The Most Uncomfortable Age Gaps In Movies

They say "all you need is love." They also say "age is just a number." But every so often when you're watching a movie, you see a mismatched couple (or at least one lovestruck stalker) taking things a bit too far. When it comes to cinematic relationships, sometimes the number of birthdays really does matter, and we got a little weirded out when we saw these uncomfortable age gaps in movies.

With its famous keyboard scene and great Tom Hanks performance, it's no wonder Big is considered a comedy classic. Directed by Penny Marshall, this 1988 flick follows a young kid named Josh (David Moscow) who morphs into a 30-year-old man. At first, this magical transformation seems pretty cool, especially when Josh is paid big bucks to play with toys for a living. But things get problematic when he starts dating Susan (Elizabeth Perkins), his adult coworker.

True, Hanks and Perkins are about the same age in real life, but in the movie, Josh is just 13. So when the two end up sleeping together, we're witnessing a serious felony offense. This illegal relationship has prompted some people to label Big the "creepiest story ever told" or describe the film as a celebration of "unrepentant pedophilia." While that sounds harsh, you've got to admit it's creepy at the end when Josh reverts to his child form, and Susan waves goodbye to her 13-year-old ex.

Directed by Jonathan Glazer, Birth is a pretty divisive movie that was greeted with an avalanche of jeers and catcalls when it premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Mainstream audiences weren't super happy, either. After all, the film follows an upper-class widow (Nicole Kidman) who's convinced that a 10-year-old boy (Cameron Bright) is actually her husband reincarnated.

At first, she's a little reluctant to believe this kid is her lost love, but as the film goes on, not only do Kidman and the kid share a kiss, they even spend a few minutes sitting in the bath together. Granted, Jonathan Glazer didn't intend for this to be "salacious." Instead, he wanted to make a film about "the idea of eternal love." Still, anytime you've got a full-grown woman making eyes at a prepubescent boy, your film is probably going to bomb big time at the box office.

Widely hailed as a 1980s fantasy classic, Labyrinth is mostly famous for two things: David Bowie and David Bowie's, um, bulge. As The Washington Post put it oh-so delicately, you can make out quite a bit of anatomy thanks to the singer's "over-revelatory spandex." With all that male charisma onscreen, it's easy to see why so many people have said Labyrinth was the movie that kickstarted their sexual awakening.

Now, that's all fine and good...but then you've got to remember that Bowie's character Jareth the Goblin King is actively pursuing a 15-year-old girl (played by a 14-year-old Jennifer Connelly). In fact, he drugs her, tries to seduce her, and begs her to, "Do as I say, and I will be your slave."It's a bit intense for a kid's film, although it's nowhere near as freaky as that cackling junk lady.

Directed by Luc Besson, Leon: The Professional is a movie that'll leave you feeling a little odd. It's an awesome film, but while the relationship between Jean Reno's Leon and Natalie Portman's Mathilda isn't "inappropriate" per se, it is just a tad...disconcerting.

The plot involves a 12-year-old girl (Portman) who asks a hitman (Reno) to get revenge on the psychotic DEA agent (Gary Oldman) who murdered her family. Leon and Mathilda's relationship starts off strange—he's childlike, she's wise for her years—and only gets weirder from there, especially when she starts crushing on Leon, dressing up as Madonna, and telling strangers this full-grown man is her lover.

True, as Jeff Saporito of Screen Prism points out, Leon loves Mathilda—but not like that. The assassin never really deals with the situation in a mature way, but then, he's also training her to become a killer, so maybe he's not the best father figure in the world.

In England, the age of consent is 16, so while the age gap at the center of An Education is technically legal, that doesn't make it any less unsettling. In this film written by Nick Hornby (based on the memoirs of journalist Lynn Barber), 24-year-old Carey Mulligan plays Jenny, a teenage cellist who can't wait to leave her little London neighborhood. And as Jenny grows more and more restless, who should arrive but David (Peter Sarsgaard), a 30-something smooth-talker with no scruples about getting involved with a 16-year-old.

Over the course of the film, David teaches Jenny all about high society, sex, and eventually, deception. As Roger Ebert described him, David is "a rotter, a bounder, a cad, a dirty rotten scoundrel. But you can't get far in any of those trades if you're not also a charmer." Fortunately, Jenny eventually realizes this guy is a wolf in 1960s clothing, and she walks away from David a little older, a little wiser, and—you guessed it—a little more educated.

It's a sad fact that Peter O'Toole—one of Hollywood's greatest actors—never won an Academy Award (honorary ones don't really count), even though he was nominated eight times. And his final nomination came for the movie Venus, in which O'Toole plays Maurice Russell, an aging actor in his 70s who looks like death warmed over.

But things take a turn for Maurice when he's introduced to his (brace yourself) friend's niece's teenage daughter (Jodie Whittaker). As critic Seongyong Cho puts it, Maurice is "fabulous dirty old man," and while he's physically incapable of getting it on, that's not going to prevent him from spending time with a pretty girl.

Of course, Whittaker's character isn't sexually interested in Maurice, but as the film progresses, the two do form a sort of bond, regardless of their whopping age gap. It's kind of sweet, kind of skeevy, and proof that O'Toole is one of the greatest actors who never took home an Oscar.

You could describe Mr. Holland (Richard Dreyfuss) as a frustrated guy. Sure, deep down in his heart, he loves teaching kids about music, but he only got the gig to make ends meet. His "real" goal in life is to compose classical music, but that's not working out so well. Things at home aren't that great either, as he's growing distant from his wife and struggling with the fact that his son was born deaf. So when a gorgeous student (Jean Louisa Kelly, who also appeared in Uncle Buck) auditions for his upcoming Gershwin revue, well, middle-aged Mr. Holland suddenly gets his groove back. The girl serves as his musical muse, but the situation gets trickier when the clearly twitterpated student asks her gray-haired teacher to run off with her to New York. Being a good dude, Mr. Holland gently turns her down...but you can tell he was totally considering it for just a second.

Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is widely hailed as one of the best novels of the 20th century, but it's not what you'd call light reading. Sure, the writing is beautiful, but the subject matter is a bit on the dark side. Nevertheless, the novel inspired two separate movies, Stanley Kubrick's 1962 version starring James Mason and Sue Lyon and Adrian Lyne's 1997 version featuring Jeremy Irons and Dominique Swain.

Both movies focus on Humbert Humbert (Mason, Irons), a child molester who sets his sights on the titular Lolita (Lyon, Swain). Both Lyon and Swain were in their early teens when cast in their respective roles, and naturally, the subject matter stirred up some controversy. Of course, it's not like Humbert is supposed to be a hero—and don't worry, he eventually figures what the term "jailbait" really means.

Manhattan is one of the greatest movies ever made. It's also a film about Woody Allen dating a 17-year-old. Allen plays a 40-something comedy writer involved with a high school girl (Mariel Hemingway)—the guy even finds it amusing when his girlfriend ends a date because she has to study for a test. "I'm dating a girl who does homework," Allen jokes, but it's hard to chuckle along.

Still, the movie is well-made, and Hemingway received an Oscar nomination for her work. However, it seems the events of the film followed her into real life. According to Hemingway, after she turned 18, Allen showed up at her house and allegedly tried to convince her parents to let her accompany him to Paris. Evidently, Allen didn't have quite the same allure he did onscreen, because the teenager shot his plans down and sent him packing.

When it comes to May/December relationships, there's no couple quite so eerie as Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) and Joe Gillis (William Holden). In this Billy Wilder classic, Joe is a screenwriter who runs into Norma, a fading starlet, completely by accident. But once he steps inside her mansion, there's no getting away. Norma is like a spider, and Joe is the fly. Of course, so long as she's paying for his suits and keeping him comfortable, he can't really complain much.

True, the gap here isn't huge. Norma is about 50, and Joe is half her age. However, the actress is completely lost in the past. Her dusty mansion is a shrine to her faded career, and she spends her evenings watching her own movies from Hollywood's silent era. In other words, Norma might still have a few birthdays left, but she feels absolutely ancient. As Roger Ebert points out, Norma "has aged not in the flesh but in the mind," and when Joe decides it's time to date someone his own age, he discovers you can't walk away from a movie star that easily.