This really deserves bonus points for its shelf-life. 13 years on and god knows how many times that I’ve watched it, it is always a surprise and it’s always fresh somehow. Like Casper, which was released the same year, the visual effects still strike me as phenomenal over a decade on, not just in their execution but also the concepts.

But like any movie that I’ll watch over and over like this (though I’ll admit, it’s actually been a long time since I last watched this from start to finish), there’s something much bigger to sink one’s teeth into here, and in fact that thing hit me more this time than it ever has before. Scratch that – it definitely hit me this way before, but it was only this time that I really understood why. I think I only realised this time that Jonathan Hyde plays both Alan’s father and the hunter in the game. Of course, that’s the key to this whole message that has struck me all along. I love when Alan and Peter are walking down the street and Peter starts crying to which Alan’s response is to tell him, “chin up, act like a man,” etc, at which he halts himself, physically on the sidewalk, and says, “I’m sorry – 26 years in the deep dark jungle and I still turned into my father.” It’s perfect.

All this hangs around the ethereal moment at the end when Alan and Sarah meet Peter and Judy again in the “fixed” timeline. That “you’ll never know”-ness about that scene absolutely kills me; for a family movie like this, it’s almost mindblowingly deep. And all of this is constantly undercut by the humour which, again, makes me laugh just as loud now as it did when I was a teenager. The axe scene, the cop’s car being taken away by the plant (“Take it!”) and even in that goosebumpy final meeting, Bonnie Hunt and Robin Williams screaming, “No!” in unison at the mention of Peter and Judy’s parents’ ski trip, lol. It’s an insanely special experience.