We Want The D

Vicky, Nolan and Jill emerged from their podcast cave this week to watch the latest Disney offering in theatres. With the generally steadfast team of Musker and Clements (Treasure Planet aside) handling directing and current musical darling Lin-Manuel Miranda making his Disney debut as a composer, the hype was high for Disney's return to an animated South Pacific among our hosts. Listen to our spoiler-free first half of the episode to hear our thoughts, and keep listening for a more spoiler-laden discussion of MOANA's swole characters, stupid sidekicks, and sailing songs.

Walt Disney created a wonderful world of animated creations early on in the company's history, and none more beloved than the classic trio of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy...Goof? The trio don't feature heavily in Disney's theatrical canon, but in 1995 the success of the Goof Troop television show led to A GOOFY MOVIE; a kind of musical kind of about a father-son relationship that is kind of based on the characters of that show. Goofy is still Goofy, his son Max still raises difficult questions about Goofy's "romantic" past, Pete still treats his son PJ as an indentured servant, and the rest of the citizens of...Dogberg(?) are still kind of a weird mixture of grotesque or overly sexualized. It's a movie that may be a lot weirder than some of our hosts remember, but hey at least the Tevin Campbell/Powerline songs are still great.

Vicky, Nolan and Jill can all remember when High School Musical was the huge Disney Channel phenomenon of the mid-to-late 2000s. In fact at least one of them may have been an active participant (guess which!). The franchise got so big, in fact, that the elevated budget of the third and final installment meant it had to be released in theatres...so here we are. This week on We Want The D, our hosts try to parse the third installment in a trilogy with (in at least two out of three cases) no context from the first two made-for-tv movies. And while the plot is anything from overly complicated, there is still plenty to puzzle over. But mostly this movie is just annoying - the songs are annoying, the acting is annoying, the writing is annoying. Kenny Ortega strikes again in HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3: SENIOR YEAR.

We recorded this week's episode of We Want The D just a few days ago, early in the evening on election night. Like most people, Vicky, Nolan and Jill had no idea what a rollercoaster ride that night would end up being, so this podcast represents an interesting snapshot in time - one where optimism and bright possibilities were still alive and well. We hope that this episode will take you back to simpler, less troubled times as our hosts are able to laugh and make light of yet another Kurt Russell Disney vehicle, NOW YOU SEE HIM, NOW YOU DON'T, blissfully ignorant of what the immediate future holds. From a purple dune buggy to a young Ed Begley Jr.; characters named Schuyler and characters (presumably) named "Girl;" from extended golfing sequences to extended invisible car chase sequences - it's all the treasures the late 60s/early 70s era of Disney has to offer on full display.

Disney's 2016 adaptation of their own beloved classic THE JUNGLE BOOK currently holds a robust 95% critic rating on RottenTomatoes. It's host score on We Want The D is...somewhat less than that. Opinions are divided on multiple fronts; is this an achievement in animation or a movie that only looks good on the big screen? Is there an interesting blend of story from the original Rudyard Kipling books and the 1967 animated classic, or is it more awkwardly paced with large chunks that serve no purpose? Did they absolutely nail the voice acting, or are there more than a few unfulfilled expectations? Vicky, Nolan and Jill each reach their own conclusions, but the one thing they can all agree is that this installment doesn't come near the original 1967 adaptation and has all of us more than a little skittish about Disney's remake-heavy future. Only time can tell what those movies will look like, though, so until then we'll take solace in the beloved media of our youth, like classic Disney and Law & Order episodes.

It's been awhile since we've talked about a legitimate classic in the Disney animated canon, and Vicky, Nolan and Jill could think of no better installment to explore than a personal favourite for all of our hosts - The Sword in the Stone. It's got all the hallmarks of classic Disney - great animation, songs by the Shermans and memorable characters like Merlin, Mad Madame Mim and the new We Want The D mascot, Archimedes. It's also got a lot for our hosts to really dig into, like the possible tyrannical rule of Woolie Reitherman as a solo director, fat horny squirrels, and a strategic breakdown of a wizard's duel. A classic movie makes for a classic podcast, so get ready to blast off to Bermuda with us this week on We Want The D!

We're no strangers to controversy here at We Want The D. We've watched Peter Pan, Dumbo, The Sign of Zorro and many other Disney movies that have had less-than-ideal depictions of diverse peoples. But we've always managed to find solace in the fact that those movies are from another time, when attitudes and perceptions were more ignorant and less developed. So when it comes to 2013's THE LONE RANGER, we are at a bit of a loss in how anyone involved thought this movie was a-ok in its depiction of indigenous people, particularly in agreeing to let Johnny Depp star as Tonto. The result is our longest episode yet, which feels appropriate for a two and half hour movie that has so much to unpack we still feel like we left much of it unexplored at the end.

What would you do with a million dollars? Wait, let's be more specific: what would you do if you were a young boy with a million dollars in 1994? Your imagination may be running wild; but when Disney attempted to answer this simple question with BLANK CHECK, things somehow went horribly wrong. This week on We Want The D, Vicky, Nolan and Jill are providing a little education to go along with our regular goofs and gaffes, as we pick apart this movie the way it truly deserves - by seeing if it follows the fifteen essential beats every movie should adhere to as laid out by this film's very own author, Blake Snyder. Author of one of the most popular books on the craft of screenwriting, Snyder's work here may be (kinda) structurally sound, but you have to question what was going through his head when he came up with ideas for his pint-sized protagonist like a Roots fashion shows with his middle-aged limo driver or a romantic dinner date with a woman old enough to know better than to flirt with a prepubescent boy.

It's been awhile since we visited the first decade of Disney's theatrical films, and our return to that early era of Disney is a somewhat rocky one. Maybe not as rocky as the circumstances under which many of those films were made - what with all the World War Two and propaganda demands going on at the time. But when you cobble together an anthology movie based on some pseudo-thought-out ideas all centered generally around the concept of music, you're gonna end up with mixed results. Enter MAKE MINE MUSIC, a collection of shorts that range from delightful and inventive to barely coherent and boring. Vicky, Nolan and Jill have grades to pass out to each segment in this week's We Want The D, and while there is a healthy mix of successes and failure, the overall assignment feels like a miss; especially when the theme of music seems secondary to all the sex and death.

This week on We Want The D, Vicky Nolan and Jill are looking at a movie all about adolescents with special abilities going off to school, where they are sorted into different categories immediately upon arrival, and having them struggle with navigating the social awkwardness of high school coupled with the return of a villain long-thought defeated. That's right, we're going all way to Hogwarts for this special episo- wait, what's that? This isn't a movie about wizard school? Oh, right, it's super hero school. You know, the Disney movie about a high school for kids with super powers. And the school is in a giant floating building in the sky. A high school...in the sky...it's Sky High!