80s Movies: A Guide to What's Wrong with Your Parents

The collaboration of National Lampoon and John Landis was hilarious and successful, so successful it inspired knockoffs for years to come. Film authorities Tara McNamara, Gen X, and Riley Roberts, Gen Z, look at how 1978's fresh, original, hysterical film about screw ups gave us the '80s and influenced generations in the worst of ways.

The Terminator (1984) defined gender expectations for '80s teens: men are emotionless, gun-toting, muscular machines; a woman's power was in her womb. Mother-daughter hosts Tara McNamara, Gen X, and Riley Roberts, Gen Z, discuss what makes James Cameron's first film so fresh, invigorating, and beloved while also looking at the impact it made on those who grew up in the era.

Ghostbusters is a horror-comedy that shook 1984 - a massive hit with a even bigger hit song. Families flocked to the theater to watch three paranormal scientists and Winston exorcise Manhattan, not thinking of the unintentional messages in the film. Film journalist Tara McNamara, Gen X, and teen movie critic Riley Roberts, Gen Z, look at the Bill Murray-Dan Aykroyd-Harold Ramis classic through the modern lens to see how the film affected '80s kids and how the film holds up with kids today.

Saying The Shining was about domestic abuse seems too obvious: what else could it be when a husband is chasing his wife and son with an axe? But, making a film created horror out of two things where you should feel safe: home and your dad (or husband). Director Stanly Kubrick actually created a metaphor for the experience of the "battered wife," a term that was just emerging in the late '70s. Gen X'er Tara McNamara gives insight into what was going on with '80s families, while 18-year-old Riley Roberts tells parents the dark truth they must know about Gen Z and suicide.

A Nightmare on Elm Street changed up the teen slasher film by offering something new: a monster could come for you in your sleep. Mother-daughter movie critics Tara McNamara, Gen X, and 18-year-old Riley Roberts, Gen Z, look at how the film holds up, why it's so scary, and what it tells you about your parents.

When Joel Schumacher took over THE LOST BOYS (1987) from Richard Donner, he changed nearly everything in the script, creating a metaphorical fairy tale encapsulating several issues facing teens and families in the mid-80s. Can you name them all and do you agree that's what Schumacher was trying to say? Tara McNamara, Gen X, and Riley Roberts, Gen Y,  apply a modern lens to the horror comedy that gave us the Two Coreys and reveal insights you never saw coming.

BEETLEJUICE (1988) launched the career of Winona Ryder, secured the future of Tim Burton, and allowed Michael Keaton to create one of the cinema's most original creatures. Mother-daughter movie critics Tara McNamara, Gen X, and Riley Roberts, Gen Z, look at how the comedy holds up today and it's cringey '80s moments - including how suicide is a punchline over and over again.

Movie critics and analysts Tara McNamara, Gen X, and daughter Riley Roberts, Gen Z, look back at HEATHERS with a modern lens at the very real elements of high school life it was satirizing and compare it to the challenges of today. They examine if the Winona Ryder-Christian Slater classic may have been the first domino in our now all-too common world of high school shootings and bomb threats.

Cameron Crowe's SAY ANYTHING (1989) is one of the great movies of the '80s and the greatest romance films of all time. Hosts Tara McNamara, Gen X, and Riley Roberts, Gen Z, look at the John Cusack classic and explore how it presents a snapshot of the late '80s, how it holds up today, and the message that '80s teens understood, loud and clear.

It's rare for a Hollywood movie to have a female director, especially in the 1980s. In her first feature film, Lisa Gottlieb, makes a film that could be abut the sexism and harassment women faced in pursuing their professions, but instead, makes it a learning experience for the gorgeous, popular girl to know what it's like to walk in the shoes of a teen boy. Hosts Tara McNamara, Gen X, and Riley Roberts, Gen Z, look at the likeable film through today's lens while sharing perspective on high school life today.