Six Mediocre Movies I Loved as a Kid

I’m a big movie fan, as evidenced by my list of my fifty favorite movies (which will soon be updated to reflect the new year). Obviously, my taste in movies has changed over time. These are some of my childhood favorites that make me look back and laugh.

Note: To make this list, each movie must NOT be on the Riker Scale list and have been watched by me multiple times. In addition, the movie must have been watched mostly in elementary school or earlier.

 

• Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (75% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes)

 

Jimmy Neutron was an absolute treasure, a movie that I watched, re-watched, and rewatched again. Based off a hit TV show, this kid Jimmy Neutron, who has swirly hair and the coolest man-cave ever, wishes his parents were gone and then they get abducted by aliens. I always loved seeing all of his inventions and tried to replicate them, to no success. This was also a movie that gave me nightmares, but still kept me coming back for more.

 

• Like Mike (57% critic score)

 

Somehow, I never saw The Sandlot until I was in middle school, so this basketball movie was my favorite sports movie. In Like Mike, a kid puts on sneakers that were electrocuted during a storm and becomes a total baller. He joins the fictional Los Angeles Knights and wrecks the NBA, destroying NBA stars like Jason Kidd, Vince Carter, and Dirk Nowitzki along the way. Like Mike also had the greatest song- “Basketball”.

 

• Sky High (73% critic score)

 

In elementary school, the test for the coolest kid wasn’t athletic ability or good looks. It was how many times you’d seen Sky High. This Disney film about high school that came out in the mid-2000s (no, not High School Musical) was about a freshman in high school who didn’t fit in with everybody else. But it wasn’t any normal high school- it was Sky High, a school for superheroes that rested in the sky. Sky High had it all- it had awesome action scenes, a great premise, and gave me nightmares for weeks. What more could a movie have?

 

• Aladdin: King of Thieves (27% critic score)

 

The best movies can sometimes come from the strangest places, and the third movie of the Aladdin series, a movie that was never even in theaters, was truly a gem. In the movie, Aladdin is going to marry Jasmine but the Forty Thieves interfere. He later finds out that the King of Thieves is his dad and has to choose to fight with him or against him. Combining interesting storytelling and memorable music, Aladdin and the King of Thieves was a go-to VCR tape, if such a thing exists.

 

• Star Wars Episodes 1 and 2 (55% and 65%, respectively)

 

Looking back, I now know that the prequel trilogy was totally ridiculed, but back when I was in elementary school, the prequels were the coolest. They were more modern than the original Star Wars movies and super cool characters such as Mace Windu, Darth Maul, and Jango Fett. I remember checking out the visual companion books of those movies from the school library and reading the same prequel pages over and over. Of course, the prequels paled in comparison to Revenge of the Sith, which I hadn’t even watched because of its PG-13 rating.