30th Aug 202429th Sep 2025 by The Disney Purist

Adventures in Babysitting (2016)

BACKGROUND

In 2016, just under two decades after the first official Disney Channel Original movie, Under Wraps, premiered in 1997, Disney Channel released their 100^th DCOM. What a milestone.

This 100^th DCOM was Adventures in Babysitting, which just so happened to be a remake of an 1980s movie of the same name, released by Disney in 1987 under the Touchstone Films label. When Disney release a movie under Touchstone Films, historically that has meant the movie contains more mature themes and content than the average Disney movie. This was the case with the PG-13 rated Adventures in Babysitting (1987).

After years of speculation around a sequel, and then a remake, of the 1987 movie, Disney delivered with their own Disney Channel movie of the same name, which featured a few stars of Disney Channel at the time, including singer Sabrina Carpenter.

I’d only vaguely paid attention to Adventures in Babysitting previously, when I randomly caught it on the Disney Channel. I didn’t think much of it; I don’t believe I even got to the end of it. I have never seen the 1987 Adventures in Babysitting, so I didn’t have that previous interest to get me motivated to watch it properly. But now I’ve decided to go back and review every DCOM, I had to go back and see it.

Sadly, I still wasn’t that impressed after re-watching it. Don’t get me wrong, there isn’t anything bad about Adventures in Babysitting, and the two lead actresses of Sabrina Carpenter and Sofia Carson, of Descendants fame, were very likeable and easy to watch. But the overall plot of two babysitters getting into various scrapes in the big city with the five children in their care didn’t feel particularly original or unique to me. Honestly, it bored me after a while because it all felt very samey. Bad guys were chasing them, then there was some misunderstanding that led to a moment of humour, then they were chased again, another misunderstanding, and so on. I just couldn’t stay interested, and after an hour, I really just wanted the movie to end.

Perhaps that is from my lack of understanding of the original, or it might be because I’ve never been a babysitter – I’m not a huge fan of kids, actually – and big cities scare me, especially at night. These elements are kind of key to the story of Adventures in Babysitting, so it was never going to be a film for me, unfortunately.

PLOT

Adventures in Babysitting begins with two girls heading to an interview for a photography internship. Jenny is quite high-strung and uptight, with everything in her life neatly organised and painstakingly planned out; she has her whole future lined up. We also have Lola, who is around two years older than Jenny and is a bit messy and wild. Lola doesn’t have her whole life planned out but she loves photography and desperately wants this internship.

At the interview, the girls are told to go away and find some inspiration for photographs over the weekend, with the actual interview now being moved to Monday. At the same time, the girls accidentally swap phones when both are knocked to the floor, but neither are aware of this. Going back to her car, Lola finds she’s being given a parking ticket for $80. “Lola’s” phone then rings and she answers; it is Zac, Jenny’s crush, inviting her to a concert. Lola realises this is not her phone but turns Zac down anyway, without explaining that she isn’t Jenny. Why you wouldn’t just say “Jenny’s not here right now, but I’ll tell her to call you back”, I don’t know. But Lola is attempting to flirt with the officer writing her ticket, so she’s obviously got other things on her mind instead of common courtesy! Now she needs $80 but luckily, she answers another of Jenny’s calls. Her teacher needs a babysitter for the evening so Lola, pretending to be Jenny, says her reliable friend Lola can babysit tonight.

Meanwhile, Jenny has arrived at her own babysitting job at the Coopers, looking after their two daughters: the glamorous little Katy, and the rebellious teen, Emily. At this point, Jenny then notices that she has Lola’s phone and not her own. Seeing as young people are meant to be constantly attached to their phones, you’d think Jenny would’ve noticed this a little bit earlier… Anyway, Jenny then calls her actual phone, hoping to speak to Lola. The person who picks up is AJ Anderson, one of Jenny’s teacher’s kids, who says that Lola is currently dealing with a fire in the kitchen so can’t come to the phone right now. Jenny immediately drives the Coopers over to the Anderson’s house to figure out what is going on.

At the Anderson’s, Jenny learns that Lola was too busy trying to relax in the hot tub to worry about the three kids she was meant to be looking after, leaving Bobby to mess up the kitchen and cause this fire. Emily Cooper then discovers that Trey, the eldest Anderson kid who was meant to be grounded, has snuck out to go to a Psychic Rockets concert in the city. Jenny freaks out and says she’ll drive there and get him home. The kids blackmail Jenny into taking all of them to the city, saying that they’ll tell their mum that Jenny doesn’t even know Lola if she doesn’t, so all of them go. But Jenny’s car isn’t big enough so they take the Anderson car instead, with Jenny driving slowly so it doesn’t get a scratch, dent, or mark on it whatsoever.

In the city, Jenny parks up by a pawn shop where they believe Trey bought his concert tickets from. The owner of the dark, dingy shop points them to the back, where the ticket scalper is playing with a sword. Lola, with Jenny hiding behind her, asks if a kid bought tickets from him this evening. He finally says that one did and that the kid said something about going for pizza. Emily pipes up that Trey probably went to Mario’s, his favourite pizza place; she has a crush on him so naturally, she’d know these things. As Jenny readies everyone to get back in the car to go to Mario’s, a purple weasel is let loose in the shop, thanks to Bobby. As the pawn shop owner rushes to catch it, Lola takes a photo with her camera, as she looks for spontaneous moments for her art. As everyone tries to get back to the car, they see it being towed away. They are told to come to the tow yard with $100 by midnight if they want to get it back today. Where are they going to get $100 from?

The group then finds that the owner and scalper are chasing them, as apparently that ferret was stolen and they don’t want evidence that they have it. Lola and Jenny hurry the kids onto a city bus and because of their arguing in front of the driver, they get away with not paying the full fare. They eventually get to Mario’s where they find Trey and confiscate his concert ticket. To get the $100, Lola thinks they should resell Trey’s ticket; it’s the only plan they’ve got. Meanwhile, Jenny overhears some girls from her school saying that Zac has decided to take some other girl to the concert and is devastated, not knowing that Lola rejected him on her behalf. Emily has also gone and got herself a sneaky henna tattoo having asked Lola – not Jenny – for permission first. Jenny is horrified and starts to shout at Lola, but they are interrupted by those two guys chasing them again. The group find themselves cornered in some sort of warehouse that washes uniforms and boiler suits. To escape, Lola comes up with a plan of hiding themselves in the suits and being carried up and over the heads of those two guys. It works and they escape via the laundry shaft.

The group then head to the concert venue, with Lola going off to try and resell Trey’s ticket, however, it turns out that this is illegal and Lola is arrested. At the police station, Lola explains that her and her friends are being chased by two men, but the officer is reluctant to believe her. Luckily, the officer who gave Lola a parking ticket at the start of the movie, Officer James, seems to work here and talks to Lola. He tries to tell her how much trouble she’s in, but she pleads with him, saying she doesn’t want to go to jail. Lola is released, and who should be waiting for her but Jenny and the kids. Jenny has just discovered that Emily has dyed her hair green, who, in a fit of teenage rebellion, walks away and calls her mum, leaving a message about what’s been going on, and AJ has met her roller derby idol at the police station. Lola and Jenny continue to argue about Lola’s irresponsibility.

As the two are arguing, the two men come back and see AJ holding Lola’s camera; she is chased down the street by them, with Lola stealing their car to chase after her. AJ manages to outrun and outsmart both the guys, and when the group catches up, they run into a building which turns out to be a rap club. The DJ won’t let them leave without rapping something, so after a brief, but pretty awkward, rap battle between Lola and Jenny, they are free to go. But outside, they see the Cooper parents nearby. It turns out they were worried after hearing Emily’s message on their phone and have gone to the police station to try and find her. The police officers laugh at the suggestion they’ve got their kids locked up here, and the parents head back to the party, believing it was just a prank.

Emily has to admit that she called her parents, which annoys everyone but there’s nothing they can do about it. Katy reminds everyone that her mother keeps a $100 bill in her purse, so they can sneak into the party and get that to pay to get the car back. At the party, which is in a planetarium, Jenny and Lola manage to blag entry by saying this is a field trip – even though it’s late and there is a private party on at this venue… They get to the cloakroom and discover that the Cooper mother’s coat is not there. Meanwhile, Bobby gets distracted by the kitchen at this venue and starts making dessert. The Head Chef is only too pleased to have some random kid in his kitchen, licking and touching all of his ingredients without washing his hands first. Where are the health inspectors when you need them?

To get to the Cooper mother’s coat, Lola is dressed up like a British socialite and takes a seat at their table. She successfully grabs the $100 bill from the mother’s purse and leaves. The scalper and the pawn shop owner have also entered the party but the ferret gets free, causing a panic amongst the party guests. Security is called to detain them and the police arrive to arrest them, with the ferret being taken to an animal shelter.

Lola and Jenny learn that they actually make a good team, but Lola admits that Zac had invited Jenny to the concert that evening and implied Jenny wasn’t interested as she was distracted by Officer James. Jenny is furious, but Lola wants to make it right and gets them all over to the concert venue. To get in to the venue, Lola has to part ways with her special camera, which the security guard wants as payment. Inside, Jenny is given a quick makeover and told to talk to Zac. The concert has just ended but Jenny wades through the crowd to get inside. She runs onto the stage and shouts Zac’s name. She tells him that she would’ve said yes to his invitation to the concert and the two reconcile.

But more trouble is brewing. The Andersons have found that their house alarm is going off and nobody was answering the house phone so they are heading home. The group quickly rush to get the car back from the tow yard and Lola speeds back to the Anderson’s house. They beat the parents there but the house is an absolute mess: Trey is tasked with cleaning the car; Emily with cleaning the dog; whilst everyone else cleans up the kitchen and laundry room. Jenny then takes the Cooper kids home, so Lola can wait for the Andersons to arrive. They are none the wiser, so they get away with their little escapade. At the Coopers, Jenny is about to head home when Zac arrives and asks her out on a date. She gladly accepts. Heading home herself, Lola is pulled over by the police. It’s Officer James and he has her driving license which she left at the police station. He also asks her out; she accepts.

On Monday, Jenny arrives – late – for the internship interview to find Lola already there. She actually tells Lola that she’s turning down the chance to interview for the internship so Lola will get it as she wants and deserves it more. The movie ends with Lola sending her pictures from that night – having remembered to remove the memory card from her camera before parting ways with it – to Jenny, Emily, Katy, AJ, Bobby, and Trey. But she also accidentally sends them to the Anderson mother as well who is horrified to learn what went on that night – oops…

CHARACTERS & CAST

Jenny is the classic example of a “goody two-shoes”. She is the perfect babysitter, the perfect student, and has never done anything wrong in her life, apparently. But that doesn’t mean that Jenny thinks she’s amazing. In fact, she’s quite shy around guys and clearly feels a bit inadequate compared to others her age, but she’s always been organised and is being given the opportunity to attend college early. We don’t get to meet Jenny’s parents but I think it’s probably their influence which causes her to be uptight and stressed all the time! What’s important is that Jenny learns, from Lola, that being perfect all the time is tiring, not worth it, and not all that fun, so it’s nice to see her freeing herself from all that expectation by the end of the movie and getting to live life like a normal teenager for once.

Jenny was played by Sabrina Carpenter, whose breakthrough acting role came from starring as Maya Hart in Girl Meets World (2014-17), the Disney Channel spinoff of the series Boy Meets World (1993-2000). She went on to appear in a few movies such as Tall Girl (2019) and its 2022 sequel, as Harper, as well as Work It (2020) as Quinn, all for Netflix, but nowadays pretty much everyone in the world now knows Sabrina Carpenter as one of the next biggest singing sensations. She has been releasing music since 2014, however, shamefully, I’ve only heard Sabrina Carpenter’s music recently. Sorry, Sabrina… And that was just the one song, “Espresso”, which I love after having heard it about three times on the radio during one car journey earlier in the year! It’s a great song, reaching No. 1 in the UK, Australian, and US Pop Charts. Some of her other more recent songs include “Feather” and “Please Please Please”, with her new song “Taste” released in August 2024.

Lola is not at all like Jenny. For one thing, Lola is about two years older than Jenny and has no plans to go to college. She wants to get the photography internship because she is passionate about it and sees a future career, whereas Jenny wants it for her college application. Lola is clearly talented, but she’s also quite chaotic, both in her art and her life. Lola has managed to accumulate numerous parking tickets, only wants to babysit to get money to pay for those tickets, and doesn’t plan anything; she just barrels into situations and hopes for the best! But Lola is a caring person; she wants the kids to be able to express themselves and do what’s best for them and she also wants to help Jenny with the situation she got them into by choosing to go in the Anderson’s hot tub instead of looking after the children… Lola learns from her mistakes though, apologises for them, and it turns out that Jenny and Lola become good friends because of everything they went through.

Sofia Carson was cast in the role of Lola, having just starred as Evie, daughter of the Evil Queen, in Descendants (2015). After the Descendants trilogy, Carson received a main role in Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists (2019) and went on to appear in multiple Netflix films including Feel the Beat (2020) and Purple Hearts (2022), where she also wrote, and performed on, the soundtrack. Carson also performed at the Oscars in 2023 alongside Diane Warren, singing the song “Applause” from the movie Tell It Like a Woman (2022), which was up for Best Original Song that year.

Now to the kids. Let’s start with the Cooper girls. The oldest is Emily and she is a bit of a rebel, initially wanting to shave her hair off at the start of the movie before deciding just to dye it with green streaks. She later gets a henna tattoo as well and is generally not in a good mood because she has a crush on Trey Anderson who seems to be too obsessed with Jenny to notice Emily. The youngest Cooper is Katy and she is a bit of a princess. She likes to wear her mother’s make-up, clothes, and expensive jewellery, even taking her mother’s earrings all the way into the city – luckily, she doesn’t lose them or she’d be in big trouble because those earrings are one of a kind, you know! Katy uses her fashion expertise in two notable occasions during Adventures in Babysitting; the first to disguise Lola as a socialite to sneak into the parents’ party and the second is to make Jenny look more like a concert-goer – and less like a “stick-in-the-mud” – to impress her crush. I like the Cooper sisters, with the girls’ opposite natures balancing each other out.

Emily Cooper was played by Nikki Hahn. She had played Bianca Russo in the Wizards of Waverly Place television special Alex vs Alex in 2013. After Adventures in Babysitting, Hahn appeared in the recurring role of Gina Tuscadero in American Housewife (2016-21). Mallory James Mahoney was cast as Katy Cooper here, before going on to star as Destiny Baker in the Disney Channel series Bunk’d (2015-24) from Season 3 onwards.

For the Anderson kids, let’s talk about the surly teenager, Trey. He is the reason why Jenny and Lola’s “easy” babysitting jobs become huge disasters. Because Trey is moody about being grounded, he decides to sneak out of the house and go to a concert with his friends, assuming that the babysitter won’t possibly notice that he isn’t there. And if Lola hadn’t been called by Jenny to get her phone back, then he might have just gotten away with it. But he didn’t so everything that happens to the group in the city is all Trey’s fault, really. It’s also his fault that Emily is starting to go off the rails since he won’t pay any attention to her. He finally does near the end, but if I was Emily, I’d be telling him “too little, too late, pal”.

Then, there are the other two Anderson children, Bobby and AJ. Bobby is the cooking fanatic, who is concerned with finding the perfect ingredient for his baking competition through the events of Adventures in Babysitting, with this ingredient turning out to be crushed seaweed. I might have blamed Trey for everything that happens in Adventures in Babysitting and that’s still mostly true, but then again, Bobby does cause the purple ferret to escape from its cage in the pawn shop and let the group in on the fact that this ferret is in fact stolen, so having these two men chasing them is Bobby’s fault. AJ is the youngest Anderson kid who loves roller skating, even getting to meet her roller derby heroine at the police station of all places. So, what I’ve learnt here is that boys are trouble and girls aren’t!

Max Gecowets was cast as Trey Anderson, going on to appear as Jonathan in the mini-series Dreaded Rose in 2017. Bobby was played by Jet Jurgensmeyer, who has voiced characters in children’s series such as Bubble Guppies (2011-23) and T.O.T.S. (2019-22). He later went on to appear as Boyd Baxter in Season 7 and 8 of sitcom Last Man Standing (2011-21). AJ Anderson was played by Madison Horcher.

Speaking of boys, Jenny and Lola have their own distractions to deal with alongside all the shenanigans going on in the city. Jenny’s love interest is Zac. Zac is clearly interested in Jenny because he invites her to the concert that evening but Lola being Lola makes the mistake of turning him down as Jenny. Luckily, Jenny is able to correct this miscommunication and the two begin dating shortly after. Young love, isn’t it sweet? Zac was played by Kevin Quinn, who had starred as Xander in the first two seasons of the Disney Channel series Bunk’d before going on to appear in Hallmark’s A Christmas Love Story (2019) as Danny and Netflix’s A Week Away (2021) as Will.

Lola has her sights set on the officer who gives her a parking ticket at the start of Adventures in Babysitting, even trying to claim that she’s a fan of classical music just to impress him, though Officer James quickly realises that she isn’t! Officer James later appears at the point that Lola has been arrested for attempting to resell the concert ticket and then shows up to return her driving license on her way home. I find their relationship a little bit random, a little bit unrealistic, and a little bit forced, but perhaps it wouldn’t have been fair for Jenny to get her man and for Lola not to? Officer James was played by Max Lloyd-Jones, who was cast in the role of Tom Thornton in When Calls the Heart (2015-24).

Finally, I’ll just quickly mention the two men chasing the group through the city: the Scalper and Tiny, the pawn shop owner, who I didn’t know even had a name – I clearly wasn’t paying much attention to them to notice anyone saying his name! These two are meant to be threatening but they are actually just two buffoons who don’t have a clue what they are doing, easily being outsmarted by these kids all because they want Lola to delete the picture of them with the stolen ferret. It wouldn’t have been too much to ask Lola nicely to delete the photo and frankly, Lola should’ve done because it’s not nice to take pictures of people without their consent. So, the whole evening would’ve been a lot easier had all of them just opened their mouths and communicated! Scalper was played by Ken Lawson and Tiny was played by Michael P. Northey.

MUSIC

The first song to appear in Adventures in Babysitting is “Wildside”, at the start of the movie, as Lola and Jenny are preparing for their photography internship interview. It also plays during the End Credits. “Wildside” was performed by Sofia Carson and Sabrina Carpenter, with Carpenter also co-writing the song. The music video was released on 10^th June 2016, two weeks before the premiere date of Adventures in Babysitting, and shows clips from the film. It’s a good song and I enjoy it; but if I think about Adventures in Babysitting, it’s not the song I’m going to remember the most…

That would be the song “We’re the Babysitters”, which was also performed by both Sofia Carson and Sabrina Carpenter, and written by Brandon N. Caddell. Unfortunately, the reason it is so memorable is because of its cringey rap battle. It was obviously the point for Jenny to feel awkward about rapping, as it’s not her style and she’s never done it before – she’s also being forced to do it, or she can’t leave the rap club – but the whole scene is a bit embarrassing to watch, even when it becomes less of a rap battle and more of a hip-hop song. This scene is an updated, more modern version of the Blues singing that is performed by the babysitter during the 1987 Adventures in Babysitting.

Sabrina Carpenter herself has stated that she is embarrassed by her performance during this rap battle, as it resurfaces online occasionally. She was not a fan of this scene and would rather nobody mentioned it anymore[1]. So, let’s keep this between us and not torture her with the memory of it all over again, ok? She needn’t feel embarrassed by it anyway; pretty much all DCOMs have a cringey scene or some awkward line in it somewhere so she’s not alone in feeling this way!

The other credited song is “Put Your Hands Up”, also written by Brandon N. Caddell. I have no idea where this appears in the movie; skipping through it didn’t give me any hints either, so I am uncertain what this song actually is, but it’s listed in the End Credits so I thought I’d better mention it anyway. It could be a song without lyrics, making it hard to distinguish amongst the rest of the instrumental background music.

There is also the song that plays as Jenny, Lola, and the kids rush to clean up the Anderson’s house before the parents come home. This is “You Ain’t Never Seen It Done Like This” by Photronique. This song is uncredited in Adventures in Babysitting.

Two other pieces of music that are uncredited are Lola and Jenny’s ringtones. Seeing as the music only plays for a few seconds at a time, this is understandable, but for anyone who is interested, Jenny’s ringtone is “Für Elise” by Beethoven, as stated by Officer James, and Lola’s is “Rule the World” by Anabel Englund.

PRODUCTION

As I’ve already mentioned, Disney Channel’s Adventures in Babysitting is not an original idea; it is a remake of the 1987 film of the same name.

With the 1987 Adventures in Babysitting being a PG-13 rated movie, there were many scenes that would’ve needed to be changed to fit the target audience of a DCOM. Some of the scenes that appeared in the 1987 film and not the 2016 film include the group seeing evidence of car theft, gang fights, going to a fraternity party, as well as guns and even a Playboy magazine being frequently seen. Adventures in Babysitting reached ninth place at the box office on its opening on 3^rd July 1987 but became a “sleeper hit”, which is still watched decades later.

Star of Adventures in Babysitting, Elisabeth Shue, said that she had not seen the 2016 film, but that she had seen a picture of Sabrina Carpenter wearing the same coat as her character had in the original movie. Shue also stated that she felt remaking the movie in present day wouldn’t feel the same since having mobile phones makes everything a lot easier for people, so they can just call someone and fix the problem. Phones don’t make a big difference to the plot of the 2016 movie but I can see what Shue means there[2].

The 1987 Adventures in Babysitting is still available to watch on Disney+, however, it has been noticed by viewers that actually two lines that both use “the f-word” have been edited out of the Disney+ version, annoying some fans[3]. It now says “don’t fool with…” and it’s only too obvious that these lines were changed!

But back to the 2016 Adventures in Babysitting. It had been announced years before that Disney were going to be making a remake, however, it had been so long since that announcement that many believed the remake had been scrapped. Raven-Symoné was once linked to an early version of the film which was being worked on around 2006[4]. It wasn’t until 9^th January 2015 that Disney Channel officially announced they would in fact be making a remake of Adventures in Babysitting, with Sabrina Carpenter and Sofia Carson confirmed as the stars of the new movie, playing two different babysitters. The first official trailer for the movie was released in February 2016.

The DCOM Adventures in Babysitting was filmed in British Columbia, Canada, however, it is unclear where exactly the movie is set, with the 1987 film being set in Chicago. Some have stated that it is supposedly meant to be set in Chicago as well, but with no specific filming locations linking the 2016 movie to Chicago, it actually just becomes an undetermined big city to me. I assumed it was meant to be New York City originally, but if that had been the case, I’m sure specific locations would have been used. I read one review that said they thought the film was meant to be set in Seattle, others said Vancouver, where it was filmed. It’s probably safer to just say it is a big city, and not be specific about it.

Adventures in Babysitting was directed by John Schultz, who had also directed A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding (2018), the second instalment in Netflix’s A Christmas Prince trilogy, and Like Mike (2002) amongst others. The screenplay for the movie was written by Tiffany Paulsen, who went on to write Holidate (2020) and About Fate (2022).

RECEPTION

In order to properly celebrate the huge milestone of Disney Channel releasing their 100^th Disney Channel Original Movie, in the lead up to Adventures in Babysitting’s premiere date, Disney Channel aired ALL their previous DCOMs from Memorial Day Weekend in May 2016 through to the premiere of Adventures in Babysitting. The most films – 51 – were shown during that four-date weekend[5]. I wish I’d seen that!

When Adventures in Babysitting did premiere on 24^th June 2016, it reportedly reached 3.45 million viewers on that one day. However, seven further showings of the movie in the couple of weeks that followed, saw the viewer total reach 15 million, where it became the top cable TV movie of 2016 to that date[6].

It also received a nomination for an Imagen Award, which supports Latino talent in the entertainment industry, in 2017 for Best Primetime Program: Special, Movies, & Mini-Series, but lost out to ABC’s American Crime (2015-17). John Schultz was also nominated at the Directors Guild of America Awards in 2017, in the category of Outstanding Directing – Children’s Programs, losing out to An American Girl Story – Melody 1963 (2016).

Adventures in Babysitting received a bit of a mixed reception though. On the positive side, many felt that the lead characters of Jenny and Lola were very likeable and that in general, the movie was fun, exciting, and light-hearted entertainment. On the other hand, those who had already been a fan of the 1987 film had a lot of negative comments on Disney Channel’s new remake.

They felt that this was a “sanitised” version of the original film, that the remake doesn’t capture any of the magic or energy of the original, and that too much of the story had been changed. The 2016 Adventures in Babysitting also happened to come at a time when reboots and remakes seemed to be the only thing that film studios and television channels were capable of making, with many viewers already upset or annoyed even just hearing the word “remake”, feeling that creativity is being wiped out by laziness.

I do agree with this general point but as I’ve never seen the 1987 Adventures in Babysitting, I cannot comment on how Disney Channel handled the remake’s story compared to the original. I can understand fans of the original wouldn’t be happy with the DCOM version though, having read some plot points and seen a few clips of it; the two movies are quite different.

For me, I just felt that it was bit long and a bit samey to keep me particularly interesting. It also doesn’t seem to have much of a message, unlike many other Disney Channel movies, apart from maybe don’t lie to your parents. Or don’t sneak out of the house in case you come across illegal activities and end up being chased around a big city at night by two criminals… But that’s a bit too precise for most kids to relate to.

LEGACY

As for what happened next for Adventures in Babysitting, well, there was no sequel. There is ample inspiration and opportunities for another remake to be made, as the story is quite flexible and it’s easy to inject humour and peril into the general idea of kids running around a city without their parents knowing, but the reception to the 2016 film has probably said that the people didn’t want this version, let alone another one, so it’s unlikely to happen from Disney. Perhaps from a different movie studio though.

However, Adventures in Babysitting will always be the 100^th Disney Channel Original Movie, so that’s something that cannot be taken away. Although from this point on, the number of DCOMs reduced to only around two per year, whereas “back in the day”, in the 2000s, Disney Channel released 8 to 10 movies in some years, Disney Channel have continued to make television movies that have resonated with the young people of the time and launched the careers of many of their stars. Just look at Adventures in Babysitting – Sabrina Carpenter has become a global superstar since her “Disney days”.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Adventures in Babysitting wasn’t for me. I didn’t find the overall premise entertaining and sadly the lead actresses of Sofia Carson and Sabrina Carpenter couldn’t keep me interested either, although I did like their characters, Lola and Jenny.

It also doesn’t look like I would’ve enjoyed the original 1987 film either – it has some quite intense moments from what I have seen – so it’s not like being a fan of that has clouded my judgement of this DCOM.

Perhaps if I’d been a more rebellious, outgoing, extroverted kid, or even just a babysitter, I might have been able to relate to some aspects of Adventures in Babysitting but I was not ever that, not even close. I’m not even like that now as an adult – I still can’t lie to my parents, or run around a city at night without feeling terrified!

Should I get out more and be more adventurous? Maybe – but please don’t make me go out with a group of kids and two babysitters; I don’t think my nerves could cope.

REFERENCES

[1] Credit: Cosmopolitan, ‘Sabrina Carpenter Is Haunted By This Scene and Asks Us to “Burn It”’, Cosmopolitan YouTube Channel, 27^th March 2024.

[2] Credit: Mara Reinstein, ‘Elisabeth Shue Answers Every Question We Have About Adventures in Babysitting’, Vulture.com, 3^rd September 2021.

[3] Credit: Noah Dominguez, ‘Fans Notice Disney+ Edits Out Elisabeth Shue’s Iconic Adventures in Babysitting Line’, CBR.com, 14^th January 2022.

[4] Credit: Marc Snetiker, ‘Adventures in Babysitting trailer: Disney’s ‘80s revival exclusive’, EW.com, 12^th February 2016.

[5] Credit: Nicole Nalty, ‘The Ultimate Guide to Disney Channel’s DCOM Marathon’, D23.com, 27^th May 2016.

[6] Credit: Tony Maglio, ‘Disney Channel’s ‘Adventures in Babysitting’ Is Top Cable TV Movie of 2016’, TheWrap.com, 11^th July 2016.

23rd Aug 202430th Oct 2025 by The Disney Purist

Cow Belles (2006)

BACKGROUND

In January 2006, Disney Channel released the biggest hit within their Disney Channel Original Movie collection: High School Musical. Because of the success of High School Musical, Disney Channel had a revival of sorts.

Think of the DCOMs that came out before High School Musical. The majority of people are likely to remember the bigger franchises, like Zenon, Halloweentown, and The Cheetah Girls. But there were so many more between 1997, when the first official DCOM was released, and 2006 that have been forgotten or never reached mainstream fame.

After High School Musical, DCOMs suddenly became bigger budget projects, with a more professional image to them. The DCOMs that came after High School Musical have been mostly remembered, perhaps also thanks to their casting of actors from Disney Channel’s most beloved television series, but regardless, it seems that High School Musical catapulted not just itself and its cast into the mainstream, but the humble DCOM as well.

I’m not saying every DCOM that came out after High School Musical was successful or that all of them are loved in the same way, but this was the point when I started to watch the majority of Disney Channel Original Movie Premieres.

Luckily for Cow Belles, it was released a couple of months after High School Musical and had an actress from a Disney Channel series in it, so it has been remembered almost two decades later. I am one of the ones who first watched it at this time and still remember it.

It might not have aged particularly well, with its focus on two spoilt heiresses who are so rich they have no concept of what life is like for the majority of people not sitting well with the people of today who are very quick to point out when “someone’s privilege is showing”. A phrase I find particularly patronising, but it seems fitting to state for this specific movie.

The world has also been through a huge recession and economic crisis since 2006, and some countries are currently in the midst of other economic issues, so watching two girls frivolously spend all their father’s money may not be to everyone’s taste. But I’ve always enjoyed Cow Belles, even if, now I’m older, it involves a lot of eye-rolling and tutting at the spending and the actions of these two teenage girls. It’s not their fault they’ve grown up rich, I’ll accept that, but money certainly doesn’t buy common sense!

PLOT

Cow Belles is about the two teenage daughters of Reed Callum, owner of Callum Dairy, which seems to be a big employer for those living in the area.

As Taylor, the eldest Callum daughter, is taking her driving test, she finds herself distracted by a call from her sister, Courtney, telling her that she’s found the perfect dress for her Cotillion party. Taylor pulls over for this call, before passing the phone over to her examiner to finish up the conversation. Strangely enough, Taylor passes her driving test despite this call, by using emotional blackmail – Taylor says she’ll keep coming back, asking for the same examiner if he doesn’t pass her. Wow, I wish I’d known it could be that simple…

This shows how easy Taylor has had it all her life. Courtney also doesn’t bat an eye at paying $1,000 for this “perfect” dress. Their father seems to accept that this is just how they are, and gifts Taylor her mother’s red Mustang as a present for passing her test, but it’s a stick shift so she’ll be getting lessons from the son of one of the dairy’s milk suppliers. Jackson Meade is not a fan of this “spoilt princess” and Taylor doesn’t want to be spending time with this “farm boy” so as you’d expect, it doesn’t go well. Taylor learns the basics of the stick shift but at one point forgets to put the handbrake on, so Jackson’s truck, which they were practising on, rolls into a lake. Taylor says her father will pay $2,000+ for the damages.

Reed is shocked by Taylor’s carelessness – though I don’t know why; I don’t think any of us watching were – and tells the girls they need to cut back on their spending, especially as he is soon to be out of the country, on a trip abroad gifted to him by his business partner, Bob. The next day, it’s clear this warning fell on deaf ears. Although the girls attempt to make their own lunch, as it is their housekeeper, Corrine’s, day off, they get distracted by shopping and rush off to go to the mall, leaving the stove on. That may have been alright, but Courtney absent-mindedly threw a tea towel onto the stove, setting it and the kitchen on fire. They get home to find the fire department there. Their father is furious and tells them that they aren’t getting any more allowance, aren’t allowed to use their credit cards, and are getting summer jobs at the dairy. Their lives are ruined.

The next morning, nice and early, Reed sees his girls off on their first day at work, telling them not to get into trouble because he’s travelling today and to a remote area, so he is going to be without cell service. They tell him not to worry. I’m sure that set his mind at ease… At the dairy, they report to “Uncle” Bob who passes them over to Fran to give them a tour of the factory. Courtney and Taylor expect to be sitting in the office, making coffees and doing accounts or something, but Fran tells them their father specifically wanted them on the production line. Worst dad ever.

Once Taylor and Courtney are in their hairnets and coveralls, they are tasked with putting lids on yoghurt pots. Courtney starts messing about with her phone, trying to take a picture of Taylor “looking ugly”, but the phone flies into a pot of yoghurt. The line has to be halted, though Taylor calls Courtney’s phone and selects just the right pot so the whole run doesn’t need to be scrapped, thankfully. At lunch, everyone has heard about the production slow down and aren’t friendly to the girls. Only the father of their friend Heather is willing to talk to them, but even he finds it funny that the girls expected there to be a catered lunch, pointing them to a vending machine instead. It’s clear the girls don’t fit in here.

In the afternoon, Taylor and Courtney are given another task, of simply carrying tubs of blueberries over to the right area of the line, but because they stupidly wore high heels to the factory – why they weren’t given some other shoes, I don’t know – they slip and the blueberry pulp spills all over them. This does give the girls the opportunity to do their own laundry though – yay! Then, it’s the end of their first day of work and they head home.

With friend Heather in tow, Courtney comes up with a plan to get a date for her Cotillion. She has her eye on a guy called Phillipe, who happens to be a foreign exchange student and a dairy worker, so they go over to invite him to the party and ask Phillipe to be Courtney’s date. Meanwhile, Taylor is getting ready to see Jackson, with a cheque for his truck’s repairs, but she falls asleep after her tough day. Jackson thinks he’s been stood up.

The next morning, Taylor is horrified to find she slept through her “date” and what’s worse is they have to go to work again! On this day, the dairy employees are complaining because all their pay checks bounced. Bob tells everyone that it seems that Reed, Taylor and Courtney’s dad, took all the money before he went away. Taylor and Courtney don’t believe that so go to Bob’s office, where they see a smashed picture of Bob and their father and the office empty. They suspect Bob took the company’s money. They go to Fran’s house after work and tell her their suspicions. Her and her husband, also a dairy employee, believe that is most likely the case.

Later, Courtney is at Cotillion planning with three other super rich girls. She is trying to get them to stick to their budget by making sacrifices, but apparently $25,000 each just isn’t enough for a one-night party! Courtney asks them to pass her all the figures and she’ll talk it over with her sister, since Taylor is good with money, apparently. Taylor hasn’t got any money-saving ideas, but she’s worried about the dairy workers’ salaries. Taylor wants to use Courtney’s Cotillion money to pay them so the dairy doesn’t have to close. Courtney is furious that Taylor would even think to suggest that, believing that Taylor only doesn’t care about Courtney’s Cotillion because Taylor had her own fabulous one last year. They don’t discuss it any further, but Courtney believes her money is safe.

At a meeting the next morning, the dairy workers demand to know when they’ll be paid because they have bills and rent to keep up with. Taylor sends Courtney out to get her phone from her car, giving Taylor the opportunity to announce to everyone that she can get them the money for their pay checks to keep them working. They agree to keep working, but don’t believe Taylor has the money lying around. Taylor doesn’t but Courtney does, and Taylor’s father gave her the access to Courtney’s Cotillion money, so Taylor withdraws $20,000 of it – without telling Courtney. When it is announced to the workers that their pay has been secured, Courtney knows it was her party money Taylor used. The girls fight and Courtney refuses to talk to Taylor as she will now be kicked out of the Cotillion. Taylor goes to make amends with Jackson and gives him his cheque. Jackson forgives her and is impressed with Taylor as she makes a suggestion that helps one of their cows give birth. They both find they were wrong about each other.

But nothing is right with her and Courtney. Courtney doesn’t want to talk to Taylor and is so distracted by her party date that at work, when the yoghurt tubs need a new expiry date, she accidentally sets it to that day but doesn’t realise. She then promptly quits. Another crisis ensues when the dairy finds their milk refrigeration unit lost power so their milk has gone bad. To get the money for more milk, Taylor agrees to sell her car, the Mustang, to an employee at the dairy for only $9,000. Courtney learns this and is shocked to find that Taylor would do that, but she has also learnt that she’s been acting like a spoilt princess and wants to help. They still need $6,000 more for the milk so Courtney hands over the last of her party budget and returns her party dress. This secures more milk for the dairy.

Courtney then tells Phillipe that he doesn’t need to be her date anymore because there won’t be a party. He doesn’t care and invites her to the Country Club for dinner with his exchange family. But at the club, Courtney encounters her Cotillion “friends” who say they’ve managed to get everything they wanted even without her money and know their party will be amazing. Courtney doesn’t care and enjoys the evening with Phillipe. At the same time, Jackson has visited Taylor and they kiss while watching a movie together.

At work the next day, Courtney has returned and the girls are invited by Fran to a party at her house to celebrate the end of this awful work week. They gladly accept, but at the party, more disaster strikes when the news comes that their deliveries are being turned away because the wrong expiry date was stamped on their products, today’s date. Courtney realises it was all her fault and says they should all try to do a new run. As they’ll need more help, Courtney, Taylor, and Jackson go to the Cotillion to ask for help. They are flatly ignored.

Returning to the dairy, the run is about to be cancelled as they don’t have the workers they need, but then, the girls’ father arrives with people from the party. He had gone to surprise Courtney at her party when all these people rushed over to tell them there was a problem at the dairy and they wanted to help. The run is completed and the dairy is saved from closure once more. As a special gift of thanks, Courtney is given a “spotlight dance” with Phillipe, one that she should’ve had at her party, in front of a van’s headlights.

The next day, the girls are told by their father that they’ll survive but it’ll be hard. He is surprised to learn that the girls want to keep working at the dairy, feeling they belong there. It also means eight hours less at the mall so it’ll stop them spending money – that’s the spirit!

CHARACTERS & CAST

Taylor is the eldest of the Callum girls so naturally is the more mature one of the two, even though Taylor does still like to shop, wear expensive clothes, and generally feel like a princess! But she is more aware of the world around her, and catches on quite quickly that should the dairy workers not be paid, then they could lose their houses. She realises that it’s up to her to pay attention to this problem and figure out a way of fixing it, since Courtney is too caught up in her Cotillion planning to care about anyone else.

Courtney, on the other hand, takes a while to come out of her “rich girl bubble” and step into the real world. She just wants to get through her day-to-day job at the dairy factory like her father wanted, and any spare time she has after that will be going into her Cotillion party. She is younger than Taylor so it’s only natural that she wouldn’t want to take responsibility for anyone else’s life. When Taylor takes the money for the Cotillion without telling Courtney, it causes a huge rift between the two sisters, but ultimately, this rift needed to happen because it makes Courtney take a good long look at herself and her lifestyle. She realises that not everyone’s life is like a fairy tale, and, given her more privileged position, she should be helping the dairy workers instead of whining about trivial things, like parties.

Taylor and Courtney were played by Alyson Michalka and Amanda Michalka respectively, more commonly known as Aly and AJ. Individually, Aly has appeared in movies such as Bandslam (2009) as Charlotte; Easy A (2010), in the role of Rhiannon, alongside Emma Stone; and Grown Ups 2 (2013) as Savannah. In more recent years, Aly was also cast in iZombie (2015-2019) as Peyton Charles. On screen, AJ was cast as Lainey Lewis in the sitcom The Goldbergs (2013-23) and reprised her role in the spin-off Schooled (2019-20). AJ also provided the voice of Catra in the animated series She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018-20). Together, Aly & AJ are a singing duo who released their debut album Into the Rush in 2005. They released their most recent album With Love From in 2023.

Taylor doesn’t seem to have any of her own friends in Cow Belles, which is fine and that’s probably why she feels more able to talk to the adults at the dairy factory. Courtney, however, seems to have much more of a social life away from her sister. She has her best friend Heather, whose father also happens to work at the dairy. Heather is nowhere near as rich as her friend Courtney, and feels like she has to hide that fact from Courtney, as we see when her mother is altering a dress for her, despite Heather telling Courtney she was going to buy a dress from some shop they’d been to. The moment when Heather tells Courtney that it’s not her fault she’s been able to have everything in life but that she should really think about how other people feel around her when she’s just going off spending money, it helps Courtney understand that she needs to help Taylor sort out the money situation at the dairy. Heather was played by Christian Serratos. Serratos actually began her acting career on that “other channel” that Disney don’t want you to know about – Nickelodeon – in the recurring role of Suzie in Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide (2004-07). After Cow Belles, Serratos went on to play the role of Angela, one of Bella’s fully human friends, in The Twilight Saga (2008-12). In more recent years, she was cast as Rosita Espinosa in The Walking Dead (2010-22) and portrayed singer Selena in Selena: The Series (2020-21).

As well as one good friend, Courtney also has “frenemies” with the worst of them being the stuck-up Sarah. She is one of the four girls planning the Cotillion, and is the only one not willing to compromise on anything to fit their budget; she wants what she wants and is going to get it regardless of how much it costs. Once Courtney’s money is taken to secure the payroll for the dairy, Sarah kicks Courtney out of the Cotillion and then brags to her later that they begged their fathers for more money and are going to get everything they wanted. Sarah is also the only one of the people at this party not to follow Taylor and Courtney’s father back to the dairy factory to help with their new product run, so that shows what kind of person she is. Maybe she was too busy trying to get all that chlorine out of her hair after falling into the Country Club fountain…Paula Brancati was cast as Sarah, and she went on to play the part of Gina, another “mean girl” if I remember rightly, in the DCOM Jump In! (2007). Brancati was also cast as Jane Vaughn in Seasons 7 to 9 of Degrassi: The Next Generation (2001-15).

Outside of that, along with the distraction of their father’s dairy factory going bankrupt, the teens are distracted by boys – typical. Taylor surprisingly starts to fall for “farm boy” Jackson Meade, son of one of the dairy’s milk providers. Jackson thinks Taylor is stuck-up and she thinks he’s common, but eventually, after spending time together, they realise that their first impressions of each other were wrong. Jackson was played by Michael Trevino who went on to be cast as Tyler Lockwood on The Vampire Diaries (2009-17) winning two Teen Choice Awards, in 2011 and 2012, for Choice TV: Male Scene Stealer. Recently, Trevino was cast as Kyle Valenti in Roswell, New Mexico (2019-22).

Meanwhile, Courtney becomes quite taken with a French foreign exchange student who has been given a summer job at the dairy, seemingly working alongside the delivery drivers. His name is Phillipe and despite not having a clue what a Cotillion is and only meeting her briefly, he is happy to be Courtney’s date for her party. Although they don’t actually get to go to the Cotillion together, they still get to have a literal “spotlight dance” in front of the headlights of one of the dairy vans. How romantic… Chris Gallinger played the role of Phillipe here, going on to be cast as Demitri in Twitches Too (2007).

For the adults in Cow Belles, the one we see the most is Fran. She shows the girls around the dairy factory on their first day. She is accepting of Courtney and Taylor for the way they are, despite the fact they are not used to this type of work. Everyone else in the factory seems dismissive of Taylor and Courtney, but not Fran. She listens to their theory about Bob being the one to steal the company money, not their father, which turns out to be correct, and is pleased to find Taylor wanting to help with some of the dairy’s financial struggles, listening to everyone’s comments and coming up with solutions that work out. Fran was played by Sheila McCarthy, who has performed both on stage and screen. On stage, McCarthy appeared in productions such as Little Shop of Horrors in Canada in 1985, playing the role of Audrey. On screen, McCarthy had supporting roles in the movies Die Hard 2 (1990), as Sam Coleman; The Day After Tomorrow (2004), as Judith; and Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (2004), as Mrs. Gerard. In more recent years, McCarthy was cast as Agnes in The Umbrella Academy (2019-24) and appeared as Angie in ZOMBIES 3 (2022).

Lastly, we have Reed Callum, Taylor and Courtney’s father and owner of Callum Dairies. Although Reed moans at his daughters for being careless and reckless with their spending, which I completely agree with, I actually have a bone to pick with him. Reed uses his employees to help his daughters on two different occasions: the first is when one of the drivers is asked to fix up the red Mustang for Taylor, and the other is Jackson being made to teach Taylor how to drive stick, after his father is asked to do this as a “favour” for Reed. It’s a bit rich to start talking about his daughters being too privileged when Reed uses his employees to do things for him. I’m sure they seemed like they were willing and happy to do these tasks for the Callum family, but Reed should know that when an employer asks an employee for a “favour”, the power imbalance means that the employee is obligated to do this, regardless of how they feel about it for fear of getting fired. So, Reed, you might want to deal with that hypocrisy first before talking to your daughters! Jack Coleman was cast as Reed Callum. After Cow Belles, Coleman appeared in the main role of Noah Bennet in Heroes (2006-10); and in the minor recurring roles of State Senator Lipton in The Office (2005-13) and William Bracken in Castle (2009-16).

MUSIC

Having Aly & AJ, a recognised singing duo, involved in this Disney Channel Movie, you’d think that plenty of their songs would be included here, wouldn’t you?

In actual fact, only one of their songs was used: “On the Ride”. Luckily, it’s a very good song, and probably the most recognisable one in the movie. It is used when Taylor is getting ready to see Jackson that evening she falls asleep. A music video was released containing clips from Cow Belles. This song comes from their debut album Into the Rush.

Outside of this, there are three songs that feature in the movie that are performed by the dairy factory employee band. The best of these is the song “All Good Now”, which is sung during Courtney’s “spotlight dance” after they’ve completed the new dairy product run and is in the End Credits. It’s a sweet song, signalling the end of that terrible, stressful week they had. The song was written by Jeannie Lurie, and performed by singer Blaire Reinhard.

Another is performed during Courtney and Taylor’s first lunch at the factory and seems to be called “Together at the Creamery”. The other is played at the workers’ party that Fran and her husband organise for everyone and is called “Beat of the Band”. It was written and performed by Blaire Reinhard. “Beat of the Band” is the only one of these two songs to be credited as part of the soundtrack in Cow Belles, but I wanted to mention them both because I like them, even though country music isn’t my favourite.

Another song that is not credited here is the song that is performed by the band at the Cotillion party. That song is “Don’t Wanna Grow Up” by the band Willknots. This number later appeared in the DCOM 16 Wishes (2010). It’s a good pop/rock song, even though it’s only heard for about twenty seconds before the song ends and Courtney takes the mic!

The score for Cow Belles was composed by Kenneth Burgomaster, who has composed the score for other Disney Channel projects, including the movies Halloweentown High (2004), Go Figure (2005) and Return to Halloweentown (2006), and Season 2 of the series Phil of the Future (2004-06).

PRODUCTION

Apparently, the story of Cow Belles was inspired by the reality series The Simple Life (2003-07), which centred around Paris Hilton and her best friend Nicole Richie having to do low paid jobs out in the real world. I’m not a big fan of reality shows – I only like a few – so I have never seen The Simple Life but I can see the premise of the show being the inspiration for Cow Belles. Except in this case, the girls are being made to work in the dairy by their father so that they can become better people and understand the “value of a dollar”, whereas I’m sure Paris and Nicole not only got paid big bucks to do The Simple Life, but then managed to get incredibly famous off the back of it and no doubt learnt pretty much nothing at all from the experience… Am I making it clear that I’m not a fan of these types of programmes?

Anyway, Cow Belles has also been linked to the movie Material Girls, which also came out in 2006, just a few months later; features two sisters in the lead roles, Hilary and Haylie Duff; and is about two wealthy teenagers who lose all their family wealth, but these two are cosmetics heiresses, not dairy heiresses. I have seen Material Girls, but it must have been so good that I’ve since forgotten almost all of the story, whereas I’ve watched Cow Belles plenty of times. Cow Belles, probably because it was a television movie, escaped some of the same criticism that plagued Material Girls with this movie only having a 4% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The Duff sisters received Razzie Award nominations for Worst Actress and Worst Screen Couple for this movie too – ouch…I didn’t think it was that bad…

Cow Belles was filmed in Canada, as so many movies and series are. Cow Belles isn’t set in any specific, exotic location, so it makes sense to film it in Canada; as most of the movie takes place in a dairy factory, with some farmland and houses thrown in, it didn’t need to be filmed somewhere with particularly good weather or amazing views.

Although a movie set in a dairy factory might not sound like a lot of fun, apparently filming the production line scenes was. Aly and AJ also enjoyed doing their own “stunts” too, like spilling the blueberries all over themselves and being sprayed with milk. That doesn’t sound like my idea of fun but whatever! The only downside was having to wear those hairnets in these scenes, which the girls didn’t like so much. They did, however, like the cool outfits they got to wear outside of that, even though they weren’t suitable for the type of work their characters would be doing in a dairy factory[1]!

There are also a couple of other more interesting scenes within Cow Belles that aren’t just factory work or sitting in people’s houses. One of these is swing dancing. AJ and Chris Gallinger were taught the basics of swing dancing by a choreographer just for their one dancing moment in the Country Club. Another is the scene of Jackson teaching Taylor how to drive a stick shift. Aly had only just got her permit so that she could actually drive a car in Cow Belles like her character does. She was only taught how to drive stick just a few minutes before shooting the scene, and it was the first scene that was shot on the movie[2]. No pressure there then!

RECEPTION

Cow Belles premiered on Disney Channel on 24^th March 2006, where it was watched by 5.8 million viewers, which is pretty good for a DCOM. High School Musical had been released just two months earlier, on 20^th January, and reached 7.7. million viewers. Whether Cow Belles benefitted from an increase in DCOM viewers after the release of High School Musical is difficult to judge, but I’m thinking the popularity of High School Musical as a television movie probably helped Disney Channel and therefore any of its subsequent Disney Channel movies, to some extent.

Or perhaps Cow Belles was popular because it was elevated by the casting of Aly & AJ, an already known singing duo amongst teens and tweens after their debut album was released just a year earlier, as well as Aly being a cast member on Phil of the Future (2004-06), where she played Keely Teslow, also helping Cow Belles reach a wider audience, potentially. Not that that made a difference to me; I didn’t like Phil of the Future, so I guess I liked it for the sister comedy angle.

Many did enjoy Cow Belles for its relatable characters, who I’m guessing were anyone other than the Callum girls, and its message about money not being everything, or being enough to make you happy. Cow Belles seems to be considered to be a bit better than the “average” Disney Channel movie, and is still remembered to this day whereas many others are not. That’s probably because Aly and AJ are still working actors and still perform regularly together, making albums and touring.

But not everybody viewed Cow Belles positively. Some say the movie is cringey and don’t like the overused trope of rich girls going broke; I have seen that idea a few times. I suppose. London Tipton going broke in The Suite Life of Zack & Cody (2005-08) is one Disney example, or there’s Princess Protection Program (2009), which is a similar idea, although not exactly the same. There’s also the movie From Prada to Nada (2011), which is a similar concept to Material Girls, with these two movies stating that their basis for their stories comes from Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, or even Confessions of a Shopaholic (2009) to some extent. There are also plenty of real-life examples, and if you already don’t enjoy seeing materialistic people on screen or in real-life, I can see how this story idea can get old, tired, and boring really quickly. Unless schadenfreude is your thing.

LEGACY

Not too many Disney Channel Original Movies have managed to generate enough popularity and acclaim to warrant a sequel. Many non-musical DCOMs do not achieve this feat, with Cow Belles being just one of those.

However, in the 2020s, and even late 2010s, we saw a boom in reboots and remakes coming to our cinema or television screens – whether they were asked for or not. Aly and AJ Michalka discussed the idea of making a sequel to Cow Belles back in 2019, believing that the up-and-coming streaming space may be the place for this type of content but did stress that discussions were still in very early stages[3]. Later interviews in 2021 stated that the storyline could be based around one of the girls having been recently divorced and coming back to keep the family business going, making “Cow Belles 2” more of a typical romantic comedy that is geared towards the adults who grew up around the time of Cow Belles’ release. This doesn’t sound like a bad idea, but Aly and AJ were unsure if Disney would allow this “more adult” version of one of their own television movies[4].

With all that being said, discussions around this sequel have not been reported on since 2021, and in 2022, Aly and AJ said during an interview that they thought the writing in Cow Belles wasn’t great and that their acting was cringey. Aly also said that her first boyfriend broke up with her whilst she was filming Cow Belles so it wasn’t a great experience overall[5]. That’s fair enough to say, but these – slightly critical – comments may mean that a sequel to Cow Belles is not going to happen and that perhaps Aly and AJ are not interested in the idea anymore.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Although Cow Belles might be cringey in places, feel outdated, and focus on two quite unlikeable, at least initially, main characters, I’ve always liked Cow Belles and it’s one of the DCOMs that I like to rewatch when I have time. Granted, there are quite a few of those, but still, Cow Belles is a DCOM that I just like.

In today’s world, with the advent of social media, many of us are inundated daily with pictures of beautiful places that are expensive to travel to, high-fashion items that are expensive to buy, and stunning houses that are expensive to own. This “Instagram lifestyle” is one that many wish for, or even actively strive for. I’ve heard stories about people getting themselves into debt trying to keep up with this way of life, and although those may be in the minority, I think it’s safe to say that social media has made others feel less worthy as a person for not being able to achieve that specific lifestyle, even though it’s not likely or sustainable for the majority of us to live like that.

I wish more people would turn away from this idea of “get rich quick” just so you can have more stuff, but it is ingrained in our society now, and it is troubling. Money cannot buy happiness, and I know lots of people like to say “that might be true, but I’d rather cry in a Ferrari” or whatever, but that’s not a healthy mindset to have. As we see from the Callum girls in Cow Belles, having lots of money can do more harm than good, by messing with your psyche or your self-worth, not to mention what happens when suddenly that stream of wealth comes to a halt, or seizes to exist entirely; then what do you do when you’ve built your whole world around it?

It would be better if everyone accepted that being comfortable and secure financially is the aim in life, not being rich. It might make you feel inadequate in the short-term, but you’ll be much happier in the long run – even without that Ferrari.

REFERENCES

[1] Credit: Disney Channel, ‘Cow Belles 2006 DVD Overview – The Making of Cow Belles’, Diamond Boy’s Disney DVD Overviews YouTube Channel, 26^th January 2024.

[2] Credit: Disney Channel, ‘Cow Belles – Behind the Scenes with Michael Trevino and Aly and AJ Michalka (2006)’’, Michael Trevino Source YouTube Channel, 2^nd March 2016.

[3] Credit: Avery Thompson and Lanae Brody, ‘Aly & AJ Michalka Are Totally Down For A ‘Cow Belles’ Reboot: ‘We’ve Talked About It’’, HollywoodLife.com, 5^th July 2019.

[4] Credit: JJ Staff, ‘Aly Michalka Opens Up About Doing An R-Rated ‘Cow Belles’ Movie Reboot’’, JustJared.com, 27^th June 2021.

[5] Credit: Morgan Murrell, ‘‘Aly & AJ Got Real Honest About Their Disney Channel Movie “Cow Belles”, And I Really Hope Disney Isn’t Listening’, BuzzFeed.com, 1^st June 2022.

16th Aug 202429th Sep 2025 by The Disney Purist

Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off (2003)

BACKGROUND

Nowadays, within the huge catalogue of Disney Channel Original Movies, the films that are generally remembered and treasured the most are the musicals.

Yet, if you are a true Disney Channel fan, you’ll know that there have been plenty of great DCOMs that are not musicals but are still just as memorable, especially if you watched them at a young age. Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off is just one of these for me.

Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off combines two things that adults like to force on all children if they can: cooking and sport, baseball in this case. Cooking, at least at a basic level, is necessary to ensure that kids grow up to be self-sufficient adults – even if that’s only being able to cook pasta or eggs; they will at least keep you alive. Sport teaches you about teamwork, as well as the importance of keeping fit and active.

I never liked sport and wasn’t any good at it since I’m only five foot tall now. I was even shorter whilst at school, so I was never going to excel in that area. Most of my P.E. teachers took pity on me, saw I was trying, and didn’t push me, which I was thankful for, but even in a game of rounders – the closest equivalent the British school system has to baseball – I couldn’t even run to first base before being told I was “out”. I showed some aptitude for cooking, however, I don’t like to touch raw meat, believing I’ll get e-coli or salmonella on the rare occasion I do, even if I wash my hands ten times in scalding hot water, so that avenue was blocked off to me as well.

With all that in mind, you’d think Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off wouldn’t interest me. Though the baseball portions of the film certainly don’t, I have always enjoyed Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off for its cooking scenes. Eddie Dogs, the lasagne, the soufflé, that weird purple barbeque sauce, all looked so good through the screen.

But Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off isn’t just about cooking and baseball. It has a much more important message at its heart and that is the importance of allowing people to be what they want to be.

PLOT

Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off begins with preparations being made for the new baseball season. The field is ready, the food vendors are ready, and the team, the Groundhogs, are warming up. It turns out the Groundhogs aren’t exactly the best team in their league though, as two twin players fight on the ground, another player trips on her untied shoelaces, and another hits a ball straight into a hot dog cart, destroying most of their food supplies. But the team has one hope: Eddie, the star player, who happens to be the coach’s son too. There is also Hannah, the best female player on the team, whose mother thinks she’s at the baseball field to be the Groundhogs’ cheerleader.

As expected, the Groundhogs lose their first game. But Eddie has perfected the best way to console the team after their defeats: by making his famous loaded hot dogs, Eddie Dogs. As Eddie and his friends, D.B. and Frankie, chow down, they are tormented by players from the rival team the Eagles. Eddie says they should do whatever it takes this season to finally beat them and win the playoffs.

At Eddie’s house, D.B. and Frankie plan to watch a baseball game on TV, but Eddie’s brothers want to make it difficult for them. As the others fight over the remote, Eddie becomes distracted by a cooking show. His father tells him that he needs to focus on baseball. A college scout has been spotted watching players from the Eagles so it’s only a matter of time before the scout comes to see Eddie. Eddie’s mother tells Eddie’s dad not to put so much pressure on him with his baseball career, and then slices her finger open as she’s making dinner. Eddie’s parents and brothers go to the hospital to get it taken care of, with Eddie being asked to put the food away. Instead, Eddie has the idea of cooking all of it, and, with the help of his reluctant friends, they successfully make fried chicken, surprising everyone when they get back. Despite the food looking strange – the fried chicken has sugary cereal on it and the gravy is pink – everyone loves it. But it’s not long before the teasing starts, with Eddie’s brothers calling him “Edwina” and “Eddie Crocker” …

The next day at school, Eddie’s year have to sign up for a new elective class. Eddie has been told by his brothers to sign up for Computer Science because it’s meant to be an easy class. It turns out that signing up for these classes isn’t going to be simple because the sign-up sheets are being crowded around. Eddie throws himself in to the sea of kids and grabs the Computer Science clipboard. He also grabs the Home Economics clipboard, having been amazed by the classroom earlier on. He covers up the class name and passes a clipboard to his friends to sign their names on. It turns out they’ve all signed up for Home Economics, much to Frankie and D.B.’s horror. To make matters worse, Hannah from the Groundhogs is also here, having chosen Home Economics to appease her mother.

Also in this class is the overly prepared and uptight Bridget, who takes cooking very seriously and warns the boys not to interfere with the class. Mrs. Hadley, the enthusiastic Home Economics teacher, welcomes the class and informs them all about the Million Dollar Scholastic Cook-Off, where students compete to win scholarships to culinary schools. Bridget is immediately interested and takes a flyer. Eddie appears interested but doesn’t take a flyer until after class when everyone has left. Hannah sees but says nothing.

That night, Eddie starts to come up with ideas for his Cook-Off recipe entry. After many attempts that all taste horrible, Eddie gets the idea of making a peanut butter and jelly smoothie, but the blender lid comes off and the mixture spills out everywhere. That’ll take forever to clean up… He’ll have to figure something else out another day instead.

In their next Home Economics class, Eddie tries to secretly talk to Bridget about the Cook-Off but is overheard by D.B. To change the subject, Eddie throws batter at D.B. which results in a food fight taking place. The principal comes in to give them all detention and the students are told to clean up the room. As they are doing this, Frankie, Eddie, D.B., and Hannah come across a bowl of purple sauce. Frankie immediately tastes it, disgusting the others, but apparently, it’s good. The others all try it and agree; it is good. This gives Eddie a new idea for his Cook-Off recipe, and that night, he recreates this sauce.

But just when Eddie thinks he’s got his recipe sorted, he hears Bridget stressing about the measurements in her Cook-Off recipe. It turns out the judges will need precise measurements, something Eddie hasn’t done. He rushes home to fix it, and his mother arrives home at the same time. He tells her all about the Cook-Off and she is happy to help him with the recipe, though they both agree to keep this a secret from Eddie’s father.

At school the next day, during Home Economics, Mrs. Hadley announces that both Bridget and Eddie are finalists in the Cook-Off. D.B. is annoyed that Eddie wouldn’t tell him, with Eddie lying to say he entered as a joke just to keep the peace. Eddie’s father and brothers both find out about the Cook-Off after Mrs. Hadley calls them to congratulate Eddie. The brothers tease Eddie and his father is clearly confused. At school, things don’t get better for Eddie as he is mocked by others in his year group. To make matters worse, he is also called into extra lessons with Mrs. Hadley and Bridget to prepare him for the Cook-Off, which takes him away from his baseball commitments, making him late to games, distracted during games, and even told to go home during a game by his dad.

Eddie later finds out that should the Groundhogs make it to the playoffs, he’ll have to choose between the game or the Cook-Off because both are on the same day. This leads to an argument with D.B., which causes another food fight, in the school cafeteria this time. Eddie then reaches breaking point; he’s sick of being made fun of and doesn’t want to waste his time in Cook-Off classes anymore, so he quits and rejoins his baseball team. At the same time, the team have revolted against their coach, Eddie’s dad, for his constant sexist remarks, with his jibes about the Eagles coach being a nurse, and telling the players not to run or hit “like girls”. Coach says he’ll change his ways. Good for them for speaking up!

The Groundhogs unexpectedly do make it to the playoffs but as the team celebrate at Eddie’s house, Mrs. Hadley arrives to try and convince Eddie to go to the Cook-Off tomorrow. He says he’s committed to the team, but clearly has some regrets about his decision as he stays up all night cooking because he can’t sleep. The next day, Eddie goes to the Cook-Off venue and meets Bobby Flay. Bobby tries to convince Eddie to stick around, promising to teach him how to crack eggs with one hand if he does, but Eddie has to go.

At the playoff game, the Groundhogs play well initially, however, Frankie decides to put the Cook-Off competition on his mini television that he has in the dug-out. This puts Eddie off the game, and irritates D.B. Frankie tells D.B. he shouldn’t have made Eddie choose between cooking and having friends, making D.B. feel guilty. He tells Eddie that they don’t need him in the game, and that they can win by themselves, leaving Eddie free to compete in his competition. His mum drives him there, but he only has about an hour of time left and no-one to help him; Eddie thinks he can manage.

Back at the game, Hannah’s mum arrives with the pom-poms that Hannah “forgot”. Hannah has to tell her mother that actually she isn’t a cheerleader, but a good baseball player. Hannah’s mum is completely onboard with this but tells Hannah she didn’t need to lie to her about it, as long as baseball makes her happy. Eddie’s dad overhears this and decides to get himself thrown out of the game. He then goes to help Eddie.

At the Cook-Off, Eddie is surprised to find his dad there to help, and even more surprised to learn he can crack eggs with one hand, a skill Eddie has yet to master. However, events do not go well. Some of Eddie’s dishes have been overcooked or not set properly. He rushes to get a plate of food up to the judges and manages with a second to go. The judging begins and the result is soon announced. The winner is… Bridget.

Eddie is devastated, but his dad is there to console him, telling him to keep working at it if cooking is what he wants to do. The Groundhogs then arrive with some better news – they finally beat the Eagles and won the playoffs, making Eddie feel a bit better. As they go off to have some celebratory Eddie Dogs, Bridget follows, saying she’s hungry too. Eddie has Bridget join them as evidence that Eddie is still more of a winner than Bridget, even without a trophy!

CHARACTERS & CAST

Eddie believes that he will be a Major League baseball player one day. Eddie never thought that cooking might make him reconsider this, but it does as Eddie finds he has a natural talent for it. This isn’t considered to be a “manly” profession though, despite many celebrity chefs being men, so Eddie is teased by his friends, his brothers, rival baseball teams, and spends much of the movie torn between what he wants to do, and what he feels he should do. He finally stands up for himself though, and says that he wants to see where he can go with his cooking. There wasn’t actually a reason why he couldn’t be interested in cooking and baseball; he never really needed to make a choice, other than on that one competition day. It’s a shame Eddie didn’t win the Cook-Off, but sadly, it did make sense having this “twist” ending. He didn’t have enough time, he didn’t make anything particularly impressive, and the use of the four “mystery” ingredients wasn’t anything special. It was also important to show that sometimes it’s worth working hard for something, and that it may take a few attempts to finally succeed at it.

Taylor Ball was chosen for the role of Eddie, after playing the part of Brian Miller in the sitcom Still Standing (2002-06). In recent years, Ball has stepped away from acting but seems to be a member of the band Tragic Forms.

For Eddie’s dad and baseball coach, Hank, Eddie’s love of cooking couldn’t come at a worse time. He believes that Eddie will be seen by a college scout soon, get a scholarship, and then have a long baseball career, however, Eddie soon becomes distracted from baseball. Hank doesn’t think it’s normal for a teenage boy to be interested in cooking and tries his hardest to steer him back to their baseball plan. It does take a while for Hank to be convinced that perhaps letting Eddie choose for himself is the best thing for him. Eventually, he sees that cooking makes Eddie happy and Hank wants to support that.

Hank Ogden was played by Mark L. Taylor, who may look familiar to DCOM fans as he played Mr. Fulton, manager of the Lava Springs Country Club, in High School Musical 2 (2007) and was also the dad in The Other Me (2000). Outside of this, Taylor was cast as Don Forrester in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989) and as Dr. Niles in Innerspace (1987).

On the opposite side, Eddie’s mother, Sarah, is supportive of Eddie’s love of cooking and even helps him properly measure out the ingredients for “Eddie’s Incredible Edible Barbeque Sauce” for the competition. Her and Eddie decide to keep this a secret from Eddie’s father as they don’t believe he’d be very understanding of it. It turns out they were right, and in fact, he seems annoyed that his wife wouldn’t tell him about Eddie’s cooking. Eddie’s mother is proud of Eddie regardless of what he’s doing and doesn’t like how much pressure Hank was putting on him to be a professional baseball player. To be honest, she probably liked being able to talk about something other than baseball at home! Susan Brady was cast as Sarah Ogden, having previously played the part of Astrid Kar, Zenon’s mother, in the DCOM Zenon: The Zequel (2001).

Eddie has three best friends in this movie: Frankie, D.B., and Hannah. They all go to school together and they all play baseball together as part of the Groundhogs. D.B. is the one who is the most against Eddie for liking to cook; he seems to find it weird and thinks cooking is “for girls”. D.B. takes the longest to come round but does eventually realise that he’s been an idiot, basically making it seem like he won’t be Eddie’s friend anymore if he keeps up with his cooking. Frankie, although he hates Home Economics, actually doesn’t seem to care that Eddie likes cooking; he accepts it quite quickly. Frankie likes to eat, so he is probably just looking forward to getting to be the chief taste-tester of Eddie’s new recipes!

Reiley McClendon was cast as D.B., having previously appeared in Disney’s The Kid (2000). McClendon went on to play one of the leads in the DCOM Buffalo Dreams (2005). The part of Frankie went to Orlando Brown, who had a long career with Disney Channel as a child and teen actor, being cast as Eddie in That’s So Raven (2003-07) and voicing the roles of Sticky Webb in The Proud Family (2001-05) and Cornelius Fillmore in Fillmore! (2002-04). In recent years, Brown was cast in Season 2 of the reality show Bad Boys (2022-23).

Hannah is the most accepting of Eddie throughout the movie and that’s because she has a similar problem with her mother that Eddie has with his dad. Hannah lies to her mother that she is a cheerleader because her mother was a cheerleader and Hannah doesn’t want to disappoint or upset her by saying that she is a baseball player. Hannah also says that she only took the Home Economics class so that her mother didn’t get annoyed that she’d chosen Field Hockey yet again. Hannah seems to have decided that her mother wouldn’t be accepting of her without even talking to her about it. It turns out her mum just wants her to be happy, so she had it a little bit easier than Eddie, whose dad basically wanted to disown him for choosing baseball over cooking!

Hannah is played by none other than Rose McIver who, since her teen acting days where she also appeared in the DCOM Johnny Kapahala: Back on Board (2007), has gone on to have a very successful acting career. McIver was cast in the recurring role of Tinker Bell in the ABC series Once Upon a Time (2011-18) and went on to star as Liv Moore in the series iZombie (2015-19). McIver also starred in the Netflix Christmas movie trilogy A Christmas Prince (2017-19) as Amber Moore. Currently, McIver is playing the lead role of Sam Arondekar in the US version of the British sitcom Ghosts (2021-present).

Finally, we have the characters of Bridget and Mrs. Hadley. Bridget is, honestly, quite irritating and full of herself. She thinks she’s the best Home Economics student there has ever been and even has her own cooking utensils. She’d rather have all of Mrs. Hadley’s attention on her but she has to share it with Eddie. Bridget is not a nice girl, saying that Eddie’s baseball career is over and not being at all supportive during these after-school cooking lessons they have together, despite the fact Bridget clearly has more knowledge than Eddie does. She’d just rather keep it to herself because she feels threatened by Eddie. I am shocked at the end of the movie when Bridget thinks she should be invited to have Eddie Dogs with the Groundhogs just because she won the Cook-Off – hello, you weren’t nice to any of them so why should they be nice to you? But Eddie takes pity on her, clearly. Mrs. Hadley also has one of the best lines in this movie that knocks Bridget down a peg. Bridget asks Mrs. Hadley if she’s bullied by other kids because she likes to cook. Mrs. Hadley says “oh no, there are plenty of other reasons”, which is so true.

Mrs. Hadley was played by Nancy Lenehan who had roles in movies such as Catch Me If You Can (2002) as Carol Strong and Battle of the Sexes (2017) as Billie Jean King’s mother. Lenehan has had various roles in television series, including recurring roles in series like Veep (2012-19), as Mrs. Ryan, and Bless This Mess (2019-20), as Deb, as well as a main role, Sandy Kelly, in the sitcom Married to the Kellys (2003-04). Bridget was played by Kylie Leydon, who seems to have moved away from acting, but did appear as herself in the miniseries Ben & Kylie’s Brave New Build (2014-15), building a house with her partner.

There is also a cameo appearance by chef Bobby Flay, who first appears on television and then in person when he turns out to be the host of the Scholastic Cook-Off. Flay is a well-known American celebrity chef, restaurateur and food writer, yet I first heard of him from watching Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off because I’m British; we have Gordon Ramsay, Delia Smith, Mary Berry, Jamie Oliver, people like that on our screens. I think I saw Bobby Flay randomly on a Food Network show or something years later and was like “that’s the guy from Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off”! I’m sure it’s one of Bobby Flay’s proudest TV moments still to this day…

MUSIC

Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off is not a Disney Channel musical, but that doesn’t mean that it is devoid of music; you just might not have heard of the songs before.

One piece that should be recognisable to most is an excerpt from Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker Suite”, specifically “Waltz of the Flowers”, which randomly appears during the first food fight scene in the Home Economics class. I guess the pretty music is meant to be in contrast to the absolute mess the kids are making in the room!

Outside of this, I personally had not heard of the other four songs that appear during Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off outside of watching the film, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t like them. In fact, I very much like the song “Grow”, performed by April Start. This song appears when Eddie is struggling to balance his new Cook-Off classes and baseball games. I think “Grow” has a nice message about not giving up on your dreams and to keep going even when things get tough. This song was popularised because of its inclusion in this film.

Then there is the song “Soul Food”, performed by Leon Russell and Marc Benno. This takes place during the scenes of Eddie waiting for his response from the Cook-Off people to see if he got in. It’s got a bit of a country feel to it that I don’t like so much. This track featured on the 1990 CD re-release of Russell and Benno’s album Asylum Choir II.

“Centerfield” is quite rightly used during the scenes of the Groundhogs successfully winning their games so that they can get to the playoffs. This song is all about baseball so it fits in great with Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off. Again, this song is a bit too country for my tastes but I don’t dislike it. This track featured on singer John Fogerty’s third solo album, released in 1985 and titled Centerfield.

One more song is listed in the End Credits of this film and that is “Now We’re Cookin’”, performed by GBonafide and J-Hi, however, I cannot find this song anywhere online and I’m not sure where it appears in the movie. It’s possible it is the music that plays as Eddie makes that fried chicken meal early on in the story, but I’m not sure. There is also a song that is played during the scenes of Eddie being teased at school after getting in to the final of the Scholastic Cook-Off, but I’m not sure what song it is. It has lyrics like “I’m left on the outside, wondering why…”, but I can’t find it anywhere. This is just one of the difficulties of looking into a barely talked about Disney Channel movie; research is hard to do.

I also quite like some of the score within Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off, particularly the music that appears during the opening scene, the Cook-Off scene, and some of the scenes of Eddie’s late-night cooking at home. Since Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off did not have a CD soundtrack released, and the score has not been split into named tracks, I cannot be any more specific than that with this music. David Kitay is credited as the composer of the music here though. At Disney Channel, Kitay also composed the music for other DCOMs, like Cadet Kelly (2002) and Camp Rock (2008), and co-composed for Stuck in the Suburbs (2004) with Jeff Vincent. Away from Disney, Kitay has worked on the music for such non-Disney movies as Clueless (1995); Scary Movie (2000); and Over Her Dead Body (2008).

PRODUCTION

I was surprised to learn that Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off was filmed in New Zealand, specifically West Auckland, not in the US or even in Canada, as many Disney Channel movies seem to be made. I’m not wrong that not too many DCOMs have been filmed in New Zealand, but there have been a few others, such as Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior (2006); Johnny Kapahala: Back on Board (2007); and even Zenon: The Zequel (2001). ZOMBIES 4: Dawn of the Vampires (2025) was also filmed in New Zealand.

I’m not a producer, I’m not a director, I’m not an actor, so I don’t know why New Zealand specifically was chosen as the primary filming location of Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off. California must have decent enough weather to accommodate the filming schedules, and there are no special sets here, just school buildings and baseball fields. It was most likely for budgetary reasons but who knows. The good thing about filming in New Zealand, or outside of the US generally, is that it can open up the casting pool. In this case, Kylie Leydon and Rose McIver are both actresses from New Zealand, as is Susan Brady.

Some of the most memorable and enticing scenes within Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off obviously involve baseball. I’m just kidding, baseball’s boring. Some have commented that the baseball scenes here aren’t even very realistic. As I know nothing about baseball, I have no further input on that, but I can judge the food and cooking scenes. They are the best scenes in the film. For some reason, I can’t get enough of seeing people throw random condiments on hot dogs, or layer lasagnes – Eddie even makes his own pasta from scratch -or see blenders explode all over the kitchen! If you’re a fan of cooking shows, but don’t want to hear any of the instructions for how to cook it yourself, then Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off is perfect. But no problem if you do want to know how to cook some of these dishes for yourself because there are recipes online for Eddie Dogs and the barbeque sauce.

In amongst these beautiful culinary creations though, we get lots of wasted food as Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off has not one, but two food fights. I love how American TV likes to use food fights as key moments in children’s series and films because apparently it almost never happens in real-life! Yet all of us outside the US have been brought up to believe that these are regular occurrences. Some kids seem to love food fights, others hate them. Bridget and Mrs. Hadley seem to be the only two not having fun in the movie, but in behind-the-scenes footage, it looks like nobody is! The actors were excited to film the scenes initially, but by the time they’d filmed it and were covered in food, they said they just felt gross as the food stuck to their clothes and skin. It sounds disgusting. All the cameras and crew members got to be covered up in boiler suits so they were the lucky ones here[1].

Paul Hoen directed Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off. Hoen began his over two-decade career with Disney Channel by directing The Luck of the Irish (2001) back when Disney Channel were experimenting with their new way of making television movies. After Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off, Hoen went on to direct many more musical and non-musical DCOMs, including Jump In! (2007), Cloud 9 (2014), and all of the ZOMBIES movies[2].

Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off’s teleplay came from Dan Berendsen, who had previously written the teleplays for the movies Sabrina Down Under (1999) and Sabrina Goes to Rome (1998), movies that add to the series Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (1996-2003). For Disney Channel, much like Hoen, Berendsen has a long history of writing for their movies. Some of his other Disney writing credits include Twitches (2005) and its 2007 sequel, Stuck in the Suburbs (2004), and Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam (2010).

RECEPTION

Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off first aired on Disney Channel on 18^th July 2003, as one of their regular Friday Night Premieres. In the realm of Disney Channel fans, Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off is generally considered to be one of their better non-musical movies. Some call this movie “wholesome” and “heart-warming”, which I certainly agree with. Taylor Ball and the performances of many of the young actors has also been praised by audiences. Many say this movie is underrated.

Others, though, do not enjoy this movie, saying that it is cheesy and clichéd, dismissing it because it is a Disney Channel movie. That could be because these particular people watched it when they were not the target audience. Sometimes adults watching movies intended for children and teenagers take them too seriously and look at them too critically so their opinions are biased to some extent. Some also said that they knew plenty of boys at school that were interested in cooking and were not teased. I’d say those people were very lucky, because I knew boys at school who were teased for this interest or for being interested in music. There were also girls I knew who were teased for wanting to play rugby, showing that harmful stereotyping goes both ways.

There were plenty of comments on the message within Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off. Looking into it, there are two schools of thought on it. The first is that this is in fact a “coming out” story, all about Eddie feeling confused about his identity. Director Paul Hoen stated this was the case[3]. I like that idea if you purely use Eddie’s story as a metaphor. The trouble comes if you take that metaphor and apply it literally to the events of the movie, because then I feel like the messaging gets confused. What this coming out story would seem to say, in this literal case, is that sure, men can like cooking, but straight men don’t. That’s not the case or the point of Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off.

That brings me to the other way of looking at this movie and that is all about challenging gender stereotypes. This is not only seen with Eddie’s love of cooking, but also with Hannah’s love of baseball instead of cheerleading. It is also shown when the Groundhogs rise up against their coach and tell him to stop making sexist remarks, about the Eagles coach being a nurse, this being an honourable profession regardless of gender, and that using the term “you run like a girl” is not helpful, when you could just say that someone is running badly. I sit within this opinion more so than the coming out story and that is just because I feel it is important for everyone to feel comfortable to pursue the hobbies or activities that interest them without fear that their sexuality will be questioned.

LEGACY

Unfortunately, since Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off is over twenty years old, and is unlikely to be popular enough now to be re-run on Disney Channel particularly frequently, it exists only in the minds of people who have already seen it, for the most part. Of course, there are always people that want to watch movies they missed out on during their childhoods and will go back and see though – thank you, streaming.

With those who do remember Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off, many of them continue to love it and it has since made many lists ranking the Disney Channel Original movies. For example, it was ranked at No. 16 on The Ringer’s list of Top 40 Disney Channel Original Movies[4]. It also reached No. 32 on Vulture’s ranking of all the DCOMs that had been released at the time[5].

FINAL THOUGHTS

This shows that Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off may only have a place in the hearts of a few Disney fans, but that it continues to be one of the more popular ones because of its important message.

Eddie is bullied by his peers and disappoints his own father for his love of cooking. Although this is quite a specific example, pretty much everyone will have been bullied or felt weird just for liking something that perhaps other people of the same age did not. When I was at university, I was mocked by my flatmates for liking Disney because it wasn’t “normal” for adults to still be interested in Disney movies. It hurt a bit, and I did keep quiet about it around these few people for a while, but in the end, I decided I didn’t need to change myself – I didn’t have anything in common with them and knew that once I graduated, I wouldn’t be keeping in touch.

Nobody needs people like that in their life and if Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off taught me anything, it’s to never change yourself for anybody and feel free to like what you like. The ones judging you are the weird ones.

REFERENCES

[1] Credit: Disney Channel, ‘Behind the Scenes DCOM: Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-off’, Meredith_Vintage YouTube Channel, 28^th February 2023.

[2] Credit: DCOMers!, ‘A Conversation with the Disney Channel’s Paul Hoen’, Medium.com, 24^th July 2020.

[3] Credit: DCOMers!, ‘A Conversation with the Disney Channel’s Paul Hoen’, Medium.com, 24^th July 2020.

[4] Credit: The Ringer Staff, ‘The 40 Best Disney Channel Original Movies’, TheRinger.com, 18^th April 2023.

[5] Credit: Rebecca Alter, ‘All 105 Disney Channel Original Movies, Ranked’, Vulture.com, 4^th May 2020.

9th Aug 202419th Dec 2025 by The Disney Purist

#2 A Bug’s Life (1998)

BACKGROUND

Pixar had begun their filmmaking triumph by making one of the best animated movies of all time: Toy Story (1995). Toy Story is classed as one of Pixar’s finest movies, both for its story, its characters, and its technological feats.

But having one success is not enough for any film studio. Pixar had to keep going, they had to keep pushing the boundaries of computer animation, they had to be one of the best producers of family-friendly entertainment within quite a crowded market.

And so, Pixar set about making their second full-length feature film. This time instead of focusing on toys, something that all of us can relate to and will have fond memories of from our childhoods, Pixar went in a different direction, by focusing on something that many of us do not love, and actually some of us even fear: bugs.

A Bug’s Life had a lot to live up to after the ground-breaking Toy Story, with its sequel already in the works. This was going to be the “make-it-or-break-it” moment for Pixar, who had only just gone public as a company. Would Pixar prove to be a film studio with future potential, or would they be a “one-hit wonder”?

Luckily, A Bug’s Life was successful both critically and commercially, although having to live up to Toy Story was never going to be easy. Sadly, A Bug’s Life has not reached the heights of Pixar’s other early movie releases or even some of their later ones.

I’m one of those people that doesn’t like bugs. I find insects in general make my skin crawl, but put me anywhere near a wasp, a bee, or a spider and I will freak out. I’ve also seen way too many ants making their way into the houses I’ve lived in during the summer months that I have little to no appreciation for insects at all; they’re just gross.

That’s my perception of real-life insects, and yet, I really like A Bug’s Life. My family have always loved watching A Bug’s Life, probably because it’s really funny. It has some highly memorable quotes and brilliant voice performances, as well as a touching story. As I’ve gotten older, I still find myself laughing my head off during A Bug’s Life, and always cry at the moment where the ants stand up to Hopper; where the underdogs realise they are stronger than they thought they were.

It’s disappointing to see A Bug’s Life not being remembered in recent years, with much of its legacy long-gone and replaced with others things, be those more popular films, or new theme park attractions. What about A Bug’s Life has made it forgettable? I’d like to know the answer, because I just don’t understand it.

PLOT

A Bug’s Life begins with an opening shot of a large tree, before moving down to the ground, to “bug-level”, where we see that a colony of ants are harvesting crops to collect food, placing it on a leaf sat atop a huge stone. Princess Atta, the queen-to-be, is being trained by her mother, the Queen, so she can take over the ruling of the colony soon. She is anxious about a gap in the line of ants depositing food, after a leaf falls onto the ground, and about the annual event that they are preparing for: the arrival of the grasshoppers, who will come, eat the food, and leave, supposedly as payment for their “protection” of the ant colony.

One ant, Flik, has ideas to speed up this harvesting process, since having to do this throughout the summer means they themselves have very little time to pick their own food before “the rainy season”. He invents a machine that will harvest the crops quickly, but as he is practising using this device, he shoots one of the stalks directly onto Princess Atta, flattening her. He then does the same thing again, before realising what he’s done. Atta and the other ants angrily tell Flik to pick the grain like everybody else and he walks away, upset. Princess Dot, Atta’s little sister, follows Flik and tells him she likes his inventions and thinks he’s really smart. He tells her she’s the only person to have ever thought that. Dot feels like her and Flik are both under-appreciated, as she is a princess ant, but can’t even fly yet. Flik, using a rock and a tree as a metaphor, says that one day, Dot will grow up to be a great ant.

She doesn’t really understand what he’s talking about, but it doesn’t matter, because the signal is called, alerting the ants to the arrival of the grasshoppers. Atta tells everyone to leave any food they are holding on the Offering Stone and to make their way into the ant hill. Flik is the last one to do this, but his crops are on his invention, so he leaves the whole thing on the Offering Stone. It accidentally pings into the stone, sending all of the food into the water below. Flik is horrified and rushes to the ant hill to tell Atta.

As the ants nervously wait for the grasshoppers to leave, they overhear the grasshoppers complaining that there is no food. Everyone turns to Flik, demanding to know what he’s done. The grasshoppers crash into the ant hill and start to terrorise everyone. Hopper, the leader of the grasshopper gang, approaches the Queen and demands to know where their food is. Atta interrupts and asks if he’s sure the food isn’t up there. Hopper is thrown by this “change of management” and tells Atta that this is all her fault and orders the colony to try again. The ants complain there won’t be time for them to pick food for themselves if they do that. Hopper, to show them all who’s boss, uses a rabid grasshopper, Thumper, to threaten Princess Dot. Flik tells Hopper to leave her alone, but isn’t exactly forceful and Hopper scares Flik back in line. The grasshoppers leave, telling the ants they want double the amount of food now and that the ants had better get to it.

The next day, Flik is put on trial as the colony decide his punishment. He gets the idea that someone should go and get some “warrior bugs” so they can fight back against Hopper. Atta is disturbed by this idea, not believing that anyone can fight the grasshoppers, but she is quickly persuaded that perhaps having Flik leave the island to find these bugs would be best for the colony, so he can’t mess anything else up! Flik is given permission to go, so he sets out toward the city, despite no-one, except Dot, thinking he’ll come back alive!

In the city, a circus of bugs is performing, however, it’s a pretty bad circus. The circus is run by P.T. Flea, who keeps pushing out acts to try and get his customers to stay. He tries sending out his clowns, then his magic act, but nothing is working. P.T. then announces that they are about to perform the big finale, “Flaming Death”, where the circus performers will save someone from being burnt alive in just 15 seconds. But it all goes downhill very quickly. The timer is set off too early, no-one does their tasks properly, so P.T. ends up stuck to flypaper which then catches on fire, leaving him burnt to a crisp. He’s not dead though, and has just enough energy to fire all of the bugs, even though the fly spectators loved seeing someone almost burn to death!

Back with Flik, the city is quite overwhelming to him. He goes into a bar to look for tough guys, and who should happen to be there but the circus bugs. They are being bothered by some flies from the circus, so set about doing their “Robin Hood” act to fight them off, but once again, everything goes horribly wrong, and the bar, which is housed within a can, rolls away with everyone still in it. Flik tries to watch this spectacle but he’s pushed into the back of the crowd. As the can comes to a stop, Flik arrives just in time to see the circus bugs looking triumphant. Believing them to be great fighters, Flik begs them to come back with him to his colony, not exactly making it clear what would be expected of them. Since they are out of work and in fear of their lives from these bully flies, they go.

At Ant Island, the ants are exhausted and there isn’t enough food on the island to double Hopper’s food order. Dot has been waiting hopefully for Flik to return and on this day, he does, with “warrior bugs”. A party is held for their arrival, where it soon becomes clear that there’s been some sort of mix-up. The circus bugs tell Flik that they aren’t warriors and that they’d better go before they wind up dead from this big grasshopper-ant battle. Flik chases after them, pleading with them to stay so he doesn’t look like an idiot. Flik then sees a bird’s nest and tells everyone to run. Dot, meanwhile, has tried to fly again but falls on a dandelion seed and is swept away. Atta and the rest of the ants watch in horror as Dot is attacked by a bird. Francis, the ladybird from the circus, catches Dot, but they fall into a crack in the ground. Francis’ leg is hurt and the two are trapped. Flik and the rest of the circus bugs come up with a plan. Heimlich the caterpillar and Slim the stick insect will distract the bird whilst beetle Dim, Rosie the black widow spider, and Flik go to Dot and Francis. As per usual, this plan doesn’t work out as smoothly as hoped, but they escape the bird by flying into a row of thorny bushes. The circus bugs are now confirmed heroes.

Atta is worried she’s offended the circus bugs, because she thought they were just a bunch of clowns. She then tells Flik that Hopper is scared of birds too, which gives him an idea. He tells the circus bugs that they’ll build a bird that they can control to scare Hopper and the other grasshoppers away when they next arrive. The ants are on board with this plan and set about building this bird, hiding it in a tree, out of sight, once it’s finished.

Meanwhile, the grasshoppers have been having a great summer in their hideout in the desert. Some of the grasshoppers, including Molt, Hopper’s brother, don’t see the point in going back to Ant Island, having enough food here. Molt tells Hopper this and he is furious, telling the others that the ants outnumber them massively, and if they figure that out, then the grasshoppers lose their power. They will go back to Ant Island right now.

As the ants party away, they believe that the grasshoppers are coming – however, it is actually P.T. Flea, looking for his circus performers, since “Flaming Death” was a huge hit. This reveals to Atta and everyone else that the warriors are “just clowns”. Atta is so angry with Flik for his lies that she tells him to leave the colony and never come back. Him and the circus bugs leave. The Queen tells all the ants to pick as much food as they can now and to forget the bird plan. As the last leaf falls, the grasshoppers return as promised and Hopper is angry at the meagre offering of food they have picked. He tells the ants they aren’t leaving until every scrap of food on this island is given to them. The Queen is also held hostage. Dot and her young friends hide from the grasshoppers, overhearing Hopper’s plan to eat all the food and then squish the Queen. Dot goes for help, but is pursued by Thumper, the crazed grasshopper. He pushes her off a ledge, believing she’ll fall to her death, but she doesn’t. Dot has finally learnt how to fly! She flies off towards Flik and the others.

There, she tells Flik they need his help. Flik believes he’s a failure and that everyone is better off without him. The circus bugs try to convince Flik otherwise, but he doesn’t listen. Dot then leaves a rock next to him, and tells him to “pretend it’s a seed”, like he did to her earlier on to give her some belief in herself. Flik is now onboard and they all go back to Ant Island to fly their bird. The circus bugs distract Hopper to get the Queen to safety and then Flik and the young ants fly the bird towards him. Everything seems to be going well, until P.T. sees some of his circus bugs “injured” – it’s just berry juice – and sets the “bird” on fire. The bird crash lands, but everyone’s ok. Hopper demands to know who invented this plan. Flik says it was all his idea and is brutally beaten by Thumper. Flik tells Hopper that ants were never meant to serve grasshoppers and that they need the ants, not the other way around. Hopper turns to see all the ants linking arms in a show of unity; they won’t be going down without a fight. This is enough to scare some of the grasshoppers away, with the ants taking Hopper to the circus cannon, ready to shoot him into space.

But then, the rain starts to come down. In the chaos, Hopper pushes himself out of the cannon, grabbing Flik on the way, flying off with him. Atta and the circus bugs follow to rescue him. Eventually, Atta catches up and rescues Flik but he tells her to turn around, as he has a plan. She thinks he’s crazy but does it anyway. They find themselves by a bird’s nest in the pouring rain, with Hopper continuously beating Flik. A bird arrives. Hopper believes it to be another of Flik’s stupid pranks and goes closer to it. It turns out this bird is real – and it decides to feed Hopper to its very cute, fluffy little chicks. What a way to go…

After the rainy season, Atta is officially named Queen. The circus bugs, along with Molt, Hopper’s brother, head off on tour. They give Atta a gift of a rock, believing it to be some kind of “ant thing”, confusing everyone except Dot and Flik. As they are leaving, Heimlich emerges from his cocoon, not becoming a butterfly, but just having two tiny wings! He thinks he can fly, but the other circus bugs carry him away, as the ant colony thank them for all their help. Everyone is safe again.

CHARACTERS & CAST

Flik is the lead character of A Bug’s Life. He doesn’t fit in with the rest of the ant colony, not wanting to do what everyone else is doing just because that’s how it’s always been done. Ants are generally believed to be conformist and uniform. Flik is the complete opposite of that, opening himself up to criticism and being mocked, but that’s just how he is. Flik is very creative with all of his inventions, though this isn’t initially appreciated by the ant colony. Flik is the one who stands up to Hopper and he makes the other ants believe that they can fight the grasshoppers if they all stand together. Despite the ants generally finding him a nuisance, causing all sorts of problems for them, Flik is actually the catalyst for major change here, proving that you certainly shouldn’t judge anyone based on first impressions.

Dave Foley was chosen to be the voice of Flik. At the time, Foley was best known for being part of the comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall, which had its own sketch comedy series from 1988 to 1995. Some of his film credits include the role of Mr Jonathan Boy/All-American Boy, the Hero Support teacher, in the Disney movie Sky High (2005), as well as voice roles such as Terry in Monsters University (2013) for Pixar. On television, Foley appeared in the recurring role of Dr. Fulton in The Middle (2009-18), and was cast as Pat Hein in the Ken Jeong-created sitcom Dr. Ken (2015-17). More recently, Foley was cast as Danish Graves in Season 5 of the series Fargo (2014-present).

Princess Atta is quite high-strung. Everything panics her and makes her worried, which isn’t really a great quality to have in leadership but there you go! She is still learning, I suppose, but it is in complete contrast to her mother, the Queen, who is calm and experienced, yet also strong and capable when things do go wrong, like when Flik turns out to have lied to everyone about the identity of their “warriors”, calmly but boldly telling all the ants what they need to do next. Then you have Dot, who makes fun of her sister for being so easily stressed out, though Dot’s just a kid; she has no idea of the responsibility and pressure that is soon to be sitting on Atta’s shoulders as she’s trained to be queen. Luckily, Flik seems to be a calming influence on Atta, becoming much stronger in her opinions and actions once the two of them start to get along.

Atta was voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who at the time was cast as Elaine Benes in the sitcom Seinfeld (1989-1998). From 1982 to 1985, Louis-Dreyfus was also a cast member on Saturday Night Live (1975-present). In recent years, she was cast in the lead role of Selina Meyer in the hit political comedy series Veep (2012-19) and voiced the character of Laurel Lightfoot, Ian and Barley’s mother, in Pixar’s Onward (2020). She also voiced the part of Rochelle in the Disney film Planes (2013).

Phyllis Diller was chosen to be the voice of the Queen. Diller was one of the first female comedians to become a household name, having had roles in series such as The Pruitts of Southampton (1966-67) and performing on various variety shows such as The Andy Willams Show and The Bob Hope Show in the 1960s. A young Hayden Panettiere provides the voice of Dot. According to the Pixar team, she was the most professional young actress they’d worked with, not needing much direction and bringing lots of ideas and enthusiasm to her part. Panettiere went on to appear in movies such as Tiger Cruise (2004) and Ice Princess (2005) for Disney, as well as Bring It On: All or Nothing (2006). She also had main roles in series such as Heroes (2006-10), as Claire Bennet, and Nashville (2012-18), as Juliette Barnes. Ashley Tisdale, known for her Disney roles of Sharpay in the High School Musical series and as Maddy in The Suite Life of Zack and Cody (2005-08), apparently voiced one of Dot’s friends here, obviously when she was much younger.

For the circus bugs, there are a lot to mention here. First, we have Dim the beetle, who is quite childlike, having Rosie the black widow spider as his “tamer”, looking after him and making sure he doesn’t do anything silly or dangerous. We also have Manny the praying mantis, and his wife Gypsy the moth, who together have a magic act at the circus, claiming to be able to read minds and make things disappear. There are also the twin pill bugs Tuck and Roll who are very enthusiastic little acrobats, but are from Hungary and therefore can’t really communicate with anyone else! Then, there’s Slim the stick insect who is quite sensitive and proud, Francis the ladybird who has a bit of a temper, and the lovable Heimlich the caterpillar, who just wants to eat and become a butterfly. For me, the circus bugs really make A Bug’s Life the great film it is. Every one of them has their own personality and own ways of being funny. These characters are constant comic relief in the movie, with many quotable lines and slapstick moments.

Brad Garrett, known at the time for his role as Robert Barone in the sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond (1996-2005), voiced Dim, with Bonnie Hunt, who had starred in her own sitcom Bonnie (1995-96) before A Bug’s Life, voicing Rosie. Hunt went on to voice many roles for Disney and Pixar movies, including Sally in the Cars series and Dolly in Toy Story 3 (2010) and Toy Story 4 (2019). Jonathan Harris was chosen to be the voice of Manny, with his role as Dr. Zachary Smith in Lost in Space (1965-68) being one of his most known screen roles. Andrew Stanton, co-director of A Bug’s Life, was a very big fan of his from seeing Lost in Space as a child. The Pixar team loved hearing all of Harris’ stories from his career including his claim that Marlon Brando still owed him a dollar[1]! The role of Manny’s wife Gypsy went to Madeline Kahn, who had appeared in movies such as Blazing Saddles (1974) as Lili Von Shtupp, Young Frankenstein (1974) as Elizabeth Benning, and Clue (1985) as Mrs. White. Michael McShane, who was cast as Chris “Q” Todd in Tower of Terror (1997), voiced Tuck and Roll.

For Slim and Francis, their actors were David Hyde Pierce, who was starring as Dr. Niles Crane in Frasier (1993-2004) at the time, and Denis Leary, who went on to voice Diego the sabre tooth tiger in the Ice Age franchise. Heimlich was actually not voiced by a known actor, though his performance might suggest that it was done by a professional because it is just so hilarious. Heimlich was actually voiced by Pixar story supervisor Joe Ranft. Ranft had provided the scratch voice for the character throughout the story boarding process, but when John Lasseter’s wife heard his recording, she laughed so much that Lasseter gave the role to Ranft to perform in the movie. Ranft had been at CalArts with John Lasseter, joining Pixar in 1992. His first pieces of work included pitching and storyboarding the Green Army Men sequence for Toy Story (1995). Ranft worked on story development for all Pixar films until his death in 2005. He also voiced other characters for Pixar’s movies, including Wheezy in Toy Story 2 (1999) and Jacques the Shrimp in Finding Nemo (2003). Ranft died in a car accident in 2005, during production on the movie Cars (2006) which he co-directed[2].

Now, let’s get to the villain – and his brother. The menacing, intimidating Hopper rules both the ant colony and his own grasshopper gang with an iron fist, not allowing anyone to have their opinion and step out of line since this is his world and everyone else is just living in it. He doesn’t care about anyone else, not even his own brother, Molt, who he supposedly only hasn’t killed yet because he promised their mother on her death bed that he wouldn’t. Hopper is a very good Pixar villain, one of the best in my opinion. Molt isn’t mean and he certainly isn’t a tough grasshopper. He’s just stuck in this gang because he has nowhere to go without them – that is until the end where he is allowed to join the circus, though he’s seemingly just some sort of lackey, which is a real shame because Molt is such a sweet guy; he deserves some appreciation!

Molt was voiced by Richard Kind, who had roles in television series such as Mad About You (1992-99, 2019) as Dr. Mark Devanow and Spin City (1996-2002) as Paul Lassiter at the time of A Bug’s Life’s production. Kind went on to have the recurring role of Cousin Andy in Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000-24), and the recurring voice role of Al Tuttle in American Dad! (2005-present). For Pixar, Kind has also returned to voice other characters, such as Bookworm in Toy Story 3 (2010), Bing Bong in Inside Out (2015) and Van in Cars (2006) and Cars 2 (2011). Kind seems to have a role in the new season of Only Murders in the Building (2021-present), with that being released on 27^th August 2024.

Then there’s Kevin Spacey as the voice of Hopper. Spacey had an incredible acting career, winning two Academy Awards, one for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Usual Suspects (1995) and for Best Actor for American Beauty (1999), amongst many other awards. Spacey’s career continued with roles in 21 (2008), Horrible Bosses (2011) and its 2014 sequel, and Baby Driver (2017) and was cast as Frank Underwood in the critically acclaimed series House of Cards (2013-18). In 2017, in light of numerous sexual assault allegations, he was removed from the show and was also removed from his role in Ridley Scott’s All the Money in the World (2017) being replaced by Christopher Plummer. In recent years, Spacey has been attempting to make a comeback in the acting world, with some notable actors coming out to support him, as he was found not guilty of the sexual assault charges. It is unclear whether Spacey will be successful in his efforts to revive his career.

Now, on a lighter note, all Pixar fans will notice that I have not yet mentioned one actor who had a role in every Pixar movie up until Onward (2020), since he was the studio’s “good luck charm”. That actor is John Ratzenberger who voiced P.T. Flea in A Bug’s Life, after voicing Hamm in Toy Story (1995). The Pixar team loved how he approached all his performances, and had so many ideas on how to deliver his lines. Though some of his roles in Pixar movies are minor, Ratzenberger’s personality and humour always comes through.

MUSIC

Singer-songwriter Randy Newman returned to the Pixar Studios to write the music and compose the score for A Bug’s Life after his work on Toy Story (1995), which had received two Academy Award nominations, one for Best Song and another for Best Score. Newman is a regular contributor to the music on Pixar movies.

Pixar do not make musicals, though some of their movies do contain a few songs. In the case of A Bug’s Life, though, only one original song was written for the movie and that is “The Time of Your Life”, which appears during the End Credits, performed by Newman. This is a nice, upbeat tune to match the happy ending of A Bug’s Life but it is not one of Pixar’s best songs. I don’t feel that it reflects the overall message of A Bug’s Life, and seems to just be about living your life to the fullest, which is a positive thought but not exactly what A Bug’s Life was all about.

Having said that, I do enjoy much of Randy Newman’s score for A Bug’s Life. I particularly like “The Bird Flies” and “Ants Fight Back”, which obviously happens as the ants are fighting against the grasshoppers. I also really like the music as the ants are building the bird, which feels like the main theme of the movie, because it’s very triumphant, and the theme for the Bug City, as it matches Flik’s feeling of being overwhelmed by the noise and sounds of this bustling place.

The score was nominated for both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award in 1999, however, lost out to Shakespeare in Love (1998) and The Truman Show (1998) respectively. “The Time of Your Life” as well as the score from A Bug’s Life were both nominated for Grammy Awards in 2000, winning Best Instrumental Composition, but losing Best Song to “Beautiful Stranger” from the second Austin Powers movie. Random.

PRODUCTION

After Toy Story (1995) received critical acclaim, it was only natural that audiences were excited to see what Pixar could do next. The animators working there felt the same.

A Bug’s Life was going to be their second feature-length film, so there was a lot of pressure. They had to at least be as good as Toy Story in some ways, and better in others, if Pixar Animation wanted to prove itself as a film studio to watch. Pixar Animation as a company had gone public shortly after the release of Toy Story, meaning A Bug’s Life was going to be Pixar’s first movie since that event. The animators knew this next movie was going to be tough and challenging, and there were some concerns they may not be able to match the achievements of Toy Story.

The idea for A Bug’s Life was developed at a basic level in 1994. Pixar were toying with making an adaptation of Aesop’s fable The Ant and the Grasshopper. The Ant and the Grasshopper is about an ant spending its summer storing up food ready for the winter, whereas a lazy grasshopper spends his summer not doing anything useful. When winter comes, the grasshopper begs the ant for food, but the ant refuses to give him any, saying that the grasshopper shouldn’t have wasted his whole summer and should have planned for the future. This might be a story about the importance of hard work, but it seems a bit mean if you ask me. What happened to the importance of helping those in need, huh? But I’m not Aesop, I don’t have a ton of stories credited to me, so who cares what I think? Disney had previously adapted this fable into The Grasshopper and the Ants in 1934 as part of Disney’s popular Silly Symphonies series of animated short films.

Anyway, the general idea was: what if this scorned grasshopper rounded up a bunch of his friends so they could go and bully this ant colony? With that in mind, the first story of A Bug’s Life actually focused on Red, a red ant, who was the Ringmaster of the circus and not a part of the ant colony. Flik was still a character here though, and he would still be wanting to hire warrior bugs to fight off the grasshoppers. Red would have convinced Flik to hire his out-of-work circus performers. It soon became clear that Red as a main character was not working, because Red was not involved in the colony, and he could just leave it whenever something went wrong. Flik ended up being the focus of A Bug’s Life; he was a part of the colony and wanted to help change things for them. Andrew Stanton, the co-director on A Bug’s Life in his directorial debut, said to himself he was just going to write the script of this idea until it did or didn’t work. John Lasseter, the other co-director here, was given Stanton’s script to read and liked this new story with Flik at the heart of it[3]. Pixar Animation then pitched their idea to Disney, since they had an agreement to produce a number of films for Disney. CEO Michael Eisner liked the idea and production was greenlit.

But making a computer-animated version of the real-world from a bug’s point of view wasn’t going to be easy, nor was it going to be simple to convince audiences to watch a whole movie about “icky” bugs. As research, the team closely observed nature around them, like grassy areas, using a “bug cam” to view the world as the size of an ant. They discovered that the leaves are translucent at that level, like the whole world is full of stained-glass windows. They also studied insects up close, to see how they move, and using their characteristics to give them a personality or a purpose in the “bug world”[4]. Some of examples of these could be that big, sturdy beetle that is used as a bus in the city, Heimlich being a greedy caterpillar, since caterpillars eat a lot – remember The Very Hungry Caterpillar story? – and Rosie talking about her many dead husbands since she is a “widow” spider, and a long-standing perception is that female black widow spiders kill their mates.

To make all of this in computer animation was going to be difficult, especially as technology is always advancing and changing. The terrain in A Bug’s Life had to look realistic, with many different terrains and organic growth to represent on screen. There are many characters in A Bug’s Life, and each and every ant had to be unique. This was not an easy thing to do with crowd scenes, but a colony of ants means there had to be a lot of ants on screen. At the time, the technology apparently could not deal with crowd scenes of more than 50 characters, so that was something that had to be figured out on the job. The moment when all the ants link arms together is a huge crowd scene, but it was a big moment in the film, showing them standing united against a common enemy; it had to be in the movie[5]. A Bug’s Life was also going to be made in widescreen, giving them yet another challenge.

Over the years, Pixar has found ways of incorporating Easter eggs into their movies, with many of these recurring in every Pixar movie to date. The iconic A113, referencing the classroom that many of the animators were taught in during their time learning character animation at the California Institute of the Arts, also known as CalArts, appears in A Bug’s Life on the side of a box that Flik walks past in the city. It is also followed by 1195, which likely points to the November 1995 release date of Toy Story. The Pizza Planet truck, first seen in Toy Story, is another classic Pixar Easter egg, which can be found in A Bug’s Life next to a trailer during the scenes of Flik’s journey to the city. Another Easter egg, this time paying tribute to Disney, is that P.T. Flea’s circus wagons are boxes of Casey Jr. Cookies, which references the Casey Jr. Circus Train in Dumbo (1941). If you look closely at this box, you’ll also see that it was made by “J Grant Bakery”, referencing Disney storyboard artist Joe Grant – plus, you can read the cookies’ questionable nutritional value!

At the end of their four-year production schedule, A Bug’s Life was finally ready for its release. A couple of weeks before its release though, John Lasseter got a call from Steve Jobs, saying that they had be invited to show the movie to the President and the First Lady, those figures being Bill and Hillary Clinton in 1998. They were all invited to Camp David for the event. Andrew Stanton even stated that he could hear one of the Secret Service men stifling his laughter behind him during the screening, obviously trying to stay professional whilst he was on duty! It was a surreal, but once-in-a-lifetime experience, to end production[6].

RECEPTION

After its premiere at the El Capitan theatre on 14^th November 1998, A Bug’s Life was released to the masses on 25^th November 1998, during Thanksgiving weekend. It performed well during that time, ranking top of the box office and grossing $45.7 million in those five days. It went on to gross $363.3 million worldwide, with $200 million of that coming from international markets.

A Bug’s Life’s reviews were also generally positive to match the successful financial results. It was found to be funny, memorable, and technologically impressive. Although it was not considered to be better than Toy Story, it was still a successful movie from Pixar and promised audiences many more great movies to come from this studio and its animators. This was enough to take some of that pressure off; Pixar had succeeded in making another great movie after Toy Story, so they were officially not just “one-hit wonders”. Some were more critical and claimed that A Bug’s Life did not have enough charm. I disagree with this.

As is quite typical for Pixar, their movie was also released alongside one of their classic short films. In this case, A Bug’s Life was released alongside Geri’s Game. Geri’s Game is one of my favourite Pixar short films. It is about an elderly man who is playing chess in the park by himself. He takes his glasses on and off to become two different personalities, with the man without glasses being quite aggressive and cocky in his style of play. The man with glasses later proceeds to have a heart attack. The man without glasses is concerned, but he needn’t be; the “other” guy just faked it so he could turn the board around and win the game for himself. It’s quite a funny short film, but it’s actually kind of sad if you think about, having a lonely old man playing chess on his own…Geri’s Game won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1998 and the Annie Award for Best Animated Short Subject in 1998, amongst other accolades. Geri’s Game was first released in November 1997.

A Bug’s Life was also released with outtakes, with these appearing during the End Credits. Although Pixar had originally planned to create some bloopers for Toy Story, there had been no time to do this, so the first Pixar bloopers appear in A Bug’s Life, only going on to do more bloopers for Toy Story 2 (1999) and Monsters, Inc. (2001). Since A Bug’s Life does not involve human actors – spoiler alert – these outtakes were not real and were loosely scripted, with some improvisation coming from the voice actors as well[7]. I’ve always loved bloopers on any movie or TV series, I just like to laugh, so I love all three sets of Pixar bloopers, especially as it gives us a feeling that these animated characters are in fact real actors, which is a nice twist. It might also help some kids cope with the more villainous characters, by imagining that they were just actors doing a job and aren’t scary in real life.

An alternate set of outtakes also appeared on the home video and DVD release, with Woody even making a cheeky appearance. Geri’s Game is another bonus feature found on video and DVD too. The first of the home releases was in April 1999, where A Bug’s Life became the first film to be digitally transferred directly from the original computer imagery rather than the standard film-to-tape process. This allowed the Pixar animators to reframe A Bug’s Life to fit TV dimensions, with the widescreen format still being available to watch as well. They knew that when the decision was made to make A Bug’s Life in widescreen that it would look awful on video, so time was set aside to go back into the computer, resize and readjust scenes to make sure it looked great anywhere[8].

A Bug’s Life was nominated for Best Animated Feature, Best Direction, Best Production Design, and Best Writing at the Annie Awards, but lost to The Iron Giant (1999) in all cases, which just so happened to be directed by future Pixar director, Brad Bird.

Now, I can’t just leave the release of A Bug’s Life there, because, as many people know, it wasn’t an easy atmosphere for Pixar to be releasing their second feature film. Jeffrey Katzenberg was the Chairman of Walt Disney Studios from 1984. He is credited with the turnaround of Disney Animation, from its struggles of the 1980s to its “Renaissance Era” of the 1990s. However, after rumoured rifts with CEO Michael Eisner, Katzenberg left Disney in 1994, after the release of The Lion King (1994) He went on to co-found a different animation studio, that little company called DreamWorks, supposedly planning to outdo both Disney and Pixar with his own animated movies.

Coincidentally, or perhaps not quite so coincidentally, in 1998, DreamWorks released their own computer animated movie about ants, called Antz – with a “z” because that makes it cool. Antz was released in October 1998, just a few weeks before Pixar’s A Bug’s Life. It has been said that Katzenberg stole his idea for the movie from Pixar since Katzenberg had heard John Lasseter’s initial pitch for A Bug’s Life, then called Bugs, in 1994 prior to his departure from Disney. Katzenberg says that the story of Antz actually came from a story pitch by Nina Jacobson, one of DreamWorks’ executives, and that he stole nothing.

Although Antz’ general concept is similar to A Bug’s Life, with both being about worker ants who don’t fit in with the rest of the colony, they have just as many differences as similarities. Despite both films doing well at the box office and with audiences and critics, the toxicity between the two studios was obvious to the press, as public digs were made between the feuding sides[9]. As further competition, DreamWorks then released The Prince of Egypt on 18^th December 1998 to go against A Bug’s Life. This didn’t work out so well for DreamWorks though. A Bug’s Life became the highest grossing animated film of 1998, with Disney’s Mulan, released in October 1998, not featuring too far behind it.

I didn’t watch Antz as a child. I don’t know if this was one of those things where families were either “Team Antz” or “Team Bug’s Life”, but in my family, we were definitely “Team Bug’s Life”. I had seen clips of Antz on television through the years, and I wasn’t impressed by the story or the animation style. I finally watched it in full in my mid-20s and I still didn’t like it – sorry to all those Antz fans out there; it just looks so weird to me. Antz was considered to be funnier, especially for adults, than A Bug’s Life and it has an all-star voice cast, with the likes of Jennifer Lopez, Christopher Walken, Sharon Stone, Gene Hackman, and Sylvester Stallone signing up to be part of the cast. A Bug’s Life is generally seen to be the winner in terms of story and animation though, as well as doubling Antz’ box-office worldwide figure of $170 million.

LEGACY

A Bug’s Life is the only movie within what I call Pixar’s “Early Years”, from 1995 to 2005, to not receive a sequel or a prequel. In one of the outtakes for Toy Story 2 (1999), there is a jokey mention to A Bug’s Life 2, with Heimlich telling Flik he got them a part in a “2 movie” but not A Bug’s Life 2. Buzz then promptly karate chops away the leaves they are standing on. A Bug’s Life 2 has been rumoured over the years, but I doubt it will ever be made as A Bug’s Life does not have the same commercial success or merchandising possibilities as other Pixar franchises like Toy Story and Cars. Maybe it was just so good it didn’t need a sequel to overcomplicate the story and push the characters too far until it loses all sense of what made the original films great…

Just after A Bug’s Life’s 25^th anniversary, National Geographic released a 10-episode documentary series in 2024 called A Real Bug’s Life, which was narrated by Awkwafina and can be found on Disney+. This series tells the stories of insects struggling to survive in different environments, like cities, farms, and rainforests. I don’t like looking at real insects so I’ll give that a miss and stick to A Bug’s Life!

At the Disney Parks, once upon a time, A Bug’s Life did have a presence, however, this presence has either already been removed or there are plans in place to do so. The longest running A Bug’s Life-themed attraction is at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World in Florida. The park opened on 22^nd April 1998 with this attraction, months before A Bug’s Life was even released in theatres.

The base of the park’s icon The Tree of Life was planned to be either a restaurant or a show, with a show based on The Lion King (1994) being initially considered. CEO Michael Eisner then thought that they could combine this show attraction with Pixar’s new movie, since both would open in 1998, and because bugs live in and around trees, so it seemed like a natural solution for this space. Imagineering consulted with Pixar so that they could use characters from the movie in this new attraction, but also created new ones specifically for the show[10]. The queue line and theatre are both situated at the base of the tree, with the design making it feel as though guests are navigating narrow tunnels and climbing over huge roots. The pre-show waiting area features posters and music parodying famous Broadway musicals, such as “My Fair Ladybug”, “Antie”, “Web Side Story” and “Beauty and the Bees”.

It’s Tough to Be a Bug is a nine-minute show which showcases the talents of different insects through a variety of acts. It is hosted by Flik, both on screen and as an animatronic from the ceiling, with Dave Foley returning to voice his character, Some of these other featured bugs include Chili the tarantula, voiced by Cheech Marin, who voiced Tito in Oliver & Company (1998); the Dung Beetle Brothers, voiced by SpongeBob himself, Tom Kenny; and Weevil Kneevil, voiced by Jason Alexander, Hugo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996). Hopper is also here to terrorise everyone, with his Audio-Animatronic figure being the most sophisticated and advanced one created by Imagineering at the time. Andrew Stanton, the co-director of A Bug’s Life, provides the voice of Hopper in It’s Tough to Be a Bug. This is a 4D show, complete with 3D “bug eye” glasses and special effects, like water sprays, pumped in smells, puffs of air, rollers in the seats, and high-speed fans to recreate the feeling of being around these bugs[11]. It even has its own Broadway musical-style song! Since this show is quite intense for children – and adults if they have a fear of creepy crawlies – guests are warned that they may not like the experience and are told to exit the show at the beginning if they don’t want to stay. I’ll admit I have been one of those people.

Although It’s Tough to Be a Bug is currently still showing, it is believed that it is likely to close soon, as a replacement based on Zootopia (2016) has already been announced by Disney. At the D23 Expo in 2024, the name of the show was announced to be Zootopia Better Zoogether and will open in Winter 2025, however, a closing date for It’s Tough to Be a Bug has still not been confirmed.

Disneyland’s Disney California Adventure Park used to have a whole area themed to A Bug’s Life. Originally, they just had It’s Tough to Be a Bug as an opening day attraction at Disney California Adventure when it opened on 8^th February 2001. The park suffered from low attendance and bad reviews from the outset, leading to many changes being made in its first year or two. In October 2002, Flik’s Fun Fair opened, next to the theatre housing It’s Tough to Be a Bug, with this whole area becoming A Bug’s Land. The area consisted of Flik’s Flyers, a spinner ride, which has since been rethemed to Inside Out Emotional Whirlwind and moved to Pixar Pier; Heimlich’s Chew Chew Train, a kiddie coaster, with one of its front vehicles being moved to Pixar Studios in Emeryville in memory of Joe Ranft, the voice of Heimlich; Francis’ Ladybug Boogie, another spinning ride; Princess Dot Puddle Park water play area; and Tuck and Roll’s Drive ‘Em Buggies bumper cars. A Bug’s Land closed on 4^th September 2018 to make way for Avengers Campus, which opened 4^th June 2021.

With Disney California Adventure Park having Pixar Pier, this area has somewhat kept the memory of A Bug’s Life alive. For example, one of its Games of Pixar Pier is called Heimlich’s Candy Corn Toss. Lamplight Lounge, a table-service restaurant in the area, celebrates the whole catalogue of Pixar movies, so you’d think you would be able to find some sort of artwork or something from A Bug’s Life there! There is also Pixar Fest at Disneyland, which had its inaugural run in 2018 and only properly returned in 2024, so it may or may not be an annual event now, running from April to August in 2024. Perhaps surprisingly, A Bug’s Life did not feature in their live entertainment, like stage shows, parades, or fireworks shows, however, there was a photo spot area with the Casey Jr. Cookies circus wagon. Some fans of the movie were very unhappy with the lack of reference to A Bug’s Life at Pixar Fest, and rightly so, because Pixar Fest should’ve been able to celebrate ALL their movies, be they new, old, popular, or underrated. It should not have ignored Pixar’s second movie. Had A Bug’s Life not been successful, then potentially Pixar would not have been able to create the great movies that came after it.

This doesn’t get much better at Pixar Place Hotel, which was recently refurbished, changing its name from Paradise Pier Hotel and reopening in January 2024. A Bug’s Life appears to have been left out of one of their lobby murals, and the most obvious references you’re likely to find seem to be the Heimlich-inspired sofa in the lobby, and a light feature at the concierge-level club lounge, The Creators Club, that was from A Bug’s Land.

There used to be a couple of references to A Bug’s Life at Tokyo Disneyland, with A Bug’s Life having floats in the original version of Tokyo Disneyland Electrical Parade: Dreamlights, running from 2001 to 2007. The first float consisted of Tuck, Roll, Gypsy, and Francis in the circus wagon, being driven by Manny and Dim, with Slim following on behind them. The second float had Atta and Flik standing on top of a flowery hill. This A Bug’s Life section was later removed when the Dreamlights parade was revamped in 2007.

The other reference was from the live stage show One Man’s Dream II: The Magic Lives On, a sequel to the stage show One Man’s Dream, which ran at both Tokyo Disneyland and Disneyland in the late 1980s and 1990s, with both shows consisting of performances by Disney and Pixar movie characters. One Man’s Dream II ran from 2004 until 2019 at Tokyo Disneyland and featured a whole segment dedicated to A Bug’s Life. It involved the ants collecting food with Flik bringing the circus bugs to the ant colony to perform their acts. There was also a chorus line of ants to end this part of the show.

As for meet-and-greets, Flik and Princess Atta used to meet guests fairly frequently at both A Bug’s Land at Disney California Adventure and at Disney’s Animal Kingdom at Walt Disney World. For Animal Kingdom’s 25^th anniversary in 2023, the pair were spotted meeting guests once more and occasionally pop up for the park’s Earth Day celebrations, though they don’t seem to have done so in 2024. At Pixar Pier at Disney California Adventure, Flik and Atta were out and about for the first Pixar Fest in 2018, but were not around in 2024. It seems that Flik and Atta are now very much rare characters, most likely to appear for Special Events, alongside some of the other movie characters like Slim, Manny, and Gypsy.

It is a shame that A Bug’s Life has been forgotten at the Disney Parks, and that is probably why the general public have also begun to forget it, unless it’s around a milestone anniversary when suddenly all the merchandise and the pins show up for a month. Many of the Disney Parks have chosen other Pixar movies as theming for their attractions, rides, and lands, with those most popular ones being Toy Story, Cars, Finding Nemo, and Ratatouille, despite the US Parks having referenced A Bug’s Life early on.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Although apparently not as popular as it once was, A Bug’s Life, I think, stands up perfectly well next to Toy Story (1995), even though critics do not seem to have agreed. For me, Pixar’s A Bug’s Life is their most hilarious movie. I think it’s highly quotable, funny for both children and adults, and it has an important message about standing up for yourself even if the odds don’t seem to be in your favour. The improvement in what Pixar could do with computer animation technology is also very impressive here, so that is another achievement.

Some might claim that A Bug’s Life is being left out of Pixar’s legacy because of its closeness to Kevin Spacey, but I don’t think that’s true because Pixar have been forgetting about A Bug’s Life for years. As evidence of this, back in 2004, when trailers began to appear for The Incredibles (2004), the titles said that this movie was from the makers of Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., and Finding Nemo, with no mention of A Bug’s Life. This led to some of the Pixar animators putting up posters and wearing t-shirts to spread the love and appreciation for A Bug’s Life once again. They also held an annual event where they did a read through of A Bug’s Life with the staff and some of the original voice cast if they were available[12]. I have no idea if this still happens, I’m going to assume not though.

Pixar’s movie slate has recently become full of sequels as Disney look to milk their most popular franchises for all they are worth. Perhaps A Bug’s Life is best staying out of the Disney corporation’s blatantly obvious ways of making a quick buck anyway.

REFERENCES

[1] Credit: Pixar, Filmmakers’ Roundtable (2009), Disney+.

[2] Credit: Jim Korkis, ‘In His Own Words: Joe Ranft’, CartoonResearch.com, 7^th June 2019.

[3] Credit: Pixar, Filmmakers Roundtable (2009), Disney+.

[4] Credit: Pixar, Living A Bug’s Life (1998).

[5] Credit: Pixar, The Pixar Story (2007).

[6] Credit: Pixar, Filmmakers Roundtable (2009), Disney+.

[7] Credit: Jeff Howard and Dave Neill, ‘‘A Bug’s Life’ bloopers explained by director’, LasVegasSun.com, 18^th December 1998.

[8] Credit: Susan King, ‘A New Look for ‘Bug’’, LATimes.com, 22^nd April 1999.

[9] Credit: Michael Lyons, ‘Small Wonder: The 25^th Anniversary of “A Bug’s Life”’, CartoonResearch.com, 24^th November 2023.

[10] Credit: Jim Korkis, More Secret Stories of Walt Disney World (2016), ‘It’s Tough to Be a Bug’, pp. 61-62.

[11] Credit: Jim Korkis, ‘A Friday Visit with Jim Korkis: The Bugs of It’s Tough to be a Bug’, YourFirstVisit.net, date unknown.

[12] Credit: Pixar, Filmmakers Roundtable (2009), Disney+.

2nd Aug 202429th Sep 2025 by The Disney Purist

Descendants: The Rise of Red (2024)

BACKGROUND

For anyone who stopped watching the Descendants series after Descendants 3 (2019), you can be forgiven for assuming that this whole Disney movie series was done, completed, and finished. For those who stuck with it and watched the animated short film Descendants: The Royal Wedding (2021), you’ll have noticed that Disney were toying with the idea of expanding the series, looking to Alice in Wonderland (1951) for inspiration.

I did watch Descendants: The Royal Wedding, but I didn’t think they would be making another movie based on Wonderland and its characters. I thought it was just there to say “look what we can do”, assuming that not many people were going to be asking for a further movie, so it wouldn’t be made. I was wrong.

I forgot that Descendants as a franchise was a big property for The Walt Disney Company and that, to them, it would make perfect sense to make a fourth Descendants movie. To the rest of us, maybe a “Descendants 4” didn’t make sense.

Without a key member of the cast, Cameron Boyce, as well as seeing the effect his passing had on the rest of the cast and crew, it seemed unthinkable for Descendants to go on without him. I wasn’t happy with the idea of this new movie; others felt the same way.

I can’t say I kept up with any further news, other than to hear that Descendants 4 was in the works. I didn’t know when the release date was, I didn’t know who the cast were, I didn’t know what the plot was, and frankly, I didn’t care. As 2024 began, and trailers and interviews started popping up online, I paid a slight bit of attention. I knew that if I wanted to review the Descendants original trilogy, I couldn’t just ignore Descendants 4 – which came to be known as Descendants: The Rise of Red, to distance itself from the original films.

It is only fitting for Descendants: The Rise of Red to not be numbered, as it is not a sequel to Descendants, but a spin-off, with just two original cast members returning: Fairy Godmother, and, thankfully, Uma. When I heard Uma was back, I was vaguely intrigued.

Yet I still wasn’t excited. I only watched the movie this week, not being enough of a fan to watch it on its premiere date or even its premiere weekend, so by the time I got round to watching Descendants: The Rise of Red, the reviews were already circulating and the results were mixed.

After watching Descendants: The Rise of Red, I felt that the music was comparable to Descendants, as was the talent of the main cast, however, what really let it down was the story. Ten minutes before the end, I felt like the plot was leading up to something, and then – nothing happened. It was disappointing, because I thought so much more could’ve been done with the storyline, but the character development did not allow it to happen in the way I’d hoped it would. More on that later. On a more positive note, if you disregard the Descendants trilogy, which you can do here, Descendants: The Rise of Red is a pleasant enough movie, still full of colour and clever ideas. In the context of the Descendants series though, it fell a bit flat for me.

PLOT

Descendants: The Rise of Red begins with a voiceover from the one and only Uma, who says that Ben and Mal, now King and Queen of Auradon, along with Evie and Jay, have sailed away to other realms to promote harmony and peaceful relations with Auradon. Mal has named Uma as Principal of Auradon Prep in their absence.

Uma arrives at Auradon Prep and is welcomed by Fairy Godmother, who is also moving on to a new role as President of Auradon University. As her first order of business, Uma says she plans to invite Red, daughter of the Queen of Hearts, to come from her home of Wonderland to Auradon Prep, as part of the Villain Kid initiative that Ben started all those years ago. Fairy Godmother is uncertain by this addition to the school, as Wonderland is a hostile land, and its leader never wanted to join Auradon, therefore, the rabbit hole, the portal to Wonderland, was walled off, so no-one could enter Auradon from there. Uma says that the VKs would’ve wanted this, especially Carlos, who is no longer with them but had always believed other VKs would get their second chance in Auradon like he had. The invite is sent.

In Wonderland, we see that Red is actually quite the rebel. She doesn’t like her mother’s tyrannical way of ruling, has no desire to grow up to be like her, and just wants to get out of there – except the Queen of Hearts won’t allow it. Dodging the guards after vandalising the Wonderland Plaza, Red is rescued by her friend Maddox Hatter, son of the Mad Hatter. He tells her that perhaps someday she’ll be able to have a new life somewhere else, showing her a project he’s been working on: a pocket watch, which is actually a time machine. But Maddox quickly pulls it away from Red, telling her it’s much too dangerous; altering the fabric of time can lead to disastrous consequences. Red is then sent back home, sneakily taking the pocket watch with her. The next day, Red meets with her mother, the Queen, who is just about to punish her Army Captain, the Jack of Diamonds, for not finding the criminal who vandalised her plaza – not realising that the criminal was in fact her daughter! The Queen then tells Red to decide how the Captain should be punished. She isn’t able to do it, disappointing the Queen of Hearts, but the disappointment is short-lived, as Maddox arrives with a letter. It’s the letter from Auradon. Red doesn’t believe her mother would ever let her go to Auradon Prep, since the Queen despises Auradon, but surprisingly, the Queen readily accepts the invitation, telling Red to pack. She obviously has a plan…

Back in Auradon, we meet Cinderella and King Charming’s daughter, Chloe, sister of Chad Charming, who is practising for the Auradon Swords and Shields team with her dad. She is very excited to be heading to Auradon Prep, and her parents are very proud of her, so much so that she gets a gift of glass sneakers. Chloe and Cinderella head to the welcoming ceremony at Auradon Prep for the new students, with King Charming going to see Chad at college instead.

The Queen of Hearts drives Red through the rabbit hole over to Auradon for this same welcoming ceremony. Their car is thoroughly inspected by security and they able to proceed inside the castle. The two soon come face-to-face with Cinderella and Chloe. The Queen of Hearts and Cinderella clearly have some bad blood between them, with Cinderella referencing some sort of prank that happened to the Queen when they were at school together. We also learn that the Queen’s name is apparently Bridget. Chloe tries to be nice to Red, but Red has no time for “goody-goodies”.

At the welcoming ceremony, Fairy Godmother introduces Uma as the new principal of the school, but as Uma is giving her speech to the new students, she becomes distracted by the Queen of Hearts shuffling a deck of cards. Uma asks her to stop, but the Queen refuses, throwing the cards into the air. The cards then transform into soldiers from her army. Uma is captured, Fairy Godmother’s wand is broken, and everyone runs in terror – though the Queen of course blocks off all the exits. The people have no choice put to bow to the Queen of Hearts, the new ruler of Auradon. Except Cinderella will not kneel to the Queen. The Queen of Hearts tells her daughter to punish Cinderella for this act of treason, reiterating to Red that her plan is for the two to rule side-by-side, with the Queen’s hand-held looking glass even showing this future. Red, in a moment of weakness, sentences Cinderella to be beheaded. Seeing what she’s done, Red then pulls out Maddox’s time machine/pocket watch and plans to go back in time to fix this, except Chloe tries to attack Red at the same time, to stop her mother being taken away, and touches the pocket watch. The two go back in time together.

Confused as to where – and when – they are, since Red was never given instructions on how to use this pocket watch, Chloe and Red find themselves in an empty part of what they assume is still Auradon Prep. It’s not. It turns out instead of going back two minutes, like Red planned to just take her mother’s cards off her to stop the coup, they have actually gone back two decades, and this isn’t Auradon – it’s Merlin Academy, the school that existed prior to Belle and Beast’s creation of the United States of Auradon. Red and Chloe come up with a new plan to stop the Queen of Hearts’ takeover of Auradon; perhaps they can stop the prank that made the Queen so bitter in the first place.

Merlin, the Headmaster of Merlin Academy, obviously, finds the two girls and assumes they are transfer students, immediately taking them to his Alchemy class. The security here is much more lax than at Auradon Prep; apparently, anyone can just walk in! At Alchemy class, Red and Chloe are assigned mentors – their mothers. Well, the teenage versions of their mothers, known here as Bridget and Ella. Bridget and Ella don’t exactly fit in with the rest of the students, but Bridget tries to be kind to everyone – even the Villain Kids. Yes, more VKs – and some of these happen to be the teenage versions of the VK parents from the first three Descendants films! The leader of this VK group, which includes Captain Hook, Maleficent, and Hades, is actually Uliana, Ursula’s younger sister, so Uma’s aunt. She doesn’t like Bridget or Ella, tormenting them constantly. But as Bridget hands out cupcakes to everyone, complete with flamingo feathers, Uliana decides she wants some of the feathers and starts to eat them. Bridget warns her she shouldn’t have too many, but Uliana doesn’t listen and promptly turns into a flamingo. Despite falling into water and the spell wearing off, Uliana wants revenge on Bridget and starts to plan with her evil sidekicks.

Red and Chloe know that this act of revenge is due to take place at the Castlecoming dance – see what they did there? – and follow the VKs to find out exactly what it will be. They go to Ella’s house to get some advice, and find that she is being used as a servant by her stepmother. Ella informs them that Uliana is trying to live up to her sister’s meanness and that she picks on Bridget because she’s weak and won’t stop trying to be friends with them. Ella then tells Red and Chloe that the VKs normally hang out at the Black Lagoon. Red and Chloe go there, where they overhear their plan: to make a cupcake from the Sorcerer’s Cookbook that will turn Bridget into a monster in front of the whole school. No, there aren’t any buckets of pig blood here like in that infamous prom scene from Carrie (1976), so if that’s what you were hoping for, well, then you’ve got some major issues!

Since Bridget is a keen baker, Red and Chloe ask if she happens to own the Sorcerer’s Cookbook, but she does not, saying it is likely banned for student use, with Merlin probably having the only copy hidden in his office. Red knows to stop the prank they have to get that book before the VKs do; Chloe thinks they should just tell Merlin. Red goes alone to steal the book, with Chloe going to Ella for more help. Ella tells her that sometimes you have to cross that line between “good” and “bad” to do what’s right. Chloe goes to Merlin’s office to help Red. The VKs see the two go into the office and watch them. Red and Chloe fight off the magical defence systems in Merlin’s office, with some struggles, but the VKs enter at the last moment and grab the book. They are then frozen because the book can’t fall into the wrong hands, i.e., a villain cannot open it. Chloe tells Red to open it, to prove that she isn’t evil, and sure enough, the book opens for her. They hear Merlin coming to the office and escape through a window. Merlin sees the frozen VKs and gives them detention.

Red and Chloe hide the book, stopping the prank on Bridget. They then go back to the present, though Red is scared they haven’t done enough to change events. As they approach the ceremony in Auradon again, Red hears the Queen of Hearts refuse to stop playing with her cards during Uma’s speech, just like the first time. Red braces herself for the coup all over again, but it turns out the Queen is actually just excited for her daughter to be in Auradon and throws heart-shaped bubbles into the air. She is also wearing a white and red dress, not just red, as more evidence that she has changed.

And that’s the end of the story. Or is it? In typical Descendants fashion, we are then told by Uma that this isn’t the end of the story, and that we’ll have to wait and see whether Red and Chloe’s time-travelling escapades have actually done more harm than good…

CHARACTERS & CAST

Naturally, Descendants: The Rise of Red focuses on the new Villain Kid, Red. Although she is the daughter of the oppressive Queen of Hearts, Red is not evil. She doesn’t want to rule Wonderland, or want to be remotely like her mother. The only thing Red really wants is to get out of Wonderland and live her own life, where she doesn’t have to feel like a big disappointment. Red is a bit of a rebel though, even if not villainous, and doesn’t spend her time being sweet and kind to everyone. She breaks the rules, pushes the boundaries, and yet, she is still caring. She wants to change her mother’s past so that she doesn’t need to feel angry and hateful towards everyone. She is devoted to her mother both in the past and the present, despite herself, protecting Bridget from bullies in the past, and relenting to her mother’s wish for Red to be a strict ruler at times. Red is a complicated girl, figuring out everything as she goes along, but her heart is in the right place most of the time.

Kylie Cantrall was cast in the role of Red. Cantrall began her career online, singing and performing on YouTube, later releasing her own music. She gained a presence in acting from Disney Channel roles, like Raven’s Home (2017-23), in the role of Jasmine in 2018, and the lead of Gabby in Gabby Duran & the Unsittables (2019-21). In 2023, Cantrall was cast as Dani in Season 4 of the Disney+ series High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (2019-23). She also provided the voice of Savannah in the movie Ron’s Gone Wrong (2021). Cantrall had a link to Descendants prior to her role as Red, appearing alongside Cheyenne Jackson in the TV special Descendants Remix Dance Party (2020).

Chloe is the daughter of Cinderella and King Charming, so she has been brought up to be kind, selfless, hard-working, and loyal – which is quite amusing since her brother, Chad, turned out to be a bit of a jerk! Chloe is intelligent and athletic, so would easily thrive in a school like Auradon Prep. She behaves like a princess should, however, she soon finds that this annoys Red, who isn’t your typical princess, villain or hero, and learns through their time-travelling journey together that it isn’t always so easy to determine what a “good” person or a “bad” person is, realising that she needs to decide what are the right and wrong actions for her, not just fitting everything and everyone into a simple category.

The part of Chloe went to Malia Baker. She began her acting career with a few small roles in series like The Flash (2014-23) and The Twilight Zone (2019-20), before starring as Mary Anne Spier in the Netflix series The Baby-Sitters Club (2020-21). After this, she appeared in the second revival series of Are You Afraid of the Dark? (2019-22), in the role of Gabby Lewis for its second season.

For their parents, we have the Queen of Hearts and Cinderella. In the present day, the Queen of Hearts is hard-to-please, easy-to-anger, and generally unlikeable. She rules Wonderland with an iron fist, everything being exactly to her satisfaction. On the other side of that, we have Cinderella. She is kind, caring, and the epitome of goodness. Despite her difficult upbringing, she has come out of it unscathed and unresentful, whereas the Queen of Hearts seems to blame everyone else for how she is feeling, turning her back on anyone who was cruel to her. They are the polar opposites of each other at this stage, with Cinderella trying to get the Queen to forget whatever prank was played on her at school, when they used to be friends, and let go of some of that hatred. It doesn’t work.

The Queen of Hearts was played by Rita Ora here. Rita Ora is best known for her singing career, where she has had such hits as “How We Do (Party)”, “R.I.P.”, “Anywhere”, and “Lonely Together”. She has also featured as a judge and host on talent shows such as The Masked Singer and The Voice. On screen, Ora was cast as Mia Grey in Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) and its two sequels, and later appeared as Dr. Laurent in Detective Pikachu (2019). She also voiced the character of Sir Luthera/Wandering Blade in the animated series Kung Fu Panda: The Dragon Knight (2022-23).

Making a surprise appearance as Cinderella in Descendants: The Rise of Red was actually Brandy Norwood, who was cast in this same role for the 1997 live-action television movie Cinderella, which was produced by Disney but was based on Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical, not their animated movie. Although an unexpected casting choice, it was welcomed by many fans of the 1997 movie. Paolo Montalban, Brandy’s co-star, also returned to his role of Prince Charming, though now a king, for this Descendants movie. Brandy was originally known for her singing career though, releasing her debut album in 1993. She won an American Music Award in 1996 for Favorite Soul/R&B New Artist, a Grammy for her song “The Boy Is Mine” in 1999 for Best R&B Performance, a Teen Choice Award in 1999 for Choice Female Artist, and a Kids’ Choice Award in 1996 for Favorite Singer, amongst many accolades. Brandy was also a judge on the first season of America’s Got Talent (2006-present), was a contestant on Season 11 of Dancing with the Stars (2005-present), and has acted on various series including Zoe Ever After (2016) in the lead role, and Queens (2021-22) as Naomi Harris-Jones. Rita Ora was a big fan of Brandy when she was younger, so was so excited to be acting alongside her[1].

We also get to see the teenage versions of the Queen of Hearts and Cinderella, and their characters might surprise you. In actual fact, the Queen of Hearts, or Bridget as she is known at this point in time, is very kind, wanting to be friends with everyone, even the villains. It’s quite a shock for Red when she finds out that her mother changed so much just because of something that happened to her at school. Cinderella, or Ella as she is known, is not as nice and sweet as you might expect either. She is best friends with Bridget, and has a crush on Prince Charming, but despite Cinderella in many adaptations of the story not being angry with the fact she is treated as a servant and not seen to match up to people’s ideas of royalty, in this movie, Ella does seem to feel she has been treated unfairly and holds a grudge against the princesses, as we see in some of the scenes of Ella talking to Chloe. Ella tells Chloe “her princess is showing”, which isn’t the kindest thing to say to someone who has lived quite a sheltered life; there are better ways of voicing this! It’s also odd to hear Ella say her best friend is “weak”, when she talks to Red and Chloe about why the VKs pick on Bridget. It’s a very strange take on the character, but I guess it is more layered than many other versions. It is just at odds with Brandy’s portrayal of Cinderella, I think.

Bridget was played by Ruby Rose Turner, with Ella being portrayed by Morgan Dudley. Ruby Rose Turner had previously been cast as Cami in the series Coop & Cami Ask the World (2018-20) for Disney Channel before Descendants: The Rise of Red. Morgan Dudley recently appeared in the Netflix movie A Tourist’s Guide to Love (2023) as Robin.

Now, for the VKs. The leader of this new group is Uliana. As Ella says to Chloe and Red, she is trying to “out-mean” her older sister, Ursula, by bullying many of the royals. She has a group of sidekicks around her, including the mistress of all evil, Maleficent, and God of the Underworld, Hades, which is a little bit weird, seeing as I highly doubt those two would be anyone’s sidekick, but never mind. To be honest, I find the whole concept of these particular villains being at school odd, and it’s very hard not to get confused by all the multiple storylines from the animated films, as well as those in Descendants. Even though Descendants clearly has its own story, and is not related to the animated films, I can’t forget the canon of the animated films when it comes to the villain parents in Descendants.

Anyway, Dara Reneé was cast as Uliana, having been cast as Kourtney Greene in the Disney+ series High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. She had also appeared in the Disney Channel Original Movie Freaky Friday (2018), and, alongside Kylie Cantrall and Cheyenne Jackson, was a part of the TV special Descendants Remix Dance Party (2020). Reneé is very much the star here, with the rest of VKs not making a big impression on me.

There are only two returning characters and cast members for Descendants: The Rise of Red, and they are China Anne McClain, returning in the role of Uma, and Melanie Paxson, returning as Fairy Godmother. Although the movie does not revolve around them, and they are minor, supporting roles this time around, it felt comforting to have these two back. It made me settle into the story a bit easier, knowing those two were there, even if Mal, Jay, Evie, and Ben were not.

MUSIC

The music of Descendants: The Rise of Red, on the whole, is decent. I do like the first song of “Red”, performed by Kylie Cantrall. This is our first introduction to the character of Red, and it’s a strong, powerful song, where we see that she is not her mother’s daughter and wants nothing more than to escape her. She also gets a kick out of destroying her mother’s castle grounds and dodging her guards apparently! On 21^st June 2024, “Red” was released as the second single from the movie, and it was performed by Cantrall as part of “NerdNite” at Vidcon in Anaheim on 28^th June[2]. Alex Boniello also performs on this song as the Jack of Diamonds, Head of the Queen of Hearts’ army. Boniello had previously performed the roles of Moritz and Connor Murphy in the Broadway productions of Spring Awakening, from 2015 to 2016, and Dear Evan Hansen, from 2018 to 2020, respectively.

Red then gets a duet with her mother, performed by Rita Ora, called “Love Ain’t It”, when they arrive at Auradon, as the Queen of Hearts tries to convince her daughter to rule Wonderland just like she does. This is also when we see the hostility between the Queen of Hearts and Cinderella. Honestly, I didn’t like this song much at all, and probably even found it worse than the duet Mal has with Hades in Descendants 3. It doesn’t match my style or taste in music and is nothing to do with the singers. I’m a big fan of Rita Ora’s music normally. Malia Baker, as Chloe, also gets to have a duet with Cantrall as Red, and that is “Fight of Our Lives”, when the two figure out how to work alongside each other, despite their differences, so they can fix everything and get back to Auradon. I don’t mind the chorus too much on this one, but I don’t love the rap portions particularly.

Chloe later has a duet with her mother, performed by Morgan Dudley, but when she’s younger. This is the song “Get Your Hands Dirty”. They are actually cleaning up Lady Tremaine’s courtyard together, though this is all about Ella telling Chloe that life isn’t always “black and white”, when Chloe isn’t sure what to do about stopping the villains; she knows breaking into Merlin’s office is wrong, but should she do it anyway “for the greater good”, to stop the VKs? This is quite a pleasant song, and I like the melody.

Now for the big group numbers. There are two of these. The first one is “Life Is Sweeter”, where Red and Chloe are introduced to all the students at Merlin Academy, as Bridget hands out cupcakes to everyone. This is my second favourite song in the soundtrack, after “Red”. It’s a hopeful, positive song with all the heroes, showing everyone in harmony – until the VKs come along. But that makes it all the more fun! It also gets a reprise at the end of the movie, performed by Ora and Cantrall. The other group number is just for the villains, and it’s called “Perfect Revenge”, whilst they are discussing the best revenge plan for Bridget. Again, it’s a bit too “rappy” for me, but Dara Renée is very good here as Uliana. I also liked the “poor unfortunate soul” line. Clever.

We also have three shorter songs that appear in the movie. One of these is “Shuffle of Love”, performed by Ruby Rose Turner as Bridget. The full version of the song appears on the soundtrack, but it only appears briefly in Descendants: The Rise of Red, when Red and Chloe are talking to Bridget in her room, and she mentions a new dance she’s created. It would’ve been a good song to use if they’d had the Castlecoming dance scene… It is played during the End Credits too. Then there is a brief version of Cinderella and Charming, performed by Brandy and Pablo Montalban, singing “So This Is Love” from Cinderella (1950). But the best one is “What’s My Name (Red Version)”. Uma performs this during the Welcoming Ceremony at Auradon Prep, just her and her pirates, which I very much enjoyed. The full version was actually the first single from the soundtrack to be released, on 26^th April 2024, and features Kylie Cantrall as Red too.

Another song that appears on the soundtrack is a remix of “Life Is Sweeter”. Finally, a cover of Joan Jett’s “Bad Reputation” is also listed on the soundtrack, performed by Cantrall, along with “Descendants: The Rise of Red Score Suite instrumental”, composed by Torin Borrowdale. The song “Bad Reputation” might sound familiar to anyone who likes 10 Things I Hate About You (1999), Shrek (2001), or Red, White & Royal Blue (2023).

Much like its predecessors, the soundtrack for Descendants: The Rise of Red topped the US Billboard Kid Albums and US Soundtrack Albums charts, however, it has so far only peaked at No. 60 on the Billboard 200 chart, whereas the previous three Descendants soundtracks had reached No. 1, No. 6, and No. 7 respectively on that same chart.

PRODUCTION

Although a potential new Descendants movie exploring the realm of Wonderland was teased at the end of the animated short film Descendants: The Royal Wedding in 2021, it wasn’t for another year that this movie would be announced.

At the D23 Expo in September 2022, a new Descendants film was officially confirmed as being in production, under the working title Descendants: The Pocketwatch, clearly referencing the pocket watch that Red uses to go back in time. This title was perhaps a bit too “on the nose” so in March 2023, the official movie name was announced as Descendants: The Rise of Red. It would also seem that Disney were careful not to refer to it as Descendants 4, not wanting to annoy original Descendants fans any more than they already had! It also makes it clearer that this was going to be a spin-off, not a sequel. It was also said that Descendants: The Rise of Red would premiere on Disney+.

In March 2023, it was also confirmed that the original VKs would not be returning but that Uma and Fairy Godmother would be. Other casting news at this time was that Brandy and Paolo Montalban would be reprising their roles of Cinderella and Prince Charming from Disney’s live-action 1997 film Cinderella. Rita Ora was named as the Queen of Hearts, Kylie Cantrall was named as Red, her daughter, and Malia Baker was cast as Chloe, Cinderella’s daughter, alongside a list of teen actors who would be portraying students at Merlin’s Academy, like Villain Kids and Princes and Princesses. One of these was going to be a younger version of Rapunzel, named Zellie, whose scenes ended up being cut for time.

It was also believed at this time that the basic plot would be that Chloe and Red would be using the magical pocket watch to go back in time after chaos breaks out during the celebration of a new royal baby. This got fans very excited over the possibility of this being the announcement of Mal and Ben’s baby, even though they weren’t scheduled to return, as well as speculation over who else in Auradon might be having a baby[3]. This storyline was still being written in articles talking about Descendants: The Rise of Red as close to the premiere date as May 2024. This idea was clearly scrapped, for unknown reasons. All I can say is that I’m glad Disney couldn’t write a storyline of Mal and Ben having a baby, despite some fans clearly wanting this. Ben and Mal must still be in their early-20s at this stage. Come on, give them a chance to live their own lives first!

This new movie meant new characters to the Descendants franchise, and as per usual, their costuming did not disappoint. Much like the earlier Descendants films, there is still the same emphasis on characters having signature colours. In this case, Red and the Queen of Hearts, obviously, wear red, with Chloe and Cinderella wearing the expected blue. Bridget, a kinder version of the Queen of Hearts, wears pink, and Ella actually has more turquoise than blue in her costume, probably to distinguish between her and Chloe. Because Ella has turquoise in her clothes, it means that Uliana has a mixture of colours, like purple, to reference Ursula, and turquoise, to reference Uma, so the family colour chart is still the same. Unlike the Descendants trilogy though, we don’t see nearly as many princes and princesses wearing pretty dresses and tailored suits. The “VK look” of leather trousers, boots, and jackets certainly seems to have caught on, even in the past! Chloe isn’t even wearing a dress in present day Auradon, whereas Audrey, Mulan, Chad, and Ben are all costumed in typical royal and aristocratic fashion in their pastels and soft fabrics in the earlier movies. Tony Award-nominated costume designer Emilio Sosa took over the costume designs from Kara Saun for Descendants: The Rise of Red. Like Saun, Sosa was also on Project Runway, becoming the runner-up in Season 7. He went on to design costumes for various musicals and plays, such as Porgy and Bess, for which he received his Tony Award nomination in 2012, Sweeney Todd, and Annie Live! (2021).

There were also all new sets, like Wonderland. Wonderland is set in picture-perfect landscaping, with perfectly manicured gardens, a huge red castle, and many references to their “wonderful” queen. It is a much better version of Wonderland than what we see in the ABC spin-off series Once Upon a Time in Wonderland (2013-14); also Disney, also live-action, but with the benefit of ten more years of CGI development. Anyone who has seen this series will know exactly what I’m talking about! Later, we get a brief look at the Villains’ hangout of the Black Lagoon, where they actually go inside an old, dead anglerfish… Eww. It might not even be dead, which makes it even more gross!

Again, similarly to the Descendants trilogy, the cast were put through tough training schedules, for dancing and sword-fighting. The dance routines aren’t quite as big as those in the first three Descendants movie. Although there are some ensemble dances, they don’t open and close the movie, and don’t feel like big celebratory moments with all the young cast, but the choreography is just as complicated and contemporary as you’d expect.

RECEPTION

Descendants: The Rise of Red held its red carpet on 10^th July 2024 at the Disney Studios in Burbank, which the cast attended, before premiering on screen on 12^th July; however, this was not on Disney Channel as you might expect. It was first shown on Disney+.

After Disney’s streaming service became such a huge success on its debut in the US and Canada in November 2019, before hitting the global markets in 2020, it was decided that Disney Channel would shut down in certain countries, the UK included, in the early 2020s, with content moving online instead, although Disney Channel does remain in America. Descendants: The Rise of Red will have a Disney Channel premiere on 9^th August.

Luckily, having its release on Disney+ only increases a movie’s chances of having high viewing figures, and Descendants: The Rise of Red was no different. It became the most viewed Disney Channel Original Movie premiere in Disney+ history – though in all fairness, I don’t think there have been too many of those so far – having 6.7 million views in its first three days on the platform. This is comparable to Descendants 3, which was viewed by 8 million total in the three days after its premiere date[4].

However, high viewership does not always correlate with audience reaction. In this case, Descendants: The Rise of Red suffered more negative reviews than those within the original Descendants trilogy. Some of these opinions were established from the point that production of Descendants: The Rise of Red was confirmed, due to the fact that making a new Descendants movie without Cameron Boyce was seen as an insult to his memory by a small proportion of fans. The fact that some of the original cast members confirmed they would not be returning to this “sequel” as well, having moved on to other projects since, made this original opinion even stronger, as these fans felt that the original cast were also against a new Descendants film. Some of these fans even debated “boycotting” Descendants: The Rise of Red for this reason, but whether they did or not, I don’t know.

Others were excited by this movie, and were quick to point out that Descendants: The Rise of Red was not being promoted as a sequel, and is in fact a spin-off. These fans liked the idea of new universes being explored outside of Mal and her friends in Auradon.

This was prior to the movie’s premiere, and yet even after the premiere, the reviews seem to fit into two different camps once again. The more positive camp say that the movie does feel like an extension of the Descendants franchise, with some great music, costuming, and set pieces, and just said that it was not better than the original trilogy because it was different, so perhaps shouldn’t be compared to the original movies anyway. It was deemed “good enough” but not exactly special.

The more negative side said that there was some confusion over the characters, especially as the original actors from the 1997 Cinderella film were brought back for Descendants: The Rise of Red, even though their backstory wasn’t going to be the same as the 1997 film. I will admit this did take a bit of time for me to get my head around. I had to basically forget everything that I had seen in Cinderella (1997) and adjust to the fact that Cinderella and Prince Charming actually met at school here. I have only recently watched Cinderella, so it wasn’t too difficult for me to do, but had you been a huge fan of that movie, watching it multiple times throughout your life, I can understand this new backstory being too much to get on board with. Others also felt that the story was rushed, and full of plot holes, which is a typical comment with many time-travel-based movies; everyone gets confused.

So, what did I think of Descendants: The Rise of Red? I thought it was alright, but I won’t be rushing back to watch it. Some of the music did feel similar to the Descendants trilogy; I liked Uma returning, if only for a few brief scenes; and I found many of the new characters quite likeable and well-acted, such as Red, Chloe, and Bridget. But parts of the story did confuse me. The biggest issue I had was that it felt to me like the story had been leading us in a new direction, a big twist, which never came to pass. Instead, we got the ending we’d all been expecting, which isn’t new or exciting. This relates to the “prank” that is played on Bridget. Although Red and Chloe believe the VKs would be carrying out this prank on Bridget, I thought that this was going to be red herring, and that Ella was going to have played the prank on her. I felt this because Ella wasn’t overly nice about Bridget, saying she was “weak”, and not accepting Bridget for the nice, sweet person she was. I wondered if maybe Red and Chloe would have stopped the VKs in their tracks, but then at the dance would come to find that Ella, Chloe’s mother, had actually done something to hurt or embarrass Bridget there, perhaps to try and impress her Prince Charming. This might have explained why Cinderella seemed to feel guilty over Bridget’s past in the present time, and why she became so kind and good, as a way of righting her past wrongs. This would have also fixed the “plot hole” of the VKs being frozen by touching the Sorcerer’s Cookbook, which would have surely happened in the original timeline, since Chloe and Red didn’t put magic on it, so they couldn’t have even carried out their plan. Anyway, we got what we got, and it was a predictable ending, which felt like a big let-down and a missed opportunity.

LEGACY

Much like the first three Descendants movies, clothing, novels, and toys were available to purchase around the time of Descendants: The Rise of Red’s release date. Some of these toys included dolls, produced by Mattel, of the new characters, like Uliana, Red, Chloe, and Bridget. Some of these dolls were also produced with a version of the Sorcerer’s Cookbook[5].

It would also seem like Descendants: The Rise of Red was made with a sequel already in mind. Uma’s voiceover at the end of the movie suggests that Chloe and Red have messed up the timeline by going back in time, and that the consequences of this have yet to be discovered. This turned out to be exactly the set-up for another movie that it intended to be, with “Descendants 5” first announced in February 2025. An official title for the movie was announced on 6^th May 2025: Descendants: Wicked Wonderland, signalling that this movie will take place in Wonderland.

Furthermore, at the D23 Expo in August 2024, it was announced that some of the cast of Descendants: The Rise of Red would be reuniting for a concert tour in Summer 2025. But this isn’t just a concert for Descendants fans, because this concert tour also involves cast members from the ZOMBIES franchise, making this the Descendants/ZOMBIES: Worlds Collide Tour. From Descendants: The Rise of Red, fans can look forward to seeing Kylie Cantrall, Dara Reneé, Malia Baker, and Joshua Colley on stage, alongside stars of ZOMBIES 4: Dawn of the Vampires Freya Skye, Malachi Burton, and Mekonnen Knife. The tour kicked off in San Diego on 17^th July 2025, and will end in Fort Worth, Texas on 16^th September 2025.

Within the Disney Parks, costumes and props from Descendants: The Rise of Red have been spotted at the attraction Walt Disney Presents at Disney’s Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World Resort. Costumes of Red, Chloe, Bridget, and the Queen of Hearts, along with a replica of the Sorcerer’s Cookbook, are currently on show in one of the exhibits, as promotion for the new film. These exhibits swap out constantly, so it will likely only be around until hype for the film has died down.

This Halloween season, a new version of the DescenDANCE party that first debuted in 2019 after the release of Descendants 3 played at the Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween parties in 2024 at Rockettower Plaza Stage in Tomorrowland at Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World, this time using music from Descendants: The Rise of Red[6].

FINAL THOUGHTS

Descendants: The Rise of Red received mixed reviews on its release. This may have surprised those at Disney, but it really shouldn’t have done. It was always going to be difficult to follow something as popular as the first three Descendants films, especially when Descendants 3 and Descendants: The Royal Wedding tied up everything pretty well. Without Cameron Boyce, it didn’t seem right to some fans to continue the franchise, so selling Descendants: The Rise of Red on this loyal group had to be tough.

I didn’t think Descendants: The Rise of Red was a bad movie, and if it hadn’t been linked to the Descendants franchise, I might have liked it more. It reminded me a little bit of The School for Good and Evil (2022), which I very much did like, probably more so because it wasn’t linked to Disney animated films. Having characters go back in time to see these great villains of Disney Animation just seemed strange; seeing them in the future is much easier to accept than seeing them in the past, when we already think we know what they’ve done from some of the best Disney animated movies ever made. It didn’t work so well.

The time-travel angle does give Disney some scope to rectify some of the viewer complaints and comments, such as around character development and predictable storylines, but it remains to be seen whether Disney can live up to this potential.

REFERENCES

[1] Credit: Entertainment Tonight, ‘Descendants: Rise of Red: Go Behind the Scenes of Brandy’s Cinderella Return! (Exclusive)’, Entertainment Tonight YouTube Channel, 7^th July 2024.

[2] Credit: Disney, ‘Kylie Cantrall Paints Wonderland “Red” In New Music Video From “Descendants: The Rise of Red”’, DisneyPlus.com, 21^st June 2024.

[3] Credit: Author Unknown, ‘Descendants 4: The Rise of Red – what we know about the new Disney film’, BBC.co.uk, 27^th March 2023.

[4] Credit: Phil Wood, ‘‘Descendants: The Rise of Red’ Breaks Three-Day Disney+ Viewership Record’, WDWNT.com, 17^th July 2024.

[5] Credit: Author Unknown, ‘Celebrate the Release of Descendants: The Rise of Red with New Products and Soundtrack!’, D23.com, 12^th July 2024.

[6] Credit: Cade Handley, ‘New ‘Descendants: The Rise of Red’ Exhibit at Disney’s Hollywood Studios’, WDWNT.com, 12^th July 2024.