sympathy

There's a fairly common formula in movies geared toward a teenage audience.

A group of teenagers face one central conflict, to varying degrees of importance and severity, but manage to solve it in a surprisingly short manner of time.

The heroes of these films are usually a hodgepodge of traditional high school archetypes (star athlete, math nerd, girl whose beauty is disguised by a pair of glasses), all of whom the intended audience can completely relate to and root for.

And then we have the adult characters, who are often buffoonish stereotypes, or the outright villain, whose sole mission is to ensure the protagonist will not achieve their ultimate goal.

As teenagers, we often find ourselves ready to boo these grown-ups from the minute they appear on the screen.

But when we revisit these movies as adults, we find ourselves noticing that their behavior isn't quite as bad as we remembered.

Or, more shockingly, we actually find ourselves rooting for them!