7 Movies From 1995 That All 1980s Kids Still Love Today

Published Oct 19, 2026, 8:29 AM EDT

Simon Gallagher has worked in movie and TV journalism for more than 17 years. He has written more than 6000 articles and reviews, and edited thousands more. He is an expert in the entertainment industry, particularly in the golden age of screen superheroes. Simon is also a Rotten Tomatoes approved critic.
 

The landscape of cinema in the 1990s went through a massive shift, thanks to vast technological improvements that today look rather quaint. Visual effects and computer animation unlocked whole new worlds and possibilities, while low-budget auteurs fought the good fight for independent filmmaking at the same time.

The early part of the decade saw high-concept blockbusters and glossy action vehicles double the cost of making and marketing a movie by 1995, even though audiences in 1994 were at their record-breaking highest point since 1960. That influx of money and audiences split Hollywood’s focus between independent, lower-cost opportunities and huge, costly titans, and by the end of the year, the box office was mostly ruled by the latter. But creatively, new wave directors were pushing the boundaries of storytelling.

For 1980s kids who grew up during the '90s, 1995 came during the key formative period of their lives: we were at a crossroads, still open to being entirely enthralled by the magic of family filmmaking, but yearning for something deeper to speak to us, and darker to tempt us towards our future. The year provided in abundance, with some of the greatest broad-appeal movies ever made, and some forbidden gems that have gone on to be staples for elder Millenials decades later.

1995 saw the release of cross-genre classics like Casper, Billy Madison, Mortal Kombat, Friday, and Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, but none were quite as great or cool or as everlasting as these seven movies, which still stand as the touchstones of that year for the younger ticket buyers.

7 Empire Records

If Batman Forever was Batman for the MTV generation, Empire Records was, well, Empire Records for the MTV generation. Few movies captured the specific commercialized angst of mid-90s youth culture quite like Empire Records (apart from maybe Kids, but if you were watching that as a teen in 1995, you had other issues to contend with).

Directed by Allan Moyle, it tells the charming story of an independent record store's ragtag group of teenage employees battling (along with Anthony LaPaglia) to stop their corner of punk pop heaven from being swallowed up by an impersonal corporate chain. And it’s basically a rite of passage for every kid who spent their weekends browsing CD racks, no matter where you grew up.

The charm is in the ensemble, which included an irresistible Liv Tyler, Renée Zellweger, Ethan Embry, and Robin Tunney, all fresh-faced and channelling their inner yearning to be a sort of mid-1990s answer to The Breakfast Club. The soundtrack remains incredible, and Empire Records feels, sadly, like a beautiful time capsule honoring the lost days of physical media and misspent retail world youth. And the magic is still very much there.

6 Batman Forever

It is a bald-faced lie that nobody liked Batman Forever when it came out in 1995. Quite apart from taking more than $330m and coming 6th in the year-end global box office ranking, it captivated an army of teenage kids who were alienated by Tim Burton’s darker (but admittedly superior) Batman movies. Critics may have hated it, but it crossed $100m in just 10 days (equaling Batman’s record from 1989).

Yes, it was campy and theatrical, but it was (and still is) cool. Jim Carrey’s Riddler was great fun, Tommy Lee Jones Joker-riffing Two-Face was great, and it was all very much like a pastiche of Adam West’s Batman, with some of Burton’s edge thrown in. In 2026, Batman Forever still feels underrated, because of more grown-up sensibilities and the inevitable creep of darkness into the Batman franchise, but try listening to either U2’s "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" or "Kiss from a Rose" by Seal and not be immediately transported back to the theater.

5 Jumanji

Before CGI took hold of basically every major blockbuster release, Joe Johnston’s Jumanji was at the bleeding edge of the technology, using it to capture genuine wonder and no small amount of terror. Robin Williams gave one of his most understated blockbuster performances of the 1990s as the tragic Alan Parrish, avoiding any mugging or manchild slapstick to add pathos to the story of a man lost in time, with very good support from both Kirsten Dunst and Bradley Pierce.

They say never work with kids or animals (which should include the CGI variety), but Jumanji’s easy charm comes from the ensemble, which also features Bonnie Hunt’s frazzled psychic, and Jonathan Hyde in dual roles as both Alan’s father and the delightfully over-the-top Van Pelt.

The other movies in the Jumanji franchise have expanded the universe creatively, but the original is still the most charming, and rewired the brains of a lot of 1980s kids who combined to push it into the box office top 10. Yes, the CGI now looks quaint, but the magic is just as compelling.

4 Desperado

If you saw Desperado in theaters in 1995 as a teenager, you weren’t supposed to be there, which is exactly why so many slightly too-young kids saw Robert Rodriguez’s cult action gem at the time. Initially given an NC-17 rating, it was already infinitely cool when that was downgraded to an R-rating, cementing it as the forbidden movie for teenagers to sneak into. Theaters back then were far easier to dupe with a Goofy Movie ticket purchase, let’s say.

El Mariachi had been an independent triumph, and as a follow-up, Desperado added greater scale and offered star-making performances from the effortlessly cool Antonio Banderas and Salma Hayek. It would be disingenuous not to acknowledge at this point that the chemistry between the pair - and one notorious sex scene that spread like wildfire around release - didn’t push some of the ticket sales.

Beyond its theatrical release, which established its aura, Desperado has grown cult armor that has seen its fanbase grow massively in the years since. It’s raw, stylish, sexy, and unapologetically violent, and the action sequences have only gotten better.

3 Die Hard With A Vengeance

Again, it may not have been aimed at kids, but by 1995, the Die Hard franchise was at its peak. John McTiernan returned to reinvent the movie, taking Bruce Willis’ iconic John McClane away from the safety of his usually-isolated battlegrounds and dropping him into the middle of New York City thanks to Jeremy Irons’ sardonic, sadistic villain, Simon Gruber.

Die Hard With A Vengeance was the highest-earning movie of 1995, which is still quite remarkable for any R-rated movie, but it had the perfect formula for success. The cast - including Samuel L. Jackson’s hot-headed Zeus - was brilliant, the terrorist threat was compelling, and there was a personal element to the action that added depth to the razor-sharp script. The R-rating was basically an encouragement for 1995’s teens, and the formative experience of seeing it in theaters shaped many older film fans for the next 30 years.

2 Clueless

Amy Heckerling captured lightning in a bottle with Clueless in the most surprising circumstances, taking Jane Austen’s 1815 novel Emma and making it the most essential teen movie of 140 years later. The story of matchmaking, romantic betrayal, and high society translated so perfectly to 1990s Beverly Hills high school life that younger, cooler audience members were tricked entirely into ignoring the literary history behind it.

Alicia Silverstone is spellbinding as Cher Horowitz, delivering a star-making performance that perfectly balances naivety and superficial self-interest with genuine charm and warmth, and she’s surrounded by genius supporting performances from the likes of Paul Rudd, Stacey Dash, Brittany Murphy, Dan Hedaya, and Breckin Meyer.

Clueless is a genuine teenage zeitgeist movie, that was just as compelling for boys in the cold North of England as it was to Californians who could see themselves reflected in Cher’s life for real. And as a mark of its cultural importance, Clueless invented a whole new lexicon of slang, as well as creating its own fashion subculture. Somehow, despite being so firmly rooted in the 1990s, it has aged incredibly well, too.

1 Toy Story

It’s hard to overstate the extent to which Toy Story changed Hollywood, or how little that mattered to the kids who saw it in theaters in late 1995. It was, of course, the first feature-length computer-animated movie ever made, and a technical marvel by any account, but it was so much more than an exercise in novelty.

Thanks in part to an incredible cast, led by Tom Hanks and Tim Allen, an irresistible concept, and a brilliant story, it was a triumph of storytelling and spectacle, which was both exciting and emotionally rich. It also spoke very deeply to kids who spent a lot more time back then actually using their imaginations.

The animation now looks dated, but that’s only because Pixar was able to build a monolithic empire on the back of Toy Story’s success. And there is still a lot of charm in the more simplistic look of the original. It’s a masterpiece and is still just as rewarding to watch now - possibly with a whole new generation of fans sitting beside the kids who marveled at it first time round 31 years ago.