Line #5 YMMV/NowAndThen


1	* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation:
2	** Was the other girls' constant teasing of Chrissy light-hearted fun or them just being jerks? Chrissy could be a bit naive, but she was pretty accepting of the girls' differences and was generally kinder to them than they were her.
3	*** Chrissy could be strong when it came to more important matters such as [[spoiler: when she punched Roberta for faking her death]]. Despite her naivety over a lot of trivial issues, she seemed to act as the mother hen of the group, and she always stepped in when her friends needed help.
4	** Sam states that Teeny is a pathological liar (and she grows up to be a good actress). Was she lying about the Cosmo quiz results, which sounded all too accurate in the answers?
5	* SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic: The soundtrack has a lot of classic late 1960s/early 1970s hits by artists like Music/TheMonkees, The Archies, Music/TheJacksonFive, and Music/StevieWonder to name a few.
6	* CriticalDissonance: Big time. Rotten Tomatoes has the critic score at 28%, audience at 82%!
7	* CriticProof: Trashed by critics in its release, it was a Box Office success and gained a cult following.
8	* DesignatedVillain: Bud is strongly disliked by Samantha upon his first visit, mainly because she misses her own dad very much. However, Bud really tried to be nice to Samantha, and she really had no reason to be unsympathetic towards him.
9	* GirlShowGhetto: It's often written off as '''Film/StandByMe'' for girls'.
10	* HilariousInHindsight: That same year, Creator/DevonSawa played a love interest of sorts to Creator/ChristinaRicci in ''{{Film/Casper}}''. The two had to fight off rumors that they were dating as a result. What's even funnier is that, many years later, both of them would admit that they'd had adolescent crushes on each other at the time but never acted on them.
11	* HollywoodPudgy: Younger Chrissy is slightly wider than all the other girls, but every joke or insult aimed at her is about her weight.
12	* NightmareFuel: The girls seeing what they believe is "Dear Johnny's" spirit in the graveyard, after their seance. Then later finding his grave cracked in said cemetery.
13	** The old newspaper article's graphic description of Roberta's mother dying in a car wreck, which states that she was stuck in said totaled vehicle, long before she was even rescued. This devastates Roberta immensely.
14	** Sam nearly drowning in a storm sewer (while trying to retrieve her friendship bracelet) on a stormy night, with nobody to hear her or Teeny's cries for help, [[spoiler: that is until Crazy Pete comes to her rescue.]]
15	** When the girls finally learn how "Dear Johnny" and his mother were killed through an old newspaper article [[spoiler: which states that they were shot to death by a robber, as they woke from their sleep. And there were no clues as to a suspect]].
16	* OneSceneWonder: Creator/BonnieHunt as Chrissy's mother, whose talk about the bird and the bees gives major insight into Chrissy's upbringing.
17	* QuestionableCasting: Rosie O'Donnell as the older version of Christina Ricci has been a headscratcher for years. Although Rosie O'Donnell looked very much like Christina Ricci when she was a child (as you can see [[https://images.app.goo.gl/N9xUdKzbj1TVemqq7 here]]).
18	* TheyCopiedItSoItSucks: A lot of negative reviews slammed the film for being too similar to ''Stand By Me''.
19	* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodPlot: Some criticism is of the adult scenes adding nothing to the story, and that it would just be a stronger narrative if it focused entirely on the children.
20	* ToughActToFollow: For some viewers, the scenes with the child actresses are much stronger, and the adult scenes can't live up to them.
21	* ValuesDissonance: Many of the jokes towards Chrissy tend to be about her [[InformedAttribute supposedly]] [[HollywoodPudgy fat size]], which would go over very poorly with a lot of people if made today, with the raised awareness over eating disorders and the rise of body positivity.
22	** Nor have Teeny's and Sam's constant prude-shaming jokes about Chrissy aged that well, in an age where the sexualizing of teenage girls and children in society has been heavily criticized, as well as the fact that people today are more understanding of women being virgins or sexually conservative if that's their own choice.
23	* VindicatedByHistory: Despised by critics in its release, it's since become a cult favourite and is considered a quintessential 90s film.
24	* WhatDoYouMeanItsForKids: It's presented as a family film, but there's a skinny dipping scene, a penis can be glimpsed, the girls talk about erections and there is a childbirth scene.
25	* TheWoobie: Roberta and Crazy Pete.
26	** Sam, who is both devastated and insecure about her parents getting a divorce, and really misses her father a lot. Plus she faces a near- death experience while retrieving her bracelet in a storm sewer at night.

Context YMMV / NowAndThen