We Want The D

The time has come for us to bid a not-so-fond farewell to Medfield College, along with its students and faculty and the handful of criminals who keep getting wrapped up in their science-based shenanigans. But this time the titular STRONGEST MAN IN THE WORLD might not be the young, round-faced Kurt Russell as we've come to expect, but the nasally-voiced, foot corn-infested Dean Higgins. Or maybe it's both of them, who can say. All our hosts know for sure is that for the final film in a Disney trilogy, this movie is a total mess.

It's not every day you get a movie that the House of Mouse was so proud of, they stick their name in the title. But it's also not every day you get superstar Bruce Willis to star alongside your latest and greatest lab-grown little ragamuffin child actor Spencer Breslin. Yes, DISNEY'S THE KID sure is special. If only it made a lick of sense in pretty much any way, shape or form.

This summer keeps getting weird so we'll keep charging ahead with our Summer of Sadness, exploring the Disney films of Tim Burton. In this week's entry, Timmy B is once again kicking back in the producer's chair as some close collaborators from a well-loved stop-motion film have another kick at that can with JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH. But while stop motion, Roald Dahl, and Tim Burton should be a match made in heaven, this one falls just a little short for our hosts. Have a listen and find out why!

Small technical note, we lost a few minutes of this week's recording, which may or may not be noticeable. If you don't notice it, then ignore this. If you do, well, this is why you noticed something off. Our apologies, such are the pitfalls of remote recording during a pandemic!

Fifty-nine years after releasing their experimental musical/film experiment Fantasia, Disney released it's follow-up, FANTASIA 2000. And so too do our hosts release an episode on the latter, 254 episodes after the original. And while the first entry could at the very least be applauded for being something wholly original for its era, this follow-up feels about as safe and middle-of-the-road as you can get. But hey, the interstitial bits with various celebrities sure are fun to talk about.

This week, our hosts wrap up the last of Disney's package films with FUN AND FANCY FREE. By now, we're all well aware that these movies were cost-saving measures for the struggling film studio in the 1940s. But the fact that two of the three of our hosts have distinct memories of Mickey and the Beanstalk wrapped in two entirely different packages than the nightmare birthday party version we watched in this one, really drives home how much a fan of recycling this content Disney has been. As for Bongo...the less said about Bongo, the better.

This week's movie is definitely a weird one, even beyond most of Disney's 80s fare. Because in many ways, CHEETAH is like a film displaced in time. It reminds our hosts of so much of the 60s and 70s output of the House of Mouse, what with the precocious yet utterly stupid teen protagonists, general cultural insensitivities, and a gambling subplot of all things. It makes sense that this movie came out when it did, though - right as the Disney Renaissance was getting started - because slipping through the cracks and getting lost from pop culture's collective memory is about as much as it deserves.

You gotta hand it to them, Disney had it all figured out in the 90s. Coming off an animation renaissance that basically saved the company, they had their fingers firmly on the pulse of what kid and families wanted in their movies. That's how we got MY FAVORITE MARTIAN, based on the 1960s sitcom that 90s kids just loved; starring Jeff Daniels and Christopher Lloyd, two actors who really resonated with the youth of the day. Yes, Disney really set themselves up for success with this one, you have to wonder how it possibly could have gone this wrong.

Our exploration of the Disney films of Tim Burton continues on our Summer of Sadness. In this episode, we see what happens when Timmy B takes a back-seat producer role in the sequel to our inaugural entry, ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS. For better or for worse, without Burton's direct involvement Wonderland (or Underland, or whatever) has been turned down but about 30%, but that doesn't mean there's any shortage of weirdness to talk about with this franchise - from Johnny Depp's accent and affectation choices to Sasha Baron Cohen's sexual energy (or the lack thereof) to altogether too much time spent on the framing device (again).

Ostensibly, this week's film is about a man who rescues three orphaned bear cubs from certain death and raises them in spite of opposition and criticism from the community around him. And when Disney's THE BEARS AND I came out in 1974, that's almost certainly how audiences received it (assuming anyone actually saw this movie). But decades later, let's just say this movie lands in an entirely different way that was almost certainly not intended.

In this week's episode we're returning to the wonderful world of DCOMs with AVALON HIGH. At first blush, this particular Disney Channel movie doesn't seem like anything remarkable - just another Camelot story to torture our hosts with, if anything. But it doesn't take long for it to become clear this is the most TV movie of all TV movies, boarding on parody if it wasn't so darn earnest. Not so much a wild ride as it is a slow-motion train wreck that delights to no end.