I grew up during Disney Channel’s golden era — you know exactly what I’m talking about. It was the when Disney Channel Original Movies (DCOMs) were at their prime and peak Disney TV starring the Jonas Brothers, Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, the Sprouse twins, and more. In hindsight, it was wild. There has never been such a hotbed for stardom since Ryan Gosling, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, and Christina Aguilera were all on the Mickey Mouse Club.

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Geffen, Olivia Rodrigo

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FILM

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

Including mermaids, holograms, and aliens aplenty.

Movies

Photo by Geoffrey Moffett on Unsplash

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

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

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

1. Alley Cats Strike!

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

2. Stepsister from Planet Weird

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

3. Can of Worms

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

4. The Thirteenth Year

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

5. Luck of the Irish

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

6. Motocrossed

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

7. The Other Me

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

8. You Wish!

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

9. Pixel Perfect

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

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

FILM

Even Keanu Reeves Can't Save "The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run" from Weird CGI

Keanu Reeves in a tumbleweed will still earn my ticket money, though.

Paramount Pictures

The trailer just dropped for the newest SpongeBob Movie, Sponge on the Run, and oh boy, it's a hella mixed bag.

Now I'll be totally upfront here, I almost always prefer 2D animation to 3D CGI. This holds doubly true for series like SpongeBob that started out as 2D, which makes changing everything to 3D for a big budget movie feel especially odd. 3D SpongeBob looked awful in the last SpongeBob movie, Sponge Out of Water, and while Sponge on the Run does a much better job fusing CGI with the cartoonish 2D vibe of the original series, I don't think I'm ever going to like CGI SpongeBob. But you can decide for yourself:

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run (2020) - Official Trailer - Paramount Pictureswww.youtube.com

Weird CGI aside, there's a lot to be excited for here. For one, a sage tumbleweed with Keanu Reeve's face in the middle of it is now official SpongeBob canon. That's nothing short of amazing, and no, I will never, ever, ever get tired of seeing Keanu Reeves in everything.

Another huge plus: Sponge on the Run, which centers around SpongeBob's quest to rescue his beloved pet, Gary, after an alleged snailnapping, features the entire original voice cast. Normally this would go without saying, but considering all the disappointment surrounding Shaggy's voice in the new Scooby-Doo movie, keeping the original voice actors for the blockbuster version apparently needs to be lauded now.

And I guess if I'm being totally honest here, weird CGI SpongeBob isn't the worst official interpretation I've ever seen of the nasally sponge. That pedestal will always be reserved for Broadway SpongeBob, who was just an annoying man in suspenders.

SpongeBob BroadwayNickelodeon

And oh God, look what they did to Mr. Krabs.

Mr Krabs BroadwayNickelodeon

So I guess if I want more SpongeBob (of course I do) and I need to choose between loosely dressed up humans or kind of off-putting CGI but also Keanu Reeves, I'll go with the latter.

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run comes to theaters May 22, 2020.