We Want The D

It's time for another edition of 1960s/70s Disney live action Mad Libs! You know the one, it's Ron Miller's favourite game. The one where you just fill in the blanks between the phrases like "illegal gambling," "extended car chase," and "adult romance plot." In the case of THE NORTH AVENUE IRREGULARS we get some real doozies, though - "cool new Reverend," "Treasury Department, and "church explosio...

Hold on to your peanuts and crackerjacks, D-Lover, we're going back old to the old ball game this week on We Want The D. Rather than a scrappy underdog story that Disney tends to love for their sports movies, however, MILLION DOLLAR ARM centers mostly on a successful sports agent who hit a bit of a rough patch, and may have to sell his very large LA home or perhaps even his luxury sports car if he...

When Mother Abbess from  The Sound of Music told us to "climb every mountain" she probably wasn't talking about the Matterhorn; or as it's called in Disney's THIRD MAN ON THE MOUNTAIN, the Citadel. But don't try to tell young(ish) Rudi Matt that, even though his own father was killed while climbing its treacherous slopes. No sir, climbing is in Rudi's blood, so no amount of stern gazes from a hard...

Disney hits more than a few stumbling block with the early-80s entry THE LAST FLIGHT OF NOAH'S ARK. Just entering the period where they attempt to create less kid-friendly fare, instead they let the children and animals fade into the background while focusing on an unconvincing love story between Elliott Gould and French Canadian actress Geneviève Bujold, a pair of Japanese Stragglers, and a truly...

As students head back to school after summer vacation, our hosts are heading back to Medfield Collage along with Dexter Riley, Schuyler, Dean Higgins, Girl and the rest of the gang in Disney's THE COMPUTER WORE TENNIS SHOES. But like students in a 8:30AM lecture, Vicky, Nolan and Jill are having a little trouble focusing on this movie's particular brand of hijinks, and wind up going on some detour...

Vicky, Nolan and Jill are on their annual pilgrimage to Bob's Lake, and since they've already done all the movies in the Szalinski franchise what could be more appropriate than talking about a real-life genius? In this special mini-episode, Vicky gives a crash course on Ub Iwerks; who not only shaped the legacy of Disney, but the entire film industry. 

The past weeks and months have been a wild ride here on We Want The D, thanks to The Summer of Love Bug. From the top of the Golden Gate Bridge to the bottom of the ocean, we've followed the adventures of the little car with a big heart with fascination, disbelief, horror and delight with equal measure. But now it's time to say goodbye, and there's likely no better way to spend our final hours wit...

In retrospect, the missing possessive apostrophe 's' in MOTHER GOOSE ROCK 'N' RHYME should have been a sort of clue or portent for what was to come. Because this week's movie is missing a whole lot. A beloved childhood favourite of Vicky's, this Disney Channel world premiere is cause for great befuddlement for our other two hosts. Why does it look like it was filmed with a potato? Why are all the...

Unfortunately, the penultimate episode of the Summer of Love Bug doesn't set us up to go out with a bang as one might have hoped. And we suppose that's to be expected - after all, we're in Disney television movie territory here. But there was always the hope that Bruce Campbell and Herbie would be a winning combination - but all for naught. Sure, Bruce's handsome face is here, but he's given littl...

Bear with us, D-Lovers, as we tell the tale of ROB ROY, THE HIGHLAND ROGUE. Rob Roy MacGregor is a proud Scotsman whose refusal to bow to the new King of England (who is German) puts him into conflict with the Secretary of State (who is Scottish), kicking off a guerrilla-like campaign; against the wishes of Ma MacGregor (who is a Campbell) and his new bride (who is Glynis Johns). It's actually a r...

Forging ahead on the Summer of Love Bug, we're wrapping up the core four original movies with HERBIE GOES BANANAS. Though at this point we have to wonder if Disney ever really understood what the appeal of this franchise was. While our hosts loved the earlier installments for their willingness to commit to the concept of a little car with a big heart, their over-the-top characters, and out-sized b...

Disney has been going through something of a new renaissance in the past decade or so, in terms of their animated movies. Most of the films they've released in this era have gone on to achieve some combination of box office success, critical praise, or audience approval. WRECK-IT RALPH feels like a clear attempt to do so by taking its cues from other beloved movies that combined existing IPs with...

The Summer of Love Bug continues on We Want The D, and we've hit our inevitable first speed bump in the franchise with Disney's HERBIE GOES TO MONTE CARLO. After establishing the little car with a big personality as a multi-faceted entity who perhaps feels the highs and lows of life a little too extremely, the third installment in the franchise takes a step back by putting Herbie back on the race...

This week on We Want The D, it's Nolan's turn to go off the deep end of comparing a movie adaptation to it's original source. Luckily for everyone, Disney's adaption of HOLES is not only faithful, but handily done as well. Lots of that has to do with the very game cast, from Eartha Kitt to Patricia Arquette to a fresh-faced, controversy free Shia Labeouf and plenty of other stand-outs in both the...

The Summer of Love Bug charges ahead with the second installment, HERBIE RIDES AGAIN. Everyone's favourite sentient little car is back, along with the firehouse set and...well, that's about it. Disney shook things up by bringing in a whole new cast of characters, but boy did it pay off. For as much as Vicky, Nolan and Jill were charmed by Herbie's first outing, this one amps just about everything...

In 1992, Disney whisked fans off on a magic carpet-esque  roller coaster ride of adventure, romance and comedy. Two years later, they took those same fans off on a bumpy camel ride through a largely barren landscape, save for some badly drawn cacti, in THE RETURN OF JAFAR. As the first direct-to-video sequel produced by the house of mouse, audiences were not yet savvy to the budget animation, repl...

We're gassing up and hitting the road this summer on We Want The D, as for the next few months Vicky, Nolan and Jill will make their way through another Disney franchise in its entirety over the coming months. With four original features, one TV movie and one reboot starring LiLo ahead of us, it should be a wild ride. Kicking things off is the original THE LOVE BUG - and it's a promising start. Be...

Disney is no stranger to Broadway adaptation, although typically its one of their classics being adapted for the stage. So INTO THE WOODS, a Sondheim musical that puts a dark spin on classic fairy tales, is a bit of an outlier. On paper it seems like a natural pairing, but in practice it seems like something may have gotten a little lost in translation - and not just nine songs and forty minutes o...

A thought experiment for you, D-Lovers. Given the title of Disney's 1975 movie, ONE OF OUR DINOSAURS IS MISSING, what do you think the plot could be? If you're anything like Vicky, Nolan and Jill, you may have come up with some ideas based on past experience. Maybe a monitor lizard is pelted by gamma rays and gets bigger. Maybe some weird combination of rudimentary claymation and green screen is u...

No point in burying the lead - Disney's MR. MAGOO is a terrible movie. Just truly awful. We won't waste your time describing the countless ways this movie fails to be more than an exercise in torture - after all Vicky, Nolan and Jill spend an hour doing so in the podcast you're about to hear. But just know that this movie has a seven (7) on Rotten Tomatoes. A seven. And that's not one of those rea...

Vicky, Nolan and Jill just can't get enough of that high seas adventure, so we're getting back on the boat and going back to where it all began with Disney's TREASURE ISLAND. Not only was this the movie that launched a thousand(ish) attempts to create pirate movies that all inevitably flopped, until a certain franchise based on a theme park ride over fifty years later; not only is it the first ful...

There were some high hopes going into this week's episode of We Want The D. This Wonderful World of Disney original movie seems to have a lot going for it: It was one of Keira Knightly's earliest leading roles; it's a Robin Hood story, which have generally been well-received on this podcast; and it came highly recommended from a loyal and beloved listener. But it's all for naught, no matter how mu...

This week on We Want The D we're heading back into the Disney Dark Ages with DRAGONSLAYER; a movie so outside the realm of Disney's brand they didn't even put their title card in front of it. This movie makes a lot of mistakes: trying to blend Disney's family friendly image with a dark fantasy movie replete with bloody virginal sacrifices; casting an actor who later defined his career by playing w...

Welcome, D-Lovers, to the 150th episode of We Want The D! We've loved going on this strange, hilarious, sometimes disturbingly graphic journey with you, and we hope you've enjoyed accompanying us; whether you've been with us since episode one or if this is your first episode. We appreciate each and every one of you, so it's no wonder we turned to you, the listeners, to help us decide which Disney...

Make no mistake, D-Lovers, there's plenty to talk about when it comes to HANNAH MONTANA: THE MOVIE, the theatrical film based on the Disney Channel property so massive, the House of Mouse convened a special conference of sixty old white dudes (probably) to discuss how to best market a teenage girl. The concept is silly, the themes are counter-productive, and the sitcom-y, slapstick humour doesn't...