Nostalgia Nights: Cats and Dogs & The Pagemaster
As much as I love my ‘Mind the Gap’ series where I spend some time with parts of pop culture I probably should have seen before, I realized something else I want to do is revisit some old favorites. A friend and I started talking about movies we remembered loving as children and mused whether or not they’d hold up. This brought about one of the best movie nights I’ve ever had. We each brought a movie we had a fondness for that we hadn’t seen in ages, and the other person had zero relationship to it.
This plan brought about something I want to do again and again: see how nostalgia affects a movie we may not have been fond of otherwise. Luckily, that actually didn’t happen with these two films, and we had a hell of a time with some movies that came out the first decade we were alive.
My pick was Cats & Dogs, a movie that looms large in my memory solely thanks to an angry Persian cat named Mr. Tinkles who is voiced by Sean Hayes. My father and I have laughed way too often about that ridiculous creature, and I was very nervous that this movie would be an actual nightmare watching it two decades after it came out. I was so worried my friend would look at me when the credits rolled and think I was crazier than I am, but I didn’t need to worry.
We had an utter blast watching this movie. The cast was more stacked than I had remembered, and we couldn’t believe how many big names were voices of these CGI cats and dogs (and that Jeff Goldblum was happy to play a semi-mad-scientist determined to find a cure for a dog allergies. This angers Mr. Tinkles, who is determined to mutate it in order to create a universal dog allergy and make cats the supreme pet. Yes, this movie is absolutely as ridiculous as it sounds, and yes, it was an absolute ball.
Next up was The Pagemaster, which was suggested rather perfectly by my friend whose name actually is Paige. I had never even heard of this movie, and now it was her turn to keep glancing at me to see if I was enjoying a movie that she held in such high esteem from childhood. While I definitely would have liked it more had I been able to have some nostalgia attached, it was such a fun ride. I don’t know how on earth this escaped me considering its book motif, and me being a tiny little nerd the second I understood how to read, but I’m thrilled it’s in my life now.
The story is incredibly cute and shows Macaulay Culkin as a young boy who becomes a cartoon as he has to go on an adventure through a fantastical literary world in order to get back home. And he may just learn a bit more about how to love books and the worlds they introduce him to along the way. It’s utterly adorable, and definitely one I could see myself showing to any kids I may have in the future.
Do you have any nostalgia loves that you want to look at with fresh, adult eyes? Share them in the comment section below and we may check them out ourselves.