If the current economy meltdown is teaching us anything it’s a few home truths about our spending habits and our bank balances. But as hard as times are, there’s always someone worse off than you.
Thanks to the wonders of modern technology you can indulge in a little schadenfreude from the comfort of your own cardboard box on the street – if these five films happen to be playing in the window of an electrical retailer that hasn’t gone into administration yet.
1. Oliver!
Poor, poor Oliver Twist. He’s had it tough all his life, from not being allowed any more gruel to falling in with a bad lot of cockney thieves and being an orphan and such. As soon as things start to look up, the lovable cockney thieves turn out to be not so lovable and some of them are downright murderers.
But not to worry, where there’s a street urchin, there’s a song and they warble their way to a happy ending. Except the ones who die and get arrested, things don’t look so good for them. If you’re alive and out of jail, you’re winning.
2. Grave of the Fireflies
When you’re orphaned in a war-torn country and living in a cave with only the fireflies to comfort your baby sister, then you can come compare notes with these poor tykes. Until then, quit your whining and crack open another 10p tin of baked beans for dinner.
3. Hook
If there’s one thing the illustrious Peter Panning learns (aside from how to fly again) it’s that money and career aren’t everything; knowledge that will, no doubt, make you feel better about being made redundant and having to move home to live with your parents.
4. Wendy & Lucy
Wendy has nothing but her dog, her car and her integrity to see her to a paying job and new life in Alaska. It’s all going well until the car breaks down. Wendy gets arrested, dog gets lost. It’s all very depressing, and the ending isn’t much cheerier. But good for you, with your internet access – even if it’s dial-up you’ve still almost certainly got it better than her.
5. Walt Disney’s Robin Hood
You can’t help but hate that snivelling, sneering, tax-collecting wolf, the sheriff of Nottingham. He makes his rounds taking the last pennies from the family of nice bunnies who, inexplicably, end up good friends with a couple of foxes and a bear.
He is the prescient animated version of today’s bank bosses, if you want to look at it that way – taking our money to line their own pockets and leaving us with nothing. Sure, they had Robin Hood, but we’ve got Barack Obama and, er, Gordon Brown on our team – I hear he’s not a bad archer.
6. Fun with Dick and Jane
Aah, 2006. Remember those golden days? We were all buying Porsches and huge mansions with our six-figure salaries and living like the money would never run out. Well, sadly, it did for Dick and Jane, set up to take the fall for heinous corporate scams – but they got their own back,.
I'm including this if only to inspire you to undertake some covert revenge missions against the fat cats sitting in their mansions lamenting the £2m value lost on their vast £465m fortune, whilst you stay in every night living off stale bread and water. Custard pie in the face ought to do it.
Image credit: © Disney