This post is part of Mashable's You're Old Week. Break through the haze of nostalgia with us and see what holds up, what disappoints, and what got better with time.
If you want to watch a young millennial get real nostalgic real fast, simply say the following four words: Disney Channel Original Movie.
Since the late '90s, Disney's cable channel offered dozens of original feature films, often with bizarre and outlandish premises. Whatever they were smoking or throwing at a wall to see if it stuck, DCOMs turned out to be a hotbed of creative energy in the early 21st century, and many of the ideas were so weird that they somehow, ingeniously, worked.
Here are the weirdest DCOMs we still can't believe got made.
SEE ALSO:Nancy Meyers movies, rankedAllyson (Alyson Michalka) starts producing a reality show about kid magicians, which is how she meets the talented Danny (Johnny Pacar). When a heated competition outs Danny as a fake, she learns that he and his mentor Max (Frank Langella) are not magicians, but sorcerers. Max has plans to control Danny and stifle his powers – he even tries to kill him on stage.
Royal witches Apolla and Artemis (Tia and Tamera Mowry), from the land of Coventry, are sent into hiding to stay safe from evil forces. On Earth, the sisters are separated and unaware of their true identities until they meet and unleash their magic. The Twitches band together to fight the Darkness and save their home and parents. A lot of this became ABC's Once Upon A Time, so we don't find it that weird anymore.
High schoolers Virgil (Jason Dolley) and Charlie (Luke Benward) are social outcasts because of an embarrassing incident, but that's about to change when Charlie invents a time machine. They decide to use it to reverse all kinds of high school embarrassment (after a failed attempt at the lottery) and develop some notoriety in the local community – so much so that the FBI shows up and we find out that all this time travel created a black hole they must close.
Wendy (Brenda Song) is a normal teen who finds out that she's a reincarnated martial artist who has to reconnect with her warrior roots while facing great personal danger. A dark spirit stalks her as she embarks on her training, reluctant to become a warrior at the cost of sweet teen life.
Zoe (Zendaya) messes up her phone and realizes that one of its apps makes men and boys obey her like dogs. Tempting as this is, it comes at a price, and she sees that the boys grow listless over time.
Will (Andy Lawrence) orders some off-brand kit to cheat at a school science project and ends up accidentally cloning himself. The oblivious and adorable clone (affectionately named Twoie) starts going to school for Will and changing his reputation while two dubious scientists set out to kidnap the clone for themselves.
Mack (Maia Mitchell) and Brady (Ross Lynch) are surfers who find themselves literally swept into their favorite movie by a giant wave. The film, Wet Side Story, is about warring gangs of bikers and surfers, but the kids realize they end up messing with the movie plot by existing in its universe. When Mack and Brady start fusing into the film's fabric (like a disappearing Marty McFly), they get kidnapped and have to be saved by the Wet Side Storyheroes.
Ben (Ryan Merriman) enters a sweepstakes for his family to win a "smart house" (these are real now!), and they win. When Ben's dad starts dating the creator of the smart house, Ben reprograms the house's OS (a term we didn't have when the film was made) to take on a motherly role. It eventually grows sentient and takes the form of Katey Sagal. Anyway, bury me in this dance scene!
A cute boy who's secretly the evil Kalabar's son (Daniel Kountz) turns Halloweentown into a bland and inverted version of itself. The quest for the spellbook involves time travel and a visit to a magical hoarder, not to mention the fact that back in our own world Marnie's (Kimberly J. Brown) mother is being courted by a bunch of frogs pretending to be a human man (it's a distraction).
Mae (Kelli Berglund) and Gabby (China Anne McClain) create a virtual boyfriend (Marshall Williams) who turns out to be a confidential robot prototype owned by the U.S. military. The Pentagon and its international enemies are on the hunt for this guy, but he's out playing high school football. Even when he returns to his robot soldier duties, he somehow makes it back for homecoming.
As Cody (Chez Starbuck), a prominent young swimmer, approaches his 13th birthday, he starts to notice some...changes. Not puberty – though there are some hilariously awkward jokes about that – but the sudden ability to climb walls, talk to fish, and generate electricity. It turns out he's turning into a mermaid – sorry, merman. Cody's mother is a local mermaid (spotted and sort-of hunted by Cody's new nerdy friend's dad – a complication) and that scales are not a side effect of adolescence, but of his transformation.
Before The Incredibles, there were the Marshalls, a not-so-ordinary family of superheroes living incognito in suburbia while the pressure mounts on young Scott (Michael J. Pagan) to display superpowers and fit in with his family. Desperately, Scott pretends to have powers and revels in his family's acceptance, only to get trapped deeper and deeper in the lie as a sleazy company hiding behind environmentalism threatens his local community. Kevin Connoly (Entourage) plays the villain and the heroes' Kryptonite is aluminum foil.
Kyle (Ryan Merriman) notices some changes in his family after an enigmatic businessman opens a new potato chip factory in town. That man turns out to be his grandfather, and Kyle is descended from – get this – leprechauns. Suddenly he's getting shorter, his ears are getting pointy, and starts randomly talking in an Irish accent while chasing down the villain after his grandfather's gold. This movie might be offensive?
Zenonis a prime example of how Disney realized they could perfectly tread the line between charming and weird, a formula they would recreate for years. Zenon (Kirsten Storm) lives on a space station in the year 2049 (before Blade Runnerco-opted it). She's lived there almost her entire life; she and her friends take class from holograms, use phrases like "stellar" and "Cetus Lupeedus" (did we ever figure out how to spell that?), and harbor intense, vocal disdain for Earth (hey!). Glitches with the "spay-stay" get her family sent back to Earth, and there is a famous pop star named Proto Zoa (see above).
This movie – which scared the shit out of me for years, by the way – follows Frances (Erin Chambers), a teen girl who thinks she's being bullied and eventually realizes she's being haunted by the freaking Boogeyman. Spoilers I guess, but in this movieverse, boogeyman are the result of imaginary friends who get forgotten, and Frances cooks up a vat of "boogey goo," which is what they eat. Gross!
Perhaps a sexier twist on Smart House, Pixel Perfectstars Ricky Ullman as Roscoe, who invents a hologram (Spencer Redford) to lead his band. But, as they do in these movies, Loretta (Redford) grows sentient and totally develops a crush on him (who can blame her!). More than once, she goes insidethe internet, and at one point, into the mind of a coma patient. In the end, she's kind of a ghost? It's a lot.
It has "weird" right there in the title, but boy does this movie deliver on the madness. Megan (Courtnee Draper) is an ordinary teen who wants to be popular and is immediately dubious of her mother's new boyfriend and his daughter – and rightly so, because they are refugees of an alien planet populated by golden bubbles and it's only a matter of time before that catches up with everyone!
TopicsDisney
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