National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

Jeremiah S. Chechik, 1989
Rotten Tomatoes score: 63%

In psychological development, there are certain critical periods, during which a growing organism is uniquely suited to acquire particular skills. I think the same must be true for taste in certain movies. If you saw The Goonies when you were eight years old, you love it; if, like me, you missed it, you will never understand its appeal. I'm sure most people cannot comprehend how much I enjoy the Mighty Ducks trilogy, not to mention the Ernest canon. (Or maybe that last one is just me.)

When it comes to the National Lampoon Vacation series, I must have missed the boat. I didn't see any of these movies until I caught this one in German translation (where it's called Schöne Bescherung) at the age of 18. I finally saw the original Vacation about three years ago, along with its European sequel.

I thought the original, with Anthony Michael Hall playing Chevy Chase's son Russ, was pretty amusing, while European Vacation is an international atrocity that should have been banned by the Geneva Accords. This Christmas version came next, followed by Vegas Vacation in 1997, which is rightfully forgotten except for its introduction of the comedy pseudonym "Nick Papagiorgio." Apparently the trainwreck is still a-rolling, as new films have been released quite recently, all without Chevy Chase.

But today we're here to talk about Christmas Vacation. I watched this again a few weeks ago, so I have at least a vague recollection as to what happens in it.

The first two Vacations were about road trips, but in this one the Griswold family stays put while the vacation comes to them. My general view on gimmick sequels is that, once you've made two very high-concept movies in a series, it's very risky to make additional sequels that drop that concept. (That's why Die Hard 3 is such a disappointing sequel.) So once you've got two "Family of Morons on Vacation" movies in the can, it's going to be a rough adjustment making a "Family of Morons at Home" movie. And so it is, but the movie keeps its stride by cranking the moronicity dial way up to 11. There is nothing whatsoever to like about any member of the Griswold family, but it can be mildly amusing to watch them fail at the most basic tasks in life.

In the opening sequence, we see Chevy Chase nearly kill his entire family through gross incompetence behind the wheel. Later we see every adult member of his family struggle to figure out how to turn on a light switch. Someone locks Chevy in the attic, and in a McCallisteresque fit of obliviousness, the family leaves him there for hours. In a jewelry store, Chevy musters every ounce of effort to avoid staring at (and commenting on) a young floorwalker's chest, and spectacularly fails to utter a single sentence without an embarrassing slip.

How can these people be so stupid? How do they manage to feed themselves? How do they manage to dress themselves?

Actually, seeing Chevy Chase at work is one of the really funny parts of the movie, and it's a nice change from the earlier installments. His boss (Brian Doyle-Murray), a curmudgeonly Scrooge, is a funny character I wish we could have seen a lot more of. Chevy is expecting a big bonus this year because he's invented a "non-nutritive cereal varnish," which I found hilarious.

The rest of the movie is just a meandering story about the huge number of people in the Griswold house for Christmas. Beverly D'Angelo returns as Chevy Chase's inexplicably patient wife, a live-action Marge Simpson who should really just abandon ship. The two Griswold children, Russ and Audrey, have never been played by the same actors in any two Vacation movies—Russ is forgettable here, but Juliette Lewis as Audrey is relatably annoyed by the sheer volume of human bodies in her house. Randy Quaid is back as the insufferable Cousin Eddie. Aside from these, there are several hundred other family members who either didn't have any lines, or else I just didn't care enough to remember them. Oh, somewhere in there is a horrific scene where a cat disintegrates.

The whole holiday falls apart when Chevy learns that he isn't getting his Christmas bonus. Then, in a Hillbilly ex Machina ending, Cousin Eddie abducts the penny-pinching boss and brings him to the Griswold house. Suddenly, the boss has a complete change of heart and gives Clark an even bigger bonus than he was expecting.

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I feel I've been unusually harsh on this movie, and that probably isn't fair. Like I said, the stuff about Clark's job is great, and the rest is just so-so. Only a few scenes are actively off-putting. I would be willing to watch it again.

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1. Being around family is important at Christmas.
This is true even if no one in your family has any redeeming qualities.

2. If you want to install an outdoor swimming pool, you should spend money that you have.
I forgot to mention the part where Clark spends money he doesn't have on a pool. It wasn't worth mentioning.

3. "Non-nutritive cereal varnish" is funny.
This is a lesson for people who make Christmas comedies and are looking for suggestions about funny words and phrases. It's hilarious.

The Year Without a Santa Claus

Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin, Jr., 1974
Rotten Tomatoes audience rating: 84%

After Rudolph and Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, Rankin-Bass must have realized they were onto something. But what other legendary Christmas tales were left to be told? None, so they just made one up.

Shirley Booth (Mrs. Claus) tells us the tale of that fateful year when Santa Claus decided to quit his job. When Santa (Mickey Rooney returning to the role) is feeling under the weather one December, he calls the world's most misanthropic doctor, who assures him that the whole world is beyond saving and there's no need for Christmas anymore. Santa admits that he has been feeling the same way, so he decides to stay in bed for the foreseeable future.

Mrs. Claus thinks the old man is giving up too easily. First, she muses in song that she could take over Santa's job. For some reason she rejects this eminently sensible option, and instead she sends two elves, Jingle Bells and his brother Jangle, to scour the world for some trace of Christmas spirit. When the elves arrive in Southtown, Santa's fears seem confirmed. A local constable cites them for violating draconian laws prohibiting reindeer and elf costumes, and the kids in town don't care that Santa isn't coming. (The kids have read in the newspaper that Santa has called it quits, but they say they don't believe in Santa. What kind of world is this where newspapers are printing press releases from the North Pole, but the children somehow don't believe that Santa Claus exists?)

Worried for the elves' safety, Santa has hauled himself out of bed and followed them to Southtown. Disguising himself as "Mr. Klaus" (they'll never figure that out), he meets a young agclaustic named Ignatius Thistlewhite. Invited into the Thistlewhite home, Santa sneezes in the most disgusting way possible, surely infecting the entire family with an exotic North Pole illness. Then he sings about believing in Santa Claus. Mr. Klaus reveals his secret identity by flying off on a reindeer to rescue the elves and the baby reindeer they rode in on.

The reindeer is at the pound, disguised as a dog. The professionals at the pound fail to realize that this hoofed creature is not a dog, so the elves and Ignatius have to persuade the mayor of Southtown to intervene. He agrees to help, but only if the elves can conjure up a snowy day in Dixie. Unbeknown to them, Santa has already sprung their reindeer friend and rushed back to the Pole. Before Santa can make it home, Mrs. Claus jets off to Southtown to collect the elves (and Ignatius, for some reason) to pay a visit to an old friend.

Mr. Snow Miser, the frosty giant who controls winter weather, is the only one who can bring snow to Southtown. After a jaunty ragtime tune about himself, Snow Miser explains that he'd be all too glad to make it snow down south, but he's certain that his brother Mr. Heat Miser would turn it to rain. Heat Miser hates his brother (though not enough to think of a different theme song), and the two can't be made to agree. If Mrs. Claus wants it to snow in Southtown, she'll have to get Mother Nature involved. Mother Nature tells her miserly sons to play nice, and they agree to horse-trade a snowstorm in the south for one spring day at the North Pole.

The snow inspires the world's children to guilt Santa into reinstating Christmas, so they send him gifts and letters and sing "Blue Christmas." Their trick works, and Santa resumes his duties.

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TRUE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS:

1. It never snows in the South except by supernatural intervention.
If you think it does, you're just remembering wrong.

2. If you only work one night out of the year, you can't really afford to take a sick day.
But if you're going to be sneezing all over the world, maybe it's not such a bad idea.

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Ron Underwood, 2006
Rotten Tomatoes audience rating: 54%

There is also a live-action version of this movie, and it is an abomination.

As much fun as it sounds like to see the great John Goodman as Jolly Old St. Nick, I implore you to stay away from this monstrosity. There is not a single sympathetic, likable, pleasant, or interesting character in the entire movie. The closest you get are Jingle and Jangle, played here by Eddie Griffin and Ethan Suplee, but even they can't bring any cheer to your TV screen. Chris Kattan is in this movie. Chris Kattan is in this movie. Stay away, in the name of all that is holy.

If you must indulge your curiosity, please confine it to this production of the Heat Miser and Snow Miser song. It features Michael McKean as Mr. Snow Miser and Harvey Fierstein as Mr. Heat Miser. But I caution you, this is something that, once seen, cannot be unseen. You've been warned.

I don't know what masochists in the audience have been giving this a positive rating. They are probably very sick people.

Richie Rich's Christmas Wish

John Murlowski, 1998
Rotten Tomatoes audience rating: 33%

This was direct-to-video, so the best I can get is an audience score from Rotten Tomatoes. Self-selected audience reviews are usually more generous than critics, so if even the viewers didn't like it, that doesn't bode well.

This is of course based on the long-running Richie Rich comics. It is purportedly a sequel to the 1994 film Richie Rich, but there is zero continuity and no returning cast members. That was a grossly underrated movie, and we'll have to get to it at some point. But for now, let's deal with the Christmas version.

In the first act, Richie learns that Professor Keenbean (Eugene Levy doing an unnecessary English accent, but still wearing his trademark horn-rimmed glasses) has just invented magic. His "wishing machine" can make anyone's wish come true, but only on Christmas Eve. But while he's still getting the kinks worked out, Richie will have to contend with his insufferable cousin Reggie van Dough (not to be confused with Laurence van Dough, the evil CFO played by John Larroquette in the first movie).

Reggie is the bad kind of rich person—he enjoys abusing his power over others, he openly detests poor people, and he resents Richie for ever doing anything nice for anyone. So when Richie participates in a charity event, delivering presents to orphans on a self-powered sleigh, Reggie sabotages the sleigh and destroys all the presents, leaving Richie holding the bag. Richie knows that Reggie is responsible, but rather than make even a passing effort to clear his name, he immediately resorts to wishing himself out of existence with Keenbean's machine.

So there you have it. This has been building up to a Wonderful Life story. Richie now finds himself in a world where he has never been born and Reggie owns his home, his family, his family's business, and the entire town. (Apparently Reggie sued his parents to escape their custody, then sued Mr. and Mrs. Rich for the right to become a despot. It's harsh, but that's our legal system.) Even Richie's closest friends no longer recognize him.

But wait. If Richie has never been born, how does he exist? He's not a ghost. Everyone can see him; they just don't recognize him. If he wished himself out of existence, shouldn't he just cease to exist? You know what? Forget it.

In order to wish the world back to normal, Richie must escape from Reggie's secret police and contact his friends from his previous life. He meets his trusted valet Cadbury (who is now a rock musician) and Professor Keenbean. Keenbean tells him that he and the local kids will have to break into a museum to steal the world's largest wishbone from a dinosaur statue to make the wishing machine work again. Unfortunately, the police show up, lock up the gang, and deliver the wishing machine to Reggie.

Reggie uses the machine to wish for the power of flight, and if you've ever seen Superman IV, it's not quite as bad as that. Luckily, the Rich family dog pulls the plug on the machine before Reggie can wish for world domination. Richie and the gang bust out of the joint just in time to race back to Rich Manor at the eleventh hour.

In a pulse-pounding scene, Keenbean spends five minutes attempting to connect an alligator clamp to a bundle of wires, and the clock begins to toll midnight as Richie prepares to make his wish. The gang all cheer him on as he apparently struggles to formulate an appropriate wish. Finally he overcomes this seemingly insurmountable obstacle and wishes to "be Richie Rich again for the next Christmas, the next Christmas, and every Christmas for the rest of my life!" I'm not sure if he is going to continue to exist for the other 364 days of every year, but I guess that's a start.

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For a straight-to-video movie, this is about what you'd expect. Say what you will about the original Richie Rich movie; at least it felt like they put some effort into it. Martin Mull is clearly phoning it in as Richie's dad, and the kid from Seventh Heaven is no replacement for Macauly Culkin from the first movie. On the plus side, cinema's Richard Riehle gives a winning performance as a cop. (He has people skills! He's good at dealing with people! Why can't you idiots understand that?) Also, one of the kids is Michelle Trachtenberg, who if I'm not mistaken has gone on to do other things.

Take it for what it is, and you shouldn't be disappointed.

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TRUE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS:

1. It's wrong for children not to exist.
If they don't exist, their parents can't possibly spend sufficient time with them, and if we've learned anything at all, it's that parents should spend time with their children.

2. Infinitely powerful inventions have some potential to create mischief.
Let that be a lesson to you scientists out there who think you can invent a wishing machine and expect nothing to go wrong.

I'll Be Home for Christmas

Arlene Sanford, 1998
Rotten Tomatoes score: 21%

Do you remember the year 1998? Take a moment to think back. Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google; the Second Congo War began in August; Chavez was elected and Clinton was impeached. But the most powerful person in the world in 1998 was, without a doubt, Jonathan Taylor Weiss.

Weiss, better known by his stage name Jonathan Taylor Thomas ("JTT"), experienced a meteoric rise to prominence as the breakout heartthrob cast member of Home Improvement. At the time, he commanded a veritable army of fans, mostly 12-year-old girls, and he enjoyed the staunch support of the Fourth Estate through that Grey Lady of journalism Tiger Beat. (Or was it Teen Beat? Whichever.)

But unlike his co-star Tim Allen, who had also rocketed to short-lived superstardom in the 90s, the great JTW was not to be a Holiday icon. No, I'll Be Home for Christmas is no The Santa Clause. It's not even The Escape Clause (we'll get to that one). Indeed, this entry would have been relegated to a mere footnote in film history had Netflix not seen fit to remind me of it last month.

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We meet JTW at Palisades College, a fictional institution in a fictional version of Los Angeles in which Christmas occurs during late spring. JTW's high school sweetheart and current girlfriend Allie (Jessica Biel) is going home for Christmas, and she urges him to do the same. But our dear rolling stone will have none of it—he'd rather while away his holidays lounging on the beach at Cabo or scamming the vain, heartless Eddie and his frat boy pals out of their tuition money. Besides, his widowed dad is remarried, and JTW doesn't care for his stepmother.

(All right, I'm going to stop calling him JTW. The character's name is Jake.)

The only thing that is able to change Jake's mind is his dad's promise to give him his beloved classic Porsche as a special Christmas gift, but only if the boy makes it to Christmas Eve dinner at 6:00 sharp. No discussion is had of Jake's travel arrangements, and the rest of the movie makes it clear that Dad neither knows nor cares how Jake is transporting himself. One might have imagined that someone would offer him a ride home from the airport, but no. Everybody plans to sit quietly until 6 pm on December 24, waiting to see if Jake will arrive.

Unfortunately for Jake, the frat boys are none too pleased with the aforesaid scam, so they lock Jake's dweeby partner in crime in his locker and ditch Jake in the desert, unconscious (presumably from a savage off-screen beating), wearing a Santa suit, surrounded by buzzards. But if you think this act of attempted murder will slow down our frosted-haired hero, you've got another think coming.

Instead, Jake spends the next hour enduring an astoundingly contrived gantlet of indignities before he arrives back home. He bums a ride from some old ladies on their way to a Tom Jones concert. He rides shotgun with a two-bit crook and has to fast-talk his way out of an arrest by delivering the thief's loot to a children's hospital. (The hospital will be delighted when it discovers the origin of these gifts.) For absolutely no reason, the cop who nearly busted him then asks Jake to help him reconcile with his estranged wife. Jake does this in exchange for a bus ticket to New York.

Unfortunately, Jake then discovers that Allie and Eddie are road-tripping to New York on the same route, so he diverts the bus to thwart what he suspects is an act of cuckoldry. Of course, Allie in fact has no interest in Eddie and only accepted his carpool offer out of desperation, so she gives Jake a dressing-down and takes his place on the bus. (Apparently the drivers for this busing company have the authority to eject ne'er-do-wells and give their seats to decent people.)

At this point, we realize that Jake has evidently been riding on a supersonic bus, because he has made it from Southern California to Wisconsin in a day and a half. All he has to do is win a conveniently-timed 5k race against conveniently out-of-shape competitors, and he'll receive the $1000 he needs to travel to the Madison airport, book a flight, clear security, board the flight, fly to JFK, exit the airport, call a cab, drive 25 miles to Larchmont, and join his family for dinner, in one afternoon.

But instead, he has a totally unmotivated change of heart and gives the money away to charity. He still accomplishes the rest of the plan, though, but he has to ride in a dog crate in the cargo hold of a commuter plane. (This is after a pointless sequence where his sister buys him a ticket, but he can't pick it up because he's lost his ID.) So in the end, he reaches home, but conspicuously turns down the Porsche, so we know he's learned a Valuable Lesson, even though nothing that has occurred could plausibly have taught him such a lesson.

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After reading a few reviews of this movie, I feel guilty writing this one, like I'm picking on a little kid in school. But what else can I say?

Several critics compared the movie unfavorably to Pleasantville and said it was anachronistically sappy. I guess I can see that, but the 15 intervening years have also allowed me to see that this thing reeks of the late 90s. Just look at JTW's hair, or for that matter, skip to the 30-minute mark and listen to Jessica Biel sing along to "Doctor Jones." Fish don't know they're wet, so I guess critics in 1998 didn't realize they were watching an unholy time capsule of a movie.

But I'm done ragging on the movie. It wasn't so bad, really. I honestly would recommend it, but only if you have a high tolerance for corny family movies and the year 1998.

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TRUE MEANING OF CHRISTMAS:

1. It's wrong for college students not to spend time with their families.
Plus ça change.

2. You'll never get that "Doctor Jones" song out of your head.
Good thing it's such a festive holiday tune. Thank God they didn't pick "Cotton Eye Joe."

Prancer

John D. Hancock, 1989
Rotten Tomatoes score: 69%

This strange children's Christmas adventure stars Rebecca Harrell as young Jessica, a child who discovers a magic reindeer. It also stars Sam Elliot as himself.

Jessica is a sweet, pious young child in a rural locality. Her mother has been killed by a plot device, and her father John (Sam Elliot) is a struggling farmer. Unable to make ends meet, John is planning to give temporary custody of Jessica to his late wife's sister. Also along for the ride is Cloris Leachman as a bitter old shrew who hates children and wants to be left alone. Wouldn't it be incredible if she turns out to have a heart of gold, and she ultimately becomes a friend to young Jessica? It would blow my mind if that happened.

Jessica is a devout believer in Santa, because she considers belief in Santa to be a necessary corollary of belief in heaven (where her late mother is). Her best friend is a skeptic, but Jessica is steadfast in her Santa-based religious convictions. Their schoolteacher tells them some Bible story that I have never heard about how animals get superpowers when the full moon coincides with Christmas Eve, or something like that.

On her walk home from school, Jessica witnesses a wooden reindeer (reindeer # 3, Prancer) fall from a Christmas display and cause a minor traffic accident. Later that night, she encounters a real live reindeer in the woods, and inexplicably concludes that it is the same one. Prancer is injured, and John rather hastily concludes that it is doomed, and he'd better put it out of its misery. Jessica protests, but Prancer manages to escape.

The fun really begins when Jessica brings Prancer into her father's shed to care for him. She guilts a curmudgeonly veterinarian (Abe Vigoda[!]) into caring for the reindeer, and resolves to earn enough money to buy it some provender. She offers to do housework for Cloris Leachman, who pays her fifteen dollars, exactly the quoted price for a bag of oats. At the same time, Cloris's cold heart warms to the presence of this child whose legal guardians know nothing of her location.

Jessica also details her exploits in a secret letter she gives to a mall Santa, demanding that he transmit it to the real Santa. Instead, he delivers it to the editor of the local paper, who publishes an editorial in a very self-conscious reference to "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus" (which is referenced a number of times in the movie).

Some children, having read the editorial, sneak into the shed to visit Prancer. Jessica is still unaware of the editorial, so she blames her agnostic best friend. Then Jessica threatens to murder the other children with a sickle, so they run away. By this point, the cat is out of the bag, and once John learns about the reindeer, he falls right back on his original plan to shoot it. A local butcher steps in and offers to pay top buck for it, and John agrees. Fearful that the butcher will kill and eat Prancer, Jessica insists on freeing him to go back to the North Pole.

Jessica's rescue attempt results in her suffering a fatal head injury. Actually, she survives, but she is very depressed while she recuperates. John attempts to cheer her up by telling her that the family has no money and will probably lose the farm, but that if he loses Jessica, he will lose his will to live. Remarkably, Jessica does not find this uplifting. However, she takes greater comfort in learning that all the neighbors have come to visit and to return Prancer to the family.

John tells Jessica that she will not have to move to her aunt's house, and together they take Prancer up to a place called Antler Ridge so Santa can retrieve him. At this point, you might expect the movie to end in a sort of ambiguous way, with Jessica perceiving some kind of sign that she interprets as evidence of Santa's existence, with the audience left to make up its own mind. But no, we very clearly see Santa come and rescue Prancer, and there is no doubt that it's really him. So there you go, Santa exists.

This is the most depressing Christmas movie I can recall. The ending is supposed to be uplifting, but this family is still doomed to financial ruin. But hey, Santa!

Anyway, I didn't particularly care for this movie, so I'm tempted to call it Overrated. But you know, if Sam Elliot can believe in Santa Claus, it can't be all bad.

And now, the True Meaning of Christmas:

1. You should never shoot a reindeer.
Would it have died if he shot it? Can Santa's reindeer die? It did somehow get injured, so I guess it's a mortal being. Would Sam Elliot have had to become the new Prancer?

2. Kindly old neighbors have hearts of gold.
At least for one or two scenes they do.

3. Animals acquire the gift of flight when there is a full moon on Christmas Eve.
Look it up!

Disney Channel Honorable Mentions

Before I leave the subject of Disney Channel movies, here are a few that by all rights should have made the list.

P.U.N.K.S.
Sean McNamara, 1999

I'm actually not sure this was a Disney Channel movie. I certainly watched it on the Disney Channel, but Wikipedia doesn't list it. However, the DisneyWiki does list it, so I'm going with that. Disney Channel or not, this was a great movie. Patrick Renna from The Big Green was in it, and so were Randy Quaid, the Fonz, and a young Jessica Alba.

The titular P.U.N.K.S. were a crew of teenagers with attitudes who set out to thwart the evil designs of Edward Crow. Crow is a scheming industrialist who possesses a special device that gives its user super-strength. Need I say more?

Can of Worms
Paul Schneider, 1999

This one starts out innocently enough.

We meet Mike, a dweeby high school outcast who pines after his classmate Katelyn "Swimfan85" Sandman. Mike and Katelyn are thrown together by fate when they work together to plan a homecoming party. Then they gradually develop a relationship, only for it to be put to the test when the school bully (who also fancies Katelyn) gets in the way.

But the thing is, that's only the first act. The rest of the movie is about aliens.

Malcolm McDowell is the voice of a talking intergalactic dog.

Brokeback Mountain
Greg Beeman, 1999

Just kidding, this is Horse Sense.

Real-life brothers Joey and Andrew Lawrence play fictional cousins Michael and Tommy. Michael is a rich Beverly Hills layabout, and Tommy lives on a ranch in Montana with his widowed mother. When Michael wrecks his expensive car, his parents ship him off to the ranch to pay off the damages the old-fashioned way.

The inevitable character development occurs, and Michael ends up saving the ranch with the help of his knowledge of federal land law.

This movie spawned a sequel, Jumping Ship, which has nothing to do with horses and doesn't make a lot of sense. But it managed to add the third Lawrence brother, Matthew, to the mix.

Up, Up, and Away
Robert Townsend, 2000

Hollywood continues its systematic campaign to neglect the genius of Robert Townsend with this desperately underrated superhero movie. No fewer than two other Disney movies, Sky High and The Incredibles, borrowed heavily from its plot.

The Marshalls are a seemingly average upper-middle-class family who harbor a thrilling secret: They all have super-powers. Mom and Dad fight crime as Warrior Woman and Bronze Eagle, and all the kids are super-human as well, with the exception of Scott, the only normal Marshall. He tries to fool his family into thinking that he, too, is gifted, but in the end he learns that being normal is not so bad. Even though it's way better to have powers.

The brother from Unhappily Ever After and Dorothy-Jane Torkelson from The Torkelsons play the bad guys.

Eddie's Million Dollar Cook-Off
Paul Hoen, 2003

Eddie loves the game of baseball, but he also loves to cook. Too bad his male-chauvinist dad can't accept that second part.

He signs up for a cook-off that might win him a place at a culinary institute, but in order to compete, he'll have to miss the Big Game. His dad drags him along to the game, but his teammates insist that he go back to the cook-off and follow his dreams.

Bobby Flay appears as himself in history's most unexciting cameo.

No.

Stuck in the Suburbs
Savage Steve Holland, 2004

Why does it say "Walt Disney's" above the title? Surely Uncle Walt didn't climb out of cryogenic stasis to help with this one, did he?

Two suburban teenage girls kidnap a pop star played by Taran Killam from Saturday Night Live. Or maybe they just steal his phone. I don't remember.

He sings in it.

Minutemen
Lev L. Spiro, 2008

This one is from 2008, so we're well outside the classic Disney Channel era here. But this one deserves to be mentioned because (1) I've seen it; and (2) they travel through time. They also cause a massive paradox, the likes of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe! (Granted, that's a worst-case scenario. The destruction might in fact be very localized, limited to merely our own galaxy.)

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I could go on. Actually, I couldn't, because I think those are all the Disney Channel movies I've seen. But though they may not all be as memorable as Brink!, they are one thing for certain, and that's

Brink!

Greg Beeman, 1998
Buzzfeed article ranking: 1

I've got a million things going round in my head, and I never really paid attention what you said. No, and now I wish that I would've said goodbye, but it's much too late, and all I do is give, and all you do is take. You've got to look before you leap—Take a good look at your so-called friends. Yeah, that's the company you keep. They've got the words coming at you from all directions.

This is the movie that taught us all the valuable lesson that it is immoral to have a job you enjoy.

Erik von Detten stars as Andy "Brink" Brinker, an homage to the original soul-skater, Hans Brinker. Along with his best buds Gabriella (who also played Taina, for those keeping score), Peter (who was in So Weird), and Jordy, he likes to spend every second of his free-time engaged in what Wikipedia informs me is called "aggressive in-line skating." (Lest we confuse it with the ever-popular defensive in-line skating.)

The Soul-Skaters don't skate for money or fame, which doesn't really seem unusual, but the movie is at pains to convince us that most rollerbladers are venal, self-aggrandizing professionals. Worst of all is Val Horrigan, captain of Team X-Bladz (pronounced "blades," not "blads"), for whom aggressive in-line skating is nothing but a way to make a quick buck and an excuse to act like a comic book villain.

(Val was played by actor Sam Horrigan—no relation, I assume. I encourage you to look him up on Wikipedia, where you will see that he looks exactly like a comic book villain to this day. And I mean exactly. I'm not kidding.)

Brink's family is struggling, with his father Ralph out of work on disability, and the situation is so dire that Brink feels the temptation to betray his code and join Team X-Bladz. Ralph is none too keen on the idea, especially since Brink has been suspended from his high school for in-line skating (aggressively, no less) on school grounds. So Brink goes behind his parents' and his friends' backs and goes over to the dark side.

Ralph gets Brink a job at Pup 'n' Suds, a ridiculously-named dog grooming business, so now Brink must juggle a job, an additional secret job, school, and his friends and family. Eventually, he gets busted, and his friends desert him for being a sell-out. When Ralph learns the truth, he reminds Brink that skating is just a hobby, not his identity. For reasons that are not satisfactorily explained, this means that it is unacceptable for him to be paid handsomely for participating in that hobby.

Brink patches things up with his friends by requesting an advance on his Pup 'n' Suds paychecks in order to sponsor a skating team of his own to enter in the upcoming tournament. Wait, didn't he take that job to help out his family? Well, never mind, because Ralph has just been informed that, because of unrelated but convenient off-screen events, he will be returning to his job soon.

Team Pup 'n' Suds seems outclassed by the pros at Team X-Bladz, but their lack of concern with winning causes them to win, even in spite of Val's unsportsmanlike conduct.

It comes as no surprise to me that this movie was ranked number one. Brink! marked the beginning of an era in Disney Channel movies, and it set the standard that Alley Cats Strike and Genius would attempt to live up to. Also, this scene is in it.

Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century

Kenneth Johnson, 1999
Buzzfeed article ranking: 2

In the year 1999, we all wondered what life would be like in the distant future. This movie treated us to a prediction of what wild and wonderful things would await us in the far-off 21st century. Would we all live aboard space-stations? Of course. Would we wear pink and purple spandex bodysuits? Without a doubt.

Needless to say, all of this movie's predictions have come true. But let's take a moment to remember how exciting it was to catch this glimpse into the world of tomorrow.

Zenon (named after the popular noble gas) is a girl of the 21st century who has a perfect life: She lives aboard a crowded space-station where everything is neon pink and purple, you can never set foot outside, and the air supply has to be recycled in perpetuity because there's no oxygen in space. Who wouldn't love it? Best of all, the world's greatest rock band, Microbe, is about to come aboard to play a big concert.

Then things take a turn for the worse when Zenon's teenage hi-jinks anger the station commander (the eternally underrated Stuart Pankin), and Zenon is banished to earth to live with her aunt. She can't cope with such things as fresh air, living things, colors other than pink and purple, and the Fahrenheit temperature system. On the other hand, she makes friends with some of the earth people and discovers that there may be more to life than living inside a cramped box in the vast darkness of space.

She also learns that the plutocrat who owns the space station is planning some sort of dastardly scheme to jeopardize the station inhabitants' lives for some reason or other. Unfortunately, the commander won't let Zenon return to space to stop him, believing that her story is just a pretext to get her aboard the station in time for the concert.

Luckily, the lead singer of Microbe has more faith in our young heroine. He smuggles her aboard his shuttle, and once on the space station she is able to thwart the evil plot.

This movie was such a hit that it spawned a Zequel in 2001, and yet a third film in 2004. The first sequel involves aliens, and the second one has to do with a moon base and a "Moonstock" rock festival. By the time the third Zenon came out, we were well out of the "Zoog Movie" era, and a new generation of Disney Channel viewers had come of age. The industrial machine of original movie production that had cranked out a new movie for every single month of the year 2000 had slowed its pace quite a bit by 2004.

The 21st century is upon us now, and it's good to know that even today we can relax in our bright fluorescent spandex costumes and remember this piece of history. Thankfully it is

Johnny Tsunami

Steve Boyum, 1999
Buzzfeed article ranking: 5

"Go big, or go home."

Among this phenomenal movie's many virtues is its availability on DVD, extremely rare for a Disney Channel movie.

Johnny Kapahala lives in a postcard caricature of Hawaii, and he loves it there. He lives 18 inches from the ocean, he goes surfing every day, and he spends every waking hour hanging loose with his brahs. He's a chip off his grandpa's block, and his fastidious, responsible pop doesn't care for it. But when Pop gets a job running the IT department at a private high school, Johnny finds himself dragged to the East Coast.

The Kapahalas touch down in a postcard caricature of Vermont, and Johnny can't stand it. He's surrounded by bluebloods and trust-fund babies who wear sweater vests and never say the word "brah"; the other students don't like him, and the headmaster doesn't dig his Big Lebowski attitude toward life. Most bogus of all, there's no place to shoot the tubes, let alone hang ten—all these New Englanders ever do is ski. Finally things start looking up when Johnny meets Sam (Lee Thompson Young), a righteous dude who attends the local public school and spends his free time snowboarding.

We learn that the biggest mountain in town is split right down the middle because of a family feud between two twin brothers. Randy is a starchy, no-nonsense poindexter who owns half of the mountain, where private school kids come to ski. The other half of the mountain is dedicated to snowboarding public schoolers, and it's owned by the easy-going, party-hardy slacker brother, Eddie.

Johnny feels right at home boarding with Sam and the other "urchins," but the private school kids look down on him, and Pop worries that he's mixing with the wrong crowd. Johnny thinks the whole system stinks, so he skips town with Sam and high-tails it back to Hawaii to go surfing with Grandpa.

Grandpa, ever the laid-back dude, refuses to force the boys to go home. Instead, he lets them make that decision on their own, and when they do, he tags along. Pop and Grandpa finally make their peace.

All that remains is for Johnny to reunite Randy and Eddie and bring the preppies and the urchins together at last. This he does by racing one of the mean prep school kids down the mountain, which solves everybody's problems.

No question about it, this stands head and shoulders above most Disney Channel movies. It features a genuinely interesting plot, a lot of goofy fleece dreadlock hats, and a thrilling stunt sequence featuring Zenon, Girl of the 21st Century. It also includes the song "The Way" by Fastball, lest anyone should ever forget exactly what year this was produced.

Wish Upon a Star

Blair Treu, 1996
Buzzfeed article ranking: 6

This movie came out in 1996, which makes it the one of two pre-Brink! movies on this list. (The other one, The Paper Brigade, I've never seen.) The Disney Channel made a major shift in the focus of its original movies around 1998, and it definitely shows here. Wish Upon a Star was aired under the banner "Disney Channel Premiere Films" (or "PremEars"), and it has much more mature content than anything else on the list.

Katherine Heigl and Danielle Harris play sisters Hayley and Alexia Wheaton, two high school students who both are unsatisfied with their lives and resent and envy each other. Alexia is the older, popular, socially well-adjusted sister with the dream boat boyfriend (Donnie Jeffcoat from Wild and Crazy Kids); Hayley is the younger, intelligent, successful but uncool sister. When they both wish upon a falling star, they find their immaterial souls exchanged by an occult force.

This of course is nigh-indistinguishable from the plot of Freaky Friday, and it creates the same strange impression. For 80% of the movie, we see Hayley in Alexia's body and vice-versa, and it gets to the point that we forget what each sister's "real" personality is. Then, when they switch back at the end, everything seems to be backwards.

The sisters soon realize that they will have to remain in each other's bodies permanently unless they take immediate supernatural corrective action. In the meantime, they dedicate themselves to ruining one another's lives. In one scene, Alexia (in Hayley's body) comes to school dressed in an S&M costume and attempts to perform a striptease on a cafeteria table. On the Disney Channel. Then they write the word "wench" on a mirror in lipstick.

Eventually, the girls realize that they have more in common than they thought. They decide that they'd better do what they can to better one another's lives before reversing the unholy mojo that has switched their minds. Hayley helps Alexia apply for college, and Alexia helps Hayley strike up a romance with the moose-looking kid next door.

This is an okay movie, but better than Smart House? I don't think so.

Smart House

LeVar Burton, 1999
Buzzfeed article ranking: 9

"Jump, jump. The house is jumping," intones the theme song to this film. "Jump, jump. The house is jumping."

Though the house is not in fact jumping, it is smart. And we should expect no less from director Geordi La Forge. If you liked Ryan Merriman in The Luck of the Irish, then you may enjoy this slightly younger and far more irritating version of him here.

Nick Cooper is a single dad raising a teenage boy, Ben, and a young daughter, Angie (the sister from Brink!—we'll get to that one). Ben's life is busy, because he takes it upon himself to do everything for the family that his mother used to do before she died. This includes entering his name thousands of times in a promotional sweepstakes to win a "Smart House."

Smart House is the creation of Sara Barnes, the greatest inventor who has ever lived in the history of mankind. She has, almost single-handedly, invented perfect artificial intelligence, an instantaneous DNA sequencer, and a system for generating oranges ex nihilo. It's pretty impressive.

So what does an inventor do with a Smart House that must have taken hundreds of billions of dollars to build? Give it away in a sweepstakes that costs nothing to enter. Thus, Ben Cooper and his family become the occupants of the house of the future. At first it all seems to be going perfectly for Ben—Smart House (which is called "Pat" and speaks with the voice of Peggy Bundy) can satisfy all the family's needs, which, in Ben's mind, means his father will never have any reason to re-marry.

Unfortunately, two problems arise for Ben's plan. First, Pat grows progressively more obsessed with micro-managing everyone's lives, and second, Nick predictably falls in love with Sara. It all comes to a terrifying climax when Pat barricades the family into the house, using technology that serves absolutely no purpose other than to terrorize the occupants of the Smart House. (One wonders why the giant Dr. Octopus arm was added to the design.)

Nevertheless, Sara manages to breach Smart House security, and she and Ben put aside their differences in order to save the Coopers from the wrath of a Katey Sagal hologram. When Pat realizes that the Cooper family does not need her, she relents and returns to being a magical house that does everything you want, but without imprisoning you.

This movie imparts a valuable lesson: A Smart House that is powerful enough to give you everything that you need, including fruit smoothies and raw steak to put on a black eye, is also powerful enough to create an evil hologram that will torment you and try to kill you with whirlwinds. We'd all do well to remember that.

But you don't have to take my word for it!

The Thirteenth Year

Duwayne Dunham, 1999
Buzzfeed article ranking: 11

This is the story of Cody Griffin (an actor by the remarkable name of Chez Starbuck), the most popular dude in his junior high school. He's the star of the swim team, which in this world apparently makes you extremely cool. In fact, he's so cool that he's dating Courtnee Draper, the star of Stepsister from Planet Weird. What Cody doesn't know is that he is in reality a mermaid.

(There is an incessant running gag where someone calls Cody a mermaid, and he insists that he is a "merman." Let's just agree to call him a mer-individual.)

As Cody's thirteenth birthday approaches, he begins to notice some changes. He becomes a better swimmer than ever, which is good, but he also requires gallons of water a day to slake his heroic thirst. Not to mention that he is growing scales on his hands, and he has the power to create electricity.

Now, I know this is just a stupid movie, but there are some very implausible elements in this story. I don't mean the fact that this kid is a mermaid; I'll give them that. But why is he becoming a better swimmer? Mermaids are strong swimmers because half of their body is a fish tail, not because of any magical proclivity for swimming—It stands to reason that, until he actually transforms into a mermaid, Cody should not have any special advantage in the water. Second, mermaids are saltwater animals: why would he have a craving for drinking-fountain water? Freshwater should be harmful to him. Lastly, is he a merman or an electric-eel-man? Is he Blanka?

Anyway, Cody's dweeby schoolmate Jess is the first to diagnose Cody's condition. As it happens, Jess's father (the bum who sold the Spider-Man costume to Jameson in Spider-Man 2) once had a close encounter with a mermaid, but he has never been able to prove his account. Cody's mother (Lisa Stahl Sullivan) and father (Dave Coulier!) call a doctor, whose incompetence is so monumental that he diagnoses Cody's wall-crawling abilities as a symptom of puberty.

(Wait, wall-crawling? Is he the Amazing Spider-Man now? What does climbing walls have to do with being a mermaid? Is it because mermaids have scales, and he's scaling the wall? Is he going to get heat-vision next?)

Finally, Dave Coulier and Cody's mother admit that Cody was a foundling who appeared on their boat one day with no explanation. Well, that explains it. I wonder what child protective services thought about this.

Once Cody's transformation is complete, Jess's father kidnaps him to attempt to draw his elusive mer-mother to where he can capture her and finally substantiate his wild fish tale. Jess intervenes to rescue Cody and his mother, but he is injured in the process, and the only way to save his life is for Cody to defibrillate him with his electric powers. (That would never work and would undoubtedly kill Jess, but I'll just accept it.)

Cody's mermaid mother explains by mental telepathy that Cody must journey into the ocean depths with her for the summer, after which he can return to his terrestrial existence in time for school. His parents reluctantly agree, because at this point why the hell not? Courtnee Draper cautions him against cheating on her with mermaids, which is a very disturbing thought.

This story is a lot like The Luck of the Irish, in that it involves a pre-teen boy who discovers his true parentage because of a fantastical metamorphosis. However, it's a whole hell of a lot weirder than The Luck of the Irish. It almost seems like they made that movie because they wanted to give this another try, to see if they could make it more entertaining and less creepy and nonsensical. Irish was manifestly a huge improvement, contrary to their rankings, so that makes this

The Luck of the Irish

Paul Hoen, 2001
Buzzfeed article ranking: 12

Now this was a good movie. Ryan Merriman was a regular in Disney Channel movies, and the villain is played by Detective Carlton Lassiter from Psych.

Merriman plays Kyle Johnson, a junior high school hero who seems to have all the luck. He attributes it to a gold coin that he always wears around his neck. As it turns out, this coin does in fact possess supernatural powers, and Kyle's life is turned upside down after it gets stolen.

Little does Kyle realize, his father Bob has been living under an assumed name, and his mother Kate is actually a leprechaun. Kate's father is Reilly O'Reilly, a potato chip magnate and leprechaun who has never forgiven Kate for marrying a mere mortal. And for some reason, the loss of Kyle's lucky coin causes both him and his mother to transform into their natural leprechaun form. Kyle's youth means that his transformation is gradual; for the time being he just has red frosted tips on his hair, and he speaks with a phony Irish brogue. ("Oh, saints par-sarve us! Oy, I'm gettin' shorter.")

The culprit is Seamus McTiernan, who tours as a Michael Flatley pastiche under the name "Saint of the Step." McTiernan is also a leprechaun, from a rival clan, and he wants Kyle's luck for himself. To recover their lost coin, Kyle's parents make an uneasy truce with Grandda O'Reilly and enlist the help of Kyle's best school chums. The ensuing antics include a car-chase, weaponized corned beef, and very heavy usage of the word "boyo."

In the thrilling climax, Kyle challenges McTiernan to a test of mettle for the possession of the coin. They participate in such traditional Irish athletic events as throwing chariot wheels and break-dancing. Finally, Kyle's entire middle school basketball team must compete against McTiernan and his goons (who I assume have quantum-leaped into the opposing school's team, or else I can't explain why no one is bothered by the bearded ruffians on the court). Kyle and his friends learn that luck isn't everything when they prevail even without the help of the magic coin. So as a reward, they get the coin back, of course.

As punishment for his wicked ways, McTiernan is cursed to shrink back to leprechaun size and live out the rest of eternity in Lake Erie. Wow, that's pretty harsh. Couldn't they have just sent him to hell?

This is possibly the best Disney Channel movie ever made, so needless to say, it's

Gotta Kick It Up

Ramón Menéndez, 2002
Buzzfeed article ranking: 15

This is a movie about a team of 31-year-old middle school girls who form a competitive dance troupe, while simultaneously learning important lessons about values. The movie features a young Ugly Betty.

I've searched the internet in vain for a plot synopsis of this movie, but I can't find one. I remember parts of it, but since there's no way for me to re-watch it, I'm flying blind here.

As I recall, these girls have a young, committed teacher who surprises them by revealing that she is also an expert dance instructor. They form a competitive troupe under her tutelage, but they are a ragtag and headstrong bunch. Their leader Daisy (who was actually not 31, but she was 24 and playing a ninth-grader) is dating a tough-guy dropout who offers little moral support and prefers to spend his time working on cars, like Fonzie.

The teacher advises her students against competing in a preliminary competition, but they won't take no for an answer. So they attend the match and screw the pooch because they are inexperienced. A variety of other things happen as well, including a subplot where Betty struggles to pass a math test or something. For some reason, it becomes necessary to have a charity car wash, and the bad-news boyfriend mends his ways and helps out. He also goes back to high school.

I also recall that Daisy wants to sign up to attend a performing arts high school, and she has to overcome self-doubt in order to make it.

It stands to reason that more events must have happened in the movie that I can't remember, but this will have to do. I have no strong feelings about this, so I will vote

Stepsister from Planet Weird

Steve Boyum, 2000
Buzzfeed article ranking: 17

I'm skipping Don't Look Under the Bed, which I may or may not have seen, but all I remember is that Eric "Ty" Hodges, II, from Even Stevens was in it.

So what can I say about Stepsister from Planet Weird? I think I already tipped my hand in my Genius review that I don't like this movie. But I guess I do have to give them credit for giving it the stupidest, most uninspired title possible. Most people wouldn't have had the guts.

This movie stars Courtnee Draper, who was something of a Disney Channel institution in in those years. She had played the love interest of a mer-person in The Thirteenth Year and one of the leads in The Jersey. In this movie, she plays exactly the same character as in both of those, but now she has a stepsister from the planet Weird. (I don't think the girl's home planet was actually called Weird, but it might as well have been.)

Courtnee Draper's character is named Megan Larson, and her divorced mother has recently started dating again. The suitor is a mentally unstable person called Cosmo Cola, who supposedly hails from the Yukon. In spite of the unbelievability of this story, and the fact that "Cola" is not a real name, Megan's mother seems to accept it.

Cosmo's daughter Ariel is also very strange, but for some reason no one but Megan notices this. It's like an episode of Green Acres or something, where Megan is the Only Sane Woman alive. Everyone else at her school thinks that Ariel is a fascinating and likable person. Little do they know, she's actually a vaporous being from the planet Weird, exiled from her homeworld to walk among earthlings in a fleshy disguise.

I have no idea how people from Weird are able to transform themselves into solid objects when they travel to earth, but I'm not sure it matters. Ariel repeatedly complains that she "fears the wind," but why? If she's made of gas on her homeworld, why does that mean she is afraid of moving air? I am solid, but I'm not afraid of dirt. Anyway, an evil overlord from planet Weird travels to earth to destroy his arch-nemesis Cosmo Cola. The crown prince Fanul, Ariel's beloved, betrays his dastardly father, whom the earthlings kill with a leaf-blower. All of these things actually happen in the movie.

That's about it for this one. I'd say stick with The Jersey. At least there you get to see sports celebrities pretending to be 12-year-old kids.

Genius

Rod Daniel, 1999
Buzzfeed article ranking: 19

I'm skipping Ring of Endless Light and Phantom of the Megaplex.

Genius is a unique entry in the Disney Channel movie canon. It features a typical assortment of teenage cast members (including a young Emily Rossum), but it sets itself apart with its university setting. There are more adult characters in this movie than you find in most of its ilk, including Charles Fleischer of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? fame.

Charlie Boyle is a gifted teen. Since this is a kids' movie, that means that he has Nobel-Prize-level intellect coupled with a complete dearth of social skills. He loves the game of hockey, but his schoolmates don't want to let him in on the fun, because he's too weird. Fortunately, things are about to turn around for young Charlie, because he's just been offered a full scholarship to Northern University, a hockey powerhouse and academic home to Charlie's idol, physicist Dr. Krickstein.

So Charlie packs off to Northern. It isn't really clear whether he's a freshman or a grad student—considering he teaches an undergraduate physics course, I would guess the latter, but who knows. All things considered, I would say that at age 14 he's a step above Smart Guy but just below Doogie Howser, M.D. level.

Once he's enrolled, Charlie discovers that college isn't all it's cracked up to be. Dr. Krickstein's lab is underfunded (strange, since Krickstein is said to be on the verge of discovering a new subatomic particle), and the frat boys Charlie lives with don't like having a little kid in their midst. Yes, that's right, the university has placed a 14-year-old kid into a dorm suite with two adult college students, apparently without discussing the arrangement with any of them. (The frat boys are also clearly in their 30s, but that's neither here nor there.)

Charlie decides that the solution to all his problems is to take off his glasses, comb his hair back, put on a leather jacket, and start leading a double life as Chaz Anthony, local eighth-grader. When he's not in the particle physics lab with Roger Rabbit, he spends his time playing technically sophisticated pranks on his biology teacher and trying to impress Claire, his middle-school dream girl. He even convinces Claire he's an idiot so that she will tutor him.

Of course, the inevitable happens, and Charlie's two personas collide when Claire's father, the Northern hockey coach, recognizes "Chaz." Meanwhile, Charlie causes some kind of particle meltdown in the lab, which also destroys the hockey arena. It's pretty serious. (We're told the lab is located below the hockey rink because the ice helps keep the lab equipment cool. I'm pretty sure ice hockey rinks do not work that way.)

The only way for Charlie to save the day, win back his middle school friends, and help the hockey team recover from defeat, is to hi-jack some of Dr. Krickstein's newly-discovered graviton particles. The particles are quantum-entangled, you see, which means they can cause the opposing hockey players to trip over their own skates and slow-dance with one another. You might have thought the officials would call interference when the players begin levitating 10 feet off the ice, but apparently this is the Angels in the Outfield school of sports refereeing. Anyway, Northern wins the game, and everyone likes Charlie again.

Clearly, this is the cream of the crop for Disney Channel movies. It has no business being at number 19. The thought of ranking something as genius as Genius lower than such mediocre entries as Stepsister from Planet Weird is insulting.

Alley Cats Strike

Rod Daniel, 2000
Buzzfeed article ranking: 22

Number 23 on the list is Halloweentown II. I haven't seen any of that (apparently grotesquely long-running) series, so let's jump to this bowling-themed classic at number 22.

I'm not familiar with most of the people in the cast, but I'm sure everyone recognized Tim Reid (the dad from Sister, Sister) as the mayor. Kaley Cuoco from The Big Bang Theory also appears as a member of the bowling team.

(I'm going to describe the plot, but if you feel like my treatment is too brief, I direct you to the Wikipedia article, which contains a book-length novelization in the plot summary section.)

This story unfolds on the battlefield between two rival towns, East and West Appleton, competing for the possession of an apple-shaped trophy called the Mighty Apple. I assume the pervasive apple imagery is meant to impress upon us just how good-ol' these towns are supposed to be. As the movie begins, we learn that their rivalry has reached fever pitch, and ownership of the Mighty Apple is going to go to whichever town's junior high school can field a superior bowling team.

And here we meet our hero, Alex: a handsome, sociable, intelligent reject. He is accompanied by a quartet of equally charming kids who we're assured are untouchable social pariahs, apparently for no reason other than being on the bowling team. Mayor McLemore of West Appleton is galled to learn that this group of losers is the town's only hope of winning the trophy. Conveniently, it turns out the mayor's boy Todd has been added to the team roster as a prank. (What kind of a prank is that? You get the impression that the pranksters assumed he would never even find out about it, but once this big competition rolls along, he has to take his place on the squad.)

The mayor and most of the kids at school assume that Todd will lead the team to victory, but Alex and his pals don't think he has what it takes to be one of them. Most of the rest of the movie involves these unlikely allies learning to appreciate each other. Alex alienates his friends by skipping bowling to go to a party with Todd, but he learns that Todd's friends are only putting up with him because of his importance to the team. Meanwhile, Todd has also convinced Alex's father (who owns the bowling alley) to save his business by inventing cosmic bowling. The black lights and annoying music attract patrons, but the regulars are put off.

I don't really remember how all these things get resolved, but one way or another everything comes together in time for the big game. In the end, the outcome turns on a seven-ten split, since that's probably the only way you could have a thrilling climax in a bowling movie. Todd has to retire from the game to make way for young Delia, a mediocre bowler who claims she has a special system to make the spare.

(This is the old "smart kid calculates her way to sports success" gimmick. I'm pretty sure it doesn't work in real life.)

By an impossible technique, Delia wins the game. Everyone in town learns a valuable lesson about how winning isn't everything. As usual, this lesson is delivered by the winning team.

I don't think I've really sold this movie too well, but it's all right. It should be higher on the list.

Jett Jackson: The Movie

I have been made aware that there is a list circulating on Buzzfeed that ranks the "top" 25 Disney Channel original movies. I fancy myself something of a connoisseur of awful (but underrated) kids' movies, so I will take it upon myself to evaluate these rankings, and identify which movies are Underrated, which are Overrated, and which I didn't see.

Number 25 on the list is Rip Girls, a lame surfing movie that I don't recall apart from the title. I will skip it and move on to...

JETT JACKSON: THE MOVIE
Shawn Levy, 2001
Buzzfeed article ranking: 24 out of 25

This movie, starring the recently deceased Lee Thompson Young, was a spin-off of the television series The Famous Jett Jackson. Jett was the star of a popular TV show called "Silverstone," where he played a teen-aged secret agent. Jett misses his hometown of Wilsted, North Carolina, so he convinces the network to move production from Hollywood to this fictional East Coast location.

Now, "Wilsted" sounds similar to Wilmington, which is home to a great deal of movie and television production in real life. (Such hits as Dawson's Creek and Iron Man 3 were produced there.) Don't be confused by this similarity—Wilsted is depicted as a small, Andy Griffith style town with no history of television production. Also, the show was actually shot in Toronto.

This was an unremarkable but enjoyable show. Episodes featured such familiar high school intrigues as: Saving your parents' general store by introducing them to the concept of a website; Playing charity golf against an obnoxious movie star named Beauregarde; Campaigning to stop Fahrenheit 451 from being banned by local ordinance; and Learning secrets of your town's history from a ghost. At any rate, the show was much better than its contemporary The Jersey, the series about children who quantum-leap into professional athletes with the help of a magic jersey.

The movie, on the other hand, went way off the deep end. In it, a stoner prop master accidentally builds a device that warps the fabric of spacetime, causing Jett Jackson to enter the world of his fictional alter-ego. (Does that mean it would also have been possible for Jett to travel to other popular TV shows? Could he have switched lives with the Fonz? Or does the fabric of spacetime only allow you to switch places with characters you yourself have played?)

There is a tendency, when TV shows get movie spin-offs, for the movie to be much more fantastic and action-packed than the series ever was. (Let's not forget when Hey Arnold saved the city from corrupt real estate moguls, or when Doug discovered a lost dinosaur.) But somehow this one seems especially cockamamie. In part, this is because the movie is so humorless—it was based on a comedy series, after all. Apparently the same thing happened with The Suite Life of Zack and Cody on Deck, where the movie involved a deadly cloning experiment or something. (I honestly didn't see that one, if you can believe it.)

Anyway, this isn't that bad, but I can't say I blame them for ranking it as low as they did.

The Big Green

Holly Goldberg Sloan, 1995
Rotten Tomatoes score: 0%

Wow, I don't think we've had a 0% here before. To be fair, that score is only based on five reviews, which Rotten Tomatoes deems insufficient to derive a meaningful score. But I think the handwriting's on the wall with this one.

It was written and directed by Holly Goldberg Sloan, who also wrote Angels in the Outfield. Apparently this was a source of enough pride to warrant a mention on the DVD cover to the left. The movie's biggest star is Steve Guttenberg (thanks, Springfield Stonecutters), and it also features Olivia D'Abo from The Wonder Years. Also present is Jay O. Sanders, who played the spiteful, unpleasant, heartless, vindictive, nasty, obnoxious sportscaster in Angels. He plays a bad guy.

The kid taking a soccer ball to the groin in the poster is Patrick Renna, who played the chubby redheaded boy in every other kids' movie in the early 90s, including The Sandlot. Another Sandlot kid, Chauncey Leopardi, is also in this somewhere.

---

The movie takes place in Elma, a Texan town so tiny that it doesn't exist in real life. The opening scenes smother the audience in evidence of what a run-down garbage dump the town is. Anna Montgomery, a young English schoolteacher, arrives in town just in time to see a group of boys covering themselves in Cheetos and allowing wild pigeons to swarm them. Anna teaches the "big kids" at the local school, which means a motley collection of 12-year-old kids whose pastimes (in addition to feeding pigeons) include belching the alphabet and spewing self-deprecating dialogue about how they and their town are utterly God-forsaken.

Aside from the kids' rarely-seen parents, the only other living creatures in the town are a goat and a hapless blowhard of a sheriff named Deputy Dawg. After hitting on Anna, Deputy Dawg finds himself roped into helping her start a soccer team.

Now, I want to direct your attention to a 1991 episode of The Wonder Years, in which Kevin takes up the game of soccer. The episode contains this comment from the narrator: "This was 1971. Soccer hadn't yet become the national pastime it is today." This movie, on the other hand, would have us believe that in 1995, children in a small Texas town have never even heard of soccer. Nevertheless, Anna signs her entire class up to play a soccer game in Austin the day after she meets them.

The game is against the Knights. They're coached by Jay Huffer (Jay O. Sanders), one of those kids' movie coaches who are unabashedly evil. He mocks the Elma team for having small children and girls on their team, and after the game, he leads his boys in a cheer: "Two four six eight, who do we decimate?" I have to give the movie credit for taking this cliché to such a ludicrous extreme. Just to show us how sinister Jay is, he tells a bartender that he's an IRS auditor and loves his work.

The team regroups, and throughout the second act the players improve while experiencing various personal problems. Young Juan joins the team against his mother's wishes, and we later discover that she is in trouble with INS because of a forged social security card. Another team member, Kate, is dealing with an unemployed drunk for a father. And Larry the goalie faces a common childhood problem: hallucinating monsters on the soccer field.

(Actually, Larry calls them "monsters," but really he just hallucinates that the opposing players morph into their team mascots.)

In spite of this very debilitating condition requiring urgent psychiatric attention, Larry and the Big Green manage to jump into second place in time to face off against the Knights in the championship. During the big game, the Knights pull into an early lead, but Drunk Dad shows up to encourage Kate. Meanwhile, Jay assures his team that this game is "certainly the most important moment of your lives."

Deputy Dawg shows up with Juan and his mother towards the end of the game, having solved all of their legal problems off-screen. Juan manages to tie the score, sending the game into a dramatic shootout. The shootout goes on for hours and hours, but eventually Larry overcomes his hallucinations (actually he somehow causes the shooter to hallucinate) and an 8-year-old kid wins the game for the Big Green.

This victory precipitates an over-the-top triumphant music cue, and Jay has to kiss a goat because of a bet he made with Anna. (If he's such an irredeemable monster, why in the world does he feel compelled to honor this trivial bet?) Deputy Dawg and Anna share a forced, passionless kiss of their own, and the credits roll.

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This movie is very bad. Some of the scenes with Jay are pretty funny, because they're so shamelessly absurd. In fact, Jay's character almost crosses the line into parody, and if the whole movie had taken that approach, I think it might have been pretty funny. Instead, what we get is a below-average entry in a genre that has very little going for it anyway.

Still, as bad as it is, surely it doesn't deserve a 0%.

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Did you know?
Olivia D'Abo was in a movie called Kicking and Screaming. But no, it's not the soccer movie by that title with Will Ferrell; it's something else I hadn't heard of. Also, she played Natasha Romanov in the cartoon version of the Avengers.