We Want The D

In many ways, THOSE CALLOWAYS is a subversion of your typical Disney movie. Rather than a dead mother, Lydia Calloway may be one of the best and strongest mother/wife figures we've seen. Rather than a happy family singing and dancing together, the Calloways have real issues with anger, alcohol and finances. Sadly, in other ways it's all too typical of Disney, especially when it comes to the studio's proclivity towards casual animal abuse. And there's the whole thing with Bucky Calloway turning from a sweet, if rather clueless boy into a raging, toxic male. And, craziest of all, their inexplicable love for God's worst creation. It's a mixed bag, is what we're saying. 

Happy 250th episode, D-Lovers! Your votes were cast and in a narrow victory THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE won out to be the subject of this landmark episode - and you won't hear any of our hosts complaining. One of the most uniquely funny movies in Disney's animated canon, the only thing Vicky, Nolan and Jill love more than getting to share our collective adoration for this film is getting to deep-dive into the lesser-known story of the troubled development and production process this movie faced - and not only because it allows them to dunk on Sting for over 90 minutes.

It's one thing for Disney to be remaking their classics, but what happens when they decide to remake one of their relatively lesser-known films? Like say, one that heavily featured child abuse and alcoholism? Well in 2016 they did just that with PETE'S DRAGON, and the results may just surprise you - as they certainly surprised our hosts.

We're killing two films with one podcast this week on We Want The D, but not by doing an original and a remake the way we have in the past. This time, we're looking at SALUDOS AMIGOS, a four-movie package film from the early 1940s; and the 2008 documentary Disney made about the making of said package film, WALT & EL GRUPO. One wouldn't necessarily think the latter deserves the former, but it turns out the documentary is quite illuminating as to just why Disney made not one, but two movies of seemingly disconnected, cute but often generic short films set in South America. Plus is gives Vicky, Nolan and Jill an excuse to dive back into the psychology of Walter Elias Disney, one of our hosts' favourite pastimes. 

It's been a minute since We Want The D took a trip to the old west, and on paper, going there with none other than Roddy McDowall seems like a promising proposition for prospecting fun. Is Disney's THE ADVENTURES OF BULLWHIP GRIFFIN one of the better Disney westerns we've watched? That's definitely an argument that can be made. Is it a rollicking good time from start to finish worth a viewer's time and attention? Well, depends which host you ask. 

Ah the 90s. A time when eyebrows were skinny, you could bring metal objects in your carry-on on international flights, and films co-starring apes were all the rage in family entertainment. Of course Disney had to hop on that train as well, and do it bigger and better than anyone else with MIGHTY JOE YOUNG. Starring a massive gorilla and a fresh-faced Charlize Theron, is this movie a time capsule or a timeless classic? Vicky, Nolan and Jill discuss the film, as well as take a very necessary detour to pay homage to the late, great Bill Paxton.

We all know that Disney is a little remake-crazy, but it wasn't until this week's episode that it really sunk in HOW crazy. Because it turns out that UNIDENTIFIED FLYING ODDBALL is the third time we're watching a Disney adaptation of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court in less than a year. But because this first adaptation (that we know of...) is from the 1970s, instead of a teenage boy or Whoopi, it's just some dude who travels "back in time" to Camelot to thwart the evil machinations of Merlin and Jim Dale, befriend an elderly King Arthur and his hetero(?) life mate, and totally weird out a poor peasant woman with his terrible notions of romance. Yet somehow this is still the best version of the story we've seen (so far...) - go figure.

All good things must come to an end, and so it is with no small amount of sadness that we bid farewell to our beloved Hayley Mills AKA Hayley Brando AKA the greatest child actor Disney ever had. THAT DARN CAT! was Hayley's last theatrical film for Disney, and to our hosts' delight they knocked it out of the park. There's great character actor faces, hilarious physical comedy, and even a fresh-faced Dean Jones brings his A-game in his first Disney role. Parting may be such sweet sorrow, but this movie definitely made it more sweet than bitter. 

The first two movies in Disney's Witch Mountain franchise were...wild to say the least. Between the flying winnebagos, the mind control devices and endless shots of cars reversing and peeling away, the movies were a barrage of strangeness. What we're saying is, RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN has quite the legacy. And while strange in its own special way - with nonsensical cameos, Men in Black antagonists and casualty-less train explosions - it does end up fitting quite cleanly into this era of family-friendly movies from Rock "The Dwayne" Johnson.

Gotta say, D-Lovers, we don't think Disney was trying particularly hard with this one. THE CASTAWAY COWBOY asks what would happen if a mid-nineteenth century Texas cowboy washed up on the shore of a Hawaiian island, and helped a widow convert her land from failing potato farm to thriving cattle ranch. The answer - not a whole lot. This time, it's more about the unintentional questions. Like, how far can our hosts' patience be stretched by a child actor who can only screech his lines? Or, how easily can Vincent McEveety get away with shooting a daring midnight cattle raid while filming at high noon?

Ah the hubris of humankind. It's something that makes us do crazy things like try to send people into space, or travel to inhospitable locations and attempt to survive, just because we can. But try telling that to driven space rock scientist Bruce Greenwood, on the hunt for his latest space rock in a frigid wasteland; or a guilt-ridden Paul Walker, desperate to get back to his Antarctic base. To tell them "no" would be...well it would be about as pointless as telling Vicky not to love a movie about dogs. Which brings us to Disney's EIGHT BELOW...

Look, D-Lovers; after two hundred and forty episodes, we know that when our hosts say that some obscure Disney movie from the 1970s has some of the craziest, non-family friendly things we've ever seen in a movie watched for this podcast, it's not really surprising anymore. It was a wild time for the film studio - you know it, we know it. But when Vicky, Nolan and Jill say that TREASURE OF MATECUMBE has, without a doubt, the craziest sequence we've seen possibly in any movie - just know that it far surpasses anything you could possibly imagine.

We all know the story of CINDERELLA by now, right? Heck, our hosts have seen four different versions of her story at this point. So no point in regaling you with how this Disney movie is a foot fetishists dream come true, or that it's weird that Cinderella's only friends are rodents and small birds. That's not to say there's nothing to say about the movie that was essentially the test run for the modern Disney remake...we're just saying don't stop us if you've heard this one before.

Whether it was on Nickelodeon or a Disney channel, there's a good chance you may have some fond memories of watching Doug Funnie and the other citizens of Bluffington on television. Of course after the series was bought by Disney, it was only a matter of time before the machinations of Michael Eisner wrought a theatrically released film in the form of DOUG'S 1st MOVIE. The question is, does any of it hold up? Find out, this week on We Want The D!

For a place known as the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia is infamous for having some of the hardest-to-please and quick-to-anger fans across all sports. And it seems some of that aggression has rubbed off on our hosts' during this week's episode on Disney's INVINCIBLE. Because Vicky, Nolan and Jill have some Big Takes on Mark Wahlberg, the NFL and (oddly) especially recreational sports. It doesn't quite get to full-contact territory or anything...but it's not that far off, either!

Step aside, Hercules (sorry, we mean Hunkules) - we've stumbled across the real greatest hero in the Disney canon. It's AMY, of course! A woman who suffered a horrible loss and channeled her grief into helping others, ditching her awful, possessive husband in the process (if it wasn't clear, this is another movie from the 1980s). While a bit heavy on the soap opera melodrama and filming techniques, our hosts were all quite taken with this film; and by the end of this week's episode you may be too.

It's another entry in the "Walt learned some history trivia so they made a movie about it" genre of Disney film this week. This time, it's about the expedition that navigated through the previously uncharted waters of the Colorado River; and if this movie is any indication immediately all went a little bit nuts and almost killed each other. It's TEN WHO DARED...or, more accurately, SIX WHO DARED AND FOUR WHO DIDN'T.

Grab your best pair of skiing jeans, D-Lovers, cause we're hitting the slopes this week with Disney's SNOWBALL EXPRESS. Featuring an all-star cast of some of our 1970s favourites - Dean Jones! Harry Morgan! Johnny Whitaker! Schuyler from the Medfield College movies! - only this time the pratfalls and hijinks all take place on a ski hill and there's lots of dangerous engine-based comedy. So, you know, a remix on a pretty familiar formula at this point. 

The first Tron was a one-of-a-kind visual odyssey into a digital world the likes of which had never been rendered. TRON: LEGACY would could be described the same way, but since technically the first Tron exists, it can't be. There are a lot of points of comparison between the two Disney films, obviously - both are visually arresting, both make even the most tech-savvy viewer feel like a grandparent trying to figure out which remote turns on the TV, both have multiple Jeff Bridges. This movie may be best enjoyed with your brain switched off so you can just enjoy the pretty lights and sounds, but unfortunately that's just not the business we're in on We Want The D.

We're returning to the magical land of Narnia this week with THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: PRINCE CASPIAN, and things sure have changed. The battles are bigger, the CGI animals are better, and Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy all suck harder. It makes this pretty bland Disney fantasy movie just as much of a slog to get through as last time, but at least the circumstances of this story allow us to get some classic We Want The D conversation going about the implication of four children who grew up to be kings and queens then being shoved back into their pubescent and pre-pubescent bodies.