I was so excited for this movie! When it first premiered, it aired on 3 different channels. We didn’t have Disney channel, but we did have ABC. I able to watch it the night it premiered.
Shy singer/songwriter Mitchie (Demi Lovato) wants to go to Camp Rock, but her parents can’t afford it. All hope is lost, until her mom gets hired as the camp cook.
Shane Gray (Joe Jonas) is serving time at his uncle’s camp after letting the fame of being the lead singer of Connect 3 go to his head. While on the run from obsessed fans, Shane overhears Mitchie singing, but doesn’t know it’s her. He becomes obsessed with finding the person the voice belongs to, but Mitchie’s lies about who she really is might keep him from finding out!
So how well does Camp Rock hold up from 12 to 26?
It was more enjoyable for me to rewatch than High School Musical. The acting was more natural. Since it’s set at a music camp, all of the songs are performed during classes and talent showcases which makes more sense than bursting into a song and dance number in the middle of the cafeteria. But then Camp Rock was always my favorite because I was obsessed with the Jonas Brothers. I’d choose to rewatch this over the original HSM. You can stream it now on Disney Plus.
Shane (Joe Jonas) and Mitchie (Demi Lovato) and the rest of the campers are back for another Summer at Camp Rock, but things are different than last year. Camp Star, a flashier career minded camp owned by Brown’s rival, Axel Turner, has moved in across the lake. Camp Star is determined drive Camp Rock out of business. Things become so competitive between the camps that a Camp Wars is held to determine the winner. Mitchie becomes so laser focused she forgets that the real reason for Summer camp is to have fun.
I enjoyed the sequel just as much as the first. It has some great, and Nick and Kevin get bigger roles this time around. The story doesn’t end like you expect it will, and that’s what I like best about this movie. A good lesson on even if things don’t go the way you want them to, things can still end well or in some cases better than originally planned. Stream it now on Disney Plus.
High School Musical was one of the biggest phenomenons to come out of Disney, and 12 year old me couldn’t get enough of it. I was obsessed. Until recently I wasn’t aware that this joyful period was such a hardship for my parents to suffer through, but I won’t be apologizing for it. But does the movie hold up from age 12 to 26?
Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) and Troy (Zac Efron) meet at karaoke during their Christmas vacation. They sing together. Sparks fly, and they part ways only to unexpectedly meet again at East High. It isn’t long before nearly the entire class winds up in detention helping prepare for the Winter musical. Like all high schools, everyone has a group they get stuck in. Troy’s a basketball star. Gabriella’s an academic. Once assigned to a group, they aren’t allowed to leave. They secretly audition for the musical and get a callback much to the dismay of popular snobs, Ryan (Lucas Grabeel) and Sharpay Evans (Ashley Tisdale). Much singing and dancing occurs while the student body fights to make sure that their high school caste system doesn’t collapse.
In the end, the school comes together to stop Ryan and Sharpay from sabotaging Troy and Gabriella’s shot at being cast as the leads. The movie ends in typical Disney fashion with a happy ending and catch musical number. Hopefully the students and those at home watching learn that it’s ok if you don’t fit in someone else’s box and that the world won’t end if you develop a love for something other than the interests that you had before.
I enjoyed this movie after all this time, but my enjoyment was mostly nostalgia driven with memories of a simpler time during my childhood. If I had watched it for the first time, I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much. The magic has faded since my tweenie-bopper years, and the acting leaves something to be desired in some places. The songs are still fun and as catchy as ever, and the choreography is fantastic especially for Stick to the Status Quo and We’re All in This Together. If this movie was a huge part of your childhood, you’ll enjoy seeing it again. If you’ve never seen it, you’re not missing out on anything. High School Musical is now streaming on Disney Plus.
Summer’s in. School’s out! No more homework. No more musicals and no more drama. Or so the Wildcats thought.
Troy (Zac Efron) is offered a job at Lava Springs Country Club owned by Ryan (Lucas Grabeel) and Sharpay’s (Ashley Tisdale) parents and manages to get jobs for the rest of his class. This is to the dismay and outrage of Sharpay who will stop at nothing to break Troy and Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) up so that she can have him for herself.
She sets up Troy on the fast track to a future as a college basketball superstar, but it could end up costing him everything that’s actually important.
This sequel is fun and even better than the original when it comes to the acting. The songs are great except for Sharpay and Ryan’s duet, humu humu nuku nuku apua’a, which is one of the most painful scenes I’ve ever sat through! It’s so stupid! I Don’t Dance and Bet On It are my favorites, and Bet on it always makes me want to dramatically dance on a golf course. Ryan’s character development is the best in the movie. I love how he’s his own person and not not Sharpay’s follower anymore. I rated this one lower than the last based on my overall enjoyment of the movie, but it’s better than the original quality-wise. The cast managed to Work It Out, and it resulted in a fun Summer musical.
High School Musical 3: Senior Year: Bigger screen, bigger budget, bigger musical numbers. This movie came out on my 13th birthday, and my parents took me to see it. I was probably the oldest kid in the theater. The rest were somewhere between 6-10. They screamed when Troy (Zac Efron) first came on screen, and there was a row of little girls who wouldn’t shut up during the entire movie! Regardless, it was one of the best nights ever!
The Wildcats are about to graduate and amid making plans for the future, there’s always time for one last musical. This time about their senior year because living through it once isn’t enough!
Troy and Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens) have some big choices to make, and a scholarship program could split them apart sooner than planned. Meanwhile, Troy is torn between choosing basketball or theater. It’s enough pressure to make one Scream! As always, everything works itself out in the end with a big musical number to tie everything up with a bow.
It’s the best of the trilogy. It also has the best soundtrack out of all of them. Scream and the Boys Are Back are my favorites. High School Musical was a big part of my early teens, and it was fun to rewatch. It’s hard to believe this movie came out almost 14 years ago! I feel old. (No comments, Mom or Aunt Crystal!) The entire trilogy is available to stream on Disney Plus.
When I was little, one of the first franchises I was obsessed with was Scooby-Doo. I had a friend who was into it, and it was one of the shows that was on the most at his house so I watched a lot of Scooby on Cartoon Network and I borrowed his movies. It wasn’t long before I had a small collection of my own including a backpack and t-shirt. Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase was my favorite Scooby-Doo movie despite the Phantom Virus being really scary for me to watch at the time (I was 6).
Scooby and the gang are going to get a chance to play a video game their friend Eric created featuring themselves fighting monsters of mysteries past. When they get to the college, they’re told a virus from the game has been beamed out via laser into the real world.
They end up being beamed into the game along with the virus. In order to get out they need to collect the Scooby Snax on all 10 levels and avoid being hurt in-game because any danger they experience is real! I LOVE this movie! I loved it then, and I love it now! I finally replaced my VHS tape with a DVD last year, and now it’s a part of my collection forever! It’s still my favorite Scooby-Doo movie even after all these years.
Who thought this movie was a good idea? Do they pull celebrity guest names out of a hat? Pair names with scenarios via a spin of the wheel? Pulls names out of hat Let’s get Bobby Flay and Giada de Laurentiis to star as themselves! Spins Wheel Bobby Flay will be Fred’s uncle. The gang will be visiting a restaurant/resort that has been in the family since the Revolutionary War and, and the resort will be haunted by the Red Ghost who scares all the guests off! Naturally, Scooby and the gang will investigate! The mystery will be easy to solve even for first time viewers. And the 77 minutes it takes to make it to the end will be endlessly long, meandering, and boring!
I wasn’t there, but I’m sure that’s how that meeting went down. They exceeded in making the most boring Scooby Doo movie I’ve watched so far.They sure don’t make them like they used to!
Scooby, Shaggy, and Scrappy accept a gym teaching position at the Grimwood’s School for Girls. At least that’s what they think until they meet their ghoul students! The girls get kidnapped by Revolta, Witch of the Web, and it’s up to the guys to save them before their parents find out!
This was one of my favorite movies as a kid. While I don’t love it quite as much as I did back then, it’s still enjoyable. Runs a little long though, and Revolta and the Grim Creeper might be too scary for little ones. I need to add this one to my collection so I don’t have to rent it anymore!
The Mystery Machine breaks down after a collision with a UFO, and the gang is now stranded in the middle of nowhere waiting for their van to be fixed. They get caught up in the town’s obsession with possible alien sightings, and like always, they can’t avoid a mystery. Shaggy and Scooby get a shot at love with nature photographer Crystal and her dog Amber. But not everything is as it seems with these two.
A story about love, loss, and the cost of greed. Ok. Fine. It’s Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders. It’s a love story with aliens. Mark Hamill plays a bad guy. It’s one of the best Direct-to-DVD Scooby-Doo movies, and it has a surprising twist at the end. It’s been many years since I last watched this, I’d forgotten all about it! I need to get the DVD. It’s too good not to own!
Night at the museum answers the age-old question: What would if everything in the museum came to life? Ok. So maybe it’s not an age-old question, and I’m just being dramatic. But it’s a question the movie asks. The answer? Sheer and utter chaos!
It’s a fun story that’s painfully similar to The Santa Clause. Just switch out Tim Allen for Ben Stiller and the North Pole for The New York Museum of Natural History, add Robin Williams as President Theodore Roosevelt, and you have an extremely similar movie right down to divorced dad, Tim, er, Larry, who struggles to commit to a career in order to support his young son, Charlie, er, Josh.
While these two movies are similar, Night at the Museum is still different enough to be entirely enjoyable.
The highlights of the movie include the aforementioned Robin Williams, (there’s a quick genie reference I caught this time around.), Owen Wilson’s performance as Jedidiah the cowboy, (why the heck wasn’t he officially credited?!), and his enemies to lovers bromance with Steve Coogan’s Roman Centurion Octavius, and Dick Van Dyke as Cecil the villainous ex-night guard. That was the longest run-on sentence I think I’ve ever written. Oops!
This is, in my opinion, one of the best family movies ever made. Plus, it includes the import message of not giving when something is hard or seemingly impossible. It’s a movie worth checking out if you haven’t already. Even if you have watched it before, it’s one worth revisiting.
The gang’s all back for the sequel, but this time around it’s a little different. Larry’s left the museum to start his own company and is basking in the glory of inventing the Glow in the Dark flashlight (Woo). Meanwhile, the New York Museum of Natural History has decided to go digital and send half the exhibits to the Smithsonian while the rest rot in storage. He learns that Akmenrah’s tablet, the artifact that brings the museum to life will also be going. After a panicked phone call from Jedidiah, Larry takes off for the Smithsonian to rescue his friends from a new threat, Kamunrah (Hank Azaria).
This sequel is almost as good as the first, but not quite. It starts off slow, and has an anti-climatic battle scene at the end, but it’s still a fun movie worth checking out with standout performances from Hank Azaria and Amy Adams as Amelia Earhart. And like the original, it comes with a good reminder to do things “for the fun of it.”
One last night. One last ride, and it’s the most emotional one of the series. Several years have passed since the sequel. The biggest change is that Nick is all grown and headed to college… Maybe. After taking a gap year which wasn’t what Larry had in mind.
Meanwhile, something strange is happening at the museum. The tablet is corroding and the museum exhibits are acting feral. The gang heads to The British Museum to find answers from Akmenrah’s parents. This was a hard movie to get through, not because it was bad but because it was released after Robin Williamses death in 2014. You can definitely tell something was going on with him during filming. There’s a heavy kind of sadness that can’t be faked no matter how good of an actor you are, and he was one of the best. 😢 The best performance of the entire movie was a cameo by Hugh Jackman including a fun reference to Wolverine. A movie with a more serious tone involving themes of growing up and moving on overshadowed by a great actor’s death. This is the most sobering installment of them all.
There’s several different versions of the story of Thumbalina. Most people are familiar with the Don Bluth version, but I’m more familiar with what turns out to be the anime version. Originally an anime series, it was pieced together into a full-length movie that my grandmother had on VHS. I was obsessed with this video for some reason or other. I’ll never know or quite understand considering the darker elements of the story didn’t naturally gel with my anxiety.
In this version, Maya’s mother is desperate for her out-of-control daughter to behave. So desperate, she asks the local witch for help. The witch gives her help in the form of a magical book that sucks in whoever is reading it into the story. Maya has to travel through her mother’s dreamworld and wake her mother up, without falling into the hands of the evil witch Cassandra.
With the help of her sugar fairy sidekick Nobel, she has to navigate obstacles like avoiding an arranged marriage to a frog and being eaten by shapeshifting fox. By the end of her journey, Maya has learned to be brave, respectful, and selfless.
It’s a strange spin on a familiar tale that only the Japanese could come up with, and I mean that as a compliment! This was a fun nostalgia trip! You can find this in thrift stores or in good quality on Youtube which is how I watched it. A fun movie for kids, but some images might be too scary for younger children. Rated: 5 stars. Rated: Couldn’t find one.
There’s several different versions of the story of Thumbelina. Most people are familiar with the Don Bluth version, but I’m more familiar with what turns out to be the anime version. Originally an anime series, it was pieced together into a full-length movie that my grandmother had on VHS. I was obsessed with this video for some reason or other. I’ll never know or quite understand considering the darker elements of the story didn’t naturally gel with my anxiety.
In this version, Maya’s mother is desperate for her out-of-control daughter to behave. So desperate, she asks the local witch for help. The witch gives her help in the form of a magical book that sucks in whoever is reading it into the story. Maya has to travel through her mother’s dreamworld and wake her mother up, without falling into the hands of the evil witch Cassandra.
With the help of her sugar fairy sidekick Nobel, she has to navigate obstacles like avoiding an arranged marriage to a frog and being eaten by shapeshifting fox. By the end of her journey, Maya has learned to be brave, respectful, and selfless.
It’s a strange spin on a familiar tale that only the Japanese could come up with, and I mean that as a compliment! This was a fun nostalgia trip! You can find this in thrift stores or in good quality on Youtube which is how I watched it. A fun movie for kids, but some images might be too scary for younger children.
2¢ Movie Reviews 