Why A Goofy Movie is Better Than You Remember

this video is brought to you by viewers like you thanks for supporting my nostalgic clickbait and i get it i get that you look at a video like this and you think all right here's some cringy avocado toast type trying to capitalize on the powerline t-shirts that they're selling at target which makes it really difficult to try and communicate openly and honestly especially on this platform about something that isn't just good but like fascinating and how and why it's good please trust me when i say this a goofy movie might be one of the most amazing films i've ever watched but more importantly re-watched and if you give me a minute i promise that i'll be able to explain exactly why this film in particular is making a comeback in recent years strangely enough this film is built in a way to be a nostalgic time bomb this isn't just your everyday nostalgia it's like super nostalgia but beyond that this might be one of if not the best disney film in their catalog and i mean that i really mean that this film is disturbingly good now if you know my channel you're probably thinking like okay he's losing his mind over the fact that this film is a musical and yeah you're not entirely wrong but have you ever thought about how conspicuous it is that this film in particular is in fact a musical like i said my other videos the disney renaissance came about when genius howard ashman brought musical theater to the animated feature film and after his death in 91 the business majors in disney did everything they could to capitalize on that success from tv shows based on those properties to straight to vhs sequels which are just so bad come on monkey little birdie want to talk to monkey have nice banana but it's not just that this film is a musical you might even go so far as to call it the er disney musical the prototypical disney musical look at me i'm so fancy but in many ways it does what it does better than most of the disney renaissance films let me explain part one the establishing number okay so after an exceptionally vivid nightmare about max becoming his father we get after today and immediately you're confronted with a level of proficiency that you didn't expect from the movie see every good musical and i guess really every musical begins the exact same way with a number that establishes the world like in les mis it's looked down that tells us about valjean being a prisoner and javier being the captor uh little shop of horrors again howard ashman it starts with skid row which tells us about you know skid row uh even book of mormon has hello which tells us about what the elders do and that's something that ashman brought with him to disney little mermaid begins with the fathoms below because we're at sea beauty and the beast has that opening number bell and actually put a pin in that we're gonna come back to that um aladdin has arabian nights lion king has circle of life pocahontas is the virginia company and steady as a beating drum technically pocahontas has two the one with the racial slur in it opens with all the racisms uh hercules has the gospel truth mulan his honor to us all and tarzan also has music in it um and then you have brother bear which is just worse tarzan and then we have um yeah actually we're gonna come back to this one too uh give me a minute anyway after today sets up the world of this film is set in it's the last day of school before summer vacation and max is about to pull a stun that's it that's all we got to know but there's something else about this number because it isn't just the establishing number for our show see during production of the little mermaid howard ashton and jeffrey katzenberg would bump heads and disagree a lot on different aspects of the film at one point katzenberg insisted on removing a part of your world ariel's i want song and if you don't know i want song is like really super critical in every musical it tells you what the main character wants and it helps the audience connect to their motivations it's just like crazy super important removing that song would be like cutting the main character out of the story it's basically impossible to write a good and accessible musical without it but katzenberg wanted to cut it out ashman put his foot down and said no and ultimately ashman was right so after the immense success of the little mermaid and finding out that ashman was dying due to complications of aids katzenberg basically gave ashman whatever he wanted for the production of beauty and the beast katzenberg even moved the entire production to new york so ashman wouldn't have to travel ashman was right about what made the little mermaid so successful and katzenberg acknowledged that and basically wrote ashman a blank check in creating beauty and the beast so katzenberg going completely hands off for beauty and the beast is why it opens with like this five and a half minute number it was ashman flexing as hard as he could because it isn't just the establishing number like you'd expect from other shows it doubles as belle's i want song as well as introducing us to our primary villain gaston this song serves like two and a half functions which allows the show to hit the ground running and it's one of the many reasons why beauty and the beast is by far the best disney renaissance film and it's exactly what happens here in a goofy movie no more maxie the gate no more goof of the week like before gonna talk to roxanne and i feel like a fool i need a new me plus some positive proof that i'm not just a goo we aren't just introduced to how the world works it's all coming from max's point of view and it doubles as his i want song she looked right through me and who could blame her so to be clear in this film in the first five minutes it opens with a number that serves a stronger narrative function than any of the other first numbers you hear in the disney renaissance except for one we know what's going on at the end of the school year and it's almost summer vacation we know what our main character wants what his motivations are he likes roxanne but he feels like he's not good enough for her and he needs to prove himself so structurally speaking this film is already stronger than frozen and it only goes up from here part two how to stand out okay so immediately following the opening we get stand out which if we're gonna explain this number and this scene then we need to talk about that cow movie widely considered to be the film that killed 2d animation until princess and the frog in 2009 2004's home on the range is one of the strangest ways to spend an evening inebriated or otherwise now if you haven't seen home on the range it's basically about these three cows who go bounty hunting to save their farm but they bump into this guy who's like a secret cattle rancher who can hypnotize cows with his yodeling and what he does is he goes around to all the ranches and he steals their herds so that the farmers can't pay their mortgage which means that they have to foreclose on their land meanwhile he sells the herds for capital and then goes around to auctions in disguise and buys the land to basically become a land baron and you might be thinking wow that's a really detailed description of the film's villain which is also somehow the entire plot and you'd be right see home on the range proves something that a lot of people really hated about my tarzan video tldr of that video is basically that none of the characters are singing it's just phil collins disembodied voice singing narration to the audience none of the characters are singing so the songs and the meaning behind those songs don't really connect with the characters on screen and this weird cow movie shows why that's so important because of like the four or five songs in this film only one is actually sung by one of the characters and that character is the villain [Music] so even though all the music was written by the same guy who wrote all the music in the little mermaid beauty and the beast aladdin pocahontas the hunchback of notre dame and even tangled when you look back at this film you only really remember the psychedelic yodeling of alameda slim because he's the only character who actually sung a song and if i'm being completely honest i really like this number till he drives and dogies well which ain't easy when your chats are labeled xxxxxxl but like i can't even remember the cows names i want to say that one is named like becky but i don't think that's right they just have no characterization because they aren't included in the musical structure of this film so when we see max lip syncing to the fictitious pop star power lines hit stand out we aren't just listening to some branded pop song designed to play over the credits it's a musical number that's stitched into the fabric of the show just like all the others even when you just consider that it's power line that's actually singing this performance brings the music into the diegesis of the world instead of just being a narrator's disembodied voice telling us how we as the audience are supposed to feel and having max lip sync to this particular number only does a better job at tying these characters to the meaning of the song which when you look at it functionally in terms of the narrative if you treat this as max singing this tune serves as a reinforcement or secondary i want song if i could make you stop and take a look at me instead of just max just really wants to stand out and have roxanne notice him which is a continuation of what we saw in the opening of the film but here's the thing there are no other films that have done this in the disney catalog i don't even think i've ever seen this in like a musical maybe max is satisfying what he was singing about in the i want section of the opening number while singing another tune clarifying why he's doing the thing that he's doing right now and reinforcing his wants it's like functional rebar for how the numbers in this show tell the story and express the character's feelings it's phenomenal part three this is a cartoon following max's desperate attempt to get roxanne to notice him the audience being introduced to goofy's job learning about goofy's motivation for going on a vacation with max and then max lying to roxanne about going to the powerline concert we get on the open road now this number demonstrates a power that this film has that none of the other disney renaissance films have see this film is set in that like disney cartoon world this isn't really supposed to just be an animated version of the real world we're looking at a continuation of those old silly symphonies from the 30s where mickey donald and goofy we get into all kinds of hijinks this is a world where goofy has to negotiate with a sentient piano with absolutely no explanation donald duck gets into like an axe fight with fire crazy things happen all the time that really should be lethal but aren't you're working on a completely different level in terms of suspending your disbelief when you're in this world and you can see this exact same kind of thing in a goof troop the show where this film comes from so when we actually get to a goofy movie there's no such thing as bigfoot cars don't float and nothing in the scene adheres to any laws of physics anywhere so coming back to this number it begins with goofy's keys rattling in the ignition followed by the muffler then some pots and pans on the roof of the car followed by goofy whistling because he can hear all this then at some point we get some nuns some country singers jump out of a piano being played by some random guy on the back of a truck and there's even a literal dead guy but when the number ends we hear goofy humming along to the tune as if all of that actually happened so was this song diegetic or non-diegetic was everybody able to hear the music or does this musical number exist outside of the world of the characters well it doesn't actually matter see senpai ashman once talked about how animation could be better suited for musicals than the theater because it's easier to suspend your disbelief music may have more license in the animated film in the same way that it does in the theater simply because the level of reality there's no game being played by a theater audience we know that's happening right in front of us and it's painted scenery and it's not real hearing people randomly break out into song is completely unrealistic and forces you to dramatically shift your suspension of disbelief in fact he once said this about live-action musical films do you not think that that making a film out of a musical is a different process entirely than making that filmmaker play i think and do you want to speak to that yeah it's an exercise and it's stupid that's true so when you think about it having a world where basically anything can happen is in many ways even more well-suited for a musical format than one where while animated you still expect the characters to follow certain rules bell could not survive this explosion for example but goofy could this world is completely unrealistic so when you watch this number at no point do you question if this is even possible you understand the diegetic nature of this musical number without even having to think about it because you're already in a wacky crazy cartoony world where anything can happen so these musical numbers don't just exist they blend flawlessly into the narrative environment but what gets even more crazy is that when you think about it this is the film's villain song so i don't need to explain what a villain song is right it's basically a song for the audience to learn about the villain or explain what the villain is going to do poor unfortunate souls gaston or better yet the mob song be prepared mind my mind hellfire you get the idea but this song serves as the villain song because depending on how you look at it goofy is technically the antagonist of this story who's our protagonist who's the main character well it's called a goofy movie but it's actually max the entire opening number comes from max's perspective and what does he want well he wants to get roxanne to like him how's he gonna do that he's gonna go to stacy's party oh but goofy gets in the way and takes him on vacation goofy is more or less the personification of max's adversity one of the key features of max's insecurity is that he's worried he's too much like his father which he might feel in an indirect way is why roxanne doesn't like him no more goof of the week like before plus some positive proof that i'm not just a goo acting more like his father is literally a nightmare for you look max like i did at your age please don't say that dad why when i was your age i've never even been invited to a party look at me now so max wants to try and live his life and create his own identity but goofy gets in the way and tries to take him on a vacation not just any vacation a family vacation that every goof has to go on we're using the same map me and my dad used we'll take the same route and make the same stops and see the same sights we're going fishing yup just like my dad and me did it's been handed down from goof to goof to goof the mile it's yours son on top of that goofy continuously humiliates and embarrasses max and ultimately goofy is the adversity that max has to overcome in order to figure out a way to get to roxanne the point of a villain song is to more or less tell the audience what they're gonna do in order to get in the hero's way which you can see demonstrated in this very number do you need a break from modern living goofy isn't just taking max away from home and forcing max to become more like him but this number is goofy explaining in detail whether he realizes it or not how he's impeding max's life so yeah goofy is the antagonist of this film and this is his villain song singing about how he's obstructing max's life and acting as a constant foil of max's efforts and something that's worth mentioning here is that in some of the renaissance films the villains don't even get their own number which honestly in my opinion leaves those villains feeling a little more lackluster when compared to their more musical counterparts but the people behind a goofy movie saw fit to give goofy a number that demonstrates his motivations this isn't just a disney musical this is a really really good disney musical and then things get even better part four silence after on the open road we get this mini number lester's possum park and i don't really have much on this other than occasionally these disney films will have a minor number here or there just to flesh out the world like the little mermaid has that chef song pocahontas has listened with your heart you get the idea little musical moments here and there that add to the flavor of the world building then we actually get a fairly long period of time before the next number which is really interesting because i think it was done for the exact same reason we saw it in mulan a film that came out three years later in mulan a girl worth fighting for is the last musical number we hear in the show save this brief reprise of be a man when they're all infiltrating the palace [Music] the idea behind having this be the last number in the show was to draw weight and attention from the loss of life in the scene before all this the characters were all bright and chipper cheerfully singing but after seeing the devastation of war they felt that singing more songs might detract from the emotional weight from that loss of life in fact they specifically draw your attention to it and how they end the number [Music] now i get why they cut all the music for dramatic effect and to add some seriousness to the show i disagree with that decision but hey what do i know oh yeah that rhymed but it seems like those behind a goofy movie had a similar idea after leicester's possum park max blows up at goofy and they have their first real fight of the vacation with max vocalizing how miserable he is on this trip this is a stupidest vacation you drive me from home you jam me in this dumb car then drive a million miles away to see some stupid rat show following this fight everything gets substantially more tense between max and goofy after bumping into pete in his glamping rv goofy has to deal with pete telling him to keep max under his thumb then they have to run away from bigfoot and deal with being trapped in a car together while working other differences and they don't quite get there then max defaces a family heirloom right before he's trusted with the map which goofy then discovers that max altered after trying to defend max when pete criticizes goofy's parenting choices only to then all come to a head in one of the most tense scenes in cinematic history where max tells goofy to go left towards la outing that he changed the map and that goofy nose and not having any musical numbers during this portion of the film draws attention to how tense things are between these two but after completely exploring the limits of their apparent immortality we hear part five compromise people this is a love song instead of the princess and the prince that we get in all those other disney movies here we're treated to a love song between a father and a son it's a duet i guess you could even call it a ballad if you want to hell even just how they trade solos during the verses and then sing in harmony during the chorus is a really really common trope in those disney love songs it's basically a cliche in fact if you pay attention when they sing together on on the open road they're singing in canon they're both singing the same melody just slightly delayed from one another demonstrating how they're both similar and think alike but they aren't quite on the same wavelength but when they sing together and nobody else but you they're perfectly in sync they're singing the same melodic line in harmony with one another showing how they've grown to understand each other but before we go any further with this number let's actually look at this song through the lens of the final song i2i [Music] [Applause] [Music] on the surface yeah it seems pretty self-explanatory it's the moral of the film goofy and max have to see each other eye to eye the song basically explains how nobody else but you is about compromise especially when you look at this like goofy is the antagonist instead of max having to defeat goofy like a traditional villain there's this beautiful message of understanding each other through communication max doesn't get his way by deceiving or manipulating goofy and goofy doesn't get his way by putting max under his thumb as pete would have it they both have to compromise and meet each other on common ground as max grows and becomes his own person while figuring out how to keep his father in his life and while nobody else but you serves to highlight how they can reach this compromise by communicating with one another eye to eye demonstrates the success of their compromise by them both getting their own way in a musical number literally only through mutual respect are the two both able to succeed max gets to go to the concert and try to impress roxanne but goofy also gets to go on that family road trip and reconnect with his son and i guess save him from the electric chair it's a far more subtle and nuanced resolution to a conflict than you'd see in any of these other disney films like normally there's a good guy and there's a villain and you have to defeat evil or whatever but here it's not that simple and somehow they managed to express all of that in the musical structure of the numbers that they included in this film and this is where it all comes together part six nostalgic time bomb [Applause] when this film first came out it did really okay it was number two opening weekend to bad boys which makes sense people were walking in with the expectation of the ducktales movie which you know it exists and it's a film they'd already gotten a load of aladdin 2 and the gargoyles movie that both got directvhs releases and looking at this film it's clear that this wasn't gonna be the lion king which came out the year before or pocahontas which was coming out in two months but i'm sitting here telling you all this stuff in a powerline t-shirt that i found on the rack at target everyone my age absolutely loves this film because when you think about it this film is a perfect nostalgia time bomb if you'd only seen one of the disney renaissance films like just the little mermaid or just beauty and the beast and then you saw that disney had released yet another film based off of one of their tv shows and it happened to be a musical you probably wouldn't have thought much of it but in the 25 years since this film was released oh my god i'm getting old but in the 25 years since this film was released we've been inundated with a massive amount of these disney musicals that all follow the same pattern now we've all become experts in looking for our establishing number the i want song a villain song the love song all these cookie cutter numbers that would have normally passed us by when we first saw this film when we were kids even if you aren't consciously looking for them now you can feel that they're there and in revisiting this film as an experienced listener you'll be able to sense how these numbers are able to come together and tell a story instead of just thinking about how all these characters from your saturday morning cartoons are suddenly singing at you and in looking at just that this film really was ahead of its time in almost every way but on top of that this film is just filled with some of the most dated artifacts like max dressing up in a devo jumpsuit the car having windows that you have to roll down cassette tapes and film land lines a lighter in the car even water beds so it's not just that this film offers a gentle reminder of a nostalgic past or that it's a musical and so therefore it's automatically good and you can't criticize it it's that now having spent a lifetime being flooded with disney musicals we can go back and look at the structure of this film with a newfound appreciation all while being reminded of a time that's not coming back but we as children all enjoyed this film is better than you remember because now you can understand the nuance of how the music tells a more developed story and it's all packaged in a film where goofy as a single parent goes on a road trip with his son who ends up going on stage at a concert to try and impress some random girl in his high school that he doesn't even end up with so that goofy and his son can make some happy memories it's a goofy movie [Music] thanks for watching i like to thank my patrons for making these videos possible with an extra special thank you to a picture of someone casting a spell abe wintersheit alec kulikowski alex klinker always posh anthony de donato ben hillard captain casey charlie hawley christian clara tan darren almgren elise and thomas constantine oh this looks like some kind of typo for the alliance google it gregory holdenness hayden elsa hayden jondro heptonian izabo bisa fifa fofisa me my momisa isa i want to tell you if my fear is justified that no one will pay attention to me if i'm honest about my addiction to ice cream jason kim joe angle john egbert jordan adams joseph spiros joshua park julian dubois karen rosenthal celtier majors ladwina elizabeth the fourth the lanyard win woo sorry michael hubbard mike wisnick myth like dennick mohammed awoon myron john tatarin nicholas cohen nobody called me the space cowboy nobody called me a gangster of love but some people do call me fantastic preloc rafael martinez richard marzullo rick osborne ryan vick sydney fox tyler heath tara femira transpanic power hour you shall call me the pumpkin queen who am i and wisdom minari thinks phil collins ruined the disney renaissance i'd also like to thank everybody who asked that i talk about a film with a really good soundtrack even though the film didn't exactly feel like a masterpiece i don't think that anybody expected a goofy movie to have such a great soundtrack if you like what you saw here be sure to subscribe and check out my other videos follow my twitter and twitch after musical questions answered live and if you really like what i'm doing then consider supporting the channel on patreon but that's all i got for now thanks for watching [Applause] also did anybody notice that this baby almost killed itself

Channel: Sideways

Views: 1,336,347

Keywords: Goofy, Max, Goofy Movie, Musical, Howard Ashman, Ashman, Menken, Alan Menken, Home on the Range, A Goofy Movie, I 2 I, Powerline, Stand Out, After Today, Music Theory, Musical Theater, Disney Renaissance, Animated Musical, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Alameda Slim, Establishing Number

Id: N6j-562xQSs

Length: 23min 26sec (1406 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 31 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/dickforadolla]

It's not better than I remember, it's exactly the same as I remember - it's fucking phenomenal.

[u/BrewtalDoom]

There are so many videos like this around...

"Here's why that thing you liked as a kid is still okay to like!"

[u/ResponsibilityBig266]

Not better but still love it.

[u/Klangenm]

Awe heck. I am in the age demographic where I should have some very nostalgic feelings about this movie... but... I never watched it. Perhaps I should some day...

[u/Ravens_and_seagulls]

I hate titles like this. “10 things you didn’t know you needed!!!!” Like you don’t know what I remember or think or know. It’s just so dumb.