As someone who has given little more than an iota of a fuck about a Disney movie in well over a decade, news that the rapidly monopolizing studio giant was unveiling a streaming service called Disney Plus piqued little interest. Access to every Disney theatrical release sounds great for parents, and access to every Marvel movie is ideal if you are Martin Scorsese’s personal enemy; you get that and more (Star Wars movies, Fox programming, and original programming) with Disney Plus. But if you are neither, cannot remember the last Pixar film you watched, and don’t feel like paying $7 a month to have access to both The Little Mermaid and Malcolm in the Middle, there appeared to be little incentive to tack on yet another monthly subscription service to your growing list of subscription services.
That’s what I thought until Disney Plus tweeted a list of “basically everything” coming to Disney Plus when it debuts in the United States on November 12. It is with a heavy heart that I must report that I am, in fact, interested in Disney Plus, but only for the Disney Channel Original Movies.
I do not need to watch Aladdin for the billionth time. And as sacrilege as it is that I have yet to see Up or Rattitouille or whatever other brilliant Pixar film I’ve missed out on (people keep telling me Coco is worth seeing, but keep in mind I still haven’t seen Wall-e). Why waste my time watching revered films and classics when I can watch 2000 Disney Channel Original Movie Mom’s Got a Date with a Vampire, starring Aunt Hilda from Sabrina the Teenage Witch and the dad from The Nanny (he’s the vampire!) instead?
There’s also Smart House (1999), in which Katey Sagal plays Pat, a proto-Alexa smart house system who is programmed to act as a surrogate mother. The kids are perfectly fine with using Pat to whip up smoothies and “activate some kick-butt video screens,” but aren’t so cool when her motherly protection gets too advanced and she traps the family inside the house.The classic era of Disney Channel Original Movies—which I loosely define as 1998 to 2009—provided a steady stream of TV junk food: mildly entertaining movies starring familiar Disney Channel stars. These movies were nightly staples for younger millennials and older Gen-Zers, and while the occasional DCOM was relatively deep or introspective (Don’t Look Under the Bed and Tru Confessions, featuring a young Shia LaBeouf, comes to mind), most were predictable comedies and dramas about teens overcoming obstacles or finding themselves in outlandish situations.
Unfortunately, watching classic DCOMs has become an increasingly laborious task, unless you want to pay YouTube or don’t mind finding a 480p quality bootleg stream that looks like it was filmed with a potato. Forking over your money to Disney could solve this problem. Unfortunately, it means forking over your money to Disney. But considering the plethora of DCOMs I could watch… it might be worth considering.
Other Disney Channel Original Movies coming to Disney Plus include:
Brink: Erik Von Detten is a dreamy indie inline-skater who sells out and becomes a sponsored skater to support his family. There’s ska.
The Thirteenth Year: A boy goes through puberty and also turns into a merman.