My Covid-19 Disney Channel Movie Marathon

When you’re stuck at home for a long period of time, you may find yourself watching stuff you may not normally have bothered checking out. Being a huge lover of all things Disney, I thought to myself, “What better time to catch up on some fun Disney Channel Originals than during a worldwide pandemic?”

Note: When it comes to these films, there is a good chance the school is heading to the state finals, a geek or nerd will hook up with the hot popular girl, and that one or more parents are not among the living, which was almost a prerequisite for a Disney film.

Teen Beach Movie (2013): This film is a loving tribute to the Beach Blanket Bingo movies starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon of the ’60s, only with the delightful added wrinkle of our two protagonists from the “Real World” being trapped inside a cheesy beach musical called Wet Side Story.

As a concept, it’s certainly not all that original, but I truly think this film pulled it off better than what Arnie and company did with their film The Last Action Hero, and I dare anyone not to get a big grin on their faces when the two leads involuntarily burst into song. This is a completely fun and engaging movie that offers the simple life lesson of Follow your heart. This is the kind of movie I can’t help but love.

Teen Beach 2 (2015): As a sequel to Teen Beach Movie, this one has a bit of a rough start, what with the Mack and Brady morphing into rip-off versions of the leads from High School Musical and the obligatory forced conflicts due to their different likes and interests — why Brady would hide his love of designing surfboards makes no sense whatsoever. But the movie pulls itself out of its nose dive when Lela and Tanner, who were the leads from the ’60s musical Wet Side Story, leave their movie and escape into the real world. There is a lot of fun “Fish out of Water” comedy with Lela and Tanner dealing with the 21st-century technology, but we also get a nice twist where they have an effect on the real world as well, such as causing the school cafeteria to break out into a musical number and any modern piece of clothing Lela puts on morphs into a ’60s version of it. Another interesting wrinkle is that back in Wet Side Story, the cast of remaining characters find themselves in a movie that is suddenly stationary; with its two leads missing, the story can’t progress, which is very much like Woody Allen’s Purple Rose of Cairo and it leads to some really funny bits.

Note: The filmmakers clearly didn’t put a lot of work into the paradoxical structure of this movie — if you think too long about the premise, the whole thing falls apart — but the song numbers are great, and though it’s not quite as good as the first movie, the end result is still a rather enjoyable romp.

StarStruck (2010): This Disney Channel Original is a cute romantic comedy where a girl bumps into an incredibly famous popstar and between the two of them they are able to discover that appearances can be deceiving. So, basically nothing ground-breaking happening there as the plot is fairly predictable, but the chemistry between the two leads is undeniably genuine. Sterling Knight is fine as the auto-tuned Justin Bieber, but Danielle Campbell is great as the jaded girl-next-door.

Lemonade Mouth (2011): In what could best be described as Breakfast Club: The Musical, this Disney Channel Original assembles an excellent cast of young actors who bring us an energetic and inspiring story of a band of outcasts teaming up to “fight the system.” Special shout-out to Hayley Kiyoko as the rebellious Stella who many will know as Velma from Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins, and in this movie she is really allowed to shine.

Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century (1999): “I refuse to engage in a name-calling contest with a teenager,” and with that startling statement, we have the crux of this Disney Channel Original, where a spunky 13-year-old girl will match wits with corporate villains who threaten the lives of all aboard the space station she lives on. This is your typical tween-comedy where kids somehow manage to outsmart adults, mainly because all the adults depicted are complete morons, but the result is still a rather fun adventure story that most kids I’m sure would get a kick out of.

Geek Charming (2011): In what starts out as your basic Mean Girls-type rom-com, Disney’s Geek Charming goes on to prove that it has a little more substance than one would assume at a glance. The very talented Sarah Hyland plays Dylan Schoenfield (the head of her clique of girlfriends), who’s dating the head jock and just happens to be one of the most popular kids in her school, but when film-geek Josh Rosen decides to make a film about her run for the “Blossom Queen,” things get complicated. She thinks the film will cinch her win, but Josh has his eyes set on making a hard-hitting exposè on how high school popularity works. Thus, we have the basis of our film’s conflict, as one would expect in this type of rom-com, but then as things progress, we learn more about our leads and what lies beneath.

Disney Channel’s Geek Charming is a film full of heart and Sarah Hyland completely nails a role that could easily have been two-dimensional. The film also has the added bonus of giving us Sasha Pieterse as a friend who Dylan abandoned in sixth grade to achieve popularity, and with such little screen-time, Sasha Pieterse gives the film some wonderfully grounded moments. Will this film change your life? Of course not, but it is certainly one of those movies that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Frenemies (2012): This Disney Channel Original tells three loosely connected stories that deal with the conflict between friends; whether that be between two girls, a boy and a girl or a boy and man’s best friend, each have their own trials and tribulations, with varying degrees of comedic success. This is a light and goofy comedy and as each segment is relatively short, they don’t hang around long enough to wear out their welcome. Of the three, the take on “The Prince and the Pauper” was probably the best, but certainly not the most original — though none of the stories bring anything new to the genre. Frenemies is passably entertaining, but not worth going out of your way to watch.

The Thirteenth Year (1999): In this movie, a mermaid misplaces her baby while fleeing a fishing boat, and thus, the baby is raised by a couple of humans. Then, thirteen years later, that child is suddenly growing scales and fins. That’s a pretty cool premise and funnily enough with only a five million dollar budget, it was still more entertaining than DC’s big-budgeted Aquaman. The young cast here all put in decent performances and the merman effects were pretty well-executed. My only complaint is the mermaid-obsessed fisherman was a poor man’s excuse for Eugene Levy from Splash.

Luck of the Irish (2001): A high school basketball star soon finds out that his luck on the court may not be what it seems when his lucky coin is stolen, and before you can say “Top of the morning to ya,” he’s getting shorter, growing pointed ears, and his mom is talking like she’s auditioning for Finian’s Rainbow. Disney Channel’s The Luck of the Irish would make a good double bill with their mermaid movie The Thirteenth Year, as this one has a kid turning into a leprechaun just before his team heads into the state finals. Henry Gibson is great as the kid’s Irish grandfather, and if anything else, this film reminds us that Irish step-dancing was once a big thing over here. Whatever did happen to the Lord of the Dance?

Now You See It… (2005): From Houdini to Penn & Teller, stage magicians have been wowing audiences for generations, and with Now You See It... the Disney Channel Original brings their own brand of magic to the proceedings. Unfortunately, there isn’t much magic to be found in this 90-minute mess, as the script, the acting, and even the special effects are all pretty bad. The “plot” deals with an overachieving aspiring teen producer who needs to find the “World’’s Greatest Kid Magician” for a reality show, a job she desperately hopes to land, but the boy she finds turns out to have actual magic, and an evil magician has nefarious plans of his own regarding this kid’s power.

This could have been an interesting movie, but both lead characters are so completely annoying that I barely restrained myself from turning this thing off — Frank Langella being the film’s only saving grace is what kept me tuned in — but worse is the fact that the people at Disney didn’t even bother to use real stage magic. Obviously, for the “real magic,” the film would require special effects to pull it off, but they also use cheap camera effects and bad opticals for the stage magic that the other non-magical competitors used. Couldn’t they afford to hire a magic consultant for this thing? Overall, an interesting premise that was ruined by unlikeable characters and a lack of faith in their own stagecraft.

Johnny Tsunami (1999): In this movie, we’ve got rich private school kids warring with the townie public school kids over who has the right to ski or snowboard on their mountain, so we’re not talking major creativity in this Disney Channel outing. On the plus side, Brandon Baker is quite charming and engaging as the film’s teen lead, and any film that includes the great Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa can’t be all that bad.

Now, a story where a surfer gets transplanted to Vermont is fairly clever, but the stuff with the insanely dickish dad pushed things over the line and caused me to groan more than a few times. Also, the stunt skiers and surfers they used to double for the film’s 13-year-old leads were so obvious it’s almost comical; they were almost twice the size of the kids they’re supposed to be doubling for. Still, not a bad film and the message it tries to get across is decent, they just needed a few more passes on the script.

You Wish! (2003): This isn’t the first movie to borrow from Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life and probably not the last, but you’d hope that something called a Disney Channel Original would have done something more original with the premise. Not only is the script cliché-laden — with bullying jocks and mean girls aplenty — but it’s also completely full of unbelievable moments and idiotic characters. We have parents that overlook their older son to the point of neglect and who let their youngest choose a turkey over a dog as the family pet. There is comedy and then there is this mess. For comedy to work there has to be some foundation in reality, and this one never passes the smell test.

Worse is that when overshadowed, Alex Lansing wishes for his annoying younger brother to cease to exist, and the film doesn’t even have the balls to wipe him from existence. Instead, it gives the kid an alternate persona as a spoiled television star. The only moment in this film that I was able to derive any pleasure from was a “Who’s on First” bit where Alex tries to explain to his parent the television star is his brother. This is a tired little movie that doesn’t quite earn its sappy ending.

Pixel Perfect (2004): What happens when you try to bottle perfection? This is the basic premise of Disney Channel’s Pixel Perfect, where a teenage boy creates a holographic rock star to help his friend’s all-girl band. Being a Disney Channel Original, one shouldn’t go into a viewing of this movie for any hard science — the script’s ideas on how holograms and programs work ranges from silly to the outright ridiculous — but where the film works best is the conflict between the whiz-kid science nerd and the girl he should be dating and not his pixel-perfect creation: “Admit it, you’re in love with her. Why wouldn’t you be? You created her. She’s perfect. There’s only one problem… SHE’S NOT REAL!”

Leah Pipes is simply fantastic as Samantha, the writer and lead singer of her band, but things get rocky when a talent scout tells her that “It’s not about sound, it’s about image,” and that if she can’t dance like Britney Spears, her band will go nowhere. This is what leads to her friend Roscoe using his Dad’s computer and holographic software to create the perfect lead singer. This film may be a sci-fi comedy, but it also strives to explore areas of teen relationships that are not often seen in your typical made-for-television movie and does a fair job with it.

Now, I must point out that the dancing of this holographic singer is a little overly-energetic and could best be compared as a mime having an epileptic seizure and is nothing like any live-pop star performance I’ve ever seen, but actress Spenser Redford as an A.I. wanting to live beyond the limitations of her programming is able to give her character life and does a remarkable job here.

Pixel Perfect is certainly no Weird Science, but it does have a lot of charm; the songs are rather catchy and, at its core, it’s a solid message that many kids should be able to relate to: looking for perfection is a futile endeavour and a good way to end up alone.