The Movies That Made Us – Netflix Season 1 Review

Episode Guide

Dirty Dancing
Home Alone
Ghostbusters
Die Hard

Following in the same vein as The Toys That Made Us, Netflix’s interesting and wholesome documentary series returns with a new flavour and four highly enjoyable episodes. With a mixture of comedy, face to face interviews and some really interesting film facts, The Movies That Made Us is another hit for the streaming giants, one that has plenty of scope to expand for more series.

From Dirty Dancing and Home Alone, through to Ghostbusters and Die Hard, The Movies That Made Us picks out an iconic film from different genres in the 80’s and dissects them from the concept through to production woes and final audience and critical reception. With each episode clocking in at around 45 minutes or so, there’s plenty of time to dive into the nitty-gritty of each film and anyone with a love of cinema or an enthusiasm to see behind the scenes material should absolutely check this one out.

Each episode begins with an introduction to each film, breaking down a basic synopsis of the plot before diving into the first draft of the script and early conceptual ideas. From here, the episode breaks down a mix of studio push-backs, budget problems, cast and crew woes and more on the road to creating some of the most beloved films from the 80’s. All of this culminates in a final 5 or 10 minutes that show how successful each film has been and what effect it’s had on the industry.

The narration takes cues from The Toys That Made Us, injecting the same mischievous, comedic style to proceedings. The face to face interviews with the crew and cast offer a lot of insights into the making of each film too and as a self-proclaimed movie and TV geek, I love watching this sort of material and this show was right up my alley.

The archival photos, deliberately chosen segments from each film and unabated positive enthusiasm oozing through each episode make this a light and breezy watch, whilst offering a lot of educational content along the way.

Every facet of the film-making process is explored here too, including special effects, costumes, acting and even script-changes, combining to make a pretty comprehensive breakdown on how films are made. 

If you’re a fan of movies, The Toys That Made Us or even light and breezy documentaries, The Movies That Made Us is well worth a watch and a highly enjoyable effort from start to finish.

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