A Goofy Movie

Theatrical release poster

***A Goofy Movie*** is a 1995 American animated musical comedy film produced by Disney MovieToons and Walt Disney Television Animation. The animated directorial debut of Kevin Lima. Robert Taylor and Michael Peraza Jr.'s The Disney Afternoon television series *Goof Troop* is the basis for the film, and it serves as a standalone follow-up to the show. It features Jason Marsden, Bill Farmer, Jim Cummings, Kellie Martin, Pauly Shore, Jenna von Oÿ, and Wallace Shawn. Disney dedicated the film to Pat Buttram, who died during the film's production. A few years after *Goof Troop*, *A Goofy Movie* follows Goofy and his son, Max, who is now in high school, and revolves around the father-son relationship between the two. Goofy embarks on a misguided mission to bond with his son by taking him on a cross-country fishing trip, impeding Max's social life by taking him away from his friends, particularly his high school crush Roxanne.

Disney came up with the idea to make a theatrical animated film starring Goofy while considering ideas for a potential *Goof Troop* TV special. Lima wanted to expand out Goofy as a character and "give him an emotional side" to resonate with audiences. Much of the show's casts reprised their roles, including Farmer as Goofy, Paulsen as PJ, and Cummings as Pete, whereas Marsden replaced Dana Hill as Max's voice due to the character's age difference. R&B artist Tevin Campbell provided the vocals for Powerline, a fictional celebrity musician who predominantly appears in the movie, performing the songs "Stand Out" and "I2I".

*A Goofy Movie* was released theatrically on April 7, 1995, by Walt Disney Pictures, and made $35 million at the box office. It received mixed reviews, and because Disney released it after they fired Jeffrey Katzenberg, they deemed the film's release as merely a contractual obligation. Disney released a direct-to-video sequel to the film titled *An Extremely Goofy Movie* on February 29, 2000. However, with its home media release, the film garnered a cult following, particularly among millennials who grew up with the film. Since 2015 it has become a much more visible property within Disney.

## Plot

Goofy is the single father of his 14-year-old son Max Goof, although the two have a tense relationship. On the last day of school before summer vacation, Max and his best friends P.J. and Robert "Bobby" Zimuruski hijack the auditorium in the middle of Principal Mazur's speech, creating a small concert where Max performs while dressed as the pop singer Powerline. The performance succeeds in making Max a school celebrity and impressing his love interest, Roxanne, but he, P.J., and Bobby are sent to Mazur's office. While waiting outside of the office, Roxanne speaks with Max and agrees to go with him to a party where Powerline's concert is shown live on television. However, Mazur calls Goofy and forewarns him that Max's behaviour may face capital punishment.

Oblivious to Max's plans with Roxanne, Goofy decides to take Max on a fishing trip to Lake Destiny, Idaho, following a cross-country map route he and his father took years ago. Before they leave town, Max manages to stop by Roxanne's house to call off their date. Still, when the heartbroken Roxanne mentions going with someone else, Max panics and instead fabricates a story about his father knowing Powerline, telling her he will be on stage at the concert.

Despite his son's objections, Goofy plans his trip, with initially disastrous results. Max angrily hurts his father's feelings after Goofy inadvertently humiliates Max at an opossum-based theme park. Later, Pete and P.J. happen to meet up with them while camping by a lake. While P.J. informs Max of how all their peers back home, anticipate seeing him onstage at the Powerline concert, 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. While Goofy sleeps, Max alters the map's route to Los Angeles, where the concert is taking place.

The next morning, Goofy decides to make Max the navigator of the trip. The two go to different locations that satisfy both of them. Eventually, they stop by a motel where they meet Pete and P.J. again. When Pete overhears a conversation between the boys, he tells Goofy that Max has tricked him into travelling to Los Angeles. The next day, Goofy and Max come to a junction: one leading to Idaho, and the other to California. Max chooses California's route, making Goofy stop the car at the Grand Canyon and storm off in anger. With the brake lose, the car drives off on its own; Goofy and Max chase after it and end up in a river. After a heated argument, Goofy solemnly declares that no matter how old Max gets, he will always be his son, and the two finally reconcile with each other. After learning Max's promise to Roxanne, Goofy decides to take him to Los Angeles's concert. The two nearly plummet to their deaths down a waterfall, but Max saves Goofy using the Perfect Cast technique.

Goofy and Max make it to the concert, and while attempting to sneak backstage, they end up on stage and dance with Powerline, watched by Pete, P.J., and Roxanne on different televisions. Goofy and Max later return to Roxanne's house in their damaged car. Max tells Roxanne the truth, though she accepts it and admits she always had feelings for him, ever since the first time she ever heard him laugh, "Ah-hyuck!"; thus, a relationship starts between them. Goofy's car explodes because of damage it had sustained, ejecting Goofy in the process, who then falls through Roxanne's house's porch roof, and Max proceeds to introduce him to Roxanne.

## Voice cast

* Bill Farmer as Goofy, a single father who works as a photographer at a photo studio in a mall department store.
* Jason Marsden as Maximillan "Max" Goof, Goofy's insecure teenage son.
	+ Aaron Lohr provides Max's singing voice.
* Jim Cummings as Pete, Goofy's co-worker whom he and Max happen upon during their road trip.
* Kellie Martin as Roxanne, Max's high school crush and romantic interest.
* Rob Paulsen as P.J., Pete's son and Max's best friend.
* Pauly Shore (uncredited) as Robert "Bobby" Zimuruski, Max and P.J.'s other best friend at school.
* Wallace Shawn as Principal Mazur, the bad-tempered principal of Max's school.
* Jenna von Oÿ as Stacey, Roxanne's best friend.
* Frank Welker as Bigfoot, a monster who lives in the forest.
* Kevin Lima as Lester the Possum, a walk-around character at Lester's Possum Park. Lima also voices Roxanne's father.
* Florence Stanley as a Waitress.
* Jo Anne Worley as Miss Maples, Principal Mazur's upbeat secretary.
* Joey Lawrence as Chad.
* Julie Brown as Lisa.
* Robyn Richards as a young girl at Lester's Possum Park.
* Klee Bragger as a tourist kid.
* Pat Buttram as the emcee at Lester's Possum Park.
* Wayne Allwine as Mickey Mouse, who makes a cameo appearance being seen hitchhiking alongside Donald Duck during Goofy and Max's road trip.
* Tevin Campbell as Powerline, a famous pop star celebrity admired by Max and his peers.

## Production

*Goof Troop*, an animated Disney Afternoon show centred around Goofy and his son, Max, serves as the basis for *A Goofy Movie*. When considering ideas for a TV special, Disney decided to produce a theatrical film based on the show, contracting Jymm 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 directorial debut for Disney crew member 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 a story from Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg in which he and his daughter- with whom he had an estranged relationship- went on a road trip together, during which they bonded their relationship considerably improved, inspired the father-son dynamic of the film.

While the work was a Disney production, it was considered far less essential than the studio's mainstream works such as *The Lion King*, and Disney gave them a far smaller budget than these films. Thus, Walt Disney Feature Animation, Walt Disney Television Animation, and Disney MovieToons jointly produced the movie and with outsourcing to Walt Disney Animation France and Walt Disney Animation Australia and other 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. Phoenix Animation Studios in Canada and Pixibox studio in France did other ink and paint. 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 leading 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 age difference, Max was played by Jason Marsden, who was in high school, replacing Dana Hill from *Goof Troop* as the character's voice actor; Hill would die at the age of 32, fifteen months after the film was released. 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 for 2-and-a-half years, was initially asked by Jeffrey Katzenberg to give Goofy a regular speaking voice instead of the character's signature, cartoonish voice, much to the confusion of Farmer. He 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 Disney re-recorded the dialogue as such. Farmer stated that he used a "mental image" of his 5-year-old son at the time to embrace his role as a loving father fully. Magon named Principal Mazur after his school principal from when he was in high school. Real-life pop stars, including Michael Jackson, Prince, and Bobby Brown, inspired Powerline. R&B artist Tevin Campbell, who was 17 years old at the time of production, provided the singing voice for Powerline, recording the songs "Stand Out" and "I2I". Campbell recorded the songs in front of a green screen while performing his choreography. Disney dedicated the film to Pat Buttram, who voiced the emcee at possum park, as he died after finishing his voice work for the film.

## Music

Main article: A Goofy Movie/Soundtrack
Carter Burwell provided the score for A Goofy Movie. Burwell was the primary composer; after Burwell had recorded his score with Shirley Walker orchestrating and conducting, Disney hired Don Davis 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 effect of the symphonic score." Disney credited Davis 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. Walt Disney Records released the soundtrack album for A Goofy Movie on March 18, 1995. Mitchell Musso covered the song "Stand Out" for the *DisneyMania 7* album released on March 9, 2010.

## Release

### Theatrical

Disney initially scheduled *A Goofy Movie* for a November 1994 theatrical release. Still, production setbacks resulted in a push-back to 1995, while they reissued  *The Lion King* 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. Director Kevin Lima and voice stars Bill Farmer and Jenna von Oÿ attended the premiere; two days later, Disney released it nationwide. The film played a limited engagement at the El Capitan Theatre from August 25 through September 4, 2017.

### Home media

Main article: A Goofy Movie/Home media
The film was first released on VHS by Walt Disney Home Video on September 6, 1995. It included a music video for the Parachute Express song *Doctor Looney's Remedy* on their video, *Come Sing with Us*. It was released in British cinemas succeeding the Mickey Mouse short *Runaway Brain* on October 18, 1996, 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. This 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 "Mambo No. 5." This film and *Doug's 1st Movie* are the only two Disney animated films produced in widescreen that have fullscreen Region 1 DVD releases (not counting separate widescreen and pan and scan DVD releases of the two Disney/Pixar films *The Incredibles* and *Cars*). However, the film's PAL and NTSC (Japan) counterpart does have a non-anamorphic widescreen DVD. The film is available in a letterbox presentation on LaserDisc and in standard-definition widescreen on digital video retailers. The movie was released on Blu-ray as a Disney Movie Club exclusive alongside *An Extremely Goofy Movie* on April 23, 2019.

## Reception

### Box office

Disney considered *A Goofy Movie* a relative success, opening in 2,159 theatres at #2 on its opening weekend with $6.1 million - held from the #1 spot only 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.

### Critical response

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, *A Goofy Movie* holds an approval rating of 58% with an average rating of 6.12/10 based on 26 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."

Writing for the *LA Times*, Peter Rainer criticized the film's emphasis on "life lessons for the tots," and conclusively wrote, "If you're going to make something called 'A Goofy Movie,' why dampen the goofiness?" Stephen Holden of *The New York Times* called the film's story "too rambling and emotionally diffuse for the title character to come fully alive." *Variety*'s Todd McCarthy criticized the film's score, calling the six featured songs "unmemorable." He also 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." McCarthy praised the film's technical aspects, calling them "crisp and clean." Louis Black of *The Austin Chronicle* summed up his review by saying the film was "bland, a barely television-length cartoon stretched out to fill a feature, and not much fun." Peter Stack of the *San Francisco Chronicle* gave the movie a 1.5/4 and called it an "incoherent mess that jumps from one unlikely, brainless, crash-bang situation to another, with each element of a protracted father-son bonding story increasingly out of synch with the others."

Roger Ebert gave the movie three stars, 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. Ebert later saw the rest of the movie, after which he stated that his initial rating still stood true. Writing for Common Sense Media, Nell Minow gave the film four stars, saying that "even tweens will enjoy this road trip with Goofy."

### Accolades

The film was nominated for "Best Animated Feature" in the production categories and "Best Production Design", "Best Storyboarding", "Best Music", and "Best Animation" in the individual categories at the 23rd Annie Awards.

## Legacy

A direct-to-video sequel to *A Goofy Movie*, titled *An Extremely Goofy Movie*, was released on DVD and VHS in 2000. The film centers on Max's freshman year in college. Characters that returned for the sequel were Goofy, Max, P.J., Pete and Bobby, but Roxanne is absent from the sequel, and no one references her. Roxanne later appears in the television series *House of Mouse* in the episode titled "Max's Embarrassing Date," where Grey DeLisle voices her instead of Kellie Martin.

Within Disney, before *A Goofy Movie's* release, the film was frequently associated with Katzenberg. By April 1995, Disney's CEO Michael Eisner fired Katzenberg due to tensions between them. The company saw the release of *A Goofy Movie* as simply fulfilling contractual obligations. Its box office was considered weak, comparable with Disney's next major feature film *Pocahontas*, and the film faded into obscurity in the years that followed.

However, the film started to gain success following its release to home media later in 1995. It soon gained a cult following, particularly among millennials who grew up with the movie from the home media releases. A combination of the film's catchy soundtrack and its story of cross-generational connections between parents and children made the movie famous. Farmer said, "The situation rings true to people...Most people thought their dad was Goofy, or at least I did when I was growing up. I didn't understand where he came from, he didn't understand where I came from in a lot of ways, but we overcame those differences and bonded." The newfound interest led to significant retailers selling new merchandise waves based on the film. A live-action scene-for-scene remake of the song "After Today" made in 2009 drew more than 5 million views on YouTube.

On August 14, 2015, The D23 Expo at Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California, held a 20th-anniversary reunion for the film. Those in attendance included Bill Farmer, Jason Marsden, Jim Cummings, Rob Paulsen, Jenna von Oÿ and producer Don Hahn. Wallace Shawn, Pauly Shore and director Kevin Lima also sent video messages. The panel also included musical performances from Farmer, Marsden, and Tevin Campbell. While the conference isn't one of the most extensive meetings at D23, it ended up with the largest attended, with around 1,000 fans attending, and forcing the expo to turn away some due to lack of seating.

Disney has since embraced the fandom's love of *A Goofy Movie* in more recent promotions and works. In 2016, Campbell uploaded a video of him partaking in a jam session with the band Enfield, in which he performed both "I2I" and "Stand Out." In June 2018, a one-week event titled "Disney FanDaze" was opened in Disneyland Paris, featuring several dedicated performances paying tribute to Disney franchises. Among these was "Max Live! Gettin' Goofy With It", which featured Max Goof performing songs from *A Goofy Movie*. In April 2019, singer Uché performed "I2I" during the Top 10 Disney Night of *American Idol's* seventeenth season.

According to co-producer Frank Angones, the film was a strong influence during the early development of the 2017 *DuckTales* series, particularly on its version of Donald Duck, as the creators "wanted [the] show to do for Donald what *Goofy Movie* did for Goofy." The series itself featured several references to the film. In the season two episode, "Raiders of the Doomsday Vault," two of the main characters, Dewey and Della Duck, sing along to "Stand Out" with a Powerline CD near them. In a later season two episode, "Happy Birthday, Doofus Drake!", supporting character Mark Beaks shows off family pictures of him and his robot son, B.O.Y.D., as part of a con, one of which shows they went to Lester's Possum Park. In the season three episode, "Quack Pack!", Goofy makes a guest appearance helping Donald and his family escape a 1990s sitcom by showing him family pictures of himself and Max. One example shows the young Goof dressed as Powerline for Halloween, and another shows him with Roxanne. Of this season three appearance, Angones said that "Because that's how big a nerd I am, I too have always thought, what happened there [with Max and Roxanne]? We couldn't quite do everything we wanted to do in that episode or so far in this season, but there's enough there that lets you know things have gone well."

In 2020, Powerline appeared in the video game *Disney Heroes: Battle Mode* as a playable character. On April 10, 2020, in celebration of the film's 25th anniversary, DCappella released a cover of "I2I", and D23 hosted an online reunion and virtual viewing party. Writing for the *LA Times*, Peter Rainer criticized the film's emphasis on "life lessons for the tots," and conclusively wrote, "If you're going to make something called 'A Goofy Movie,' why dampen the goofiness?" Stephen Holden of *The New York Times* called the film's story "too rambling and emotionally diffuse for the title character to come fully alive." *Variety's* Todd McCarthy criticized the film's score, calling the six featured songs "unmemorable." He also 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." McCarthy praised the film's technical aspects, calling them "crisp and clean." Louis Black of *The Austin Chronicle* summed up his review by saying the film was "bland, a barely television-length cartoon stretched out to fill a feature, and not much fun." Peter Stack of the *San Francisco Chronicle* gave the movie a 1.5/4 and called it an "incoherent mess that jumps from one unlikely, brainless, crash-bang situation to another, with each element of a protracted father-son bonding story increasingly out of synch with the others."

Roger Ebert gave the movie three stars, 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. Ebert later saw the rest of the movie, after which he stated that his initial rating still stood true. Writing for Common Sense Media, Nell Minow gave the film four stars, saying that "even tweens will enjoy this road trip with Goofy."

## Notes

1. ↑ Animation services handled by Walt Disney Television Animation, Walt Disney Feature Animation, Walt Disney Animation France, and Walt Disney Animation Australia.