Disney+ – Moby’s First Impressions

A Goofy Movie.

That is all.

OK, fine it’s not. However, as I told Leland in Episode 48, I was going to be a day one Disney+ subscriber, and would write my first impressions. I felt it was my duty to Listener to sign up for my 34th streaming service and further bankrupt myself. However, out of all the things I figured I’d write about the service, a sense of “surprise” was not on the list! But here I am, surprised, in many ways. In fact, so surprised, I’m not sure where to start. Perhaps at the top?

The User Interface (UI) of Disney+ is very, very Netflix like. As in, “when will the lawsuit drop?” almost a copy. It simply looks like Netflix and I think it’s too close. Come on Disney you own…All(?) You can afford better! My second surprise was how little content there is. There are several of the tentpole animated films, your Beauty and The Beast, Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, etc. But it doesn’t appear close to the full back catalogue at all. In addition, I could only find a few Marvel movies on the site. The Star Wars films are there as is the tentpole new series “The Mandalorian” which was very good, though short. There wasn’t much new original content there at all. Though finding Goofy movie and watching it drunk at 3:30AM before working the next morning was awesome. “Stand up and look around…Even if ya gotta shout it out loud, I’m the…” Oh wait, sorry, Goofy Movie, I love the Michael Jackson-esque songs.

What it feels like is a “sampling” – you have the original Mighty Ducks, but not the sequels. You have some National Geographic stuff, but just a taste. Even The Mandalorian dropped only with one 38 minute episode. There were some nice touches – a fully remastered “Steamboat Mickey” was an absolute delight. This animated short is crude and beyond dated but is an integral piece of entertainment history and is something we don’t realize we almost never get from Disney – a Mickey Mouse led story. He’s the damn mascot, THE MOUSE, after all!

My biggest disappointment if you know me will be no surprise as I explain. Most of Disney’s back catalogue is given a trigger warning that warns the film “May have outdated cultural depictions.” This is Disney being ashamed of their own work, unable to trust that most folks will understand their older films are a product of a different time and have no malice implied at all.
So do I recommend Disney+ right now? Conditionally. If you’re a Disney fan in general and realize your DVD/Blu-Ray collection is missing many pieces, it’s worth looking into. If you want to entertain your kids with lots of kid-friendly programming, that’s mostly what’s there right now. But those are really the only two situations – the original programming isn’t there yet and the back catalogue is miles from being filled. Make no mistake, Disney needs a streaming service, they’re the world’s Mega Corp when it comes to entertainment and until November 12th 2019, they had no streaming service despite their near-unlimited resources. Wow.

However, this service comes horrifyingly close to a Todd “16 Times The Detail” Howard statement of “It’s not where the [streaming service] starts it’s where the [streaming service] ends.” Disney could have easily done better. They have the time and resources to have blown this out of the park – thus I’m surprised the launch is so mediocre and derivative. Yet, it’s only $8.99 which is on the cheap side of streaming and is probably worth the content there already assuming you don’t have access to most of it elsewhere.

Take Care Listener,

Moby