79 - Ice Cream Man (1995)
The Ice Cream Man is an example of my nostalgia getting in the way of this podcast. I enjoy this movie despite all of my co-hosts absolutely HATING it. I know I’m probably wrong; but I don’t care, The Ice Cream Man is still good to me dammit!
As a teenager growing up in the late 1990’s you didn’t have as many sources for finding which bad movies to watch. Sure you had a few websites here and there but seeking out the diamonds in the dumpster was up to you. Ice Cream Man was a movie passed around by friends of mine at the time and we all got a kick out of just how bad this movie was. I loved it so much I even ordered myself a VHS copy from my local Suncoast video.
When I started this podcast almost two years ago I had a few movies in mind that would definitely be making an appearance, The Ice Cream Man was one of them. I remembered it fondly and assumed that my co-hosts would get a kick out of it too; especially because none of them had seen it.
I started my bin watch and began my notes. The same lines of unintentionally funny dialogue were just as funny as they had always been, the same stock music was just as bad as I remembered it, and the pillow-under-the-shirt fat kid was still baffling. I finished my watch and wrapped up my notes excited for the show, what ended up happening broke my heart.
Everyone hated it. I didn’t get a single recommend for a movie I had spent so many years of my life telling people about. What I expected to be an all-around enjoyable show ended up being a lot of groans and hate comments about a movie I still love today.
As we continue to face the realities of our nostalgia-fed culture and grapple with the reality that our favorite things from yesteryear were actually just horrible, it becomes obvious that personal taste is something we simply can’t share. We will all have those movies we love in the face of constant criticism, but instead of being ashamed of them we should just remember: we like them and everyone else is just wrong.
