A Live Look in as I Watch a Beloved Family Movie From the '80s or '90s With My Kids

I bet it's aged fine?

[SCENE: A Friday evening at home with my wife and grade-school-aged children. We’ve just finished our takeout pizza, and are settling in for a family movie night]

ME: Alright, so what should we watch?

MY WIFE: [scrolling through Disney+] Gosh, we’ve already watched all of these with the kids.

ME: Oh, what about that new Studio Ghibli movie? The Boy and the Heron?

WIFE: Hmm. It’s still $13.99 to stream.

ME: Ah, nevermind. Do you think they’re old enough for Ghostbusters?

WIFE: Do you want them sleeping in our bed tonight?

ME: Not particularly. Oh, I have an idea! Let’s watch Space Dog!

WIFE: I don’t know what that is.

ME: You’ve never seen Space Dog!? One of the most beloved family comedies of the late 1980s or early 1990s?

WIFE: I guess maybe the name sounds familiar.

ME: [pulls out phone, searches] Oh, perfect. It’s available to stream for free on Zuumbo.

WIFE: Do we have that?

ME: Yeah, it’s one of the ones at the bottom of the Roku menu that’s full of weird Russian hair removal ads. Hey, kids, I’ve got our movie for tonight! It’s one of my favorites from when Mommy and I were kids. It’s called Space Dog.

[presses play]

ME: You guys are going to love this.

WIFE: Do you think it’s aged well?

ME: I haven’t seen it since I was a kid, but I think it’s pretty timeless. Shh, it’s starting!

[SCENE: a 1980s school classroom]

TEACHER: Okay, kids, it’s time to present your reports. Joey, you’re up first.

[the other students all groan. DUFF, a large boy with a buzz cut, speaks to the general sentiment in the room]

DUFF: Ah, but Joey’s a nerd! NEEEERRRRD.

[the other students clamor in agreement. JENNY, a pretty girl, turns to HEATHER, a fellow classmate]

JENNY: I heard he’s from out of town. He doesn’t have any friends, or a dad.

HEATHER: Gross.

MY SON: These guys aren’t very nice.

ME: No, this is just plot development.

TEACHER: Now, class, give Joey a chance. Joey, what have you written your report on?

JOEY: It’s called the World Wide Web.

TEACHER: Spiders. Excellent.

JOEY: No, the World Wide Web is a network of computers, and—

[the entire class groans again]

JOEY: —it’s going to change the way we do everything! You’ll be able to buy things on it, do research, and talk to people all over the world!

DUFF: NEEEEEEERRRRRD

ME [pauses movie]: You see, most people didn’t have computers back then, and it wasn’t considered “cool” to know stuff about them. Obviously, that’s changed these days.

WIFE: is the teacher Daniel Day-Lewis?

ME: let’s just keep going, okay?

[unpauses]

JOEY [stammering]: You could look up sports scores on it, and—

TEACHER [disappointed]: That’s enough, Joey. Please sit down.

JENNY [to HEATHER]: I bet this is why his dad left his mom.

TEACHER: Duff, you’re up next.

[DUFF strides to the front of the classroom, receiving high-fives and cheers on the way up]

CLASS: DUFF! DUFF! DUFF!

DUFF [holding up football]: My presentation is on how to throw a football. First, you grip it by the laces like this, and then you spot your receiver downfield, and—

[DUFF throws the football at JOEY, knocking him out cold. The class cheers.]

TEACHER: Very good, Duff. A+. Joey, get up and stop being a nerd.

DAUGHTER: I don’t like this movie.

SON: Yeah, everyone’s really mean to Joey.

ME: Could you just stick with it? It’s the hero’s journey. Joseph Campbell, and so on.

[JOEY is walking home along a busy street]

JOEY: This is the worst day ever.

[A car drives through a puddle and splashes JOEY, soaking him from head to toe. A group of adults standing at a nearby bus stop point and laugh at him like it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen]

DAUGHTER: Was everyone mean back then?

ME: It was a different time.

[JOEY trudges into his house, still dripping wet. MARCY, his mother, is on the phone]

SON: What’s that?

ME: It’s a landline telephone. Phones used to be connected to your wall by a cord.

MARCY [on phone]: You said we have until the end of the month to pay before we’d lose the house! There’s still a week left in the month. [listening] Well, I’ll figure something out!

[MARCY slams the phone down, then looks at JOEY]

MARCY: Oh, honey. What happened this time?

JOEY: I don’t want to talk about it.

MARCY [crossing her arms pityingly]: After your father left, I thought that picking up and moving to a new town would fix things, but you haven’t made any friends and we’re going to lose the house if I can’t come up with $1000 in a week.

JOEY: It’s too bad there’s no money in computers.

MARCY [smiling at how stupid the idea of making money from computers is]: Oh, Joey. You’re just a kid. [MARCY looks at her watch] Rats, I’m late for my shift at the restaurant. You think you can manage here tonight, champ?

JOEY: Yeah. I’ll be fine.

DAUGHTER: Is she just leaving him at home alone?

ME: Yeah, you could just do that then. Or you could just leave kids in your car.

[JOEY sits in his bedroom. The walls are covered with posters of the solar system, scientists, and other 1980s-smart-kid things. His face is lit by the glow of a tiny computer screen, as he plays the 8-bit game SPACE HERO. A tiny astronaut zaps monsters with a ray gun, until one of the monsters eats him. A GAME OVER message flashes on the screen.]

JOEY [sighs]: I wish I were a space hero.

[He turns to a telescope situated by his bedroom window. He looks at the stars, but then tilts it towards the upstairs window of a nearby house. JENNY appears in the frame]

JOEY: [zooms in]

ME [pauses movie]: Okay yeah I forgot about this scene BUT I want to make clear that what Joey is doing here is not okay, either as a real thing to do or as a plot point for the protagonist of your movie. It’s wrong and you could go to jail for doing this.

WIFE [looking at Wikipedia on her phone] I’m pretty sure the director actually did go to jail for something adjacent to this a few years later

ME: just… don’t do it.

[unpauses]

[JOEY continues to commit what we now understand to be a crime, but is interrupted by a clap of thunder and a bright flash. He pivots his telescope up just in time to see something streak across the night sky and crash in the nearby woods]

JOEY: Whoa! I gotta go check this out!

[JOEY runs downstairs, hops on his bike, and pedals off into the woods at night]

SON: Isn’t it a school night?

ME: I dunno probably

[JOEY rests his bike against a tree, then trudges into the woods, where he finds a small spaceship in a smoldering crater]

JOEY: whoa

[the spaceship hisses steam, and a door swings open. Out steps SPACE DOG, a seven-foot-tall anthropomorphic dog wearing a Hawaiian shirt and holding an electric guitar and a surfboard]

ME [pausing]: I assure you this was very cool at the time.

[unpauses]

[SPACE DOG lights a cigarette]

ME [pauses]: Smoking is bad. Don’t smoke.

[unpauses]

JOEY [nervously]: Hi, I’m Joey. Do you want to be friends?

[SPACE DOG looks at JOEY, then plays a sick riff on his electric guitar]

JOEY: C’mon, let’s go back to my house!

[SPACE DOG does that shaka symbol things surfers do]

SON: This is kind of a rip-off of E.T., isn’t it?

ME: Not exactly. Aliens were just very big there for a while. ALF, Mac and Me, Mork and Mindy… it was just a thing.

[JOEY and SPACE DOG stop into a convenience store on the way home. A white actor is portraying the shopkeeper as a wildly inappropriate ethnic stereotype that I will not elaborate on the specifics of]

SHOPKEEPER [heavily and poorly accented]: You cannot bring that dog in here!

ME [whispering over kids’ heads]: should I explain why this is wrong?

WIFE: I don’t think they’ve noticed. Just let this one go.

JOEY: This isn’t a dog! This is my big brother, uhh, Kevin!

[SPACE DOG begins eating entire bags of chips off the shelves without even opening them, and chomping whole cans of soda open]

SHOPKEEPER [just a wildly regrettable performance that the actor will disavow at the urging of his agent years later]: No, no, no! My Crystal Pepsi!

[the SHOPKEEPER produces a shotgun from behind the counter, and begins firing at SPACE DOG and JOEY. SPACE DOG avoids the blasts by breakdancing around them. The SHOPKEEPER runs out of shells, and JOEY and SPACE DOG flee]

ME [to no one in particular]: The random gun violence part has aged fine, honestly.

SON: Dad, what’s Crystal Pepsi?

ME [wistfully]: It was the future, once.

[JOEY and SPACE DOG arrive back at JOEY’s house, where they hide in the garage]

JOEY: That dancing you did was amazing. Do you think you could teach me how to do that?

[SPACE DOG plays another sick riff on his guitar, which by now we understand to be his way of agreeing]

DAUGHTER: Daddy, is this why you have that guitar that you never play?

ME: Shh, watch the movie.

[JOEY and SPACE DOG arrive at school. SPACE DOG is now wearing a toupee, which seems to effectively disguise the fact that he is a seven-foot-tall anthropomorphic dog from any and all observers]

DUFF [to his friends, ZEKE and BUD]: Hey, look. Joey’s got a new boyfriend!

ME [pauses movie]: Social attitudes at the time were not as evolved as—

WIFE [takes remote from me, unpauses]: we just need to keep the clock running here

[SPACE DOG has picked DUFF up by the throat, and is ready to choke him to death]

TEACHER [who definitely is a young Daniel Day-Lewis, I checked]: Hey! What’s going on out here?!

JOEY [signaling for SPACE DOG to set DUFF down]: Oh, nothing, Mr. P. Duff and I were just talking about, uh—

[JOEY looks at the wall behind the TEACHER, and sees a poster for a breakdancing competition that weekend with a $1000 top prize]

DUFF [noticing what JOEY is seeing, and remaining oddly confident for someone who was almost just killed by a guy in a surplus mascot costume]: We were talking about the big breakdancing competition this weekend.

TEACHER [shaking head]: I’m going to go back to my classroom and smoke.

ME: Again, don’t smoke.

[SCENE: A crowd of students has gathered in the courtyard of the school for the big breakdancing competition. No adults seem to be present, save for three judges and a RICH MAN. We can tell he is rich, because he is wearing a shiny suit with a turtleneck and has wraparound sunglasses.]

ME [pauses]: Sunglasses like that were very expensive at the time.

WIFE: when did you take the remote back? Give me that. [unpauses]

RICH MAN: This is it. The last stop on our tour to recruit the best breakdancers in the state. A thousand dollars is a small price to pay for the money we’ll have after we add the final dancer to our crew.

DAUGHTER: What’s their business model, Daddy?

ME: Shh, honey, Mommy wants to watch the movie. [looking around] Hey, where’d your mother go?

[DUFF has just finished a stellar breakdancing routine, to the delight of all onlookers. RICH MAN appears satisfied.]

JUDGE: There’s just one contestant left. [squinting at paper] Kevin Spacedog.

JOEY [whispering to SPACE DOG]: You can do this! You’re the best there is, and once you win this money, we can save our house and—

[THE GOVERNMENT arrives and shoots SPACE DOG]

SON: The government wouldn’t do that, would they, Dad?

ME: I mean, the CIA— [receives text from my wife in the other room] No. No, they would not. It’s a movie.

[The JUDGES and RICH MAN are ignoring the commotion as government agents swarm the school]

RICH MAN: Which one of you is Kevin Spacedog!?

SPACE DOG [dyingly, to Joey]: You have to go on for me.

JOEY: You can talk?

SPACE DOG: I’ve always been able to talk, but I’ve been afraid to. I’ve hidden who I am behind my awesome shirts and sick guitar riffs, because I thought no one would want to hear the real me. But you believed in me, Joey. You listened to me. And now I need you to listen to this—you can win this dance competition.

JOEY: you really think I—

SPACE DOG: [dies]

DAUGHTER [sobbing]: I love you Space Dog

ME [reading another text]: hey guys, after the movie, will you help me fold out the couch?

[JOEY finishes his breakdancing routine, stunning the crowd with his newfound confidence and skill]

RICH MAN [nodding approvingly]: There’s the final member of my crew.

TEACHER: I was going to fail him, but now I won’t.

MARCY: We get to keep our house.

DUFF: You know what, Joey? You’re not so much of a [thing that we now widely agree is a slur but was just casually dropped by a child in a PG-rated movie back then] after all.

[JOEY taps JENNY on the shoulder, then kisses her as soon as she turns around]

ME: again, not the way that should happen

DUFF: Hey, did your friend die?

[EVERYONE turns as they remember SPACE DOG, who is in a bodybag being loaded into an unmarked van by THE GOVERNMENT]

JOEY: I don’t think that’s the last we’ll see of Kevin.

[a sick guitar riff can be heard from within the bodybag]

SON: Was that the last we heard from Kevin?

ME: No, they actually made eight of these. Joey goes to space in the third one, and— [my phone pings again] I seem to have been mistaken. That was the last we heard of Kevin.

—Scott Hines (@actioncookbook)

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