Films are rarely skin deep. Like skin, except instead of applying expensive moisturisers to reveal the hidden depths, you need to put your thinking cap on and consider that maybe Toy Story isn't just a superior kid's film. There were some old VW adverts that claimed Pixar's debut was a metaphor for sexual awakening, with Woody's limp and unresponsive form superseded by the gleaming ten inch toy Buzz Lightyear who takes Bo Peep to infinity and beyond. How about that, huh? Pretty far removed from their accepted narratives, there was also the reveal that ET is a story of a stag do gone wrong. They're just a couple of the more goofy readings of popular movies, but it's proof that you can read a lot more into films than what's simply on the screen. And it's not just about sex stuff, either. Spending more than the requisite ninety-odd minutes on a film can turn up totally new things you had never considered, from the way that the camera shapes the conflict in a scene to how you can use Freudian psychoanalysis to pick apart Disney films (okay, so sometimes they are about the sex stuff). And this isn't just in your fancy art house fare, either. In fact, the more unlikely films can sometimes provide the richest bounty of secretly clever stuff. Movies are hardly ever confined to a single reading: theorists, academics and fans alike have put together unique views on everything from Fifty Shades Of Grey to Tangled. Here are ten such films that are smarter than you think.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
