Atlantis: Milo's Return

Note: This review contains spoilers for Atlantis: The Lost Empire.

Of all the IPs Disney owns, one of the most overlooked is Atlantis, which revolves around the lost city of Atlantis. Though the original 2001 film, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, has managed a cult following within the last twenty years, it didn’t do as well at the box office as Disney had anticipated. As such, any further plans for a franchise were scrapped, including a TV series called Team Atlantis. Before Team Atlantis’ cancellation, however, three episodes were produced. Not wanting the effort to go to waste, these episodes were combined into a DTV feature, Atlantis: Milo’s Return, with some new animation tying the episodes together. Gauging critical reception is difficult, though Milo’s Return is typically viewed as a subpar effort in comparison to The Lost Empire. Looking as it now, it’s hard not to see why, but the rare window into what could have been makes it more interesting.

An Extremely Goofy Movie

Note: This review contains spoilers for An Extremely Goofy Movie.

Five years after A Goofy Movie, Disney released a direct-to-video standalone sequel, An Extremely Goofy Movie, on Leap Day in 2000. I remember watching this film as a kid and liking it, mostly for the extreme sports angle, but largely forgot the story over the years until I decided to rewatch it after viewing A Goofy Movie. Watching this film again as an adult, I saw it as a sequel that squandered its own potentially interesting plotlines and realized that the three security stickers on my sealed DVD copy were actually a warning.

A Goofy Movie

Note: This review contains spoilers for A Goofy Movie.

While there are many motivations to watch a film, as we’ve discussed before on this blog, sometimes you’ve seen a film during childhood, but either didn’t pay attention or memories of it faded until you’re reminded of its existence years later. This was the case with A Goofy Movie, an animated Disney film based on Goof Troop that turned 25 this year. While looking for something short to watch, I remembered wanting to watch A Goofy Movie while actually paying attention to the plot, which led to buying a cheap DVD copy. At the next opportunity, I finally gave it a watch and realized I had just seen an underrated Disney classic.

Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Candace Against the Universe

As we were catching up with every episode of Phineas and Ferb, we learned about a new film, Candance Against the Universe, and anticipated it even more once we finally finished the series. We didn’t keep up with all of the pre-release material, but we did watch a Comic-Con@Home panel about the film, which gave some great insight into the development and included the opening musical number as a preview. We would then later cave in and get a Disney+ subscription to access the film, which we then watched twice on its release day. While I thought the build-up was worth it, I wasn’t sure exactly how to feel about the seeming influence from Dan Povenmire and Jeff “Swampy” Marsh’s other project, Milo Murphy’s Law.

Phineas and Ferb the Movie: Across the 2nd Dimension

Since its first official airing on Disney Channel in 2008, Phineas and Ferb has become one of Disney’s biggest animated television series, with 222 episodes across four seasons released over eight years. The franchise also proved popular enough to spawn a few video games and several albums collecting the show’s music, among other merchandise, along with a full-length TV movie, Across the 2nd Dimension, and an upcoming Disney+ movie, Candace Against the Universe. Since we had only recently gotten into Phineas and Ferb, we made it a point to watch Across the 2nd Dimension while catching up with the show. Aside from the necessity of watching it to make a later episode watchable, the movie is fortunately worth the investment.

Recess: School's Out

One show I had watched in some form growing up was the Disney animated series Recess; though it originally aired as part of the One Saturday Morning block on ABC (before it was rebranded as ABC Kids), I remember watching it via reruns on Toon Disney (prior to its own rebranding as Disney XD), which was one of a few formative animation outlets for me as a child. For those who haven’t seen it, the show revolved around the misadventures of six fourth-graders (T.J., Vince, Gus, Spinelli, Gretchen and Mikey) as they make the most of the school year, with a heavy emphasis on what occurs on the playground during the recess period. During the show’s run, it had received a theatrically-released movie in 2001 known as Recess: School’s Out, however I never ended up actually watching it, and even then, I had only seen it in parts when it ran on TV. After having finally seen the movie in full, on what was coincidentally a few days off from the 19^th anniversary of its US premiere no less, and spurred in part by the (as of this writing) recent passing of Jason Davis (Mikey), I found it to be a solid movie that holds up surprisingly well.