As I mention in the video, this is a rewatch. However, since this is my first time reviewing it on this blog, according to my new rules, it gets a video only review.
I haven't really talked much about the Zorro TV serieson this blog before. (Although I mentioned it in passing HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.) But Disney's Zorro series was a big part of my childhood.
The show was originally on TV in 1957-1959, before my time, but reruns of the show were a staple of the Disney channel in the 1980s.
At some point, I would love to do a watch through of the whole series, from beginning to end, and add it to my TV show review project. But that's going to have to be a project reserved for the distant future, at this point. For one thing, I don't have a lot of free time these days with two young kids. For another thing, I don't have any way of getting ahold of the whole series out here in Vietnam. Even if I was back in the US, it might be difficult to track down the whole series. According to Wikipedia:
Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released the entire series on DVD in Region 1 on November 3, 2009, under their Walt Disney Treasures banner featuring several bonus features.[7] however like many other Disney releases it was available for a limited time, before entering moratorium and put back in the Disney Vault along with the other Walt Disney Treasures DVD sets.
But nevertheless, watching the whole Zorro series all the way through is one of my someday projects.
I watched a lot of Zorro as a kid, but of course the nature of TV back then is that you just tuned in when you could, and you could catch the odd episode, but it was very difficult to follow the whole storyline.
You see, the old Zorro TV series had storylines. Each episode was independent in that each episode had its own mini-conflict, and it's own climax (there was always a fight at the end in which Zorro won), but it was also part of a larger story-arc which (if memory serves) was typically about 6 episodes long.
[Sidenote 1: Conventional wisdom is that television couldn't get away with serialized storylines until DVDs and streaming services emerged, which allowed viewers to catch up on the back-episodes that they had missed, and keep up with the story. Which is why TV shows were always episodic in my childhood in the 1980s, but nowadays every TV episode is always part of a longer story arc. But I wonder... was there a brief window at the beginning of television in the 1950s when serialized storylines were more common? Or was Zorro just ahead of its time?]
Now, the storylines at the beginning of the Zorro series were relatively simple. An evil Comandante would oppress the townsfolk. Zorro would foil the Comandante's evil plans for about 6 episodes. Then eventually the Comandante would be killed. Then a new Comandante would take his place. There would be a brief period of optimism in which the townspeople hoped that this Comandante would be good. But then, he would turn out to be just as oppressive as his predecessor, and Zorro would have to fight the new Comandante.
I actually saw the first several story arcs in order. You see, during the 1980s, the Disney channel was mostly using Zorro as filler during the weekdays. But then, at one point, they moved it to their prime-time slot on Friday nights, and they made a big deal about how they were going to start at episode, one, and show the series in order, one episode a week.
I think I saw the first 4 story arcs in order this way (which equals about 24 episodes). But I never made it through the whole series.
I'm not sure if I got distracted and stopped watching, or if the Disney channel might have given up on the idea, and gone back to just showing Zorro in the afternoons. I think it was the latter, but I don't remember. It could also have been that there was some sort of change in my schedule, and I wasn't able to watch Zorro on Friday nights. (As a child, it was hard to be dedicated to watching any TV show, because my mother had this crazy idea that life was not to be arranged around TV schedules. There were real-life events, like school, soccer games, church, youth group, family gatherings, etc, and all of them were to be given priority over TV schedules. If a family gathering was scheduled for a night when Zorro was on TV, so much the worse for Zorro.)
So anyways, I made it through roughly the first 3 or 4 story arcs in the Zorro series in order. But the other episodes, I just caught on weekday afternoons at random when I could.
And despite only running for 2 seasons, there were a lot of episodes. According to Wikipedia, 39 episodes per season. So, about 80 episodes. Plus the follow-up specials.
[Sidenote 2: Boy, they sure did crank out the TV episodes back in the day, didn't they? Strange to think about nowadays when we're so used to thinking about a season of a TV series being 10 episodes. (Of course, that's prestige TV I'm thinking off. Maybe the regular sitcoms are still being cranked out weekly. I don't know, I've been abroad for so long I'm out of touch with regular TV schedules.) But still, 39 episodes a season is quite a schedule, isn't it? And I know they didn't spend a lot of money on special effects, but all those fight scenes must have taken time to choreograph, right?
Actually speaking of fights, that brings me to Sidenote 3: Whatever happened to all those great stage fight scenes that used to be in old TV shows? Is it just me, or is the action in TV shows nowadays really boring? As I noted in my retrospective on Star Trek, I really like the choreography of the big stage fight scenes, that used to be so common in TV shows in the 50s and 60s. Why did this go out of style?]
...where was I?
Ah, yes, the point being that as a kid I never saw the whole series straight through, and so would just pick up bits and pieces of random storylines. And although the early storylines were very simple (there's a new Comandante in town, Zorro has to fight him), somewhere along the line things must have started to get more complex.
For example, I remember in second grade tuning into an episode of Zorro one afternoon, and watching An Eye for an Eye (Season 2 Episode 7), in which the viewer is dropped into a storyline about a little civil war going on between Governor Luis Rico and his men and the bandit Joaquin Castenada and his men. Zorro is caught in the middle of this little war, and tries to keep the peace between both sides.
It's clear from the beginning of the episode that this is a conflict that had already been established in previous episodes. But where did Joaquin Castenada and his gang come from? How did this little war get started? What episodes had I missed?
I suppose some people would be frustrated by this, but as a child I was fascinated by this. I was captivated by the idea that there was this larger, richer story out there somewhere, and that I could only get little glimpses of it, but that by digging around a bit, I could hope to gradually uncover more of it. (That is, if I kept watching Zorro episodes, maybe someday I'd discover more about who Joaquin Castenada was, and how this whole conflict got started in the first place.)
...although, that being said, I still to this day have not yet watched the whole storyline of Joaquin Castenada and his gang. But someday I'll track down and watch the whole series!
[Sidenote 4: I've been googling it now, and it's hard to find a lot of information on the Internet about this storyline. Although I did find this article HERE which claims that the storyline was based off of real-life outlaw Joaquin Murrieta, but seen through the conservative lens of 1950s Hollywood:
In the late 1950s, the hero of Walt Disney’s TV series Zorro, played by Guy Williams, was often seen as the “good” rebel while Joaquin Castaneda, clearly modeled on Joaquin Murieta, was presented as the example of the irresponsible “bad” rebel who Zorro constantly had to lecture to and keep in line.
...the same article goes on to say that Joaquin Murieta was also a character in 2005's The Mask of Zorro:
In an ingenious touch, the screenwriters of The Mask of Zorro had Joaquin Murieta’s brother, Alejandro, played by Antonio Banderas, become the new Zorro after Joaquin’s death.
But all of that is simply a digression. The point of this post is that I wanted to talk about a failed 1983 TV series called Zorro and Son which was supposed to Disney's follow up to the 1958 Zorro series.
In 1983 a comedy follow-up, Zorro and Son, aired on CBS. The series was shot in color on many of the same studio lots where the original was filmed. Featuring none of the original cast (Gene Sheldon and Henry Calvin had passed away by then, while Guy Williams walked out after a script dispute), the show performed poorly in the ratings.
1983 was actually during my lifetime, but I was still young and don't really have any memories of this show being a thing. (Although, this was only a few years before I got really into Disney's Zorro. And I think I do vaguely recall my dad or somebody saying to me that there had been a sequel to Zorro about Zorro's son, that it was supposed to be a comedy, and that it wasn't very good. So I guess I was vaguely aware of it.
Episodes of the show can be found on Youtube. Of course.
I've just watched the first one now, and I've got to say, it's not very good.
The general concept is okay, but the problem is that it's just not funny. Like, really not funny. Like, the jokes are so cringe!
Well, that's the problem with writing comedy, huh? You can have a really good idea for a sitcom, but actually making it funny is a difficult business.
Part of me thinks it's too bad that Guy Williams couldn't be convinced to come back for this role. (It would've been nice to see him as Zorro one last time.) But part of me recognizes it's probably for the best he didn't come back for this.
(Plus, I don't really need to see him one last time as Zorro. I still have 80 episodes of the original TV show I need to catch up on first!)
Despite good ratings (#30 in Season 1 with a 26.6 rating), the series ended after two seasons due to a financial dispute between Disney and the network over ownership of Zorro, Mickey Mouse Club, and the Disney anthology television series (at the time titled Disneyland). During the legal battle, Disney produced four new hour-long Zorro adventures of the franchise, aired on the anthology series: Zorro: El Bandido (October 30, 1960); Zorro: Adios El Cuchillo (November 6, 1960); Zorro: The Postponed Wedding (January 1, 1961); and Zorro: Auld Acquaintance (April 2, 1961). Guy Williams was kept on full salary during this period. But by the time Disney and ABC resolved their differences, Walt Disney decided that public interest in the character had flagged. Disney continued to pay $3,500 per year until 1967 to retain the television rights.[5]
As a kid, I had always assumed the character of Zorro had a legacy in books and folklore. I was surprised, when I looked on Wikipedia, to see how scanty his legacy really is.
Zorro is not some old folk legend that dates back to colonial times, but a rather recent pulp fiction character created in 1919. And he only appeared in one novel before he started getting adapted to screen (although more short stories did come afterwards):
Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford, on their honeymoon, selected the story as the inaugural picture for their new studio, United Artists, beginning the character's cinematic tradition.[citation needed] The novel was adapted as the film The Mark of Zorro (1920), which Fairbanks produced, co-wrote and starred in as Diego/Zorro. The movie was a commercial success,[2] and the 1924 reprint of McCulley's story by publisher Grosset & Dunlap used the same title, capitalizing on the movie's popularity. The novel has since been reprinted using both titles.
In response to public demand fueled by the film, McCulley wrote more than sixty more Zorro stories, beginning in 1922 with The Further Adventures of Zorro, which was also serialized in Argosy All-Story Weekly.
Given my childhood interest in Zorro, it's on my someday reading list to read the original novel. It's on project Gutenberg now, and I did buy a Kindle for precisely this kind of thing. Maybe I could even squeeze it in this year for Garbaugust? We'll see.
[Note: It sometimes gets confusing determining what is a canonical Disney animated film, and what is not, so I used this wikipedia page--List of Disney theatrical animated feature films--as my guide. They included not only films from Disney studio, but also Pixar, Disney MovieToons, Studio Ghibli, et cetera. So I'll just follow their example, and include everything.]
Background--The First Incredibles
I was already an adult when the first Incredibles came out, so I can't claim childhood nostalgia for this series. Although I agree with Mike Ryan, who writes: "It’s one of those movies that kind of feels like it’s always been around. As family movies go, The Incredibles is canon."
I didn't see The Incredibles right when it first came out. I waited a couple years, and then, once I began to get wind of all the praise the film was gathering, I finally caught it on DVD. (I think I must have seen it somewhere around 2006--before I started my movie review project).
Like everyone else in the world, I was impressed. The opening scene was so action packed, and yet so funny at the same time. I couldn't believe all the great jokes and one-liners that they crammed into a pretty impressive opening action scene.
The ending climax also impressed me. The pace of the action just kept increasing and increasing.
(I feel like this film was even more impressive when I first saw it 12 years ago, because I think since then the ending climax scenes in animated movies have just kept getting bigger and bigger, and The Incredibles doesn't stand out as much as it used to. But maybe that's just me. What do you guys think?)
...anyway, onto Incredibles 2
Positives
* Everyone knows we have too many superhero movies nowadays. But what makes The Incredibles so fun is that it's not just another superhero movie. It's a brilliant mash-up of retro 60s kitsch. It's Dr. No, plus Johnny Quest, plus The Outer Limits. (I'm not claiming special insight for noticing these--the movie wears it's influences on its sleeve. Johnny Quest and The Outer Limits are even in the movie itself, but I think the stylistic influences are also throughout the movie, not only in the brief scenes in which The Outer Limits and Johnny Quest play on the TV.)
* Related to the above point--the animation in this film is great. Not only from a technical standpoint, but also great from a stylistic standpoint-- perfectly recreating the mood of that 60s kitsch I mentioned above. Not only great mood and lighting, but also great retro style flying jets and secret lairs.
And that fight in Screenslaver's apartment was perfect eerie moodsetting.
* The ending climax of this movie was really exciting.
I think the director was cheating slightly. The quick cuts and dramatic theme music made it seem as if the action was more intense and exciting than it actual was. But... if it works, then it's fair game. I felt like it was a really exciting climax.
* Perhaps not quite as funny as the first Incredibles but... some good laughs were had along the way.
The Review
Most of the reviews I've read about this movie are really positive. Although a few are bitterly negative (for example this guy HERE, whose opinion I normally agree with).
In my opinion, The Incredibles 2 did the best job it could with the hand it was dealt.
The problem was that the original Incredibles was a premise that was only really good for one movie to begin with. All of the wonder, and all of the laughs, in the first movie came from setting up this family of zany superheroes and their world. A superhero struggling through a midlife crisis at an insurance company was comedy gold the first time around. But then once that joke was used up, it was gone.
We can't go through the fun of rediscovering these characters again. The only thing that the sequel possibly could do was send these already established characters out on a new adventure.
So, given that this was the only option the movie had open, I think they did a fantastic job with it. What a great second adventure for these characters.
Other Notes
* Some interesting philosophical discussions in this movie, huh? Pretty deep stuff for a kid's movie.
Brad Bird is (according to the Internet) a devotee of Ayn Rand. As I wrote in my book review of Ayn Rand, I don't agree with her, but I don't hate her completely. I do like the part of her ideas about the individual being valued.
* Since The Incredibles is set in the early 60s, before everyone had laptops and smartphones, Screenslaver seems a bit anachronistic.
But, I read an interview with Brad Bird (forgot where) in which he says that when he was a kid back in the 1960s, parents and teachers were always telling them not to watch too much TV.
Indeed, the dawn of the television would probably be when people were most concerned about the effects of the television screen. Now television is just normal.
So in that respect, the 1960s is a perfect setting for Screenslaver.
(Like most people of my generation, I am an addict to the television screen. Even though I hate myself for it. As I've often blogged about.)
* See Whisky's thoughts on the first Incredibles movie HERE. As always, Whisky provides some interesting food for thought.
Rating : 9 out of 10 Stars. (Not as good as the original, but the best sequel that could be hoped for.)
I'm running out of ideas. So for the next movie, I gave my students a choice of 5 movies to vote on, and I put Atlantis on the list.
I had never seen Atlantis before. I know it had gotten mixed reviews, but at the same time I always thought it looked kind of cool. So I decided to take a chance on it. And the students voted for it.
The Review Over-All
This was an experiment for Disney--an action/adventure animated film. And experiments are always interesting, even if they don't work out.
I mean, they could've so easily gone with another princess story with cute animals.
This movie, in the end, doesn't work out. But seeing Disney try to pull this off is so fascinating that, for all it's faults, I can't hate the movie entirely.
Part of the problem is the mix of genres. This film can never really decide if it wants to be for 10-12 year old boys or for little kids. And so it tries to do both--violent action scenes for the preteen crowd, but silly cartoon gags for the little kids.
The resulting confusion shows itself on screen. It's clearly a movie that doesn't know what it wants to be. But that's part of the fascination as well.
The action sequences are impressive for their animation quality. The camera zooms around following flying ships and submarines through tunnels and caverns. (Somebody obviously spent a lot of time working on the animation for this movie. And I assume computers helped.)
But at the same time, the action sequences are a little bit too busy. It's sometimes confusing telling what's going on with all the vehicles flying around, and the explosions.
I should note that this isn't actually Disney's first attempt to go after the 10 year old boy market--see also Treasure Planet, and The Black Cauldron.
But even compared with those other movies, Atlantis is by far the most violent.
There's actually a fairly high body count in this movie. Most of the crew that starts out on the expedition dies along the way.
(Albeit we never see anyone we know die--all of the deaths are faceless extras. And most of the deaths happen off-screen. You see the explosion, but you don't see the dead bodies. But still...)
And the ending sequence I'm fairly sure sets a record for "most machine guns fired in a Disney animated movie".
Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Well... who knows. 10 year old boys will love it. (And the movie went over fairly well with all the 10 year old boys in my classroom).
As someone who was once a 10-year-old boy myself, part of me can't help but feel that this is exactly the type of movie I would have loved to see at 10 years old, and to view it fondly for that.
But the older part of me wonders if this might be another marker in our culture's "loss of innocence"--when even Disney movies become filled with machine guns and explosions.
I'll get around to nitpicking other aspects of it down below.
Atlantis
I've always been fascinated by the myth of Atlantis. And if pop-culture is anything to go by, other people are as well. (Back when I lived in the United States, I remember the History channel regularly used to run documentaries in which experts debated about the truth of Atlantis.)
Of course the basic concept is fascinating--an entire civilization lost to history.
But there's something even more fascinating about the antiquity and vagueness of the myth.
A lot of the ancient myths feel like they could have some historical value--that they could be mankind's earliest historical record. The truth may have been distorted over the years, but there could just be a nugget of truth behind the mythology. (Well, after all, Schliemann found Troy, didn't he?)
Maybe... just maybe... in the mists of antiquity, there was a real lost ancient island civilization out there.
(Yes, I know, most scholars think that Plato was just using Atlantis as an allegory, and that it doesn't come from an ancient oral tradition. But it's fun to imagine anyway.)
This fascination with Atlantis is no doubt why so many movies and TV shows have attempted to depict Atlantis over the years.
But almost none of them have pulled it off.
The problem is that the myth of Atlantis is at its most fascinating when it's mysterious.
When filmmakers try to show Atlantis on the screen, what they project is never quite as interesting as the mystery of the original myth.
...so all that is to say, I think it was bound to disappoint no matter what depiction of Altantis Disney had decided to go for. It was a no-win situation.
But that being said, they really blew it with this one. An Atlantis populated by crystals, and strange alien technology, and giant robots, and forcefields, and flying vehicles. Who wants to see that?
First of all, it takes away all the air of antiquity that lent the myth so much fascination in the first place.
But second of all, the whole thing makes no sense from top to bottom.
Where does this technology come from? Why is it so advanced?
Why can no one in Atlantis read any longer?
Why are they submerged in the ocean? What exactly happened?
What is going on with this crystal thing?
The movie doesn't even try to explain any of this. In fact the movie itself knows it doesn't make sense. It's own characters admit as much.
ROURKE: Talk to me, Thatch. What's happening?
MILO: Look, all it says here is that the crystal is alive somehow. It I don't know how to explain it. It's their deity. It's their power source.
ROURKE: Speak English, professor.
MILO: They're part of it. It's a part of them. I'm doing the best I can here.
....and that's all the explanation the viewer gets. Some strange thing about crystals, which nobody really understands even inside of the movie.
Now, this needn't be a huge problem. (There are plenty of science fiction movies which don't entirely make sense). Except that the movie spends so much time on it's own mythology. If the mythos of Altantis had simply been in the background, I wouldn't complain about it so much. But because the movie spends so much time on it, I wanted it to make sense.
There were so many long animated sequences in which the crystal transforms a character, or transforms the city. These sequences can go on for 2 or 3 minutes without any dialogue, while mysterious music is playing in the background.
These sequences are really boring to watch, in large part because the whole world of Atlantis makes no sense.
Characters
I've read a lot of other reviews that complained about how boring all of the characters are in this movie.
I'm somewhat on the fence about this one. Yes, most of the characters are under-developed. Most of them just have a funny gag, and one line of backstory, and that's all the characterization they get.
But, on the other hand, it is a cartoon movie after all. Most cartoon characters aren't really that deep. If they have one funny gag, that's usually enough.
Part of the problem is that this movie is juggling too many characters, which means we spend too much time getting introduced to characters who are never developed. (This is probably because Disney was originally planning on using this movie as a springboard for a TV show that never materialized (W). So presumably they were more concerned about future character potential than actually developing these characters in this movie.)
That being said, visually at least, these characters are broadly interesting as archetypes. They at least remind you of a rich tradition of pulp fiction. Rourke is perfect as the tough-guy adventurer. Helga is great as the femme fatale.
Audrey and Sweet seem like characters who could be interesting if they were developed.
And Vinny is just there for comic relief, but to give credit, he is pretty funny. (I love his deadpan delivery).
Rating
I debated between 3 and 4 stars. It's 3 stars on the merits. (There's a lot of flaws in it.) But it's probably 4 stars on the watchability factor. (For all its faults, it's still pretty watchable).
And it went over well with my class of 10 year olds, so it's doing well with its target audience. 4 Stars it is.
Jules Verne
So, apparently this movie was inspired by the novels Jules Verne.
In my opinion, the influence is distant. (It's a very loose inspiration). But for what it's worth, here are my reviews of Jules Verne--Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Around the World in Eighty Days. LINKS SF Debris absolutely nails this movie. He says everything there is to say about it. Recommend watching his review instead of wasting time on mine.
Background
This movie came out in 1995. It's kind of based on The Goof Troop TV show.
I'm just seeing it now.
More Background / My History with the Franchise
This movie is based off of The Goof Troop TV show.
Kind of. Although they did sort of reboot things for the movie. They changed some of the voice actors, got rid of some of the characters from the TV show (e.g. Peg, Pistol), and added in some new characters for the movie (Roxanne, Bobby, Stacy).
[Sidenote: I read online somewhere that part of the reason Disney retooled and recast the original premise for the theatrical version is because the Ducktales movie had under-performed at the box office, making the studio leery of directly transferring another show to the big screen.]
The Goof Troop TV show premiered on the Disney Channel when I was in 8th Grade. And I did watch the TV show.
8th Grade is right about that age where you're beginning to feel embarrassed about watching cartoons, but you still watch them anyway. (I trust I'm not just speaking for myself here, right?)
Plus, I had always been a huge Disneyphile growing up, so I was keen to keep track of what the Disney characters were up to, even if I did feel like I was outgrowing it a bit.
I liked Goof Troop. I don't remember it quite as fondly as some of the other Disney Afternoon Cartoons, but that could have been because this one came out right when I was growing out of the whole thing. But Goof Troop was good Saturday Morning Cartoon fare. It was a suburban comedy, which was different than the usual adventure-driven plot of shows like Ducktales, but it was different in just the right way. It was funny seeing Goofy's life in the suburbs, and I remember each episode usually had a big wacky slapstick finish (e.g. an out of control fire engine careens around the neighborhood, etc.)
A Goofy Movie, however, came out 3.5 years later, which was right around the time I was graduating from high school. At 18, I was definitely too old to be interested in this movie, and gave it a pass.
I do remember reading a couple reviews of it when it came out. (Just because I read reviews of all new movies). And I remember reviewers panning it at the time.
And, I've got to say, although the Nostalgia Critic's review was my first hint of this, searching around a bit on the Internet has confirmed this for me. There are a lot of dedicated fans of this movie among the under 25 crowd.
I'm too old to remember A Goofy Movie fondly, but of course I understand the phenomenon easily enough. I am also nostalgic for all kinds of cartoons from my own youth--even the ones that weren't really all that great.
It's a funny thing nostalgia. It prevents each generation from ever objectively viewing the media of their childhood, and it has a way of making today's trash into tomorrow's nostalgic classics.
You know all those stupid kids movies that everyone is complaining about nowadays? Twilight, and The Emoji Movie and Peter Rabbit? In 20 years they'll all be fondly remembered as classics by the generation that grew up with them.
(I'm given to understand that the same thing has happened with the Star Wars prequels. People who were 5 years old when they came out are now full-grown adults now, and many of them don't understand what the problem with the prequels are.)
Anyways...where was I again? Oh right, A Goofy Movie Why I Watched This Movie
In spite of what The Nostalgia Critic said about this movie having become a cult classic, I felt no particular desire to watch the whole thing through from beginning to end. (The Nostalgia Critic's summary of the movie more than satiated any curiosity I might have had). If left to my own devices, I would never have watched this movie.
But, I ended up watching this movie because I my class voted to watch it.
I've been doing a lot of movie worksheets in my classes the past couple years.
I used to just pick the movies myself. (My general philosophy is to never let the students pick the movie). But over the past year my students have gotten increasingly picky about the movie, so I've had to do compromise more and more. I've started providing them with a list of 6 movies, and they vote on which one they want to do.
The last time around, I decided to include A Goofy Movie as one of the choices. Even though I had never seen it myself, I was influenced by the Nostalgia Critics video, and how this movie had become such a classic with the generation that grew up with it. There must be something in it that would appeal to the target audience, right?
Well, my class voted to do this movie. So over the past couple months we watched it in class (about 5 minutes per class with a worksheet). And now that we're all finished with the whole thing, here's my movie review.
The Review
So... with apologies to the fans of this movie, I didn't think it was anything special.
Sorry.
I mean, I get the "being nostalgic for the movies of your childhood" thing. I really do. But for me, watching this movie for the first time at 39, it didn't have quite the same impact.
Which is not to say it's a bad movie. It's a perfectly serviceable as a cartoon. It's about everything you'd expect A Goofy Movie to be.
There are a few good laughs, some decent slapstick, and a suitable wacky ending with a careening out-of-control car.
But, the movie never really feels like a real movie. It feels like an hour long version of the TV show.
It works great as a home video, but I would sure have felt cheated if I had driven to the theater during its initial theatrical release.
This movie was produced by DisneyToons Studios, which you may remember, was responsible for a plague of Disney sequels during the late 1990s.
As, as Lindsay Ellis says in her video essay on Disney Sequels the big problem with all of these movies was that they were produced by TV people, and they all had the pacing of a TV show and the stakes of a TV episode.
And boy is that ever true of A Goofy Movie. The animation quality is a bit better than the Goof Troop TV show, but the plot, pacing, and stakes are geared much more for the small screen than for the big screen.
In fact, the plot is so thin that it can barely cover the 78 minute running time.
The plot is about Goofy's attempt to reconnect with his teenage son over the course of a road trip. But it's one of those movies where (in order to pad the run-time) the relationship keeps going up and down. They start out on horrible terms. Then they come to appreciate each other. Then, something will happen to reset the relationship, and they'll be back to being on horrible terms again. (By my count, the relationship went from bad to good and then reset again 3 times over the course of the movie).
But, my students (8-10 years old) loved it. They laughed at all the gags. They kept commenting throughout the movie: "Teacher, it's so funny!" And they broke into applause at the end. So the film does seem to hit all the right notes with its target audience.
Other Notes
* Pauly Shore is in this movie. (He plays Max's friend Bobby). And he's doing his typical drugged-out-surfer voice shtick.
I absolutely hated Pauly Shore in the 1990s, when he was everywhere. I thought he was the most annoying thing ever.
But... he's actually alright in this movie.
After watching this movie, I've decided that the key to Pauly Shore is that he works best in small doses. He should never have starred in any of his own movies, but he works fine as a side character. A little bit of his shtick goes a long ways.
Rating : 5 out of 10 Stars (Absolutely nothing wrong with this movie--it hits all the notes you'd expect it to hit--but nothing great about it either. A solid 5 for being average).
(Movie Review--Thoughts After Re-watching)
