As children, we were handed all of our romantic relationship expectations from various, seemingly innocent movies. With Valentine's Day coming up, it's time to compare what we know now to what we learned then. This in-depth analysis will take you on a roller coaster of truth. Be warned: It turns out that the couples we learned from were completely and utterly dysfunctional. Here we present six influentially bizarre movie relationships from our childhoods.
1. ""The Sound of Music""
How did this never occur to us? Maria (Julie Andrews) is a nun. Generally nuns abstain from all things romantic, especially widowed men whom the German government is trying to persuade to join the Nazi party. And when this man happens to be your employer, this would seem like it would be an even bigger no-no. Not even the man's seven children protest this relationship, let alone function as deterrents from the conception of this match made in heaven.
Here we were, sitting on our grandparents' basement floor, our chins in our palms, thinking all they were doing was singing ""Eidelweiss"" and eating Wiener schnitzel. Little did we know, God was probably heartbroken over the fact that Maria had broken her vow of chastity, thinking, ""How do you solve a problem like Maria?"" Seven Hail Marys and an Our Father? Or perhaps just saving a family from the Nazi regime. All honorable attempts, but we think we know what Maria's ‘favorite things' really are. And it's probably not brown paper packages tied up with strings.
2. ""Big""
To the untrained eye—say, a nine year old's—it would seem nothing about the relationship between Josh (Tom Hanks) and Susan (Elizabeth Perkins) is all that wrong. They are two adults in love, right? Nope. Let us not forget that he's actually a child in a man's body. While we were distracted by the thought of having trampolines in our bedrooms, a 13-year-old and a 30-year-old were getting it on. It's a good thing Child Protective Services didn't know about this. As kids, we may have had crushes on older celebrities like Freddy Prinze Jr. and Britney Spears, but this was just puppy love. Josh and Susan, however, were a few bases—if not ballparks—ahead of that. It's a matter of Little League versus the Major Leagues. What were our parents trying to teach us when they popped this VHS into the VCR? Was it a pre-emptive education for MySpace? A 101-type introduction in May-December romances? Or were they just as ignorant as we were? Either way, it's best we acknowledge this weirdness now. That way once we reach full-fledged adulthood, we'll know something's up when the guy we're dating is n't referring to bunk beds when he says ""I get to be on top.""
3. ""Beauty and the Beast""
""Look there she goes, that girl is so peculiar."" Not because of her introverted personality, eccentric family or love of great literature (for this we greatly admire her), but because she is, in fact, attracted to an animal. We may have looked past this as children, following the age-old, ""never judge a book by its cover"" lesson, but when bestiality is this book's cover, perhaps it should be judged. People go to prison for things like this.
Our lack of concern for logistics at that age was probably a good thing too. What was she so attracted to? She referred to there being ""something there that wasn't there before""; did new fangs or a layer of fur magically appear? We didn't care. The moment when Belle, in her beautiful yellow dress, approaches the Beast in his dapper blue suit, our breath was taken away. Love knows no boundaries. But should it?
4. ""Flubber""
Professor Philip Brainard (Robin Williams) is a madly zany scientist surrounded by advanced technology, most of which he invented himself. This turns out to be a little problematic when his computer/supposed personal planner, Weebo, falls in love with him. Our young minds looked past the unconventional relationship and Brainard's narcissism for programming a computer to feel this way. No matter what, this gives a whole new connotation to the era of technology. He even has a real-life, hot girlfriend (Marcia Gay Harden), but chooses to ditch his wedding. Instead he creates friends out of little green balls of slime (who sometimes dance with him) and encourages his computer's ardor for him. Yet in the end, he still gets the actual human girl and the computer dies for him by way of getting hit with a baseball bat. Apparently, we learned that unreasonable sacrifices and inappropriate relationships with brainless objects are perfectly acceptable. Perhaps that explains best why we're all so attached to our cell phones. We're all under the influence of flubber!
5. ""Casper""
As children, we didn't have the capacity to wrap our minds around death. Our knowledge of it didn't extend beyond crying when Mufasa was trampled by hyenas or shivering in fear because of the Goosebumps series. We were able to grasp, however, the basic idea that when you die, that's it, unless you come back as a zombie: the scary, flesh-eating type, not a ""friendly ghost."" These ethereal beings were meant to haunt us. And yet, we didn't hesitate for a second when Kat Harvey (Christina Ricci) locked lips with Casper, who by the end of the kiss had turned back into his floating, translucent self. Casper's lack of a beating heart didn't stop ours from beating with innocent glee. He was madly in love with her, which temporarily trumped the line between life and death.
6. ""The Little Mermaid""
Maybe if Flounder hadn't been so damn adorable or of Ursula hadn't been so damn ugly, we would have noticed that there were a couple things were flagrantly wrong in Ariel and Eric's relationship. First off, Ariel is pretty much a fish. She has scales covering the bottom half of her body and her best friend is a crustacean. Clearly, she is not a ""part of our world."" Nonetheless, when she fell in love with a mammal of a man, we didn't question it. We just knew the boy was dreamy. We also didn't notice that Ariel's willingness to give up her voice in exchange for smooth, skinny, animated legs was absolutely ridiculous. This told girls everywhere that you don't need a personality so long as you have sexy legs. But still, we longed for Eric to ""kiss the girl.""
