Is It Time To Grow Up?

A Screenscope Guest Entry by Tunde

The first time I saw Shrek, I was just old enough to know that “do you think he’s compensating for something” was an insult, but not old enough to know what for. Years later, rewatching it in my world of spreadsheets, bills and council tax, it hit differently. What was once a sweet fairy tale about friendship had somehow become a story about a politically moderate member of the working class and a fairy-tale revolutionary helping a member of the bourgeoisie unlearn the propaganda she’s been fed since birth leading to her disillusionment with the very system that upholds her privilege. All, of course, with a splash of fart jokes and an incredible Smash Mouth soundtrack. My point is I’d changed, and the film had changed with me.

Growing up, some films act like time capsules. You open them again and suddenly realise how much of your own life has been recorded between the frames. When I was a kid, Finding Nemo was an adventure about a fish who wouldn’t listen to his dad. As a parent, it’s a documentary about anxiety, overprotection and the desperate attempt to let go when your child is finally ready to swim off without you.

The same goes for The Lion King. As a child, it was all Hakuna Matata and Simba’s roar. As an adult, it’s Mufasa’s voice that echoes louder; that mix of strength and weariness you only recognise once you’ve been the one trying to raise someone while the world throws wildebeests at you. Pixar, of course, makes a habit of this emotional ambush. Up opens up with a love story so perfectly compressed and devastating that even teenage me found it sad, but thirty-something me understands that grief doesn’t just live in the moment of loss. It lingers in the empty routines you keep repeating because you don’t know what else to do.

Some of this is just life experience levelling you up: the cheat codes of empathy, responsibility, and heartbreak. But part of it is time itself. Watching and rewatching Coco or the Black Panther movies hits differently when the family on screen looks like yours, or when an actor you admired like Chadwick Boseman, is gone far too soon. I never used to understand why people cried when celebrities died. But when someone who represented possibility, purpose, and pride passes away, it feels less like losing a performer and more like losing part of your own reflection.

Of course, it’s not just us who change. The world around us does too. Some of the stories that once defined whole generations now make us cringe, not because they’re bad, but because the culture that birthed them no longer exists: Eddie Murphy: Raw remains one of the most iconic stand-up specials ever filmed. It also contains material that would earn a thousand quote tweets and a network apology today. The same goes for Ace Ventura: Pet Detective: a film so gloriously absurd that it feels unfair to judge it by modern standards, but it’s almost impossible not to.

What’s fascinating isn’t that these things have “aged badly” but that they reveal how we’ve matured. Comedy, especially, ages at the same rate as our collective empathy. Eddie Murphy and Jim Carrey are both still hilarious, but the humour has evolved; it’s sharper, more self-aware, less about punching down. They’re proof that you can stay funny without staying frozen in time.

Every era has its blind spots. What was once progressive can become problematic with hindsight, just like what was once edgy can later feel oddly quaint. The phrase “of its time” gets tossed around as a polite way to say, “we didn’t know better.” But we did, at least a little, we just didn’t have the language yet. The art didn’t change; the audience did.

Streaming has made this evolution unavoidable. Whole decades of television are now one algorithmic click away, served to viewers who never lived through the context that made those shows make sense. Friends reenters the cultural chat every few years for its lack of diversity or dated gender jokes. But maybe that’s part of the point: rewatching the past with today’s eyes forces us to confront how our sense of “normal” has shifted.

Some stories age like fine wine; others curdle the second you open them.

The Simpsons has been on air long enough to have parodied its own decline, yet it survives because it’s always been in conversation with its audience. The jokes stretch to fit the times, from mocking the American Dream to side-eyeing the algorithmic age. Its elastic quality means it doesn’t just reflect culture; it absorbs it, mutates with it, occasionally trips over it, and then makes a joke about the fall.

Then there’s American Pie. A film once treated as a rite of passage now feels like a relic sealed in a time capsule labelled “Pre-Internet Gender Politics”. The nostalgia remains, but the laughter doesn’t land quite the same. It’s not that we’ve lost our sense of humour; it’s that we’ve gained perspective. What was once rebellious now feels rehearsed. What was once liberating now feels limiting.

Rewatching old favourites isn’t really about the films. It’s about the person pressing play. Each time we return to a story, we bring a slightly different version of ourselves: a few more bills, a few more bruises, maybe a little less time for the end credits. The dialogue stays the same, but the meaning changes because we’ve changed.
Some stories earn their longevity by growing with us; others serve as checkpoints of who we used to be. And maybe that’s the real measure of storytelling, not that it stands the test of time, but that it stands with us through time. Because when we rewatch something, we’re not asking if it’s still good. We’re asking if we still recognise ourselves in it.