As a kid, I watched The Neverending Story a few times. I hadn’t read the book until I was a little older, but I still loved the story. I’m watching it again now on Encore on Demand. I am not ashamed. This movie was amazing to me as a kid. A story of a young boy who didn’t have many friends except for his books, gets caught up in an adventure story that was happening as he read it. And then he ends up creating a story from it! Magical.

When I was younger, I seriously thought the movie was three hours long. I think it was because it had the word “neverending” in it. As a kid with no attention span, watching a movie I thought was three hours long was not an easy task.

I realize only now, after all these years, that the movie is only 93 minutes long. Oops.

As I’m watching it, I can’t believe how badly it was made. I guess it was “ahead of its time” when it was made in the 1980s, and I was only a year old when it came out to theaters. I only saw it about 7 years after it came out. This movie is so horrible. And what’s with the snail that looks like Jar Jar Binks?? And why is Olmec from Legends of the Hidden Temple in this movie eating rocks? He is a rock and he’s eating rocks…? Way to make children learn about cannibalism.

This movie to me (as a kid) is what Willow is to REB. He told me when he was 7, he and his brother insisted that their dad take them to see Willow, even though their dad obviously didn’t want to. Then again, what parent really wants to sit through a horrible kid movie? Anyway, he told me it was the best movie ever and when we started Netflix a few months ago, he made sure it was in our queue. We watched it…and he couldn’t believe how horrible it was. The truth came out: when he saw the movie at the age of 7, he fell asleep about 10 minutes into it, and didn’t remember it.

…I just read that part to him and he laughed and said, “It was a good movie. It had midgets and magic.”

Sigh. I love him.

I guess The Neverending Story is still a magical movie and the concept is still pretty cool. In fact an anime series, Fushigi Yugi, took the same story about a girl who found a book and as she’s reading it, everything is happening.

At any rate, this movie is pretty funny to watch after all these years. What’s also funny is my coworkers were in Winnipeg for work and told me that one of the people at the newspaper up there was actually named Atreyu. He apparently legally changed his name. Ugh. Canadians.

One thing is true though. I still want Falcor to be my pet.