To paraphrase South Park. "This is cool? Man, I've gotten old."

The entire live action Disney experience continues to baffle me. It's all been downhill since <insert crappy Disney movie of your choice here>

"...before I was born". They stopped making good live action stuff in the 60s.

Escape from Witch Mountain was awesome. So the good years stretch up through at least 1975.

They moved a hate thread out of the WANderground. Man, I'm getting old.

True, I may have been a little harsh. When did Tommy Kirk grow up? Whenever Dean Jones got old and quit doing Disney movies too. Those events mark the end of good Disney live action.

I didn't realize how HUGE all this live action Disney stuff is until Li'l Taft started watching The Wizard of Waverly Place. Holy cow they've got multiple music groups that draw gajillions of fans, "stars" that are stars only in the Disneyverse -- but the Disneyverse is big enough so that's still HUGE, and on and on and on. It's amazing.

I'm afraid the real answer is "whenever you got old enough to realize that Disney has always made shitty live-action stuff".

When I've re-watched old Disney films I loved as a kid, there's this sinking feeling that this things weren't anywhere near as good as I thought they were when I was young.

My nephew watched a lot of those crappy Disney TV shows. And they're awful, but I'm aware I used to watch (and love) shows just as awful when I was that age.

Some of those old Disney movies are still fun when I've watched them recently, but you're probably right Steven. A few that I've revisited have made me cringe.

Just think of some of the dreadful, dreadful music you listened to when you were a wee one. I'm sure most of us had a few records before our "first" record, which we have edited out of our memories. Some of them were probably Disney albums, too, since they did a lot of collections of songs from their movies. Then you bought a Led Zeppelin album or The Beatles or Aerosmith or Van Halen, then decided that was your first ever album and forgot about the many afternoons lost to listening to "Bare Necessities" over and over again or *shudder* the likes of Shaun Cassidy or The Archies.

We should all consider ourselves lucky Disney hadn't managed to put two and two together back then and jump on the bubble gum pop band wagon.

I wore this fucking song out when I was a wee one.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oxzg_iM-T4E[/youtube]

The first time I ever called up a radio station and requested a song, it was this one.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgkbyrVq_0w&feature=related[/youtube]

To quote Nancy Kerrigan: WHY, WHY, WHY?

Dear IMWANers ...

Please stop creating threads that should have pics of Ashley Tisdale in them, and then NOT posting any pictures of Ashley Tisdale.

Thank you.

-- Doot

I really liked Toy Story.

PETE'S DRAGON was the last Live action Disney Movie I remember seeing. The really sad thing about HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL, is that on IMDb they list them as a.k.a. GREASE 3-5. Why tarnish a great musical like GREASE by trying to associate it with HSM?

Toy Story isn't live action. I don't think any disputes the legacy of quality Disney is responsible for on the animation front (although, thankfully, PIXAR moved away from the whole musical aspect Disney seems to insist upon). They've had some lean years, but most Disney animated movies are worth watching as an adult.

The live-action stuff though... I'm sure there's a few honest-to-goodness gems in there (like Honey, I Shrunk The Kids or if you're being really kind TRON), but most of them seemed to be churned out for an undiscerning audience of kids to make a quick buck. And having watched a fair bit of Disney's cable channel in the past few years, the trend has not changed.

Why tarnish GREASE by trying to associate it with GREASE 2

There was a GREASE 2? I seem to have blocked that one out of my mind.

GREASE 2 was a horrid sequel that just switched the genders of the cool and nerdy leads.

Also, like most entertainment produced for younger people since the early 1980s they appear to have been designed from the ground up as multimedia merchandise machines. They don't make movies for kids that are just movies.

Boy, not me. In fact, I've sought out all the albums I had as a kid that I can find on CD. Just recently picked up the Bugaloos album and the soundtrack to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

A lot of their 1970s material was at least watchable, if you approached it in the right spirit. Admittedly I saw much of that for the first time as a kid then. But I discovered "Barefoot Executive" as an adult, and it's a lot of silly fun.