Review of The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again (1979) by Edith N — 11 Nov 2006

Okay, so this isn't exactly a good movie. Still, I do love it so. It's inferior to the original, of course, but it's delightfully wacky and a nice change from Hitchcock.

This time around, I missed the beginning, but I've seen this movie many, many times. I had the Disney Channel as a child, and it was a powerful influence. I saw this, the original, all sorts of things starring all sorts of stars, including more than a few who were Disney-only--Tommy Kirk, Dean Jones, the Corcoran brothers.

No. Not a good movie. But there's a whole heap of nostalgia attached to it, and I do love the ensuing wackiness. I love the mule, the prison, Wooly Bill, poor Harry Morgan (who was in an [i]awful[/i] lot of Disney movies in this era as well as [i]M*A*S*H[/i]). I love the totally improbable plot twists and how poor Amos and Theodore can't turn around without encountering someone who would quite willingly kill them.

Most of the old Disney movies are like that to me. First Tommy Kirk and then Dean Jones turning into a dog because of Lucrezia Borgia's ring. Fred MacMurray flying his Model T across the night sky. Halley Mills, Halley Mills, and the body double getting their parents back together. Dean Jones and that wacky little VW bug. And I'm sure several others that they've remade--poorly--in the last few years.

It's not just that the remakes are bad--most of the original movies are pretty bad, I have to concede, though I dearly love them. It's that once Disney remakes something these days, they stop showing the original. Also, by all accounts, the remakes are [i]worse[/i]. There's one brief bit of the [i]Parent Trap[/i] remake that I'd like to see--the woman who played Vicki in the original plays her old character's mother in the remake--but mostly, the remakes just make me sad.

The Disney Channel has played the [i]Parent Trap[/i] remake probably half-a-dozen times in the last few days. They play their new, generally quite bad, made-for-Disney-Channel movies into the ground. And you can't see a classic Mickey cartoon. Or, in fact, any of the classic cartoons. I want to see Goofy learning How to Ski, or How to Ride, or any of the other great old Goofy cartoons. I don't want to see a new one teaching him How to Bungee Jump or whatever. The animation's inferior, the voice-over's wrong, and it isn't half so funny.

They don't show [i]The Moon-Spinners[/i]. They don't show [i]Merlin Jones[/i]. They don't show [i]The Barefoot Executive[/i]--and you'd think they'd be terribly proud of it, given that Kurt Russell's a big name who got his start working for them. They don't show so many great things. Instead, they play all the [i]That's So Raven[/i] you can stomach and then some. The same episode, four times a day. No more [i]Vault Disney[/i] in the wee hours. Not even more episodes of the one current show I like, [i]Kim Possible[/i]. It's not the same, and not in a good way.