Disney's Best Film of the 90s: "A Goofy Movie"

Anyone remember Disney's "A Goofy Movie"?

A low-budget, low-concept film, it came out in 1995 with virtually no fanfare, no publicity, and no merchandising. And yet, it is the best film to come out of the Disney studios since "Beauty and the Beast."

The past decade has been a shocking wasteland for the Disney animation teams. After losing their genius lyricist, Howard Ashman in the early 90s, and the defection of guru producer Jeffrey Katzenberg to Dreamworks soon after, Disney's film division collapsed into a dark era even worse than their mid-70s malaise.

Forgettable films from that era like "The Aristocats", "101 Dalmations", and "Robin Hood" found analogous bombs in recent stinkers like "Mulan", "Hercules", "Treasure Planet", and "Atlantis". Even their target audience of under-8-year-olds stayed away.

The studio's next desperate strategy of sequel-izing their biggest hits failed even worse. "Dumbo II", "The Little Mermaid II", "The Jungle Book II" all went straight to video -- and straight onto the $4.99 remainder shelves, where not even scavenging old Disney-philes like me touched them. Here even the 4-year-olds tuned out.

All of the films of Disney's recent and 1970s morasses (morassi?) lacked what "A Goofy Movie", and in 2000 "An Extremely Goofy Movie" both possessed: what we in the business call "Heart".

In these two films, the heart came in the universal conflict of fathers and adolescent sons, and their journey to better understand one other. In this case, it involves a lot of ridiculous slapstick and downright idiotic situations -- like Bigfoot stealing their walkman with a "Saturday Night Fever" tape playing -- but hey, it's Goofy.

The Goofy films celebrate the love of family. They have no other agenda, no "axe to grind", no attempt to make the film a meaningful commentary on repression in China or the advancement of computer animation or the power of hand-drawn cels. Nor is it a shameless attempt to capitalize on past success.

The films are not perfect by any means, nor brilliant tour-de-forces like "Beauty and the Beast" and "Mary Poppins". Yet, at their very cores, these films are alike. The central heart of the story holds everything powerfully together, no matter how silly or serious things get.

Universal themes are what always wins an audience. Love, hate, revenge, greed -- all the basic elements of human nature provide an immense palette for storytelling. Movies like the Goofy films happily remind me that some storytellers remain that remember this truth.

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Keisuke Hoashi
Nov 8, 2004