what a gift
a new year, a new decade, and the Movies I Loved as a Kid Awards
Exciting news that I’m announcing here first! After a nice run of turning 29 an undisclosed number of times since the start of the pandemic lockdown, I have decided to publicly turn 30! It’s not a decision to take lightly, I know. But the time feels right, and not just because if I stick with 29 any longer I’d have to start pretending to be part of Gen Z. And let’s be real, I can’t present as anything other than millennial—I have developed too much resilience from living through economic downturns and national crises to pretend otherwise.
As I embark on this exciting new decade, I want to take a moment to look back and honor the media that raised me. As a millennial, I grew up turning on the TV every morning before school for the weather report and after school for network sitcom reruns. Choosing a movie to watch at home required getting someone’s parents to drive us to Plaza Video, so a lot of our entertainment came from the cable that our parents were already paying for. Whatever the programmers at Nickelodeon or Disney Channel or Fox Family or vh1 chose is what we watched. Which meant we saw a lot of the same movies, edited for television, over and over again.
I remember my dad saying how weird it was that his friend’s kids and I had the same sort of Valley Girl speech pattern, when I was growing up in the New York suburbs and they were out in rural Maine. But like, we were all hanging out with Cher Horowitz and Zenon and the girls of Troop Beverly Hills, so that actually does make sense. He was all, “You kids are addicted to television, you’re frying your brains.” And I was like, “I’m ten, and you’re the one who bought the TV, scheduled the cable installation, put batteries in the remote, and then gave me untethered access to it, soooooo that’s definitely on you!”
But back to me, and my impeccable taste in media that was honed over zillions of hours in front of the tube in my formative years. It is from those arduous hours of consuming content that I bring you…
The Movies I Loved as a Kid Awards!!!
The categories are comprehensive and the winners are telling. Enjoy!
Best Disney Channel Original Movie That Not Enough People Talk About
BLANK CHECK
Idk what the pitch for this movie was, but I bet it was something like, “what if a regular kid did bank fraud and got to go live Richie Rich’s life for a day?” This movie is so fucking good, the first time I watched it I was like, “okay, this is cinema, shoot this straight into my veins.” And then it wasn’t on again for like….. years! And Google hadn’t been invented yet so I had no way of finding it, and that plagued me for most of elementary and middle school.
The premise is that a kid’s out riding his bike and gets hit by a limo (goals) and the guy in the limo gives him a blank check to pay for a new bike. But the kid has a computer printer and a dream and so he makes the check out for one million dollars, cashes it, then goes on a spending spree. He rents out a mansion with a pool that has a multi-floor water slide from a bedroom into the backyard!! This kid is playing chess and checkers—he’s ordering every pizza topping and using a voice disguiser device to sound like a grownup on calls. It takes his parents a really long time to notice he’s missing (relatable to anyone raised by boomers lol) but I think he only has the butler to talk to and gets lonely? And in the end he probably learns the lesson that money can’t buy everything?
Best Period Piece About a Kid
A LITTLE PRINCESS
Is there any greater moment of joy and wonder than the bedroom makeover reveal in this movie?! The first time you see that plush-beyond-belief silk satin comforter?!! Iykyk. This movie is devastatingggggg for all of act two because our little princess was rich and then had it ripped away from her!! And she has to be a servant girl at boarding school because they thought her dad died and I guess in this fictional world all his money would… disappear with him?? Or orphans aren’t allowed to read?? Idk, but she had to live in the attic with the other servant girl, and ultimately that’s for the best because she made a ride or die friend and then BOOM magic she gets rich again 🥰. And they find her dad, and he’s maybe blind? But then maybe gets his sight back? Idk, what’s most important is that she returns to her life of beautiful hair ribbons, etc., but she has a new bestie now, too.
Best Golden Age Movie About a Kid
HEIDI
Ok WOW sensing a theme here, another tale of poor kid becomes rich/gets to go live in a mansion. This movie has everything: wooden clogs, Shirley Temple, a really good snow globe, mountains, a central grandpa-granddaughter relationship, a makeover, snow. It’s been like 20 years since I saw this and I am not interested in whether it holds up, because it holds in my heart!
Best Golden Age Movie About Grownups
FUNNYFACE
A sad little shopgirl is plucked from a bookshop job to become an international model and get dressed by couturiers and hookup with Parisian poets and an old but well-respected photographer—FUCK I REALLY NEED TO UNPACK THIS!!
Best Contemporary Comedy
MISS CONGENIALITY
I’ll see myself out.
Best Olsen Twins Movie With Kirsty Alley
IT TAKES TWO
Fuck me. In this one, two generations of baddies suddenly find their rich soulmates, and it’s actually so beautiful. And has there ever been a better description of that instant romantic chemistry you feel with someone who’s just right, than calling it that “can't-eat, can't-sleep, reach-for-the-stars, over-the-fence, World Series kind of stuff”?!! Anytime I see a helicopter shot of traffic in midtown Manhattan, all I can think is, “Clarisse Kensington finally lands her man.”
And that concludes the 2025 Movies I Loved As A Kid Awards and the answer to the question “what brings you in?” at my first appointment with my next new therapist :)
Downey, over and out!!