YMMV / Now and Then

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • 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.
    • Chrissy could be strong when it came to more important matters such as 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.
  • 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?
• Awesome Music: The soundtrack has a lot of classic late 1960s/early 1970s hits by artists like The Monkees, The Archies, The Jackson 5, and Stevie Wonder to name a few.
• Critical Dissonance: Big time. Rotten Tomatoes has the critic score at 28%, audience at 82%!
• Critic-Proof: Trashed by critics in its release, it was a Box Office success and gained a cult following.
• Designated Villain: 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.
• Girl-Show Ghetto: It's often written off as 'Stand by Me for girls'.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: That same year, Devon Sawa played a love interest of sorts to Christina Ricci in 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.
• Hollywood Pudgy: Younger Chrissy is slightly wider than all the other girls, but every joke or insult aimed at her is about her weight.
• Nightmare Fuel: 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.
  • 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.
  • 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, that is until Crazy Pete comes to her rescue.
  • When the girls finally learn how "Dear Johnny" and his mother were killed through an old newspaper article 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.
• One-Scene Wonder: Bonnie Hunt as Chrissy's mother, whose talk about the bird and the bees gives major insight into Chrissy's upbringing.
• Questionable Casting: 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 here).
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: A lot of negative reviews slammed the film for being too similar to Stand By Me.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: 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.
• Tough Act to Follow: For some viewers, the scenes with the child actresses are much stronger, and the adult scenes can't live up to them.
• Values Dissonance: Many of the jokes towards Chrissy tend to be about her supposedly 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.
  • 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.
• Vindicated by History: Despised by critics in its release, it's since become a cult favourite and is considered a quintessential 90s film.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: 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.
• The Woobie: Roberta and Crazy Pete.
  • 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.
  • Chrissy, who is sadly made the butt of jokes by the other girls, more often than not merely because of her weight and naivety. Anybody who has been ostracized by other people in a friend group can relate to Chrissy.