Home Video Picks and Passes 12.08.19

Disney+ Highlights

Miracle on 34th Street
Miracle on 34th Street (photo: Fair Use via Wikipedia)
The arrival of the Disney+ streaming service is a major new source of potential family entertainment on the small screen.

I could almost subscribe to Disney+ just for Phineas and Ferb, a terrifically oddball animated series as kindhearted as it is zany. Following two genius stepbrothers making the most of their summer vacation, it’s got the same breathless, absurdist humor as popular cartoons like The Simpsons (also here), but none of the cynicism and misanthropy.

From the 20th Century Fox library, Disney+ subscribers can enjoy Maureen O’Hara and Edmund Gwenn in Miracle on 34th Street; Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music; the slapstick Christmas classic Home Alone; Danny Boyle’s saints-and-stolen money family film Millions; and the vertiginous rock-climbing documentary Free Solo.

Then, of course, there are the Star Wars films, which Disney already owned via its Lucasfilm purchase; most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (my favorites include Iron Man, The Avengers and Doctor Strange; Black Panther and Ant-Man and the Wasp are missing) and most of the Pixar canon (my favorites include the first couple of Toy Story films, The Incredibles, Wall-E and Inside Out; Coco is missing).

From the vast library of actual Disney movies, my favorites include the 1995 Vatican film-list honoree Fantasia; the 1959 Sleeping Beauty, with its overtly Christian imagery; and the wacky morality tale The Emperor’s New Groove.