I can clearly remember my grandparents raving about Grumpy Old Men in 1993. The movie is hilarious—Burgess Meredith dropping innuendos will never not be funny—but it’s strange that of all things, my grandparents laughing about their viewing became one of my core memories.
They had a richer enjoyment of the film because it was lived experience, told by people of a similar vintage. They appreciated it in a way I’ve still never been able to. I liked it as an anthropological device—ahh, so this is what being old is like. Jokes about your equipment not working and living in fear of indigestion.
Hollywood provides movies for all of life’s seasons. It just happens with less frequency as you get older. The hero’s journey is more exciting when it involves fighting galactic empires than when it means grappling with the slow decay of time.
Well into my 40s, I’m older than the protagonists in many movies. It’s a development I’ve been tracking with mild concern.1 I can think of plenty of stories where the hero is quite a bit older than me.2 And there’s a new action sub-genre that suggests aging is not real, actually. But we all know the truth, and I’m just not ready to transition to the Philomena demographic.
I was in my 20s the first time I saw Napoleon Dynamite. I could still readily identify with a gawky teenager in oversized glasses who’s oblivious to his tragic sense of fashion. I felt a tinge of phantom recognition when I recently revisited the film, but mostly I thought about how the troubles of high school and awkward, neophyte love were unfamiliar things. I could still access those emotions through Napoleon as my proxy, they just felt secondhand. That part of me isn’t completely gone—The Goonies still rekindles old feelings—but apart from nostalgia, it seems inaccessible. Like looking at a photograph of yourself and having no memory of when it was taken.
