Guilty pleasures that are full of cheese. We all have them, right? Except for the hipsters, but those don’t count because most of them are lying, anyway. As a confirmed cheese lover, my guilty pleasures are too numerous to list in their entirety, so this week I present you with the cream of the crop.

I developed a love for many of these movies when very young, and the passing of years doesn’t seem to have lessened the fun of watching them. Neither has the fact that I always know what’s coming next and can pretty much act out (or sing) all the dialogue by heart.

Grease – I loved this film and all it represented way before retro and vintage became a thing. Although it’s a product of the late 1970s, I saw it for the first time in the late 1980s when I had just become a teenager myself.

The dialogue was in Italian and the songs in English. John Travolta (as Danny Zucko) and Olivia Newton-John (as Sandy) sounded hilarious in Italian, but I was instantly in love with this golden couple. Well, I was 13 years old, what do you expect?

However, the film introduced me to the character who was to be my heroine throughout most of my teenage years – Rizzo, played by the indomitable Stockard Channing. Short, blazing red hair, a feisty personality and an inclination to never let anyone interfere made her shine way more than the rest.

Let’s face it, Sandy was a bit of a dweeb (back then the word ‘dweeb’ was a thing). As for the others, they didn’t even register on my scale of consciousness. Rizzo rocked, and I dreamed of becoming her when I grew up (minus the pregnancy scares, of course).

The music was also another massive pull. At the time, I adored some good, old-fashioned rock’n’roll. Heck, I probably still do, just try me. A susceptible 13, this was the first time I had ever witnessed anything so, ahem, rocking as part of a movie, if you’ll excuse the bad pun. It was the birth of an era for me, one that would herald a host of musicals (much to my parents’ bored dismay).

The Goonies – if you didn’t watch this on loop when you were a child, then you must have had a very deprived childhood. I remember watching this in the same period of time as I discovered Grease.

The two movies are miles apart in vibe and even in the age group they target, you might say. And you would be right. But none of that mattered to me back then. I was just as keen to keep myself entertained with the goings-on of a group of hormone-infested students as I was with the derring-do of a group of children/adventurers. Come to think of it, this still holds true to date.

Rizzo rocked, and I dreamed of becoming her when I grew up

The Goonies is impossible not to love. The story has everything, a group of friends as protagonists who somehow remind me of the Famous Five (that I adored as a child); a buried treasure; monsters; thrills and spills; and even a minor love interest. It’s a film that fully showcases Steven Spielberg’s genius for a good, rollicking story.

Flight of the Navigator – potentially the most awesome alien-abduction movie ever, at least when viewed from the eyes of a child. Did it have special effects? In a primitive fashion, given that it was released in 1985, sure. Did it have any gore? Zilch. And were there any over-the-top aliens to keep us entertained? Not at all.

In fact, this is what makes the film so fantastic. A 12-year-old Joey Kramer pretty much carried off the entire movie all on his lonesome. The film blew my mind when I first saw it, as it was pretty much my first experience pondering stuff like time dilation (not that I’d have known what to call it, of course). I like to think that it was the springboard that started me off on the long road to sci-fi and, eventually, fantasy.

ramona.depares@timesofmalta.com

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