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 directorial choices that we get to relish in together.
It's our 300th episode! And we couldn't be more happy to be talking about perennial underdog Disney movie TANGLED. Not only did it lose in several straight polls for past anniversary episodes, it somehow feels like this movie never quite gets its due, despite how good it is, always in the shadow of its younger, colder cousin. But no longer, as our hosts sing its praises from the top of a tower in all respects. Well...except maybe one.
At first blush, it doesn't seem like there's anything in Disney's FOLLOW ME, BOYS! that we haven't seen before. It's not the first time we've seen Kurt Russell, Fred MacMurray or Vera Miles. It's not the first time we've seen Disney create a whole small town on their studio backlot. It's not the first time we've had wacky punctuation in the title. But just because it's all been done, doesn't mean it's ever been done this well - because this movie is unexpectedly charming and affecting across the board...well, maybe not the extended war games scene, but pretty much everything else.
Not all live action remakes are created equal, and in the case of LADY AND THE TRAMP that means being a movie that has the look and feel of a direct-to-Disney+ release. That is to say, it's not all that bad as far as these remakes go, it just feels more inessential than usual. Sure, there's some dynamite voice casting, some nicely expanded roles for the non-dog characters, and it's way less racist. But while the original movie is so charming that it's an undeniable timeless classic, this one just kinda...exists in the ether of other remakes.
On the surface, Disney's RASCAL may appear to be yet another entry in the long list of Disney's "boy and his dog" movies - only this time the dog is a bandit-masked, human-handed, cute lil' raccoon. But in fact, Disney's RASCAL is actually about another one of our favourite recurring Disney themes - children who have not properly grieved the loss of a parent. In this one, all the animal hijinks, of which there are plenty, play second fiddle to the infuriatingly negligent actions of a rambling-man father, the dogged perseverance and self-sacrifice of an older sister, and the tacit understanding of a town that it might just take the whole village to properly look out for this boy and his racoon.