A Goofy Movie

**A Goofy Movie** is a 1995 animated film directed by Kevin Lima. It is based on the television series Goof Troop.

The film was released on April 7, 1995.

## Plot

Goofy is the single father of his 14-year-old son Max Goof, with whom he has a tense relationship due to Max's fears of turning into his father. On the last day of school before summer vacation, Max and his best friends P.J. and Robert "Bobby" Zimuruski hijack the auditorium during Principal Mazur's speech and Max performs dressed as the pop singer Powerline. Though he gets in trouble with Mazur, the stunt makes Max a school celebrity and impresses his love interest, Roxanne, who asks him to a party where Powerline's concert will be viewed live on television. Meanwhile Mazur calls Goofy, concerning him that Max's behaviour may eventually see him face capital punishment.

Oblivious to Max's plans with Roxanne and fearing for his son's future, Goofy decides to take Max on a fishing trip from their home state of Ohio to Lake Destiny, Idaho, following a cross-country map route he and his father took years ago. Before they leave town, Max stops by Roxanne's house to call off their date, but when Roxanne mentions going with someone else, Max panics and instead fabricates a story about his father knowing Powerline and they will be on stage at the concert.

Goofy's attempt to bond with his son on the trip prove increasingly disastrous. When they happen upon Pete and P.J. on a camping trip, P.J. informs Max of how all their peers back home anticipate seeing him onstage at the Powerline concert and Pete advises Goofy to keep Max under control. Goofy takes his son fishing and shows him the Perfect Cast fishing technique, accidentally luring Bigfoot to their camp. Pete and P.J. flee, leaving Goofy and Max to spend the night with Bigfoot.

The next morning, Goofy decides to make Max the navigator of the trip. The two both start enjoying their time together more but, unbeknownst to Goofy, Max has altered the route and is directing them to Los Angeles, where the concert is taking place. They stop at a motel where they meet Pete and P.J. again; there Max tells P.J. of his plan to get to the concert, which Pete overhears and informs Goofy. The next day when they arrive at a junction, Goofy tells Max to choose to go left to Los Angeles, or right to Idaho. After Max chooses left, Goofy stops the car in anger and it rolls away on its own after he and Max get out. The two chase it into the Colorado River where Max and Goofy have a heated argument, leading them to finally reconcile. After hearing Max's promise to Roxanne, Goofy vows to take him to the concert in Los Angeles. The two nearly plummet down a waterfall, but Max saves Goofy using the Perfect Cast.

Goofy and Max make it to the concert, and while sneaking backstage, they end up onstage and dance with Powerline, watched by Pete, P.J. and Roxanne on separate televisions. Goofy and Max later return to Roxanne's house in their damaged car, where Max tells the truth to Roxanne. She accepts it and admits she always had feelings for him ever since the first time she ever heard him utter his father's trademark laugh. The car suddenly explodes, ejecting Goofy, who falls through the porch roof of Roxanne's house. Max introduces him to Roxanne.

## Cast and Characters

* Jason Marsden as Maximilian "Max" Goof
* Bill Farmer as Goofy
* Jim Cummings as Pete
* Kellie Martin as Roxanne
* Rob Paulsen as P.J.
* Pauly Shore as Robert "Bobby" Zimuruski
* Wallace Shawn as Principal Mazur
* Jenna von Oÿ as Stacey
* Frank Welker as Bigfoot
* Tevin Campbell as Powerline
* Kevin Lima as Lester the Possum / Roxanne's Father
* Florence Stanley as Waitress
* Jo Anne Worley as Miss Maples
* Joey Lawrence as Chad
* Julie Brown as Lisa
* Pat Buttram as Emcee at Park
* Dante Basco as Trekkie Nerd
* Wayne Allwine as Mickey Mouse
* Pat Carroll and Corey Burton as Big Woman and Small Husband

## Music

See Also: A Goofy Movie (Soundtrack)

The score for A Goofy Movie was provided by Carter Burwell. Burwell was the primary composer; after he had recorded his score with Shirley Walker orchestrating and conducting, Don Davis was hired to rework his score rather than write a completely new one. Burwell later wrote: "My score had relied somewhat on unusual instrumentation – banjo, percussion and choir for example – and Disney wanted the sweeping scale and familiar affect of symphonic score". Davis is credited with "additional music" on the movie and the soundtrack album. The songs "I 2 I" and "Stand Out" were performed by R&B singer Tevin Campbell, while "After Today", "On the Open Road", and "Nobody Else But You" were performed by Bill Farmer and Aaron Lohr. The soundtrack album for A Goofy Movie was released by Walt Disney Records on March 18, 1995. Mitchel Musso covered the song "Stand Out" for the DisneyMania 7 album, which was released on March 9, 2010.

## Production

A Goofy Movie is based on Goof Troop, an animated Disney Afternoon show created by Robert Taylor and Michael Peraza Jr., that centred around Goofy and his son, Max. When considering ideas for a TV special, Disney decided to produce a theatrical film based on the show, contracting Jymn Magon to write a feature-length script starring Goofy. The filmmakers chose to age up Max, who was shown as a young child in Goof Troop, setting the film several years later and putting him in high school. The movie was the feature film directorial debut for Disney story artist and animator Kevin Lima, who went on to direct the Disney films Tarzan (1999), 102 Dalmatians (2000) and Enchanted (2007). In 1995, Lima said that "Instead of just keeping Goofy one-dimensional as he's been in the past, we wanted to give an emotional side that would add to the emotional arc of the story. We wanted the audience to see his feelings instead of just his antics." Magon stated that the father-son dynamic of the film was inspired by a story from Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg in which he and his daughter—with whom he had an estranged relationship at the time—went on a road trip together, during which they bonded and their relationship considerably improved.

While the work was a Disney production, it was considered far less essential than the studio's mainstream works at the time such as The Lion King, and was given a far smaller budget compared to these films. Thus, A Goofy Movie was jointly produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation, Walt Disney Television Animation, and Disney MovieToons and with outsourcing to Walt Disney Animation France and Walt Disney Animation Australia, along with additional Disney animation studios in Spain and Canada. Pre-production was done at the main Feature Animation studio in Burbank, California, starting as early as mid-1993. The animation work was done at Walt Disney Animation France in Paris supervised by Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi, with additional scenes animated at Disney's studio in Sydney, Australia under the direction of Steve Moore, and clean-up work done at the main Burbank studio. Additional clean-up/animation was done by Phoenix Animation Studios in Canada, and digitally inked-and-painted by the Pixibox studio in France. The film's planned release on Thanksgiving 1994 was delayed due to the monitor that they were using to capture the film's animation having a single dead pixel, forcing them to recapture three-quarters of the film again with a non-defective monitor.

Most of the main voice cast from Goof Troop reprised their roles in A Goofy Movie, including Bill Farmer as Goofy, Jim Cummings as Pete, and Rob Paulsen as PJ. To conform to his difference in age, Max was played by Jason Marsden, who was in high school at the time, replacing Dana Hill from Goof Troop as the character's voice actor. Alternatively, Aaron Lohr did Max's singing voice. Other cast members included Kellie Martin as Roxanne, Jenna von Oÿ as Stacey, and Pauly Shore as Bobby Zimuruski. Farmer, who spent 43 days recording dialogue over the span of 2-and-a-half years, was initially asked by Jeffrey Katzenberg to give Goofy a regular speaking voice as opposed to the character's signature, cartoonish voice, much to the confusion of Farmer, who insisted that audiences wanted to hear the Goofy they were all familiar with. After recording lines in this manner for a week-and-a-half, according to Farmer, Michael Eisner and Roy E. Disney told Farmer to speak in Goofy's original voice, after which the dialogue was rerecorded as such. Farmer stated that he used a "mental image" of his 5-year-old son at the time in order to fully embrace his role as a loving father. Magon named Principal Mazur after his own school principal from when he was in high school. The character of Powerline was heavily inspired by real-life pop stars, including Michael Jackson, Prince, and Bobby Brown. R&B artist Tevin Campbell provided the singing voice for Powerline, recording the songs "Stand Out" and "I 2 I". Campbell recorded the songs in front of a green screen while performing his own choreography. The film is dedicated to Pat Buttram, who voiced the emcee at possum park, as he died after finishing his voice work for the film.

## Release

### Theatrical

Within Disney, prior to A Goofy Movie's release, the film was frequently associated with Katzenberg, and by April 1995, Katzenberg had been let go by Disney's CEO Michael Eisner due to tensions between them, and the company saw the release of A Goofy Movie as simply fulfilling contractual obligations. A Goofy Movie was originally scheduled for a November 1994 theatrical release, but production setbacks resulted in a push-back to April 1995, while The Lion King was reissued to fill in for the film's absence. The film's world premiere took place on April 5, 1995, at the AMC Pleasure Island at Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, and was attended by director Kevin Lima and voice stars Bill Farmer and Jenna von Oÿ; two days later, it was released nationwide. The film played a limited engagement at the El Capitan Theatre from August 25 through September 4, 2017.

### Home Media

The film was first released on VHS by Walt Disney Home Video on September 6, 1995, and included a music video for the Parachute Express song Doctor Looney's Remedy on their video, Come Sing with Us. In the United Kingdom, it was released in theatres on October 18, 1996 (with the Mickey Mouse short Runaway Brain preceding it), and on VHS in 1997. It was reissued on June 20, 2000, along with a DVD version, as part of the Walt Disney Gold Classic Collection series. The DVD edition includes the Goof Troop episode "Calling All Goofs", the episode "The Goofy Success Story" from the Disneyland television series, and a "Disney-fied" edit of Lou Bega's 1999 song "Mambo No. 5." To date, this film and Doug's 1st Movie are the only two Disney animated films produced in widescreen that have pan and scan-only Region 1 DVD releases. The movie was released on Blu-ray as a Disney Movie Club exclusive alongside An Extremely Goofy Movie on April 23, 2019.

## Reception

### Critical Response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, A Goofy Movie holds an approval rating of 61% with an average rating of 6.3 out of 10 based on 28 critics. The website's critical consensus reads, "A Goofy Movie offers enough of its titular ingredient to satisfy younger viewers, even if most parents will agree that this beloved character deserves better".

In contemporaneous reviews, the film received mixed reviews from critics. Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four, noting that he only got to see a portion of the film before a technical issue in the projection booth caused the display to turn upside-down. In his one-star review from The Austin Chronicle, Louis Black said "The movie appears to have forgotten that... it is an adolescent angst drama about his son Max's ambivalent feelings about having Goofy as a dad. This is a story about a boy and a dad... it is bland, a barely television-length cartoon stretched out to fill a feature, and not much fun." Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, Peter Stack summarized it as "brutal", and said that "there's no denying that A Goofy Movie can't be a proud moment for Walt Disney Pictures." While the Los Angeles Times questioned the overall tone of the film, Empire's Bob McCabe gave the movie three stars out of five and the following verdict: "Harmless enough day in the sun for Goofy; pity there's an overwhelming feeling throughout that he deserves better."

From The New York Times, Stephen Holden called the film's story "too rambling and emotionally diffuse for the title character to come fully alive." Writing for Variety, Todd McCarthy criticized the film's score, and felt that the personality of Goofy's character, while agreeable enough in support, proved a bit over the top for a headliner, and that "by any reasonable reckoning, he's distinctly overbearing and selfish, and responds with a bland dismissal to any opinion offered up by his son". In 2010, Nell Minow from Common Sense Media gave the film 4 stars, saying that "even tweens will enjoy this road trip with Goofy."

### Box Office

A Goofy Movie opened in 2,159 theatres at second place on its opening weekend with $6.1 million, held from the number one spot because of the Will Smith blockbuster Bad Boys that opened the same weekend, with $15.5 million in box office returns. It ultimately ended its run at the US box office grossing $35.3 million. Internationally it grossed $2.3 million, partially due to the fact the film was not released theatrically in most overseas territories, for a worldwide total of $37.6 million.

## Awards and Nominations

 Best Production Design
 Best Storyboarding
 Best Music
 Best Animation