Nostalgia reviews with jokes and receipts.
Movies That Raised Us revisits animated movies, comfort watches, holiday staples, and Y2K-era curios with affectionate side-eye. The conversations move quickly from plot recap to fandom memory, production details, dating tangents, and sharp little verdicts.
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Movies That Raised Us is a nostalgia movie-review show with a high tolerance for detours and a real appetite for the weird details. It covers the films people grew up quoting, renting, rewatching, and half-remembering, from The Swan Princess and Barbie in the Nutcracker to Billboard Dad, Princess Protection Program, Home Alone 2, and How to Train Your Dragon. Newer titles can enter the rotation too, as KPop Demon Hunters does during Animated April. The show is not just recap. It is recap with immediate judgment, personal memory, fandom context, and the kind of joke that arrives before the sentence has fully parked. A romantic duet might prompt a complaint that the story has not earned it. A villain's proposal strategy might become a miniature ethics hearing. A hotel scene in Home Alone 2 can lead to credit card machines, Plaza pricing, Tim Curry's delivery, and the missing pool. The speakers are especially good at noticing the tiny cultural artifacts around a movie: flip-phone-era logic, royal fantasies, holiday food habits, old media technology, fan requests, awards chatter, and the specific emotional weather of childhood favorites. There is warmth underneath the teasing. The show can laugh at a movie's nonsense while still respecting why people love it. That balance matters. It keeps the criticism from turning mean and the nostalgia from turning foggy. Episodes often start with everyday banter about weather, travel, holidays, recording logistics, or whatever obsession has taken over the group chat. Then the movie pulls everything into motion. The result feels casual but not empty, informed but not stiff. It works best when a beloved scene gets treated as both sacred text and ridiculous object. Listeners get cult-animation enthusiasm, Y2K pop culture, comfort rewatches, musical numbers, villains, crush dynamics, and a steady supply of sideways observations. Movies That Raised Us is for people who remember the movie, remember the feeling around it, and still want someone to ask what was actually going on there.
Made for: For movie fans who grew up on animated favorites, holiday staples, Barbie movies, and Y2K comfort watches. It especially suits listeners who like affectionate criticism, rapid banter, and pop-culture tangents.
What sets it apart: The show turns formative movies into lively group archaeology, mixing plot detail with fandom memory, modern reactions, and comic disbelief. It is less polished lecture than fast-moving conversation, which makes old favorites feel freshly strange again.
Once Upon A Time, Mo and Christina met in the big apple. While neither became Princess of Genovia or found their long lost twin sister, they did bond over the movies that put those ideas into their heads. If you scour the city looking for your very own Austin Ames, or, like to dream about the days when you preferred Lip Smackers to Lip Kits, look no further. Sit back and relax, as Mo and Christina cover everything about formative movies, flip phones, and growing up on Movies That Raised Us.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Mo and Christina revisit formative movies with scene-level scrutiny, affectionate skepticism and a sharp eye for romantic and narrative absurdities.
Movies That Raised Us turns movie revisits and first watches into lively scene-by-scene conversations. Mo and Christina move through each plot while testing character choices, romantic logic and remembered affection against what is actually on screen.
A princess has never heard of hamburgers, and suddenly you're litigating movie logic with Mo and Christina.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A first-time Swan Princess watch becomes a funny, skeptical tour through romance, nostalgia, and one strange puffin.
The Swan Princess works here as a brisk test of animated nostalgia, with Mo and Christina coming to a listener-beloved film they did not grow up watching.
A loose, funny KPop Demon Hunters review about viral fandom, demon lore, and the trouble with canceling a hot man.
Movies That Raised Us opens Animated April with a brisk, affectionate discussion of KPop Demon Hunters, framed as both a heavily requested Instagram pick and a pop-cultural moment.
A funny rewatch about billboard matchmaking, family loneliness and what makes someone a catch.
Movies That Raised Us treats Billboard Dad as a pleasantly odd case study in billboard matchmaking, with twin daughters trying to find their father a partner, then bristling when the billboard is set to come down.
A loose, funny rewatch that pokes at Princess Protection Program's royal logic through cafeteria details.
Princess Protection Program gets a brisk, funny rewatch from hosts who keep tugging at the royal setup through the smallest details. The cafeteria scene becomes the easy centerpiece: the princess is offered mystery meat or a hamburger, has somehow never heard of a hamburger,…
A warm Home Alone 2 revisit where Plaza luxury makes the small gags feel like the main event.
Movies That Raised Us frames Home Alone 2: Lost in New York as a holiday comfort watch powered by Kevin's accidental taste of luxury: the Plaza suite, the snacks, the poolside cannonball, and that bedside hot fudge sundae.
Fast movie talk with critical bite.
Horror criticism with jokes, brackets, and blood memory.
Pop culture with receipts and velocity.
Fast movie rants with actual film sense.
The hosts discuss their excitement for Spooktober and share their Halloween decoration shopping experiences.
The hosts discuss the weather and their excitement for fall before introducing a spooky TV episode of Pretty Little Liars.
The Movies That Raised Us reviews Prime Video’s The Love Hypothesis, adapted from Ali Hazelwood’s novel and its AO3 Star Wars fanfiction origins.
Two podcast hosts discuss the cult following of the 1994 animated film 'The Swan Princess' and their surprise at its popularity, as they had never seen it before.
Movies That Raised Us covers KPop Demon Hunters, a 2025 Netflix animated release that the hosts say became the platform’s most watched film after 325 million views in 91 days.
Movies That Raised Us covers Billboard Dad, the 1998 Mary-Kate and Ashley film about Emily and Tess Tyler, twins living in Venice, California with their father Max, a sculptor working through his wife’s death.
Movies That Raised Us covers Disney Channel's Princess Protection Program, with the hosts opening on current Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, and Hudson Williams chatter before turning to the 2009 movie.
The hosts discuss releasing a previously Patreon-exclusive episode about the Barbie in the Nutcracker movie to the general audience on Christmas Eve.
Movies That Raised Us covers Home Alone 2: Lost in New York as a sequel with a $28 million budget, a $359 million box office, and a very specific 1992 New York production story.
Movies That Raised Us revisits Pretty Little Liars: The First Secret, a Halloween episode set before Alison's disappearance.
The hosts welcome intern Kate as a guest host while Christina is at TIFF, and they discuss her upcoming episode about the festival.
The hosts chat about their summer travels and recording on location in Montreal, joking about French accents.