Starring Shelley Duvall, Dan Gilroy, Jean Stapleton, and Ben Vereen
Directed by Jeff Stein
Music and Lyrics by various
We honor actress and producer Shelley Duvall, who passed away last month, with this truly unique and extremely early 90's fantasy. Disney made TV movies long before they branded them with the Disney Channel Originals moniker. Most of their earlier movies tended to be dramas and comedies oriented towards the whole family. This would be their only musical until the 2000's. How strange does this modern retelling of famous nursery rhymes look today? Let's begin with Gordon Goose (Gilroy), son of Mother Goose (Stapleton), beginning his day in a neon Rhymeland and find out...
The Story: Gordon is the only other normal human in Rhymeland besides his mother and feels very out of place among the bizarre characters who live there. Little Bo Peep (Duvall), who drives backwards, comes to him driving backwards as she looks for her lost sheep. Bo Peep's sheep are the only Rhymeland characters missing. Mother Goose herself vanishes shortly after Gordon leaves her for the day...and after she disappears, many of the characters in Rhymeland start vanishing, too. Gordon and Bo Peep question the many wacky and colorful citizens of Rhymeland to try to find Mother Goose, before they too disappear forever.
The Song and Dance: The Disney Channel used to run this a lot in the early 90's...and it may be the most early 90's TV movie in existence. Everything is bright, big, boxy, and either neon, black, or pastel. The costumes are especially evocative of the time. The ladies are all in tutus, short jackets, and leggings, and the guys wear baggy suits and sweat suits, and they're pretty darn cool to look at. The entire movie has the look of a pop up fairy tale book of the time, with its goofy cheap sets.
The stars alone make this worth seeing if you remember the era. Name a star who was even a little popular in the late 80's-early 90's, and they're probably in this. In addition to sweet, naive, goofy Duvall, we have everything from Harry Anderson as a Peter Piper who is addicted to alliteration and Debbie Harry as a decidedly not Old Woman Who Lives In a Shoe to ZZ Top as the Three Men In a Tub who aren't the best at giving directions. There's even Little Richard as Old King Cole.
Favorite Number: "Hot To It," featuring the Del Rubio Triplets of Pee Wee's Playhouse fame, introduces us to the wacky world of Rhymeland with some nifty choreography and how Gordon feels out of place in it. The Van Nuys Rap Association and the chorus in funky pastel suits are "Waiting for the King." When Old King Cole arrives, we get more dancing, including female blackbirds bursting out of a pie, for "Party With the King." "Gordon Won't You Come Out and Play" is the big metal number in the dungeon, performed by the appropriately-named The Dank.
Trivia: There's two versions of this available, the longer one that was released on video and a version that ran on TV in later years that cut a lot of the more risque content, rearranged sequences, changed the score, and encored "Party With the King" in the end credits.
What I Don't Like: Gordon keeps calling himself "normal," but he's really whiny and obnoxious. In fact, a lot of the folks they encounter are more annoying or grating than funny or whimsical. No wonder Gordon spends most of the movie complaining about them. For something that turned up on The Disney Channel, there's an awful lot of adult humor on this, from Jack and Jill fussing about "needs" to the Not-So-Old Woman in a Shoe's children having multiple fathers and the uncomfortable hard rock "torture" sequence in the dungeon. The story is also pretty thin, with Gordon and Bo Peep wandering aimlessly among Rhymeland residents for a good chunk of the movie. (And they never do find Bo Peep's sheep.)
The Big Finale: My sisters and I loved this movie when our family taped it off The Disney Channel in the early 90's, but it hasn't really dated that well. If you enjoyed it when you were a kid, think your kids might enjoy it and be young enough to overlook the more adult jokes, or are a fan of any of the stars involved, it's worth checking out at least once for the unique wacky look alone.
Home Media: Never on DVD or legitimate streaming, the only place this can currently be found is YouTube.
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