5 items
Half wolf, half dog, all underdog: Amblin's 1995 cartoon about the sled dog who carried the diphtheria serum into Nome. It opened a month after Toy Story and sank, then lived forever on VHS. The real Balto's statue still stands in Central Park, and the real story is messier than the movie.
The 1992 comedy about a St. Bernard puppy who sneaks into a suburban family's house, grows into a huge, slobbering dog, and slowly wins over the dad who never wanted him. John Hughes wrote it under a pseudonym, critics shrugged, and audiences gave it an A.
A Buffalo TV reporter yells at God, and God hands him the job for a week. Jim Carrey's 2003 hit opened on a Memorial Day weekend that beat The Matrix Reloaded, and the pager number on screen was real enough that strangers in two countries fielded hundreds of calls meant for the Almighty.
Ben Stiller's Mr. Furious, Hank Azaria's cutlery-flinging Blue Raja and William H. Macy's Shoveler: a team of third-rate superheroes with dubious powers, out to save Champion City. It bombed in the summer of 1999 and left behind a cult and the Smash Mouth "All Star" video.
Spanky's He-Man Womun Haters Club, Alfalfa's cowlick and his forbidden crush on Darla, a go-kart called The Blur, and a clubhouse that burns down: Penelope Spheeris's 1994 update of Hal Roach's Our Gang shorts, produced by Amblin and released by Universal on August 5, 1994. Critics called it a marketing exercise; kids wore out the VHS.