Get ready for the most lit holiday weekend of your life.
Disney Channel has over 100 original movies to its name. They are wildly diverse in content, tone, style, and political correctness, but they are all of the exact same caliber. That caliber is "fine, bordering on the worst thing you've ever seen." But as we all know, the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia have a tendency to make anything that delighted us in our younger years seem as grand and sacred as Wally World.
Disney, purveyor in human emotion, has therefore decided to play a non-stop marathon of 51 of its original movies, starting at 10AM ET on May 27th, and wrapping up in the extremely wee hours of May 30th.
Here is a video of me, reading this news:
Watching 51 movies over the course of four days might be physically impossible. There are some advantages to the films airing on television, like commercial breaks leaving time to sneak to the restroom or make a sandwich. However, the around-the-clock, four day programming schedule obviously doesn't account for other elemental human needs like sleep and attending at least one Memorial Day barbecue in pursuit of free hamburgers. So, we'll all have to make some choices.
Here are my top five must-watches, ranked based on a "Rose Glasses" score which will be derived by multiplying my enjoyment of them as a child (on a scale of 1 to 10) by their current Rotten Tomatoes score.
Pixel Perfect (2004): 10 X 62% = 6.2
This movie stars certified babe Ricky Ullman, who you may also know as Phil of The Future. In it, he builds a holographic pop star, who hurts his best friend's feelings by being too pretty. The moral of this movie ends up being "artificial intelligence cannot be creative, but it can be sexy!" A climactic musical number is performed inside a character's brain while she's in a coma, which she fell into after being electrocuted by a guitar. She sings a duet with the pop star hologram, who entered her brain through an EKG machine. (I might be remembering that wrong. I hope so!)
Tune in: May 29th, 1:20AM ET
Princess Protection Program (2009): 10 X 60% = 6
Okay, I was in high school when this movie came out, but bad movies are a slumber party staple, and I'm sure I saw this 14 times. In it, Demi Lovato plays a rude princess, and Selena Gomez plays the chill, no-nonsense daughter of an agent in the Princess Protection Program. I feel they were typecast. I can't wait to watch this movie and then spend nine hours online, looking up minutiae about the extremely fraught IRL friendship of these two gals.
Tune in: May 28th, 9:50PM ET
Stuck in the Suburbs (2004): 8 X 63% = 5
This movie is about young women who are stuck in the suburbs. I was definitely that in 2004! Stuck in the suburbs with them is a pop star, played by Saturday Night Live's Taran Killam. The best part of this movie is when the whole soccer team does a choreographed dance that is at least partially borrowed from the "Can't Touch This" scene in Charlie's Angels. I really can't wait to teach myself that dance all over again, and take funny snaps of Taran Killam.
Tune in: May 30th, 10:30AM ET
Read it and Weep (2006): 4 X 59% = 2.4
This is an objectively bad movie that I watched upwards of 10 times anyway, I guess hoping that the very stupid moral "don't write about your friends" would change eventually. This movie is basically Harriet the Spy but with an imaginary friend, and no Rosie O'Donnell. So, worse. I hope it makes me cry with longing for my former self!
Tune in: May 27th, 11:20AM ET
Eddie's Million-Dollar Cook Off (2003): 3 X 47% = 1.4
This movie stars certified non-babe Taylor Ball, who looks vaguely like certified babe Ricky Ullman, but isn't a babe. I watched it a lot because it is as compelling as every cooking show. It's about how misogyny affects boys. Hope it holds up!
Tune in: May 29th, 9:35AM ET
Smart House (1999): 1 X 53% = 0.5
This movie got a very low enjoyment score because my experience of it as a child was really more like pure terror. The only reason it's on here is because it stars certified babe Ryan Merriman (of The Ring Two). It's about what happens when you program your very futuristic smart house to be your mom, and then your house goes insane and tries to kill you. I'm not sure if it is an early criticism of the Internet of Things or if it's just a garden variety "femininity is monstrous" flick, but I guess I'll find out!
Tune in: May 30th, 2:55PM ET
Alright, I picked six, but it was hard enough to cut out Right on Track, The Proud Family Movie, Cadet Kelly, The Cheetah Girls, Camp Rock, Johnny Tsunami, Motocrossed, Halloweentown, Cowbelles, and Kim Possible Movie: So The Drama, so give me a break. (I'll probably end up watching all of those, even if it breaks my body and mind.)
I'll see you all on Twitter, come feelings and films time!