Generation Xers got screwed out of a lot of things, not the least of which was animation. Boomers and Millennials got Bugs Bunny, Pixar and Disney classics (“Pinocchio,” “Lion King,” etc.). We got Scrappy Doo and “Heavy Metal.” For whatever reason, Ivan Reitman thought 1981 was the right time for an animated anthology featuring the four food groups for 14-year-old Xer boys: weapons of war, rock and roll, purple eye shadow and huge breasts. The animation is typical of the early 1980s – artistic yet awful. The story is also typical – some kind of high-minded pacifism shrouded in blood and boobs.
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Everybody needs to stop making these movies about Gen Xer creative types who can’t get their shit together. Either that, or I just need to stop watching them, because I’m starting to take it personally. I was starting to enjoy “No Way Jose” (2015), about this neurotic hipster rocker whose band is reduced to playing kids’ parties. There were hijinks. I liked them. There was also this undercurrent of “why can’t these Gen Xers just grow up?” I didn’t like that. Then everyone gets pregnant and everything goes to hell. Just like real life. (Maybe I shouldn’t post this one.)
Watching “Hall Pass” (a funny-yet-disposable 2011 R-rated comedy about two suburban dads who get a week “off” from being married), it struck me how many movies target Generation X. For such a small and perennially shit-upon demographic, this age cohort has dominated a particular genre of comedy for going on 30 years. You start with the “Sixteen Candles” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” bunch. Take a few years off, characters get older, and “There’s Something About Mary,” then “Wedding Crashers,” etc. They are basically comedies, but have both a gross-out aspect and a romantic aspect (and have gotten increasingly edgier).
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