Yahoo Movies '90s and '00s movies that are TOTALLY not okay now
Everyone knows that Song of the South and Birth of a Nation were a "bit iffy", to say the least. But we'd like to think we're a bit more evolved these days regarding what's appropriate and what's downright offensive.
It turns out we might be wrong, though. These are some movies from the not-even-that-far-back eras of the '90s and '00s that make us go, 'Oof, how is that acceptable?'.
Cringe away.
1. Pretty Woman
In this movie we learn it's okay to pay women for sex as long as you're rich and not totally scuzzy on the outside. Wealthy city perv Richard Gere starts off by soliciting Julia Roberts' sex worker for a night, and then buys her for the week to pretend to be his girlfriend. After he's had sex with her, dressed her up in clothes he deems more appropriate, and told her how to speak and stuff, he starts to actually like her.
It's apparently a romantic Pygmalion-esque love story, though we'd hope that might ring a few alarm bells now.
2. She's All That
Basically the same story, but with a high-school kid rather than a sex worker. This time, perfectly-happy-with-herself art student Laney Boggs is given a drastic makeover (i.e. she removes her glasses and gets a haircut) after a bunch of douchey guys make a bet over whether they can turn her into a member of the A-group.
"Given the right look, the right boyfriend, bam! ln six weeks, she's the one being crowned prom queen," proclaims love interest Zach, before summing up a bunch of other girls with pithy one-liners ("You strip away all that attitude and makeup and basically all you have is a C-minus GPA with a Wonderbra").
Zach finally learns that he needs to be less shallow and look deeper inside Laney. But only after he's changed the way she looks and who she's friends with.
3. The Love Guru
Mike Myers dresses up as an Indian guru, complete with 'funny' accent, and preaches spiritual teachings while wearing a chastity belt and playing the sitar. Never mind the properly dodgy mocking of another culture, it's also offensively unfunny. This happened in 2008, people.
4. Boat Trip
Two straight guys accidentally get on a cruise for 'gays only' – my God, what could be worse than gays?! The set-up, the stereotypical portrayal of gay men, and the fact that it's horribly unfunny for starters. We're pretty sure a film entirely centred around gay panic wouldn't happen today, would it?
Roger Moore was in this movie. Cuba Gooding Jr was in this movie. Why? The answer had better be 'Show me the money...'
Also, what the hell is with this poster, which we think is the German one? We don't like to think too deeply about what any of these design choices are about.
5. White Chicks
The Wayans brothers don white-face drag as two African-American undercover cops pretending to be two white heiresses. All the hilarity of race/gender-swap antics combined with a bit of date rapey-ness, homophobia and not very good prosthetics. Can't imagine the elevator pitch for this being anything but awkward.
6. Dangerous Minds
This well-meaning (probably) drama, based on the memoir of female naval-officer-turned-teacher LouAnne Johnson at a tough inner city school, is now much mocked as a kind of patronising, trite tale of how a white woman bribed hard-up multiracial kids by teaching them the lyrics to 'Mr Tambourine Man'. "But you can't leave us," says one kid when LouAnne plans to go. "You're our Tambourine Man!" Cringe.
7. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
For a fun film about an animal lover who specialises in locating missing pets, Ace Ventura is surprisingly offensive. There's a bit where Ace pretends to be mentally ill by wearing a tutu and affecting a faux Down's syndrome voice. That's pretty rough. But that's overshadowed by the crazy gay panic and repellent transphobia that's a pretty central part of the plot.
To recap – Ace's hunt for a missing American Football mascot leads him to an ex-player who suffered a mental breakdown. Now escaped from a mental institute, the movie's denouement reveals that the libidinous female police officer played by Blade Runner star Sean Young is in fact the male ex-player.
[Puking and massive gay panic begins around 3.05]
When Ace finds out the 'woman' he has kissed still has male genitalia, he voms, burns his clothes, fills his mouth with toothpaste, takes a plunger to his face and cries in the shower, with the song 'The Crying Game' playing in the background (that movie, which came out two years earlier,dealt with a trans subplot much more sensitively). It's just incredibly offensive.
Thank God nothing like any of this would happen now.
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