This movie speaks to me

One of my absolute favorite movies from childhood is Heavyweights.  Do you know this movie?  It's amazing.  It's about a boy that hates his life, goes to fat camp, makes the greatest friends in the world, and becomes the happiest boy on the planet.  The movie also stars The Blob, depicted below.

Does this not look like the most fun of all time/contraption almost 84% likely to break your neck?

I was super envious of The Blob and spent many a childhood fantasy imagining myself flying a billion feet into the air and being catapulted into the water after strategically placing myself on the end. 

The movie also has Ben Stiller as Tony Perkis, the mean new camp owner.  I literally hated this man as a child.  Hated him.

The face of evil

I recently sat down to re-watch Heavyweights and I was so so so excited.  I couldn't wait to relive the joy and inspiration that I felt in my youth.  I knew it was going to be awesome.

And you guys, it was awesome.  Everything was still there!  The Blob!  Evil Tony!  The boys hiding candy in their bunks!  The hilarious quotes!  "I'm feeling skinny Tony!"  Lars!  It was all there.

But there was also my new adult awareness and it put a bit of a damper on the movie.  The nurse with the weirdo cropped tops was definitely not as pretty as I remembered.  And her falling for the chubby camp counselor with the strange part in his hair no longer seemed probable.  But the most disturbing part was the revolt.

Ok, this next description contains spoilers to the movie so stop reading here if you are planning on watching and want everything to be super surprising.  The whole plot of the movie is that this adorable and heartwarming camp for overweight children where they go to feel accepted gets taken over by a tyrannical fitness guru who removes all fun from the camp in a misguided effort to get the kids in shape.  The kids then stage a revolt, capture Tony, win the Apache Relay (the tournament with the neighboring camp for athletic kids), and restore the camp to it's former glory.  

Sounds totally awesome, right?  It is.  This is why I found the movie so inspiring as a kid.  The boys totally took down crazy evil Tony!  But it's the method and results of this take down that I found especially disturbing as an adult.

The boys capture Tony and lock him in an electrified cage.  An electric cage!  That's so awful!  And then they kind of torture him until he loses his mind and eventually walks barefoot on broken glass.  When I was a kid I felt like he completely deserved this fate, but watching as an adult all I could think was, "Maybe we've taken this a little bit too far here..."  Perhaps I'm too sensitive, but I just think that imprisoning people in electrified cages is a tad extreme. 

But the strangest part of all of this is that I still totally love the movie!  I would recommend it to anyone and assume that they would love it just as much as I do.  I find this a bit concerning, that the torture and madness scene didn't completely turn me off even after knowing full well how sick it is.  But I'm just going to attribute that to the amazing power of childhood nostalgia.