Nostalgia Throwback! What Ever Happened to the Cool Animated Opening Credits of the 80s and 90s? (VIDEO)

I'm nostalgic for a lot of things on Tuesday mornings. Primarily for the previous weekend. But today especially there's something I've been stuck in a timewarp over. Around the late 80s to mid 90s someone had the bright idea that the best way to open their comedy movie was with a witty animated opening sequence, usually scored over with some zany Henri Mancini-esque as a throwback to The Pink Panther and hint at the hijinks that were about to ensue.

And then they were gone. Gone forever, like dust in the wind; like a faded memory; like Chris Kattan. Sometimes you get an animated call-back, but now it's all done to be cool and jazzy and crisp, like Catch Me if you Can or Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang, clearly done on a computer in Flash and meant to be stylized. Stylized? No, no, no. These were great because you were supposed to take them seriously. Someone wanted you to take the opening credits to Weekend at Bernie's 2 seriously. You were supposed to enjoy the sincerity.

Unless you're a David Fincher movie, chances are you're not going to have a really cool opening titles sequence. Which is probably a good thing. Why waste talent, time and resources to put together some zany animation sequence when the rest of the movie is garbage? The best thing about Troop Beverly Hills was the opening animation with Beach Boys music over it. Great. Then the movie starts. Not so great.

But I still miss those little gems. I'm not sure why. Maybe you just miss something when it's gone, even if it was totally superfluous and unnecessary. Much like most of Weekend at Bernie's 2. But that doesn't mean I don't want to watch a cartoon corpse version of Bernie stumble and fall into zany situations instead of reading who the best boy grip was on the project.

There are dozens of these out there. But here are a few of my favorites. Leave it to Youtube not to have City Slickers or Honeymoon in Vegas.




And the one that started it all: