Monopoly Era

Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #61: Strange World

“Welcome mes amis! Please to be seated. I ‘ave called you ‘ere so zat we may solve zis murder!”

The facts of the case, they are simple. Strange World, the youngest heir of a very long, very respectable line of animated features, went missing from the box office in the winter of last year. A few months later, it was found, face down in a cold stream of content. There are many possible suspects. The movie boasted Disney’s 98th first gay character. Perhaps this was a hate crime? Or perhaps Covid 19 was to blame? But no, I believe there can be only one killer. Monsieur Disney, J’ACCUSE!

“I knew it! You killed him, just like you killed my brother!”

(Man, I have GOT to write a Knive’s Out style murder mystery with sentient Disney movies, I have to do that.)

***

You’re all asking the wrong questions, you know.

The mystery is not “Why did Strange World flop?” I can tell you that right now.

Last year I sat down to plot out my review schedule for the next decade or so (I will never, ever, ever auction reviews off again. That was stupid. I was a stupid Mouse).

And this was an honest to God chain of thought I experienced:

Oh hey, I should probably put aside a slot to review the next canon Disney movie.
Oh damn, what even IS the next canon Disney movie?
Oh shit. Strange World? I haven’t heard anything about this. When is it coming out?
Oh fuck. It’s in theatres NOW.

Yeah. I’ve been reviewing the Disney canon since Obama and I both still had black in our hair and even I knew nothing about this thing. It didn’t fail because it as too gay or not gay enough or because every time Disney tries to make a sci-fi animated movie the monkey paw exacts a terrible price, NO. It failed because Disney didn’t market it and bad word of mouth delivered the coup de grace.

But what I can’t really get my head around is why Disney buried this so hard. I mean, it’s definitely bad, but it’s a kind of bad that Disney can and have managed to sell before. To take the most recent examples, Raya and Wreck It Ralph 2 ate the box office alive and those are both, I remind you, hot effing garbage.

Was it really the fact that the main character is gay? I’ve always found that line of thinking flawed and conspiratorial. If a studio doesn’t want to release a movie with a gay main character, they can just, y’know, not make the movie and save the estimated €180 million dollars. But in this case…I dunno, maybe? It definitely feels like Disney has dropped bigger turds than this and yet was able to convince a sufficient amount of the population that it was selling them chocolate ice-cream. And hell, the reviews for this were actually very positive (not from me, I’m gonna dance on this thing’s fucking head) but most mainstream critics dutifully cooed “representation”, dropped a handful of stars and clocked off for lunch. It really was the audience reaction to this that was sharply negative. Maybe that was a homophobic backlash? Or maybe it was just the burgeoning realisation that most of Marvel/Disney/Pixar’s recent output has been trending worse and worse and people are now treating the brand less as a mark of quality than a warning label.

I don’t know and I’m not going to try to guess. I am DONE trying to game this kind of stuff out. Back in my Raya review I said that the age of Disney movies being big, unifying cultural events was over only for Encanto to come along and be that exact thing. I cautiously mused that Encanto might be the Disney ship righting itself only for Strange World to come along, cough once and die on my carpet so fuck it. I am just going to review the damn movie and leave the big pronouncements to people who actually know what they’re talking about.

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Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #60: Encanto

Seagoon:
Any objections?

Milligan:
Ohhh yes! If we build this mountain on England, England would sink under the weight.

Seagoon:
Sink? In that case, this mountain would be invaluable, people could climb up the side and save themselves from drowning!

Milligan:
Mercy, you’re right. Hurry and build it, before we all drown!

The Goon Show: “The Greatest Mountain in the World” (1954)

“Mouse, you explain that opening quote RIGHT NOW!”

“What, I can’t reference classic British radio comedy to open my review?”

“Listen to me. *Encanto* is the one good thing to come out of this miserable fucking decade and if you try to ruin it for me…”

“Ooookay, how about we take a deep breath?”

Alright, let’s just dispense with the usual dancing around.

Encanto is great. It’s a great piece of animation. It’s an excellent musical and it’s without a doubt my favourite canon movie in a long-ass time. It’s walking out of here with a good grade, don’t nobody worry ’bout that.

But…

I have to confess that what really fascinates me about Encanto is how it keeps making the most basic, obvious mistakes in screen-writing you can imagine (trying to build a mountain that will cause the country to sink), and instead of just fixing them in a sensible way (just not building the mountain) by doubling down and solving those problems in the most ridiculously over the top way possible (actually building the mountain). And it works.

The best example of this is the first song Welcome to the Family Madrigal.

There are twelve named speaking Madrigal characters, all with unique personalities, powers and familial relationships to keep track of. That is, quite frankly, bananas and any sensible screenwriter would have gone through the cast with a machete looking for who could be cut.

Way I see it, for this story you need Mirabelle, two older siblings to establish the pattern that Mirabelle broke by not getting a gift, and then a younger sibling to get a gift to show that Mirabelle really was a fluke. You need Abuela, obviously, Bruno and Julietta. Augustine doesn’t need to be there and Pepa’s entire family is extraneous. And yes, obviously, that would really suck to lose those characters but that would be the sensible choice. The sane choice. But that would not be the Encanto choice.

Encanto instead decides that it’s going to have an opening song flat out admitting “yes, our cast is far too big and complicated and our premise is weird and clunky so here is a song to help you remember”. It shouldn’t work. It really shouldn’t work. But simply by dint that it is a phenomenal song it does. They built the goddamn mountain.

But I get ahead of myself. So about that premise.

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Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #58: Frozen 2

Guys. I’m really scared. I think this might be it.

I mean, I know we’ve had our share of close calls and near misses, but I can’t shake the feeling that this really is the big one. This is finally how it all ends.

“Aw shit!”

“AAAAAAAH WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!”

“OH PLEASE GOD NO!”

“What?! What are you talking about?! I just meant I’m worried about the current state of the Disney canon movies!”

“Ohhhhhhhh…”

“What did you think I meant?”

“Oh nothing, nothing. Everything’s just grand.”

I mean seriously, I am concerned. Have you heard about Raya and the Last Dragon? It’s the next canon movie, due for release in November of this year, which feels like a long time because we’re all doing jail time right now and time passes slower on the inside but it’s also really not that far away. And after that?

Nothing.

Zip.

Bupkiss.

There are no officially announced Disney canon movies after Raya. And, while I’ll be the first to admit I’m not as plugged into the Disney fandom as I used to be I can’t say that I’m sensing a lot of hype for Raya. Plus, c’mon Disney. You’re really going to make a CGI Dragon movie? That’s, like, Dreamworks’ one thing that they still do well and you’re going to try to take it from them? For shame.

“Stay on East Side!”

I mean, you don’t see Dreamworks trying to copy your movies. Ahem.

So it’s starting to feel like the Disney canon’s in trouble. Maybe that’s just me jumping the gun. Admittedly, not everyone feels the way I do about Wreck It Ralph 2. And maybe I’m just letting my impressions be coloured by the Disney company’s drift away from “movie company” to “Lexcorp-esque colossus of super-villainy”. Because I am all kinds of outraged about that. I mean, not enough to cancel my Disney + subscription or alter my spending habits in any way. But outraged enough to loudly proclaim how outraged I am on the internet? Oh yes. I am willing to be the hero this world needs.

But anyway Frozen 2. Usually before diving into a review I’ll give some background as to how the movie came about but how about we cut the shit? I’m not going to sit here and lie to you and tell you how one morning Jennifer Lee shot bold upright in bed, struck with the inspiration for the next chapter of the Arrendelle saga that simply had to be told. We’re all grownups here (I hope, otherwise I really should lay of the cussin’). Frozen gifted the Disney company a fortune, and that fortune wanted a little brother or sister. A movie makes a certain amount of money, and a sequel is no longer optional. That’s why James Cameron is still threatening to smite the Earth with Avatar 2. And look, maybe it’s fine. Getting a bunch of talented people in a room and hoping the lightning strikes twice isn’t the craziest way to make a good movie. Maybe there is room for the story to go. Maybe Olaf’s character does need further exploration. Maybe the worst is behind us.

“No. No, we’re all doomed.”

“Dude, relax. It’s just a movie.”

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Disney Reviews with the Unshaved Mouse #57: Ralph Breaks the Internet

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So occasionally I will actually watch movies made for grownups and recently Ms Mouse and I saw Rocketman, which I can best describe as “Bohemian Rhapsody but not terrible”. Apart from quality the two movies are scarily similar but then I suppose that’s just the nature of musical bio-pics. They all follow the same pattern: You start out with our protagonist living in grim, post-war Britain, all cobble-streets, glass milk bottles and tuberculosis. You have the unsupportive parents saying “Yew’ll nevah make nuffin o’ yoself” and then the moment where they decide to rename themselves from Rodney McBorningname to Elvis Stardazzle and then fame, fortune, a sleazy manager played by a Game of Thrones alum, rises, falls, break-ups, breakdowns and a moment where the protagonist’s oldest and dearest friend from childhood reads them the riot act.

What does this have to do with Ralph Breaks the Internet? Because if the Disney canon was a musical biopic, this movie would be the point in the story where Elvis Stardazzle is slumped over a table in a trashed mansion covered in a thick layer of cocaine and groupie juice, having driven away all the people who ever loved him with his massive ego and unwillingness to see how far he’s gone off the rails.

Guys, I’m not going to toy with you on this. I fucking hate this movie. My brother, the Unscrupulous Mouse, declared this the worst Disney canon movie since Dinosaur and, while I can’t agree, I really want to. Can I sit here and tell you that animation is worse than Chicken Little? No. Can I tell you that it’s worse directed than Home on the Range? Well…I mean…no. No I can’t do that. What’s wrong with Wreck It Ralph 2 isn’t anything to do with the animation or direction or voice cast but with an attitude of insufferable all-encompassing smugness that sets me little mouse teeth right on edge. Everything from that FUCKING title to the instant datedness of the references to the obnoxious “what you gonna do about it?” reminders of the Disney corporation’s near cultural stranglehold on every nook and cranny of pop culture. I hate it. I hate this. I hate what Disney’s become.

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