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You don’t know what you had until its gone
It’s the early noughties. Very early because I recognised the perfect storm on the shelves as a new release DVD. Yes we had started to move to disk and my PS2 could manage it. Perfect storm was said to have so much detail. A giant leap from VHS. Technically I guess it was. Today we would call it Standard Definition. We had moved from RF cables to Scart Leads. Barry had started to move on. I recall a centre shelving area where the new DVD’s were.
Barry’s had faced an uphill battle in our household and I’m sure among many others. He had put his prices up a bit and we all had so many channels now. Sky digital had launched in 1998. Most of us now had the upgrade. With it Sky Box Office could now offer PPV movies on par with the DVD and video releases and the wait for TV was shorter than it had ever been (at that point).
I walked up to the shelves as usual but there’s no on loan stickers. Not on the games either.
Then in a bittersweet moment came the news.
“We’re closing down, everyone has Sky. The tapes are all a pound each if you want any”
Within the week the shop was gone. I had aspirations of having a VHS wall at Uni because I thought that would be cool..
Spoiler alert it ..wasn’t. We had all moved to disk so fast.
Another of those occasions where my feelings at the time don’t match my feelings now.
I now know I was part of the problem. Despite having no purchasing power as such at the time I had no complaints when we moved onto Sky. Quite the opposite. My friends all had Sky.
An early example of us moving away from the physical experience of going to a shop and choosing a film. Choosing convenient over experience.
Now as someone who has been self employed and in an industry where AI replacement and modernisation is on the cards I appreciate how hard it must have been to keep this small rental shop going well into the PPV era.
I rented a new release last night from sky. The price £9.99, The video shops £4 adjusted for inflation comes to about the same. Convenience won but the price never really changed
An era ended and no one even blinked.
The shop is still unused on the high street. Perhaps itching for its own legacy sequel.
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Casper (1995) — Heavy Themes
Revisiting these 90s films, there are some that are considered classics but didn’t do much for me at the time. Then there are films like Casper. When it came out, I was already at the upper end of its target age range — especially by the time it reached the video store.
Full disclosure: I’m putting this one down as a VHS rental, but we were entering the era of Sky TV, and for the life of me I can’t remember whether this came from Barry’s shelves or from Sky. Possibly both. I digress partly because memories aren’t always clear. The Eleventh Doctor once said, “Everything has to end sometime, otherwise nothing would ever get started.” Another Barry’s memory springs to mind — but that can wait until next time.
At the time, I’d never have admitted I had a soft spot for this film. It appeared in these blogs during the original Spaceman run, and I made the dig about Casper dressing Kat as his mother. We — well, judging by the reader numbers, I — had a lot of fun taking the plot out of context.
Lonely teenager Kat (Christina Ricci) and grieving dad Dr. James Harvey (Bill Pullman) move into a haunted house to study/exorcise the ghosts living there.
What really stood out to me was how Ricci plays Kat. This isn’t like her more famous 90s role as Wednesday. It’s not even comparable to other heroes of those 80s/90s family films like Lydia in Beetlejuice. Those characters are outcasts largely by choice. Kat wants to be normal. She has a tough exterior, but she’s also grieving her mother. The character carries this unmistakable sadness.
In predictable 90s‑kids‑film fashion, Kat befriends Casper the Friendly Ghost, and in the finale both she and Dr. Harvey find closure. Dr. Harvey decides to turn his attention to his living daughter rather than living in grief for his wife — with his wife’s blessing. That moment!
What we really have here is a kids’ film that manages to deal with some heavy themes while still being a lot of fun. It features the first CGI main character, yet somehow still has one foot in the kids’ movies that came before it — particularly the 80s and early‑90s Ghostbusters and Addams Family. There’s even a Ghostbusters callback that I really enjoyed. Cameos weren’t common then. Or I hadn’t noticed.
Time to take the rental back, and I’ll share my last Barry’s memory next time. Of course, it’s not the only time we’ll go there. Time is not linear, after all. As I take the tape back, I glance behind me at the row of VHS behind the family films — where a full shelf is dedicated to a very scary‑looking monster wearing a hat and knives for fingers.
Barry can’t rent me those. But our friends down the road have Sky Movies.
Until next time.
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Retro Reaction: Dumb and Dumber (1994)
There was another comedy force of the nineties. Decades before being Dr Robotnik (you knew I’d get a Sonic reference in there), Jim Carrey was undoubtedly on a roll. He was the Pet Detective, The Mask, and The Cable Guy, to name a few. It seemed like there wasn’t a month that went by without a Jim Carrey comedy on the shelves at Barry’s.
My brother loved these — owning a good few on video, which meant repeat viewings.
Confession time: I often found these movies a bit too much. I know, sourpuss, right? It’s not like I don’t like slapstick comedy. Rowan Atkinson’s Mr Bean and Rik Mayall (Drop Dead Fred, The Young Ones) were already firm favourites. But until Dumb and Dumber, the rubber‑faced Carrey didn’t 100% connect for me. My favorite Carrey movie is Man on the Moon, and I’m sure we’ll visit that one another time here at Reaction.
Back to Dumb and Dumber. My brother will still quote this one. I have complex feelings about it — not because of the quality of the film. This is a good one that balances slapstick with a good heart. It’s a road‑trip comedy that sees Harry (Jim Carrey) and Lloyd (Jeff Daniels) travel across the country to return a briefcase to Mary (Lauren Holly). The suitcase is full of random money, Harry and Lloyd are in danger all the way through but don’t really realise it. Later, they both try to impress Mary, which leads to its own set of routines.
The reason I have complex feelings is simple: I’ve seen it too many times. After the video rental, this one came onto Sky Movies. We recorded it onto VHS and, on “movie nights” when my brother was choosing, it was often a Jim Carrey movie (or later Something About Mary). More often than not, it was this one.
Which brings me to my favourite memory of this movie.
I took the VHS to my grandad’s — I often did for the bigger ones. My Great Aunt turned up halfway through, just in time to see the part where Harry puts laxative in Lloyd’s drink. If you’ve seen it, you know.
I had, to that point, never seen my Aunt cry with laughter. She couldn’t get her breath, and within seconds the whole room was laughing — partly at the film, but also at her reaction to it. This moment alone puts Dumb and Dumber up there.
Next time: it’s 1995, and we’re looking at Casper the Friendly Ghost.
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Mrs Doubtfire: The Rental Rush
It’s hard to understate how big this film was back in the mid‑90s. Released in 1993, but again remember that longer wait period we had back then — there really was a wait if you didn’t get around to seeing it in the cinema.
Why I remember the hype so well is because it was the only time I ever saw a whole shelf at Barry’s filled with copies of the same movie. Even with those extra copies, for an entire week every single one had the red on loan sticker.
When we looked at Hook, I mentioned how much of a force Robin Williams was during this era. This is the last time he appears in this 90s film set — I’m sure not the last time we’ll return to his work in Reaction. But let’s deal with the elephant in the room. Even now, I still find it hard to understand how a guy who made me laugh so much — the only one to cause Barry’s to sell out for a week straight — could have been so unhappy privately. Thank you for the laughs
My brother and I still occasionally quote Mrs Doubtfire today, 30 years later.
The premise: fun‑loving father Daniel (Williams) is going through a messy divorce with his wife Miranda (Sally Field). To gain access to his children, he disguises himself as nanny Mrs Doubtfire.
Yes, elements of the film are now seen as dated. Daniel does, well, near‑on stalk Miranda. But rewatching it, it’s still funny and not malicious in the way some comedies can be. The humour comes from seeing Daniel try to take on the lone‑parent role while simultaneously sabotaging Miranda’s next relationship.
Miranda doesn’t really come off as “the baddie” in this one, but you’re still rooting for Daniel throughout the movie.
One thing that really stands out is that, unlike most films like this — particularly of the time — Miranda and Daniel don’t reunite at the end. Here in the UK, around 42% of people are divorced. Having a family film deal with that back in 1993 was very forward‑thinking.
Next time we’re sticking with comedy, with Dumb and Dumber
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Jurassic Park I appreciate you now
Its the mid‑1990s. Another video rental from Barry. Jurassic Park was a 1993 movie, but there was that half‑year wait for rental. Then a few weeks before it hit the shelves of the local video shops—basically anyone who wasn’t called Blockbuster.
This film came with hype. It was “the adventure 65 million years in the making.” I remember reading that this film would make you believe that living dinosaurs were real.
This is a movie I’m split on. I know the consensus is that it’s a classic. But I think I saw this film at the wrong time. Perhaps my attention span wasn’t there yet. The first dinosaur doesn’t appear until about 20 minutes into the film.
As an adult I know that this is because the first half of the film sets up the action. At its core it’s a character‑driven film. Today I appreciate this. The film’s narrative on the dangers of messing around with nature couldn’t be more relevant. And the effects still hold up. In so many ways this was ahead of its time.
In the 1990s… it just took too long to get going. It was too “talkie”.
Did this stop us collecting the toys? Nope. It didn’t stop us buying the video game or watching the sequels that followed either. But at the time I found it slow.
A few years later the film came to BBC. It was a big premiere. I remember my grandad telling me they had “watched the dinosaurs last night and wasn’t it slow. It never seemed to get going.”
First impressions die hard. This was a film that I was over‑hyped for but too young to appreciate.
Next time we’re still in 1993. It’s a big family film and Robin Williams is back on our screens. You could argue it’s the biggest film of that year… But Barry is all out! See you on the next one.
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Hook (1991) – Uncomfortably Familiar
“Have to fly. Have to fight. Have to crow. Have to save Maggie. Have to save Jack. Hook is back.”
Back to another 1990s video rental from Barry’s — this time, Hook. Adventure movies like this were the kind I really used to get into. This one, however, I remember confusing me back in the 90s. Hook was marketed as a sequel to Peter Pan. Everyone knows the story of Peter Pan, right? Right?
Well, it’s 1991 — or to be honest, a little after that, thanks to rental delays — and I’m under ten. It concerns me that I haven’t seen Peter Pan before watching Hook. This is made worse by the way the first half of the film has so many characters urging Peter (Robin Williams, practically the face of family movies in the 90s) to remember.
A little later I managed to track down the Disney cartoon, and it still didn’t seem like a sequel as such. It looked and sounded a lot different. Adult me knows this is because Peter Pan was a 1953 Disney cartoon, and Hook was a 1991 blockbuster released by Sony Pictures. But to a kid, it didn’t make sense. I sort of wish someone had clarified that it’s a sequel to the Peter Pan book — but honestly, I’m not sure anyone in our house knew that.
The concept: what if Peter Pan grew up? Spielberg has mentioned the issues with the film’s second half. They’re there, definitely. They’re undeniable. There are parts where it looks like a theme park.
But this is Retro Reaction, not a movie critic blog. It’s always been about how these movies make you feel. That first half of Hook, with its strong message about Peter forgetting what childhood is like — about him being busy with life and missing out — that’s where the story is so strong for me.
I wonder if, for younger watchers, this falls into the same category as Home Alone. They’re treading water, waiting for Peter to remember and for Pan’s return to save the day in the final act. I don’t blame them. I was once in that category. For me now, though, it’s all about the emotional journey he takes to get there. Helped a little by the iconic John Williams soundtrack again. As an adult, it can strike an uncomfortably familiar note.
We’re still in the 90s and still renting from Barry, so there will be more Robin Williams in the weeks to come. But next time… we’ve got some dinosaurs.
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Retro Reaction 3.1 Home Alone
Something has been happening with this film over the last few years. If you take a look at the Disney Plus posters nearing December, or even the TV guides, this 1990s film has quietly joined an elite group. A group it shares with the likes of The Wizard of Oz, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Snowman, and at least one rendition of A Christmas Carol. Home Alone has become a Christmas tradition, and my family are no different.
So, back to the 90s. Realistically, it was probably late 1991 into 1992 before we rented this one. Back then, the waiting period from cinema to VHS was around six months. Rental stores always got the films next—but small rental stores like Barry’s? You could add a few extra weeks on again.
Rewatching Home Alone anytime after the first viewing always has an element of waiting. You want to get to the part where the baddies fall into the traps—the twenty minutes of pure slapstick comedy at the end. As much as this film has become a tradition with the young nephews, I do catch them losing attention while waiting for that slapstick. The YouTube generation, I think.
Watching as a, shall we say, middle‑aged adult, I notice the other parts of the film that make this an absolute classic. The iconic John Williams music. The sentiment on family. The fact the movie has heart—and is funny to go with it.
A couple of years ago, I put this one on at my late Nan’s house. The nephews acted out the entire film. They knew every word. That is one powerful Retro Reaction.
Next time we venture back to Barry’s, the year is 1991 and the movie… Hook.
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Retro Reaction 3.0: 90s in Film
Barry’s Video ShopThere are ways in which the more things change, the more they stay the same. Friday nights in the 90s were often spent searching for something to watch — picking something from hundreds of titles.
This didn’t happen on a TV screen with Netflix. It meant going into the small town centre with some change and choosing a video from Barry’s.
We had some great rentals from Barry’s throughout the 90s, and in this set of reactions we’re going to look back on a few of them.
Home Alone (1990)
We go back to the 90s and rent the film that has become a Christmas tradition.
Hook (1991)
This one was considered a disappointment back in 1991 — but was that fair?
Jurassic Park (1993)
For many, this was the first time we saw CGI. The film that aimed to make you believe dinosaurs were back.
Mrs Doubtfire (1993)
This film dominated at Barry’s. I remember seven copies, and they were all sold out.
Dumb and Dumber (1994)
A film my brother still quotes. Jim Carrey was everywhere in the 1990s, and this was one of his most famous.
Casper (1995)
Always wondered why there were never more of these.
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Retro Reaction 2.6 Sonic Origins
Computer and Video Games, 1995It’s 1995. Another one of our friends is talking games. Gone was Sonic the Comic; this friend and I swapped Computer and Video Games, the monthly magazine covering everything in gaming. I read that thing cover to cover. Demo disks weren’t really a thing yet, so the magazine was our main way of seeing what was coming and getting advice on which games were worth our time and parents money.
On this particular day, the conversation turned to Sonic.
My friend had Sonic & Knuckles, and when you locked on the other Sonic games, you got more Sonic. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t interested — of course I was — but the gaming landscape was changing, and thanks to that magazine, we both knew it.
Console generation shifts in the 90s and early 00s weren’t small. Today, a new PlayStation or Xbox might make things look a little sharper. Back then, the changes were seismic. We were entering the 3D era.
So, back to Sonic Origins. This was my first proper opportunity to play Sonic 3 & Knuckles — the complete Sonic 3 experience, the lock‑on cartridge my friend had talked about back then. It was also my chance to finally play Sonic CD.
Sonic Reactions
Retro Reaction isn’t really a review thread. It’s more about how replaying these old games made me feel. I’m sure each of these will get their own reaction blog in the future, but to sum it up:
Sonic the Hedgehog
Revisiting this felt like catching up with an old friend. Through muscle memory, the first two zones were easy enough. Labyrinth Zone, though, was a different story. Thankfully, modern save states help. I said I liked old games — never that I was any good at them.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2
I found a new appreciation for this one. I finally get what the fuss was about. I was stuck for ages in Chemical Plant where the water rises. Once again, never claimed to be a master at these.
Sonic CD
I liked finally being able to play this. But was it the classic people made it out to be? I found it closer to Sonic 1 than Sonic 2. Definitely one to explore in more detail another time. I did enjoy the boss race against Metal Sonic, though.
Sonic 3 & Knuckles
I’d played this before via a DS collection, but it ran a bit slow there. Here, all together in one package, the game is tied with Sonic 2 for me.
Meanwhile, in 1995In that same magazine, I remember looking over an advert for FIFA that used photos. I wondered aloud: when would graphics get so good you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference?
“That’s easy,” my friend replied. “When the Sega Saturn comes out.”
Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
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Retro Reaction 2.5 Sonic Obsession
If you’ve stuck with this set so far, you’ll know about my winding journey to play Sonic games. But that’s only half the story. You see, as a child of the 1990s, Sonic was everywhere. No, the Jim Carrey movie was not the start of Sonic Mania. Far from it.
Back in the 1990s my Nan allowed us one magazine each. My Dad suggested The Tree of Knowledge, and for a few years the monthly encyclopedia was what I got. But it was noticed that these magazines were mostly only skimmed. I wanted Sonic the Comic.
This ran from 1993 to 2002. Though I only followed the earlier years, it adapted stories from the Sonic games — including the elusive Sonic CD. This is how I learned about characters like Tails, Knuckles, and Amy well before ever playing those games.
Well, there and Channel 4. Because much like Super Mario before him (yes, I also loved The Super Mario Super Show), Sonic and Tails were granted their own TV show: The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. I didn’t like it as much as the Mario shows — that whine of “I’m waiting” was a bit much even for a kid — but I still watched it religiously.
I still vividly remember Dr. Robotnik going into hibernation in Sonic the Comic. He was inside a big egg. The story was to be continued in the next issue… only to find that this was all a way for Sonic the Comic to adopt the same Robotnik design as the TV series. Some of the letters to the comic slated that change, but for me it was my first real experience with a cliffhanger in a comic story.
This might all sound like I was a bit obsessed with these games. I thought I was — in only the way a child can be. Then 2022 rolled around. It was announced that the games were returning, rebuilt for modern platforms. In the form of Sonic Origins, I finally got to play those four Mega Drive greats… and Sonic CD, a game I had wanted to get my hands on for some time.
I sidelined whatever big RPG I was playing at the time. Because I could now play some Sonic.
