It had been 33 years since I last watched My Girl…until last night. Whew boy!
My 11 year old daughter and I watched it together and bawled our eyes out during the Thomas J. funeral scene. “He can’t see without his glasses!” 😭😭😭
That got me wondering: is that the saddest single scene from any movie from our Xennial childhood / tween years?There are some biggies:
- Thomas J funeral (My Girl)
- Charlotte death (Charlotte’s Web)
- Artax death (Never Ending Story)
- Forrest reading letter to Jenny at her grave (Forrest Gump)
What else, my fellow 40-somethings?
The whole “Somewhere Out There” part of An American Tail
Oof yeah! Poor Fievel. 😢 America turned out to be a lot tougher than he thought. The roads were, in fact, NOT paved with cheese.
My otherwise lovely parents had a habit of forgetting me, losing me, and leaving me places (usually due to a miscommunication about who had me/was supposed to pick me up) that lasted until I was in middle school and could advocate for myself and to this day I cannot handle anything with the child-separated-from-parents plot line. Even Home Alone bothers me.
And there were, in fact, cats in America.
Anyone know if An American Tail is streaming anywhere?
That's my #1. Then "Part of Your World", and "A Whole New World" haha.
Highly honorable mention: When You Believe with Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. Like how is that not so fuckin' cool.
I love that episode of Community.
Maybe sad isn't the right word but I was pretty distressed when I saw the poor shoe get killed in "the dip" when I saw Who Framed Roger Rabbit in the theater
Yeah, traumatizing!!
Scenes from a couple of other movies that weren't sad but definitely distressing were:
A few scenes from Robocop: Murphy getting blown away, the executive who dropped the gun but Ed209 didn't register it and blew him away, and the toxic waste dude.
The escalator scene from Total Recall where Arnold uses the civilian as a human shield getting pelted with bullets.
https://preview.redd.it/pjei0gjd407g1.jpeg?width=350&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f27883ac9c4c76c8b79c36c66cdaddd94e852505
Yep! That deserves a spot on the Mount Rushmore of Sad Childhood Movie Moments.
Easily the 2nd saddest thing that ever happened to dinosaurs
Oh man this image made my stomach lurch
Probably not as wide of an audience but when Matthew Cuthbert dies in the Anne of Green Gables miniseries
https://preview.redd.it/4fojcvxjd07g1.png?width=1500&format=png&auto=webp&s=642135c349dfcc4907b8ab1cd4aadbb988841b88
This scene… I usually start uncontrollably crying about 10 minutes leading up to it…
This is my top 3 cry. Just the other day we were rewatching the series. And stopped cuz we weren't sure we wanted a 'watch Matthew die' day.
Even reading it in the book sets off the waterworks.
All dogs go to heaven.
My dad took me to see it because neither of us really invested in finding out more than “animated movie + dog.” More so shame on him because I was 5 but man…. We both had a 1,000 yard stare coming out of that one. The most silent McDonald’s dinner capped off with “don’t tell your mother.”
It’s so horrible knowing what happened to the little girl. That makes it the worst of these movies for me.
Oh absolutely! That poor little doll baby.
YOU'RE COMING BACK RIGHT, CHARLIE?!
E.T.
The final words are “Be good”, “Thank you”, and “I’ll be right here”.
The end of Homeward Bound.
But yeah, Thomas Jay… I am looking forward to showing it to my daughter. Pass on the trauma.
I skipped past the part where Shadow says goodbye many times in my youth. I hate seeing unhappy animals.
The ending was posted somewhere here around Thanksgiving and there I was crying all over again. I refuse to watch the entire movie again!
A Muppet Christmas Carol.
I cry every time Kermit comes back from picking a grave site for Tiny Tim, on the hilltop where he could see the ducks and talks about life being a series of meetings and partings and that he expects they will all remember this first parting in their family for a long time.
I watch it with my kid every year, and it has me every single time.
Add Fried Green Tomatoes and Steel Magnolias to your list.
ETA: and Beaches
Steel Magnolia's is truly amazing. Fantastic cast and you'll laugh just as hard as you'll cry.
Secrets in the sauce
‘Baby Mine’ scene from Dumbo 😭
I am tearing up just at your mention of it. That song and movie wreck me.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. When Splinter all but says goodbye to his sons in the fire.
Not sure what his name is in English but the mother dying in the Land Before Time 😭
And Mufasa of course.
Little Foot
The Fox and The Hound. Tod being left in the forest. Jesus Christ. I sobbed my eyes out as a child and again as an adult.
I've watched the movie once. Literally cried from the second the mom fox put Todd by the fence post until the end of the movie. I can't bring myself to watch it again.
I don't know what's happening but I feel like I've suddenly seen so so so many posts about My Girl lately. I seriously think about this movie anytime a bee gets near me haha.
The Ninja Turtles movie is the most serious un-serious at the same time movie ever I have no idea how that was pulled off. Raphael in the bathtub was sad and weird at the same time.
Technically we were all probably over 18 at the time, but The Notebook seriously made me cry tears down my face. I caught my Uncle watching it crying with tears. I caught my roommate watching it with tears. People I had never seen cry for anything ever before. I don't think there is any movie like that one that I can think of that literally everyone I can think of cried full on tears than that one that I have no idea how it does to people what it does.
Good call on The Notebook.
Yeah, regarding the My Girl recency, my daughter mentioned that a lot of kids at her school have been talking about it. So maybe it’s just “that time” in our Xennial lives: our kids are old enough to see it, they’re watching and talking about it, so we watch it again…and boom! Memories and feels.
That's so cool! I'm missing out on kids, but my friends who have them, despite how stressed they are at times, I know are having such a good time being parents.
It's a TV show, but the end of Dinosaurs.
I don’t believe I’ve ever seen the final episode
All Dogs Go to Heaven when the little girl says goodbye to Charlie.
Fucking The Fox and the Hound makes me upset just thinking about it.
And Dumbo. Fuck that whole movie and whoever created it. I never cried so hard at how cruel cartoons were being to that cute little baby elephant ripped away from his Momma.
And I am sure this has been mentioned, but fucking Lion King. “Dad? dad! Get up dad! Dad, get up!”
Children’s movies don’t need to be so emotionally harrowing. Life is hard enough.
Oh god!! Yes to every one of those 😢😭
Sad? The bees did us a favor taking out that psycho from The Good Son.
They didn't finish him off! Poor Frodo had to do it!
Bambie.....
'Little Women' 1994 (Winona Ryder, Kirsten Dunst, Christian Bale, Clair Danes, Susan Sarandon...Come on!), 'Titanic' 1997 (1st she hogs the floating wood and then later she threw it in the damn ocean!), 'Saving Private Ryan' 1998 (He died, wtf! I cried like a baby), 'Free Willy' 1993 (The begining was the saddest), 'The Lion King' 1994 (Every time the dad dies...its a cryfest).
Radio Flyer and The Cure. Both sad af and ironically Joseph Mazzello was in both.
Fried Green Tomatoes, Steel Magnolias and Stepmom
Where the red fern grows
Old yeller
The Cowboys
Maybe those aren’t from our youth…more childhood.
Youth era saddest moment for me…
8 Seconds
The scene when Kelly and Tuff are in the barn and Tuff admits he has a real shot at the title….
Then the freaking tears and goose bumps when he wins the world and rides an additional 8 seconds and Kelly says “He’s riding for Lane now”….damn made me choke up just writing this out.
We watched Where the Red Feen Grows in elementary school. Class full of kids bawling or pretending not to cry.
It's still little foot for me.
All dog go to heaven, I’m still recovering.
Littlefoot's mom's death.
Turner and Hooch
That physically hurt
My inability to watch any movie with an animal as a central character was spurred by TLBT 😑
So you decided to pass on the trauma to the next generation? How about literally watching the light going out of Optimus Prime’s eyes?
Dead Poets, Swing Kids
The Man in the Moon with Reese Witherspoon 😭
That scene traumatized me
The book and movie "Bridge to Terebithia". Gets me every time.
Anyone else have to watch Stone Fox at school? I am tearing up right now just thinking about it.
The ant death in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.
Mufasa's death in Lion King, especially when Simba tries to wake him up. I saw that in a packed theater and it went totally silent during this scene.
A Walk to Remember with Mandy Moore 😭
This is the movie that got me the hardest when I was in my cynical teenage years. I hated it but every time it came on tv it had a chokehold on me, and I’d watch it from wherever I caught it to the end, and I’d be ugly crying about how unfair it was every time.
And the soundtrack!
Alf Christmas Episode where the girl dies. Hypochondriac after this for the rest of my life
Fried Green Tomatoes
i am still upset about My Girl (the movie) vs My Girl (the ads for the movie)
I watched it with my kid a few years ago and she was MAD. These young kids don't have the appetite for drama that we had.
Deep cut but maybe y’all have seen this? I've always been the only one but it really traumatized me as a kid.
It's called. "Bear." Zero dialog and it was real live bears. The mom died and then the baby had to rough it on its own. Later baby bear trips mushrooms.
This movie was so incredibly sad to me as a kid, yet captivating like I was peeking in on the life of a real orphan bear.
I only saw it once but it's burned into my memory.
Edit to add: it's apparently called The Bear (1988).
I have never been stung by a bee and to this day, I’m terrified of them because of this movie 😂
Court dying in The Man in The Moon
I never see this one brought up, Gorillas In The Mist. I remember standing in front of the mirror inconsolably sobbing for an hour.
Green Mile. All of it. Soul crushing. I honestly can't get through it. It slaughters me.