No it wasn't that,...it just seemed awful in general.
I thought this was a really good film years ago, but if it was released today as a brand new film I just don't think it would be as appealing.
I can't believe I actually liked this film as much as I did.
It's like the humour is so contrived and poor. Everything about it seems so clunky and formulaic and contrived.
Mind you the 80's defined the film-making by numbers procedure more than any other, so there's probably a lot of 80's films that probably don't age that well either.
Obviously the gremlins themselves are just like hand puppets and they could do a more realistic job on them nowadays with new technologies, but at the time they didn't seem as low tech.
The film just didn't have much of interest for me anymore. It was as simple as going from A, to B, to C. Even if you hadn't seen it before you would pretty much know which direction things were going to go in. The humour was that nauseating style that Joe Dante, Stephen Speilberg and John Hughes always used.
Maybe it's just that film making has advanced so much since then, so certain things stand out more unfavourably as they did before.
Don't know what the appeal of these films was for me back then, because just because it was the 80's is no excuse.
Films from the 70's back to the 30's can still look fresh and interesting even now.
Maybe I was just brainwashed by film hype in the 80's or something.
The formulaic approach sticks out like a sore thumb now with a lot of 80's films.
I think it might be because when you can see a film deliberately using unsubtle methoRAB of trying to manipulate your emotions, it doesn't work. But when it isn't so obvious it works quite effectively on making you laugh or cry.