It’s really hard to ignore Disney’s reach when you log onto Disney+ for the first time and see “Disney”, “Pixar”, “Marvel”, “Star Wars”, and “National Geographic” side by side, with Fox programming featured below. Anyway, this is my way of saying I now have Disney+.

Over Christmas Eve and Christmas (Happy Holidays, y’all!), my family had a mini movie marathon. My parents and I watched Cars 2 (2011), which, while not a Christmas movie, was the first thing we could all agree on because my parents absolutely adore the talking tractor named Mater. My dad and I followed that up with Home Alone (1990). Christmas day, my ghoulfriend (aka best friend) and I watched Smart House (1999) because it’s the best DCOM (Disney Channel Original Movie) in existence, thankyouverymuch, before following that up with The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992). Now, to be fair, I’d seen all of these before. But it had been so many years that it was almost like watching them for the first time- and none of them had Letterboxd ratings by me yet- so I’m going to review them this week. I make the rules, so I can break the rules. Deal with it.

After Christmas, I decided to go deep into Disney+ and see what I could uncover. The first thing was Fun and Fancy Free (1947) a two-part animated movie. Part 1 follows Bongo the newly escaped Circus bear as he experiences nature for the first time and falls in love with Lulubelle, a bear with a flower behind her ear. Part 2 is Mickey, Donald, and Goofy in a Jack & the Bean Stalk adaptation. Is it good? Not particularly. But the animation is beautiful!

Then, I found a series where Gordon Ramsey attempts to become the late Anthony Bourdain. No, seriously. It’s called Gordon Ramsey: Uncharted and is about Gordon Ramsey traveling to different countries and learning about indigenous cooking before trying it out himself with a popular indigenous chef from each culture. So far, I’m a big fan! It’s nice to see the other side of Gordon Ramsey, the non-screaming, respectful side that I always knew existed somewhere inside him.

Unofficial Ratings

Cars 2

Cars 2 is so much better than Cars 1 and this is a hill I will die on.

Home Alone

It had been so long since I’d seen this movie that I sincerely though 90% of the movie with Macaulay Culkin beating up the robber when in reality that’s only the last like 20 minutes.

Smart House

I looked up the guy who plays the dad in this because my mom refused to believe me when I said it wasn’t the dad from Modern Family, and this guy’s Wikipedia literally said he was “best known for Smart House”

The Muppet Christmas Carol

This is the best adaption of A Christmas Carol and no one can tell me otherwise. If they try to I will hold up froggy Tiny Tim (Kermit and Miss Piggy’s son) and make them say that to his face.

Fun and Fancy Free

I cannot get over how the first animation was narrated by a popular actress/singer on a record player, and the second animation was narrated by multiple ventriloquist dummies to a young girl on her birthday. Bit of a drop there, eh?

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Guess what! I post different reviews of movies I watch on my Letterboxd! Go check ’em out!