Christmas Movie Marathon, Day 9 — The Ultimate Christmas Present (2000)

I have a confession to make… I really love Disney Channel Original Movies. (And Disney-made straight to TV movies they also showed a lot) I do! Can you blame me? The movie premieres on Disney Channel Friday nights were a huge part of my tweenage existence. I thought, at first, that they released one every month, but they only did that in 2000! Obviously that was the heyday. The most memorable movies for me, according to this list, were in '99 and 2000. I remember watching the premiere of Life Size starring Tyra Banks and Lindsay Lohan with my Mom and dancing to the "You're a Star!" song, and having a friend over for ice cream and the Zenon: The Zequel on TV. It was pretty great addition to life without a driver's license or hard homework.

The dangerously curious protagonist and her nervous friend, Brenda Song, find a weather machine (that belonged to Santa, duh) and they actually MAKE IT SNOW IN LA. I don't know if you know this or not, but the temperatures in LA got down to around 59º F a week or so ago and it made the news. Now, there was no mention of a "potential apocalypse," stores literally running out of coats because no one owned any, or tremendous amounts of car accidents (the Los Angelites are a rowdy bunch of drivers) in this movie, and watching it now, I find that really shocking. I didn't realize that it doesn't even rain in LA but a handful of times a year, until I visited back in May and it was beautiful all the freaking time.

The weird and eccentric weatherman in the movie makes a funny reference to this:
"The 14 inches of snow... that has fallen since last night easily eclipses the previous record for Los Angeles county... of 0.3 inches on January 19, 1949..."
(he says, stunned)

TREND ALERT, Cactus Christmas Tree

As in any good Disney Channel Original Movie, the ending is heartwarming and everyone learns that the most important thing in life, one that we are reminded of especially around the holidays, is our family. It's nice to know that when they made these movies, they did try really hard to make sure there was some kind of good message locked-in at the end. I feel consoled by that, having watched all these as a younger kid, and hopefully they have kept doing this, but I'm not entirely sure. I stopped watching around 2004, pre-High School Musical/Camp Rock craze. (Though I totally would have been obsessed with those if I was the right age when they came out. Shoot, now I really want to watch both of those. I'm a big ole sucker for anything that has singing in it. Really.)

Luckily, my movie for tomorrow contains two criteria that make up a great movie for me, it's old AND there's singing! I've also never seen it before, so you could say I'm looking forward to it.

Dreaming of a white (and not brown muddy) Christmas,
Stephanie


P.S. — I know some of my posts recently have been a little late, but I am still watching the movies each day, even if I don't get around to writing about them until the next. Don't quit me yet!

P.P.S. — I was really excited because I've been getting a lot of blog traffic since I've started making these posts (which was my master plan) but they are unfortunately sourced from sites like vampirestat and 7secretsearch, so I guess they don't really care about me.


So, if you are ACTUALLY reading this, thanks a heap :)