FILM

9 Strange—but Great—Disney Channel Original Movies You Forgot About

Including mermaids, holograms, and aliens aplenty.

Movies

Photo by Geoffrey Moffett on Unsplash

Disney+ is trickling its way into our daily dependence on streaming services.

This means we've unlocked a whole new world (Aladdin pun intended) of movies to watch half-attentively while we also scroll on our phones. You probably already know of all the classic Disney Originals that are at your disposal, but what about the Disney Channel Originals?

It's probably a given that big hits like High School Musical, Zenon, and Camp Rock are now available for your adult self to stream and reminisce, but that's only the tip of the iceberg. Name a DCOM, and it's likely available on Disney+, including all the strange, ridiculous low-fliers you might've forgotten about. Here are just nine to kickstart your nostalgia trip.

1. Alley Cats Strike!

Anything goes in the Disney Channel universe, including a bowling match to settle a basketball championship tie between rival towns. Why are both towns so invested in high school bowling? Why do the teenage winners get to pick the name of a new school in the area? We don't know, but we're still chasing the high of that final scene.

2. Stepsister from Planet Weird

In this sci-fi comedy from 2000, a literal alien refugee is immediately welcomed into the popular crowd at her new high school on Earth, despite thinking her human form is "grotesque." Not to mention that the emperor of her home planet is defeated by hair dryers and wind blowers.

3. Can of Worms

On the other end of the spectrum of Disney Channel's alien fixation, Can of Worms centers around Mike, who lives an entirely normal life besides believing he doesn't belong on Earth at all. After he accidentally sends a message to space, he's visited by an alien lawyer who deems Earth's living standards subpar. Strangely eerie 20 years later, isn't it?

4. The Thirteenth Year

Cody's birth mother is a mermaid who left him on a random boat when he was a baby. Now, as Cody approaches his teens, his merman features are beginning to present themselves, and he nearly gets accused for cheating during his swim meet. It's just fins, not steroids!

5. Luck of the Irish

There's little to take away from this film other than a white teenage boy finally embraces that he is both Irish and from Ohio, but leprechauns and river dancing will never not be amusing.

6. Motocrossed

Five years before Amanda Bynes posed as her own twin brother in She's the Man, Disney Channel offered their own adaptation of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. After Andi's brother gets injured, she decides to fill in for him in an all-male motocross tournament, chopping her hair off and all. The sexism is abundant, but—spoiler alert—Andi can totally take on the guys.

7. The Other Me

Poor Will. His grades are slipping, his dad is threatening to send him to military camp, and he just accidentally made a clone of himself who turns out to be way cooler and smarter than him, so they switch places. Kinda like the Parent Trap, but sciencey.

8. You Wish!

The lesson this film attempts to impart is: don't wish away your little brother, because he might instead become a child TV star and make your life even more of a living hell than it was when you lived under the same roof.

9. Pixel Perfect

The perfect pop star doesn't exist, until, of course, you make a hologram of her. Loretta Modern might have been programmed to become an overnight sensation, but she just wants to be a regular human, damn it! She ends up being helpful in more ways than one, but like all modern technology, she can't last forever.

Maybe they didn't all make total sense, but there's a reason DCOMs became such an integral part of growing up in the 2000s. DCOM creators conceived some of the strangest, most fringe ideas, and served them to a market that didn't mind how nonsensical they were; pair that with Disney Channel's omnipresence in the typical middle-class American household, and these oddly lovable films serve as a timestamp for an era.

TV

The Cartoon Wars Are Upon Us: Nickelodeon Signs Streaming Deal with Netflix

Disney Channel, Cartoon Network, or Nickelodeon: Which classic cartoon channel is the best?

Nickelodeon

Hot on the heels of the Disney Channel library going live on Disney+ and Cartoon Network being slated for HBO Max, Nickelodeon and Netflix have settled on a multi-year streaming deal.

Now, at long last, all the archives of the Big Three '90s cartoon channels––Disney Channel, Cartoon Network, and Nickelodeon––will be available for 24/7 streaming. Thus begins the official Cartoon Wars of 2019.

See, if you actually want to be able to access all three archives at any given time, you'll be spending $35 per month across all three subscription services. Us millennials can barely afford an avocado toast, let alone three separate streaming platforms. But let's be honest, nobody actually likes Disney Channel, Cartoon Network, and Nickelodeon equally, anyways. One of them is clearly better than the other two.

If you grew up watching '90s cartoons, reading that last sentence gave you a visceral gut reaction, guaranteed.

disney GargoylesDisney

Maybe your first thought was something like: "I loved Gargoyles, that show was bomb. Disney Channel ftw."

Or maybe your reaction was more personal, echoing something deeper: "Rugrats formed the very foundation of my childhood. Chuckie's relationship with his father informed my own experience growing up in a single-parent household after my mother's tragic death when I was very young."

Too bad you'd be wrong in both of those scenarios. The best channel was Cartoon Network. Why? Because Cartoon Network had everything. Genius boy scientist doing wacky experiments? Dexter's Laboratory. Female empowerment superhero narrative? Powerpuff Girls. Oh, and don't forget Samurai Jack, which won eight Primetime Emmy Awards.

Samurai JackCartoon Network

And let's not even get into Adult Swim, which kept the cartoon goodness going late into the night. Without a doubt, Cartoon Network was the superior source for all things cartoons.

All joking aside, it's exciting to finally have all the best cartoons from our childhoods streaming at our fingertips. But at the same time, I can't help but feel that when everything is set up on competing platforms, we're finally reaching a point when streaming has come full circle.

Netflix's biggest disruption to the classic TV model was its ability to give viewers so much content that was available anytime they wanted it, all in one place. Why would anyone need a cable subscription when so many great shows were available on demand for a cheaper price?

But now that there are so many competing streaming platforms breaking different content up across different subscription platforms, we've circled back into a bastardized "channel" model. We're essentially paying for premium channels all over again.

In a twist fully reflective of our capitalist hellscape, the enhanced corporate competition to get our money for accessible content has ultimately made said content increasingly less accessible. Moreover, they all get a lot more of our data now, which means that on top of returning to what essentially amounts to a feudal channel system, we're also giving companies a lot more access to our personal info. Good thing they're only using our nostalgia-driven data to peddle us more harmless nostalgia though, right?

Still, it's nice to have so many beloved cartoons, at the very least, available. And while I might not keep every subscription going long-term, I certainly look forward to abusing a few free trials.