13 Comedies Everyone Loved (That Have Not Aged Well)

Revenge of the Nerds is a classic 80s "slobs vs. snobs" movie that leaned into the lesson that you should always be yourself - even if who you are is a complete dweeb. The movie is already full of oversexed characters who talk incessantly about their hookups - or lack thereof. But that's to be expected: these are nerds in the '80s, after all. It would make perfect sense if, at the end of the film, the nerds have consensual encounters with girls who realized that brains were just as good as brawn, and all that really matters is whether or not you're a good person. Unfortunately, that's not what happens. The "revenge" that the nerds claim begins at a college carnival where the frat houses are trying to win points to see which house will reign supreme. Louis, the leader of the nerds, steals the Darth Vader costume belonging to the leader of the rival frat and entices his rival's girlfriend into a bounce house. They do it, and then Louis reveals that he's not her boyfriend. 

The filmmakers depict this as casual college hijinks. Betty is totally fine with being assaulted by a stranger and used as a pawn in the frats' game. In real life, however, this would hopefully land Louis behind bars for a very long time. 

If you haven't watched the classic John Hughes coming-of-age film in a while then you may only have warm memories of Molly Ringwald navigating the strange world of high school dances, house parties, and that dreamy Jake Ryan. But that's overlooking the blatant stereotypes at play. Gedde Watanabe plays foreign exchange student Long Duk Dong. Dong is repeatedly referred to as a "Chinaman," he can only verbalize things in a Mickey Rooney-esque shout, and at one point he shouts, "BONZAI!"

As if that weren't bad enough, the second half of the movie follows Anthony Michael Hall's character Ted on a quest to sleep with any woman who will have him. He is finally saved when Jake tells Ted that his ex, Caroline, is so drunk that he could "violate her 10 different ways" if he wanted to. Jake hands the keys to his father's car over to Ted, helps load Caroline into the car, and tells him to "have fun."

This 1961 romantic comedy has provided the blueprint for most of the Manic Pixie Dream Girls and the following films that featured them. Audrey Hepburn's naive eccentric socialite Holly Golightly is hardly a three-dimensional character. But time has been kind to the character, likely because of how good Hepburn is in the film. And no matter how daffy Hepburn's portrayal of Golightly is it's never going to seem offensive next to Mickey Rooney's portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi.

Yunioshi is a Japanese photographer who lives in Golightly's apartment building. Rooney speaks in an accent, wears false teeth, and tapes his eyelids. It's hard to believe that people weren't upset with Rooney's portrayal at the time, but Rooney himself claimed that there was no racist intent in the character. Regarding later criticism, he said: 

[It] breaks my heart...Never in all the more than 40 years after we made it — not one complaint. Every place I’ve gone in the world people say, ‘You were so funny.’ Asians and Chinese come up to me and say, ‘Mickey you were out of this world.’

Even at the time of its release, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective was a terribly offensive film. First, there's Snowflake, the pet dolphin kept in a tiny tank that's clearly animal cruelty. Then, a lengthy section of the film features Ventura prancing around a mental institution dressed in a pink tutu and acting out some kind of faux mental illness. He smashes his head into a park bench and crosses his eyes while speaking in a manner even more affected than normal.

Somehow, that's not even the only offensive part of the film. The movie climaxes with Ventura exposing the over-libidinous Lt. Einhorn as trans by stripping her down to her underwear. Everyone begins to vomit in the throes of gay panic.

American Pie focuses on four friends planning to lose their virginities before they graduate high school. Along their journey there are several road bumps, but none so big or heinous as the one made by Jason Biggs's Jim. He meets a beautiful foreign exchange student named Nadia and agrees to tutor her as a way to get into her pants. Jim is also persuaded by his bro Stifler to install a webcam in his room so everyone can watch Nadia change.

Everyone in the school gets the link to Jim's webcam just in time for Jim and Nadia to begin to hook up. Unfortunately for Jim, he can't perform. It's not a heroic moment by any means, but the fact that the protagonist set up a camera to watch a woman change is entirely glossed over in the film.

In the '80s comedy powerhouse Trading Places, Dan Aykroyd plays a wealthy snob who loses all his money to two other wealthy snobs and has to enlist a top-of-his-game Eddie Murphy to help him pull off a scheme in order to get his money back. A large portion of the film is spent with the characters in costume on a New Year's Eve train bound for Philadelphia. Aykroyd's costume is a rastafarian complete with blackface.