Oh, to see the world through the eyes of this dog. A dog who loved an old shepherd so much he'd follow his slowly-dying body from the moors to the streets of Edinburgh to the Greyfriars Kirkyard. Who then was fed by a guilt-ridden restaurant, bathed by a graveyard caretaker, and played with by poor children. Who was then...dragged before the the magistrate in an ownership dispute, but got to play with a cool quill? What a life for GREYFRIARS BOBBY, and what a Disny film for our hosts to be delig...
Nov 25, 2021•58 min
We haven't been shy about our general malaise toward Disney's modern predilection for remakes and sequels that feel a bit creatively bankrupt. So imagine our surprise when we watched one of their first ever sequels, SAVAGE SAM, and discovered it's not necessarily a new trend. Ostensibly a sequel to the classic trauma vehicle Old Yeller , this movie is less a fraught coming-of-age tale about a boy and his dog and more a movie where Kevin Corcoran hurls rocks at people and animals before turning i...
Nov 18, 2021•1 hr 4 min
We're closing out another decade of Disney this week with THE LITTLEST OUTLAW. The story of a little boy and a frightened horse attempting to avoid the wrath of a Mexican General and stepfather who's a real piece of work. It's not entirely unpleasant, at least until it starts extolling the virtues of bullfighting. And because we're finished with the 1950s, we also reminisce about the highs and lows of the movies we watched from this early era of Disney.
Nov 11, 2021•1 hr
Has someone at Disney been listening to us? Seems that way, since RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON gives us a lot of what we've been wanting from modern Disney. An original story instead of a sequel or a remake? Check. A "let's get a team together" structure filled with interesting and fun characters? Check. A con artist baby who can do martial arts? You better believe that's a check. This movie isn't perfect, but it's still a whole lot of fun.
Nov 04, 2021•1 hr 6 min
We close out our October Season run of programming by closing out a Disney Channel franchise with RETURN TO HALLOWEENTOWN. And while these movies may have always been dull, cheap and dumb to varying degrees, they've never been more incoherent than in this last installment. And we're not just talking about the fact that they replaced the lead actress and literally nobody else in the reoccurring cast. So it's not a fond farewell we're paying to Halloweentown, but after sitting through four of thes...
Oct 28, 2021•1 hr
It's a spooky October Season surprise as the Summer of Muppets returns from beyond the grave. The scariest combination of words in this Disney+ special may just be "corporate synergy" as MUPPETS HAUNTED MANSION plays more as a cross-promotional advertisement for a theme park ride than a natural fit for these beloved puppet characters, but hey - it's still the Muppets getting to do stuff, so it's all ok in our books.
Oct 21, 2021•50 min
There's a feeling of October in the air, which can only mean one thing. It's time to return to Seabrook High School (AKA Jill's work building) for Z-O-M-B-I-E-S 2. And this time, there's werewolves. Who, in this universe, are all teens who wear the same jewelry and sew fur patches onto their clothes. Disney Channel Original sequels tend to be a bit better than their first iterations, but there's always going to be exceptions to the rule, and this may very well be one of those.
Oct 14, 2021•1 hr 5 min
Welcome to McFARLAND, USA - a small California town made up of a mostly Latinx community, and a new family lead by the latest in a long line of Disney old dads. Only this time, the old dad is Coach Kevin Costner and he's noticed that a lot of these local boys sure can run. Yes, it's another Disney sports movie, which of course means we're in for a good time; and maybe we'll learn one or two obvious lessons along the way as well.
Oct 07, 2021•1 hr 5 min
We've watched a lot of sub-par Disney movies over the years, but there's something different about CHICKEN LITTLE. It's a movie with so many problems that there's no way they couldn't have been apparent to the people making it, and yet nobody seems to have cared to pump the brakes and try to correct them. The result is a montage heavy, dialogue light, weird looking, strangely cast, inexplicable mess of a story that puts our hosts through the ringer.
Sep 30, 2021•1 hr 2 min
It's a classic tale of a family vacation gone awry in Disney's BON VOYAGE! A straight-laced father just wants to give his wife and children a holiday to remember, but all manner of entitled little rich boys, beach con-artists, and would-be cuckholders conspire against him to throw a wrench in their plans. And no, we didn't slip into an alternate universe where the Griswolds are somehow Disney characters, it is good ol' Fred MacMurray at the centre of all these hijinks as usual.
Sep 23, 2021•1 hr 11 min
For the first and most likely only time, we're breaking protocol on the podcast for the grand finale of the Summer of Muppets. Because Disney hasn't made enough feature-length Muppet projects (yet), we're allowing ourselves to examine the small screen sitcom THE MUPPETS.. (the period is part of the title), which aired on ABC for one season back in 2015-2016. Was this a wonderful new forum for these beloved creations that never got a fair shake, or a misstep that unfortunately put the gang back o...
Sep 16, 2021•1 hr 10 min
Based on the novel by S.E. Hinton, TEX is a thoughtful coming-of-age story about a wayward and wild teenage boy learning to think of people other than himself, and learning to be ok with saying goodbye to friends and family as they inevitably leave their small, rural Oklahoma town - even if he has to stay. If that seems a little too mature and grounded for Disney, just remember that the 1980s were a strange time for the company. One that we look back fondly at as we finish up the decade with thi...
Sep 09, 2021•1 hr 20 min
There's no shortage of movies we've watched over the course of this podcast that involve Disney putting animals in harm's way. We are still pretty sure they killed at least one horse. But THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN portends a more benign future where Disney can make movies that star animals but without the need to for there to be actual animal performers. The downside is, they've finally hit that balance of making CGI animals look realistic while still being expressive, so stories about wild animals ...
Sep 02, 2021•1 hr 6 min
For our special Minnie Mouse-isode edition of our summer series, we take a look at the man behind the Muppets. From humble beginnings to picking up puppetry on a whim to breakthroughs in children's entertainment to a highly valued and sought-after multi-media company, Jim Henson's success is undeniable. But it's his attitude and philosophies that were imbued in his work that has allowed the Muppets to thrive even beyond his untimely passing. We hope you enjoy this celebration of Jim and his coll...
Aug 19, 2021•1 hr 1 min
Go back a couple hundred episodes and you'll hear our rather lukewarm reception to the 90s live action remake of 101 Dalmatians. Take all of our comments and criticisms of that move and add one degree, and you basically have our take on 102 DALMATIANS. The leads are blander (and stupider), Glenn Close is more unhinged (and her costuming more fabulous), and the hijinks are zanier. But, the plot is basically the same, which isn't a surprise - if a movie about dog murder worked once, surely it can ...
Aug 12, 2021•1 hr 6 min
We've seen enough Disney westerns to think we've seen it all - singing cowboys, spliced-in nature footage, white people dressed up as Indigenous people, etc. And a lot of that stuff is still present and accounted for in THE WILD COUNTRY. But this particular western takes itself so seriously and uses the genre's tropes and iconography so well that we have no choice to declare it the best Disney western we've seen so far. Faint praise, perhaps, but praise nonetheless.
Aug 05, 2021•1 hr 14 min
Frequent We Want the D listeners may recall that our hosts have a lil' bit of baggage when it comes to Disney adapting the work of Mark Twain. But fear not, for their adaptation of what is called the first (or only) great American novel - THE ADVENTURES OF HUCK FINN - is a welcome break in the trend. And much like the novel it's based on, there's no shortage of analysis and discussion to be had.
Jul 29, 2021•1 hr 13 min
It's time for another one of Disney's period costume dramas, only THE FIGHTING PRINCE OF DONEGAL puts a little bit of a twist on the formula. See, while most of these types of movies were made and released in the 1950s, this one came out in 1966. What does that mean, you ask? Well, instead of starring Richard Todd, this one stars the guy who played Hayley Mills' love interest in The Moon Spinners, and...actually that about covers it.
Jul 22, 2021•58 min
The Summer of Muppets continues with the latest and to date last theatrical Muppet movie - MUPPETS MOST WANTED. If Disney's 2011 relaunch of the franchise in earnest was a heartfelt and loving tribute to the madcap gang, this follow-up is a reminder that the Muppets are capable of being absolutely off-the-wall zany in just the best way. Packed with more cameos than perhaps any other Muppet movie, more great songs, and more than it's fair share of laughs, if this is the last Muppet movie we get f...
Jul 15, 2021•1 hr 18 min
Here's the thing, D-Lovers: it's not that G-FORCE - a Disney movie that answers the unasked question "what if guinea pigs were spies?" - doesn't merit any criticism. There's far too many Black Eyed Peas needle drops for that to be the case. It's just that, in our hosts' estimation, it doesn't merit the amount of criticism it has received. Because at the end of the day, there are a lot worse spy movies than this that don't feature adorable guinea pigs adorably using tiny spy equipment. All we're ...
Jul 08, 2021•54 min
If only the differences between the original That Darn Cat! and this 90s remake was the missing explanation mark. Disappointingly, this movie doesn't really live up to its predecessor in any real way. But it's also just way, way too strange to say it's an outright bad movie. The tone is stunningly bizarre unlike anything we've seen so far on this Disney odyssey, creating more questions and rabbit holes to go down than one might expect from THAT DARN CAT.
Jul 01, 2021•1 hr 4 min
Welcome back to the 80s, D-Sciples, the most turbulent decade of Disney. They're up, they're (mostly) down, they're trying out weird things to varying degrees of success. And TRENCHCOAT is definitely one of their oddest, and to be frank least successful experiments. It's not for lack of trying, at least on the part of Margot Kidder, but it's hard to pull off a movie that's trying to spoof the spy genre and film noir while not being even a little bit funny. It would be like, oh just for example, ...
Jun 24, 2021•1 hr 5 min
We know what you're thinking, D-Lovers - "What the heck is a MOON PILOT?" That's an easy one to explain, it's another word for an astronaut. Explaining what the heck the Disney movie MOON PILOT is, however, is a more challenging question. In some ways it's a contemporary farce about the space race and red scare, in others it's a romance between an all-American chimp-minder and a French alien. Mostly, though, it's just a lot of yelling.
Jun 17, 2021•56 min
Weigh and anchor and hoist the main sail, we're heading back to the high seas with MUPPET TREASURE ISLAND! Disney's second kick at the can at a Muppet movie where they adapt a work of classic literature, will this movie measure up to the precedent set by their version of the Dickens classic, or will good ol' Robert Louis Stevenson's adventure tale come up short? For our hosts, it mostly depends who you ask, so be prepared for rough seas ahead on the Summer of Muppets!
Jun 10, 2021•1 hr 13 min
It's a landmark episode of We Want The D as our finish out our first proper decade of Disney movies. And it's somewhat appropriate that we end the 1940s with SO DEAR TO MY HEART, a movie ostensibly adapted from a book about a boy and his sheep, but as all the best early Disney movies do also provides some insight into Daddy Walt's psyche and how he viewed (or at least liked to view) his childhood.
Jun 03, 2021•1 hr 6 min
The last time we saw a Disney movie adapted from a Roald Dahl classic, we were a little dismayed at how the team behind The Nightmare Before Christmas handled the translation of James and the Giant Peach from page to screen. Surely THE BFG will fare better, though. It's decades later and it's Steven Feakin' Spielberg making his first and (to date) only Disney movie. And look, the man is one of the greatest directors of all time, there's a minimum threshold of quality that is always going to be h...
May 27, 2021•58 min
In the original Homeward Bound, Shadow, Sassy and Chance make a harrowing, one might say incredible, journey through the wilderness to be reunited with their owners, braving all manner of natural hazards and dangers. HOMEWARD BOUND II: LOST IN SAN FRANCISCO offers a somewhat different set of obstacles. Wild animals and waterfalls have been replaced by raging house fires and, er, a dog love triangle...hey, what do you expect from a mid-90s Disney sequel?
May 20, 2021•1 hr 6 min
It's time to raise the curtain on the Summer of Muppets! Our latest summer series will be a most sensational, celebrational look at the Disney films that feature these beloved Muppet characters, starting with 2011's THE MUPPETS, which was a bit of a relaunch of the brand under the Disney banner. One that our hosts find largely successful in capturing what makes this cast of characters so special, but maybe doesn't hold up quite as well as we remember from the first time we saw it. But that won't...
May 13, 2021•1 hr 14 min
If you've listened to our last few episodes, or even just take a cursory glance at the movie titles, you'll know we've been spending more than our fair share of time talking about Disney animal movies. Unfortunately, NAPOLEON AND SAMANTHA doesn't break that trend. Fortunately, however, things are a little more...exotic in this movie, and not just because the animal in question is an old, milk-loving lion. There is so, so much more than that going on in this movie that our hosts could never have ...
May 06, 2021•1 hr 11 min
Wayne Gretzky. Don Bradman. Usain Bolt. There are some athletes who are so far ahead of their peers they will likely forever hold the title of GOAT in their respective fields. But the biggest GOAT of all may be a horse - a horse named SECRETARIAT. Secretariat ran three races very fast, and as a result, a lot of rich white people got a whole lot richer, and so of course Disney made a movie about it. But while straight-forward on paper, this movie is anything but thanks to some truly bizarre direc...
Apr 29, 2021•1 hr 24 min
