big set piece in the days of Chuck Norris.

    I think there are certain points in cinematic history where the book was re-written, where there was such a shift in what could be done or how a film could be made (not even just as it pertains to action), and whether you could relate or not to older movies or if they seem “dated” or not, depends on whether you were there before or after the shift. I was 13 when “Terminator 2″ came out and had spent my early years growing up on Schwarzenegger and Stallone, so while that movie was a game changer, I can still appreciate the stuff they did before and can also appreciate more traditional non-CG fare like the Indiana Jones flicks, which had more going on besides effects and action sequences. I’m sure there are people a few years younger than me though that don’t really know anything from before “Terminator 2″ when it comes to action, and they might find everything from the 80’s and before to be hilarious. A lot of it might be ironic, like they’re bagging on it just because it’s what the kids do, but I’m sure a day IS coming when younger audiences see the stuff we grew up on and think “Who was this shit for? It’s just old and stupid”.

  • bullet3

    See, I can understand it with some of the 80s stuff, but the current obsession with “grounded” and gritty movies is not some crazy new-found realization. 70s action films are in many ways just as straightforward and realistic as something like the Bourne series. You look at French Connection or 3 Days of the Condor and they feel completely modern. If there’s anything that people might laugh at there it’s politically incorrect jokes or lines of dialogue, but other than that, I think the concept of older movies being necessarily “dated” or not “holding up” is completely bullshit.

  • I tried showing my nephew some of the movies in my collection because I thought he might enjoy them. To my horror, he laughed at most of them even though they were not comedies. If one of them had stop motion animation in it, he laughed his ass off. He had no appreciation for the work that went into it.

    I no longer show him any of my movies. I know better.

  • Gerry

    My only rule in watching movies is to accept them on their own terms.
    This means I enjoy the shit out of movies of any type or from any era.

    I’ll record old films from the 30’s 40’s and 50’s and I find a lot of them hold my attention a lot more than a lot of today’s films because they’re written and made with, seemingly, more skill, whether they be noir, a blockbuster of their time or a silly propoganda film.

    The Grapes Of Wrath would feature in my top 5-7 movies of all time / my favourite movies.
    Hitchcock, Wilder etc would number among my favourite directors.

    Old movies are, to me, valuable historical documents as well as pieces of entertainment. They can be as revealing about their period as a history book.

    Re Bond films, I find most modern Bond’s as silly as the audience found From Russia With Love. I still enjoy them, on the same level I would a cartoon.
    I like the really old On Her Majesty’s Secret Service a lot as, to me, it’s more of a proper film than a Bond film.

  • Bas

    Maybe the little shits thought they were watching an Austin Powers movie? No, they’re probably too young to know who that is.

    And it’s not just old films that are inexplicably laughed at by youngsters either. I saw Batman Begins at the theater and they thought Rachel slapping Bruce was the funniest thing ever! Fucking kids these days…

  • Adam Lenehan

    @Bas: Wow! First of all I think you meant teenagers, because children are aloud to laugh at any film if they want to. Also Austen Powers and James Bond are so ingrained in pop culture these days that it’s really hard not to know who they are.

  • Bas

    I meant teenagers, but ‘little shits’ more accurately captures the emotion I’m going for. And secondly, leave it to punks to amaze you with their lack of knowledge of even the most basic stuff ;)

  • Maopheus

    I wonder what the scene(s) in FRWL that they laughed at. I’d like to know because I can’t think of any that really stand out. That’s the thing about a great movie is that it should be timeless, you shouldn’t notice the time period in which the movie is set. Especially if it was contemporary to its release date.
    Oh now I know. It was probably the scene in the beginning when Bond is lounging with Sylvia Trench and he answers the “car phone” call.

  • Derek McFarland

    I don’t think it’s wrong to laugh at something outdated, if you can still appreciated it for what it was, once upon a time….but then again, it also depends. There are some things I find funny now, that I thought looked pretty cool when I was younger (like Lou Ferrigno’s Hercules, Mortal Kombat, and Independent Day) ….and there are also outdated films that I still find to be badass, in a not funny kinda way (Like Robocop, Jason and the Argonauts, 1980’s Clash of the Titans, and Total Recall)

    Just a year ago, my brother and I started watching the original Star Trek T.V. series from the 1960’s; for the first time…..and we couldn’t get enough of it? We found ourselves laughing our asses off at how outdated the FX and the acting was; but were totally entertained by how good the stories were as well, and couldn’t wait till the next weeks episode. We found the show to be more fun to watch then S.T.The Next Generation. It can be annoying at times though….trying to enjoy a good cult classic, like 1979’s Alien…..only to have some asshole in the same room, laughing at all the meaningless “computer button lights” and the one 27″ moniter; in “Mother’s” computer room.

    I wonder…..Is It Wrong To Scream At New Movies, because they suck, and repeat shittier versions of these so called outdated films?

    I mean really……what’s with the F%#kin CG blood, and fake ammo? It’s that kinda crap that has me looking for all these outdated classics.

  • Gerry

    @Maopheus.

    I’m guessing they laughed at the gypsy women fighting scene. It’s attitudes to women were always pretty laughable.

  • Owozifa

    @Gerry

    That is a little bit of a ridiculous moment, but nobody can laugh at the bladed shoe fight.

  • devolutionary

    Nothing wrong with laughing at older movies for whatever reason (outdated effects, silly plots, unrealistics sections, etc.) as long as you can appreciate the good merits as well. If you are ok with someone making fun or laughing at your favourite movies say 30 years from now then fair game to all.

  • European

    I find new films laughable, and I find people who use word “dated” for a piece of art (be it film, song, etc.) very laughable.
    What I find laughable in new films and TV shows is that many of them try so hard to portray “reality” that they finish in self-parody. One notable example of this is a crime TV show The Wire, which tries to play on a card of reality, but ends up as parody when watched by anyone who has some knowledge of politics and police work. Unfortunatley, most of film critics don’t have the knowledge.