Life Lessons from Saturday Morning Cartoons
Posted on August 9, 2009 at 8:00 am
Be sure to read Paul Asay’s entertaining and enlightening discussion of the lessons we learned from Saturday morning cartoon shows like “Scooby-Doo” (be careful of strangers) and “Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids” (television can teach moral lessons). I especially like this discussion of the lessons from Road Runner:
Wile E. Coyote was the show’s primary professor, and he taught his young students dozens of pragmatic lessons: Don’t horse around near dizzying precipices. Don’t strap yourself to large explosive rockets. Don’t paint false train tunnels onto the faces of cliffs. But, through his boundless trust in (and inexhaustible account with) the Acme Corporation, Mr. Coyote also offered an important, if little heeded, message: You can’t catch happiness through the accumulation of “stuff,” no matter how much of it you buy. Sure, sometimes it’ll seem tantalizingly close…but it’ll always speed away again with a “beep-beep” and tongue waggle.
, later remade with James Mason and Warren Beatty as 
.
, remade with Richard Dreyfuss and Holly Hunter as 
. 
, gently helping an Episcopalian bishop remember that his priorities were his faith and his family, not the new cathedral. The remake, “The Preacher’s Wife,” stars Denzel Washington.
Bill Murray was the counselor who teaches his campers to embrace their loserdom in this classic anti-hero comedy. (some mature material)
A bunch of kids with high-pressure parents invent a fake achievement-oriented camps (theater, fat camp, paramilitary, computer camp) and head off to enjoy themselves…until the parents all show up. 
Boomer parents will recall this Mickey Mouse club serial about the Triple R camp and the camper who arrived with his butler and learned a few things about roughing it. Watch for Mouseketeer Annette as a guest star. 
A group of adults return to the camp that they loved as kids in this bittersweet midlife drama filmed on the site of the real-life camp attended by the film’s director.
There is some mature material in this very uneven story about two girls who make a bet at camp about which one will be the first to have sex, but it gets some credit for a more honest portrayal than most of the consequences of some of these choices. Watch for future “Sex and the City” co-star Cynthia Nixon as one of the campers. For a more family-friendly film, try 
, a sweet story about friendship and loyalty with our heroines creating a day-camp for younger children.
Both the Haley Mills and Lindsay Lohan versions of this story of campers who discover they are identical twins are delightful family classics.
The kids at space camp find themselves launched into space for real in this exciting family adventure.
Based on a real-life camp attended by the film-makers, this is the story of an intense theater camp attended by talented, high-strung, insecure, and very ambitious teenagers. (Some mature material.) 
is a documentary about the real-life campers.
Summercamp! is a documentary following the day-to-day drama of 90 kids let loose in the woods at Swift Nature Camp in northern Wisconsin. They go through the highs and lows of adolescent rituals: sing-alongs, talent shows, homesickness, counselor mutiny–and first love. 
Charles Schultz’s everyman comic strip hero goes to camp with all of his friends. Watch for Linus standing up to bullies and some nice lessons about teamwork.