By now, you may have seen this video of a pair of kids crying hysterically over the end of The Odd Life of Timothy Green. Assuming the tears were real, and not elicited by a pair of parents desperate for social media fame (what? we’re naturally cynical), it is clear that the film about a magical boy with leaves on his legs will never be forgotten by these two boys. It got us thinking about the movies that did the same for us when we were younger. But what about you, dear reader? Please respond in the comments below.
Frankenweenie
Tim Burton’s 1984 short made me lose my mind with grief and horror. I must have been … 6 or 7 when we watched it? I knew what death was, but at that point, I had never really considered that our dog would die someday (and, real talk, I was 20 when we put her to sleep and it remains one of the saddest days of my life). Anyway, we watched Frankenweenie, and I started losing it, and, as I remember, both my sisters did too. Dogs die! That is the saddest thing ever! And even if you can bring them back to life, they will be sort of grotesque and covered in horrible stitches and they won’t be the same and all your neighbors will hate you! Oh God, just writing this paragraph has made me totally cry.
Also, I called my dad, and he said I cried a bunch at Jim Thorpe All American, when Jim Thorpe gets stripped of all his Olympic medals. Indeed, merely thinking about this still makes me sad. — Margaret Lyons
Rudy
College football was very big in my house, which is probably the only reason that I, an otherwise-sports-ignorant 9-year-old and a devoted Sound of Music fan, agreed to go see Rudy in the first place. I’m told I started crying early, because Rudy’s family was so mean, and then kept on at it through the “dress in my place” scene, at which point I was ready to swear my eternal allegiance to Notre Dame. I did this, actually; I remember calling my dad’s best friend, a ND alum, and telling him through the tears that I was going to go there, too. (Then I found out about the dorm curfews.) My Rudy attachment runs so deep that even the Newsroom stunt a few weeks back got me; I’m not proud of that fact, but it’s the truth. “For Rudy, Coach.” Come on, how can you not cry at that? — Amanda Dobbins
