80s Movie Review: Little Shop of Horrors

Danyielle Wren, Staff Reporter|April 18, 2022

Welcome to Classic or Canceled, a series where I review 80s movies and decide if they hold up in today’s society.

This week’s movie is Little Shop of Horrors, a classic 80s musical. I loved this musical as a kid after seeing it performed in a school play, and the movie was even more exciting to watch. This movie involves romance, greed, and horror, hence the name. Actor Rick Moranis plays the lead character Seymour Krelbron, the face of many futuristic 80s and 90s movies like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Ghostbusters, and Spaceballs.

Little Shop of Horrors is primarily based in a plant shop, with the main characters being Seymour, Audrey, and Mr. Muchnick. Seymour works and lives at this plant shop. One day he brings a funny-looking plant back from a little shop in the city. At first, it’s normal, but then things start to get really out of control with this weird plant. This movie is filled with love, heartbreak, and many lessons that could be learned by these characters. Let’s talk about it.

Overview:

Audrey, who also works at the plant shop, is in a relationship with Orin. He is a dentist, and he’s terrible at it. He and Audrey’s relationship is very abusive. Mr. Muchnick and Seymour tried talking to Audrey about it, but she couldn’t leave the relationship. This movie showed a glimpse of domestic violence in a good way, not romanticizing it or acting like it was normal.

One thing that I liked about this movie was the outfits, three women were singing throughout the film, and they had very 70s/80s outfits. My favorite outfits are the blue polka-dotted dresses and blue headbands. They’re just a nice touch to the movie overall.

Main Concerns:

There was a point in the movie focused on Audrey’s boyfriend, Doctor Orin. In his dental office, a lot of kids and adults scream throughout their entire dentist visit. He wouldn’t give them anything to numb the pain; instead, he inhales a bunch of laughing gas. He works on the patients while being high on laughing gas and completely ruins their teeth. He is a completely messed up person overall. But they tried to make his scenes pretty goofy to “lighten” the topic of his problems.

This movie was fascinating to watch, they fit a lot into a short film, and I liked that. They got to the point immediately, and it ended in a really good way too. The only corny thing about this movie was the love exchanged between Seymour and Audrey. It was cute but also really corny.

The music in this movie was absolutely great in my opinion. Love, self-questioning, and fame were often brought up in these songs, but my favorite definitely would have to be the starting song.

Overall Thoughts:

I noticed way more now than I would’ve as a kid, I saw different real-life problems now than I did when I was younger. As a child I thought that this was a goofy movie, and I was scared of the plant. But now as a teenager I know that this movie is way deeper than that, and I glad that I could catch that when watching at this point in time.

I think that this movie is a classic rather than canceled because it has good lessons to follow. It shows the dangers of domestic violence, fame, greed, and so much more. I would have to rate this movie 8.5/10, I liked it, and this would definitely be something I would watch again! Come back next time for my last review of the year on Revenge of the Nerds!