A GOOFY MOVIE
A film review by Jeffrey Graebner
Copyright 1995 Jeffrey Graebner
Last night, I attended a sneak preview of WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING
(a terrific film) and after the movie the theater manager announced
that the audience was welcome to stick around for the 9:20 showing of A
GOOFY MOVIE (of course, they did this after the credits so there were
only 3 or 4 of us that actually heard the announcement...
The movie is kind of cute and I suspect young kids might like it quite a bit, but I wasn't exceptionally impressed by it. Goofy has always been one of my favorite Disney characters. His cheerful ineptitude has a very definite charm and appeal. My biggest disappointment was the fact that Goofy was reduced to a supporting role in a film that includes his name in the title. Did Disney think that kids today are unable to relate to and enjoy the film unless it is centered around a kid? When I was a kid, I never had any problems enjoying Goofy on his own.
I seem to recall that Disney had an afternoon TV series featuring Goofy a few years ago, but I don't think I ever saw it. Perhaps the characters in this movie based on that series. The movie seemed to be lacking in a back story (the explanation of how Goofy became a single parent seemed an obvious omission). If the back story came from the TV series, I suppose that might explain it.
The film was made by Disney's animation studio in France. Until recently, that was their TV animation department, but they are now simply known as "Disney Animation France" (meaning that they also do features). The animation doesn't have the same depth or detail of Disney's major animated features, but it still is a generally good looking film. It is easily several cuts above most TV animation and seemed to be on a par with most non- Disney animated features. There are a lot of bright colors and the characters are very expressive. The backgrounds generally tended to be flat and non-descript, though.
I guess Disney has now decided that every animated film they do has to be a musical, but many of the songs seemed to be shoehorned in here. A few of them were kind of catchy, but they never quite seemed to fit in extremely well. The movie might have worked a bit better without them.
The movie is pleasant enough and it does have a number of amusing sequences (my favorites were the parody of Disney's "Country Bear Jamboree" attraction and the disco-dancing Bigfoot), but my overall reaction was that I would have rather seen a movie strictly about the Goofy of the old Disney short subjects.
-- Jeffrey P. Graebner Columbus, Ohio
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