Mom Can't Cook! A DCOM Podcast

Vega omega, Mom Can't Cook! fans, this week we're heading back to the spay-stay for another instalment in the Zenon series of sci fi films that is confusing major, as well as viral extreme (bad). When we join our hero Zenon, she has a lot going on, with a new cousin, her space driving test, and the Galactic Teen Supreme contest all vying for her attention. But when moon activist Sage Borealis appr...

High School Musical may have been the most successful musical DCOM, but it wasn't the first. That dubious honour belongs to 2003's The Cheetah Girls, which charts the fortunes of a four piece girl group as they navigate friendship, fame, and deciding whether or not to trust a man who is literally named 'Jackal Johnson.' When we first meet the Cheetah Girls they're performing at kids' birthday part...

Calvin Wheeler, the main character of Life is Ruff, is many things. A big man on campus, a world class skateboarder, master to a snivelling worm-like manservant named Figg and of course, the world's biggest fan of an unpopular superhero named Gotham Man. What he isn't, is a dog owner, something that proves to be a problem when he needs to win a dog show to get enough money to buy the rare comic Go...

What if Johnny Tsunami were a lot less fun, and a lot more about probate law and real estate deals? That's the question no one asked that was answered by Rip Girls (2000)! Sydney Miller is a 13 year old girl who suddenly finds herself the owner of a large parcel of land in Hawaii after a distant relative leaves it to her in their will. But it turns out that Hawaii holds painful memories for her ov...

High School Musical was a watershed moment for Disney Channel Original Movies, when they crossed over from odd, throwaway curiosities about mermen and telepathic horses, into huge mainstream success, with hit albums, merchandise and two bona fide stars in the form of Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens. With all that being said however, it is still recognisably a DCOM, thanks to such unmissable genre co...

The Even Stevens Movie (2003) is the culmination of three years and 65 episodes of television, which we have seen precisely none of. However, that's not going to stop us from recapping this wild movie, in which the Stevens family think they've won a dream vacation to a paradise island, only to end up unwitting participants in a cruel reality show. Having seen none of Even Stevens, it's hard to kno...

Can you think of any scenario in which you abscond with the President's daughter and don't end the night being killed by the secret service? Well, Disney can. In My Date With the President's Daughter (1998), regular teen Duncan Fletcher asks a girl at the mall on a date, only to discover later that she's the literal DOTUS. When Hallie decides to escape her handlers for a wild night of mayhem, hiji...

Ice. What is it? Science can only begin to guess. But without it we would not have figure skating or ice hockey, the two sports at the heart of this week's DCOM, Go Figure. Katelin Kingsford is a world class figure skater, but to afford training from the world's top coach she must accept an ice hockey scholarship to a prestigious school. Will Katelin be able to balance her figure skating, ice hock...

How many great bands have never found mainstream success because their lead singer stands there singing, instead of rolling around on the floor doing yoga and the splits and stuff? It is literally millions. That's the predicament the band The Zettabytes find themselves in in Disney Channel Original Movie Pixel Perfect - that is until they meet Loretta Modern, who can sing, dance and is, regrettabl...

We're halfway to Halloween, Mom Can't Cook fans, so what better way to celebrate than with a spooky DCOM! This week it's 2002's The Scream Team, which is, confusingly, about a group of ghosts called The Soul Patrol. It's also about Ian and Claire, two kids whose grandfather passes away, but unfortunately gets his soul crushed in the fist of an evil dead inventor called Zachariah Kull. And also abo...

Miracle in Lane 2 tells the inspirational story of Justin Yoder, the first person with a disability to compete in the All American Soapbox Derby, and also presumably the first person to sit in a Disney screening room watching a movie about his life that inexplicably features loads of scenes of his parents going to town on each other. Frankie Muniz plays Justin, a plucky kid searching for a sport i...

The iconic good-vibes surfin', boardin' legend from Johnny Tsunami (1999) makes a glorious return to the Disney Channel in 'Johnny Kapahala: Back on Board' (2007)! Johnny returns to O‘ahu, Hawaii for his grandfather's wedding, but finds the island paradise under the cruel yoke of a gang of mountainboarding teens! Can Johnny save his increasingly large family from the poisonous influence of these b...

Apes. What are they all about? Can we trust them? Are they going to go ballistic and destroy our houses? If only there were some way we could ask them. Well friends, there is: sign language, the communication method that can be learned by apes. Unfortunately the ape in this movie, Jennie, isn't really interested in learning sign language, and is more interested in ape carnage and killing the mailm...

Jace Newfield is a New Yorker through and through. He loves jazz music, playing baseball in Central Park and, of course, the great taste of an egg cream. He's also a person who is blind, although in a place like the Big Apple, he lives a normal life with his friends. But when his family uproots and moves Jace to Utah, he finds himself struggling with his new surroundings. The school won't get a be...

We all feel like we don't belong on this planet now and then, but very few of us choose to construct an intergalactic satellite communications dish in our backyard to beg aliens to come and pick us up, and even fewer of us have those calls answered by a talking dog with a necklace made of lips. Not so Mike Pillsbury, an awkward computer genius who decides to depart planet Earth when some bullies s...

Imagine, if you will, some cooking. Seems pretty normal, right? Well get this: it was done by a BOY. Sorry to shock you with such a mind shattering scenario, listeners, but you'll need to be thusly prepared for this week's episode which is about Eddie's Million Dollar Cook-Off, a movie in which baseball-loving teen Eddie Ogden discovers a passion for the culinary arts that is as charming as it is...

Welcome back, podcast fans, to Mom Can't Cook! This week we're recapping 2006's Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior, a film that attempts to be a martial arts movie, a high school drama, a wacky fish out of water comedy and a thoughtful examination of the pressures affecting first and second generation immigrants. Does it succeed? Kind of! DCOM royalty Brenda Song plays Wendy Wu, a feisty teen whose only...

Happy Holidays, Mom Can't Cook listeners! We got you this episode, about a film in which Melissa Joan Hart falls in love with a sexual nutcracker. MJH plays Kate Holiday, an overworked baker who has to make 15,000 cookies for the army for some reason. But when she receives a magic nutcracker that turns into a man for some reason, it rekindles her love for Christmas for some reason. Enjoy, and we'l...

It's the holiday season folks, so this week we're cracking into a seasonal DCOM: the impossibly festive sounding The Ultimate Christmas Present (2000). The movie tells the story of Allie and Sam, two teenage girls who steal Santa's weather machine, which you'll notice, isn't a thing Santa is known for having. If he were known for having a weather machine, said machine probably wouldn't have an ear...

Continuing the grand DCOM tradition of trying to get you to care about niche sports, this week's episode is about Right on Track (2003), which takes us deep into the highly competitive world of *checks notes* junior drag racing. Here we meet Erica Enders and her sister Courtney, junior dragster prodigies who struggle to be taken seriously because of a) the sexist attitudes of those in charge of th...

The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror is a Disney ride in which you get in an elevator that flings you up and down for about a minute. As you can probably tell from that description, it's rich with narrative potential, which is why we have 1997's Tower of Terror movie starring Steve Guttenberg and Kirsten Dunst, the movie we're talking about today. Guttenberg plays the improbably named Buzzy Crocker,...

If you didn't watch 1999's Don't Look Under the Bed when it first came out, then let us introduce you to that rarest of things: a good DCOM! If you did watch it when it first came out then you won't need reminding, as this film is absolutely terrifying and you've doubtless seen it every time you close your eyes for the last 24 years. The film tells the story of Frances Bacon McCausland, a gifted t...

Ah, October. Jack-o'-lanterns on every stoop, crisp leaves upon the ground, and a new Halloweentown movie to stare at in baffled wonder as Marnie condescends to every single person she meets and then goes time travelling. Yes friends, it's time for Halloweentown II: Kalabar's Revenge (2001), a sequel which picks up where the first movie left off, but introduces a new threat to peace in both the cr...

17 year old Pete Riley thinks he has it pretty tough. He's the assistant manager of a huge cinema, there's a big Hollywood premiere happening tonight, and he's friends with like, 37 named characters that this film expects us to keep track of. An impossible task for a movie audience, let alone one stressed boy. But buckle up folks, because Pete's evening is about to get a whole lot weirder as a mys...

Do you ever wish horses could speak to you? Perhaps in the voice of outrageous funnyman Sinbad? Then what you need, friend, is la confianza de caballos, otherwise known as the confidence of horses. When 14 year old wannabe jockey Corrie gains this incredible gift, as well as her own racehorse, the self-doubting stallion Thunderjam, her whole world is turned upside down. But will Corrie and Thunder...