The story set up in the Disney TV Movie LIFE-SIZE is pretty grim. A young girl, two years out from the death of her mother, has still not properly processed her grief. Her father, rather than be there for his daughter, has thrown himself into work. As we all know, that's a recipe for any pre-teen girl to start dabbling in the occult (or metaphysics). So it's no surprise that things go from bad to worse when Lindsay Lohan accidentally brings a doll to life instead of raising her mother from the grave, resulting in the most disturbing adult love story we've seen yet.
Ol' Walt used to get inspiration for his movies from all sorts of places. His daughters beloved books, timeless folklore, heck even a mountain one time. So it's not all that surprising that when he happened to catch a performance of the Vienna Boys' Choir during his travels, he called up the studio with the latest hot idea. The result is ALMOST ANGELS, a film that is part mild early-60s Disney output, part straight-up promotional video for those high-singing Austrian boys. It's a little bit charming, a lotta bit nuts, and all-in-all pretty par for the course when it comes to our strange Disney journey so far.
If you're familiar with this movie, or the classic children's novel its based on, you probably know what is in store here. Much like our hosts, who all pretty much knew what they were getting into when they sat down to watch this movie. It's hard not to be saddened by Disney's BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA, it's sort of built-in to the story; what with poor lil' Josh Hutcherson having trouble bonding with his dad, the T1000; lil' Mary Belle and her twinkees; and lil' AnnaSophia Robb...well, you probably know. But it's also easy to be delighted by the strong performances of the child actors, the risk Disney took in faithfully adapting this story, and the always-impressive work of Weta Workshop in bringing a child's imagined world to life.
This week's episode would come with a big ol' spoiler warning for the latest in Disney's line of live action remakes, except for the fact that this new version of DUMBO is pretty predictable for anyone who has, y'know, seen a movie before. Yes, unfortunately the only surprise to be had in this film is that it somehow made it to theatres under the Disney banner, while functioning as a part-parody, part-condemnation of giant amusement parks and megalomaniacal businessmen/entertainers...something you'd think the House of Mouse would rather avoid. But here we are, so in the twice-repeated words of Michael Buffer in this movie: "Let's get ready to Dumboooooooo!"