We Want The D

Now wait just a second, D-Lovers. Before you give this episode a pass because it's clear pretty much from the title that it's gonna be another one of those fake-documentary animal movies, let us try and convince you to give it a listen. First...er, well this one is about a wolf, that's pretty different! And uh, there's some pretty unexpected animal fights - not that the fight themselves were unexpected obviously, but the kinds of animals involved in the fights are pretty exotic. Oh, and Jill tells a pretty great story about the history of the guy who wrote the book this movie is based on. So yeah, just because we've watched what feels like dozens of these over the past few months doesn't mean these episodes aren't worth listening to, we promise.

What's a major film studio largely known for its cutting-edge and industry-defining animation to do when they are no longer top dog? Take a deep look inwards and rebuild from the ground up? Poach the hottest talent through attractive offers or corporate buy-outs? Well, if you're Disney in the 2000s, you just boldly rip-off another successful animated film by making THE WILD, a movie that two out of our three hosts can confirm is just a worse version of the Dreamworks movie Madagascar from a few years earlier. A much, much worse version.

Ah, the internet. Without it, our hosts wouldn't even be here talking to all you D-Lovers out there. A hub of easily accessible knowledge, the history of humanity writ across pages and recorded in vdieo for anyone to learn from. Well, that's the idealized version, anyway. The reality, and the one spotlighted in RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET, is that the internet is mostly used to harvest your data and sell you shit megacorporations (like, say, Disney) make you think you need. A place where mass approval can be converted into currency. And where your self worth becomes intrinsically tied to to the way people see you. It's an...interesting choice as a setting for a family film.

If you had told our hosts at the beginning of this podcasting journey they'd be watching this many movies that feature cougars, it's hard to imagine they'd believe you. Yet here we are, watching CHARLIE, THE LONESOME COUGAR - another entry in the "animal does stuff while a folksy voice narrates" Disney subgenre. At least this time there's a dog named Chainsaw, milk shenanigans, and a climax where it looked like we might actually see a person get mauled by a big cat.

Our hosts' journey through Disney's 1970s theatrical releases ends not with a bang, but with A TALE OF TWO CRITTERS. A sub-one hour movie about a bear cub and baby raccoon that were forced to fight not just each other, but a whole host of other animals from wolverines to geese. But don't worry, there is of course of a folksy voiceover assuring us they were the best of friends and roommates, at least for a time. And since that can only generate so much conversation, there's also a recap of the best and worst of this decade of Disney.

It seems like, at this stage in our little podcasts life, the animal movies are just unavoidable, with no repreive to be found even in animated films. Because HOME ON THE RANGE is, of course, about cows. And cattle resutling. And yodeling. And...hypnosis? It's a little strange, for a number of reasons, but mostly it's just very very average, which is what you would expect from a movie that almost killed 2D animation at Disney for good.

Over the course of this podcast, our hosts have watched package films, real documentaries, fake documentaries and all manner of unexpected plotlines. So it's nice that this many episodes in there's still a few oddball surprises in the Disney theatraical catalog. Like THE YOUNG BLACK STALLION, an IMAX movie that doesn't even break an hour runtime. Which doesn't leave our hosts with a whole lot to talk about, so we decided to honor the occassion of us watching our last Disney horse movie by reflecting on all the previous ones.

Disney's BIG RED may be a somewhat typical "boy and his dog" story - something our hosts are all too familiar with at this point. But this is, in some ways, a very atypical episode of We Want The D. Because in this episode, it's Nolan who is full of praise for the Irish Setter at the centre of this film, while it's Vicky who is more preoccupied with potential discrepencies in plot and character. And Jill is left to try to navigate this strange new reality. Let it never be said that after 363 episodes, surpises can't happen.

Here's a sentence you probably were never expecting to read: this week, our hosts are talking about a Disney film directed by David Lynch. That's right, the master of the surreal and macabre directed a film for the House of Mouse, and unsurprisingly it is neither of those things. BUT it's still extremely David Lynch, which could have had mixed results; but for our hosts was a welcome reprieve from movies about animals.

Not long ago, our hosts watched a Disney film that was mostly documentary-esque footage of a bear with some narration over the top to create some semblance of narrative. Well, RUN, COUGAR, RUN is a bit different. For one, and most notably: this time it's a cougar story we're following. But! Actor Alfonso Arau is also here, and his presence (and million-watt smile) alone more or less bump this movie up a whole letter grade. That, or our hosts are just desperate to find anything to latch onto when it comes to this type of picture.