You’d imagine Goofy, Disney’s old-time anthropomorphic animated dog, too long in the tooth and distant to support a full-rigged kid-oriented feature film in 1995. Truth is, he’d never quite gone away, even fronting a recent tv series. Enough for Disney bean-counters to think this canine Intellectual Property worth the investment to maintain. But if cold corporate logic initiated this old-school project (fashioned like an extended cartoon short), studio creatives brought real affection to the old guy and a nifty idea in a Father/Son bonding story. Max Goof is the high school senior forced to take a cross-country car trip with his embarrassing dad when he’d rather hang out with his new girlfriend. But the film’s promising beginning is quickly dumbed-down for the kiddie trade, frenetic when it means to be funny, much in the manner of those dreadful live-action films Disney was half-heartedly churning out in the ‘70s (think APPLE DUMPLING GANG*) before the company got rebooted in the ‘80s with live-action SPLASH/’84 and animated breakthru in THE LITTLE MERMAID/’89. Here, even the laughter feels canned. Pity.
SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *The film came out in 1995, yet Disney has Goofy sing a ‘50s tune (‘High Hopes’) to date him. More likely, Goofy would have been zoning out to The Rolling Stones. Now that could set up a funny Generation Gap routine.
DOUBLE-BILL/ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: A Grand Canyon sequence recalls Disney’s first ever CinemaScope short, GRAND CANYONSCOPE/’54 with Donald Duck taking in the sights.
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