Life Lessons We Learned From Disney and Pixar Movies + Movie Review: Turning Red (Disney+) + Trailer Park: The Bubble

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to Movie Mix Movie Podcast. I am your host Movie Mike A k A Mike D. Today I want to share with you some lessons that I and probably you listening to this right now have learned over the years from Disney and Pixar movies. We'll get into a movie review talking about the latest Disney Pixar movie, Turning Red, and in the trailer park we have a new meta comedy from Judd Apataw. I'm not really sure what's going on there, but we'll get into all of that. Appreciate you being subscribed and listening every single week. Shout out to the Monday Morning crew. You know who you are. We're all here, We're ready to go. Let's talk movies. In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast, one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like never before in a movie podcast. A man with so much movie knowledge. He's basically like a walking on MTV with classes from the Nashville Podcast Networks Movie mis Movie Podcast. Whether you're a kid or you're an adult now who still loves watching animated movies, there's always something to learn from a Disney Pixar movie. And that's what I want to talk about today. I always like to have a theme for every single episode, and I wanted to pair it with the movie review today because I will be talking about Turning Red, which is available on Disney Plus. So I'll get into that full review later, but there's something you can learn from that movie, and going back further into every Disney Pixar movie, there's always a kind of lesson, and even more so now with Pixar movies, who I feel are a lot more progressive and really kind of challenge what a kid's movie can be. I'm gonna go through some Disney Pixar movies and what I and probably you learned from them too. And I did want to group these altogether, because now every Pixar movie is a Disney movie. After Pixar was acquired by Disney. Before, I felt there was a pretty big distinction between Disney and Pixar. Disney was a lot more of the old school fairy tales, and they're kind of like an old school thing of like, here's the thing you have to learn after watching this movie. It was all very storybook. And then when Pixar came along with toy Story and then really over the two thousands and twenty tens, Pixar became a thing of its own because it's so different than a Disney movie because in Pixar movies, oftentimes there's not really a villain. It's almost like just life in general is the villain. It's a lot of a kid growing throughout a movie, an animal, a car, or some other kind of character, learning a valuable lesson that's important for kids to learn, but if you're watching them as an adult, there's probably something you can take away too. So I think that's really why I, as a thirty year old man, still enjoy watching Pixar movies. And it is just kind of funny how sometimes, yeah, it Pixar movies, there isn't a villain. It's just everyday life. And sometimes that's even scarier. But let's get into it now. And I want to go back to what I considered to be the o G Disney MOVI via my childhood. I think one of the greatest Disney films of all time it is The Lion King from nine and there are really so many things you can learn from The Lion King, but what I took away from it more was learning about death. And I know you could say that maybe it was Bambi before this, but for my generation, it was definitely Lion King. And when Mufassa dies and simbols, they're trying to wake him up. I mean, that's still kind of rattled me as an adult, but as a kid, I was like, what is happening right now? We're not even halfway through this movie and Mufassa is already dead. But here's just a little bit of that scene that good. You gotta get up dead, we gotta go home, hell, somebody, anybody. And watching that as a kid, you can really only imagine, Oh, the things you're having to process. You've just been introduced to this story. Simba, who loves his dad, wants to learn everything from his dad, and now he has passed away and is laying their lifeless. That's a really powerful thing to put in an animated movie like this. And what I learned from that, that's the first time I ever realized that someday my parents aren't going to be here. It's a heavy thing to learn when you're five six years old. And I think why I love Disney animated movies so much is sometimes, like my parents, they were great parents. But maybe it was because my parents are Hispanic, or or because we grew up with not having a whole lot that my parents were just trying to work that sometimes I felt they didn't get around to teaching me the hard lessons. And I think part of why I love movies so much is because I learned a lot through movies. I don't think my parents ever sat me down to have a talk about death. They never sat me down to have a talk like the Talk, and a lot of things I learned as a kid with through Disney movies and then later as an adult was probably through teen comedies, which is probably not the healthiest thing for me looking back. But this scene in particular, I remember it resonating with me, and I don't even think I really asked my parents about it, like, Yo, what happened to move faster? He's gonna be all right? Like what is this thing? Death? But I think the movie does such a great job of teaching you so many lessons that by the end of it you're almost able to understand and have a little grasp on death even as a kid. The other lesson that I learned from watching The Lion King is you can't run away from your problems because they're still gonna be there. In the movie, that's what Simma does after the death of his dad. He has chased out of Pride Rock by his uncle and starts a whole new, carefree life with Timon and Puma where he doesn't have to worry about anything at least so he thinks. But what's going on back at home and everybody who you know thought he was dead too, Like, that's still a very big problem. And all he did was get away from it, put it out of his mind, out of sight. And that shows you that running away is never the answer. And what does he have to do in the end has to go back and face his problems head on. But the most important thing I learned from The Lion King is do not trust your uncle's Next up, I want to talk about another one of my favorite Pixar movies, and it is Toy Story. And maybe something I learned from Toy Story that not everybody else took away from this movie is you have to set your goals high. And that is something I learned through Buzz Lightyear. Buzz Lightyear is so positive, he almost seems delusional, and I feel like, sometimes we all know those people in our life who are just so positive that I'm myself and more of a Woody. I'm a little bit more of a realist. And while those people seem like, like, what are you doing? How do you wake up already in a good mood? How do you think everything is gonna work out? You have all these high expectations and it seems like these people have no flaws. And what I was able to learn from this movie and the relationship with those two people, the realist being Woody and Buzz Lightyear, who has this very positive outlook and his goals are super high, that the two people can coexist. You can be friends. And that's what I learned from Toy Story. And no matter which one you are, you're going to have your set of problems. Even Buzz in the movie realizes that sometimes those highest spectations do come crashing down and you can break your arm off. But I think what really was the underlying moral message of Toy Story, and maybe more of us stick away from it, is that change is inevitable. And we learned that through Woody and him realizing that he's not going to be Andy's favorite toy for his entire life, and when this song is playing and everything in the room is changing, suddenly the woody posters go down and the buzz lightyear posters go up. It's a pretty emotional moment in that movie, and you just have to learn from that change is inevitable. We're all going to not be the new shiny thing anymore, and that's okay. It's a part of getting older. It's a part of in this case, your owner, growing older and moving on to new things. Now we're humans, were not toys. But I think throughout the entire franchise of Toy Story, we see this theme kind of ongoing, of them adapting with all the changes while themselves are still remaining the same. The next movie I want to talk about is A Bug's Life. This movie was very inspirational to me as a kid. I was a very quiet kid in kindergarten and an elementary school got bullied a little bit for it. And I think as a result of that, now is an adult, why I am a little bit more on the quiet side. Unless I'm doing a podcast or something else with a microphone in my face. People just know me as being kind of a quiet person, and I think all that kind of goes back to my childhood, and I think the hardest thing for me was speaking up for myself when and there was a kid making fun of me for my weight or the way I looked, or my jacked upp teeth. I always thought standing up to the boy, standing up for myself would make it worse because I was, in that instance the little guy. Even though I was a kid struggling with his weight, I still felt like I was the little guy. So in a figurative sense. But in the movie A Bug's Life, that's what it's all about. If these little ants forced to gather food for the meal grasshoppers, and there's this one in particular, Flick, who devises this whole plan to fight back against them, to not take it anymore. And they realized that, well, there are really only so many grasshoppers, and while we are small ants, we totally outnumbers them. So why they've been making us feel so bad about ourselves, making us feel like we're so little and insignificant. We really have the power here. We have the power of numbers. So while we've been treated this way our entire life, all we have to do is speak up. All we have to do is stay and up against them, and they will be powerless and in turn have to run away. And I love that the grasshoppers in the movie actually knew that you left one ants stand up to us, then they all might stand up. Those puny little ants outnumber us a hundred to one. And if they ever figure that out, there goes our way of life. It's not about food, It's about keeping those ants in line. So there you go. You could take that all away from just watching A Bugs Live. Moving on now to my personal favorite Disney movie. While I think The Lion King is probably the best Disney movie of all time, for me personally, my favorite Disney movie will always be Lilo and Stitch. The animation style, the voice acting, the character design, But ultimately it's the story that really hits close to me. And you may be thinking, how does the story about an alien crash landing in Hawaii hit close to home for you? And I think it's because of what I learned from Lelo and Stitch is Stitch feels like he doesn't have a place where he belongs because he's actually an unfamiliar place where he actually doesn't belong. He's an alien and he's here on Earth and stumbles upon Lilo, who was nice enough to take him in and treat him like he is a normal being. And Stitch has this program rage inside of him, this emotion that he doesn't know how to channel. It just kind of comes out in him destroying things and hurting the people around him. And that's kind of how I felt. For along part of my life. I was this weird alien that nobody could really love because I was always just kind of pushed away. So I've always felt like Stitch in my entire life. And it wasn't until I found somebody who was able to push those feelings aside and learn who the real person is underneath there that I didn't feel like such an alien anymore. And in the movie, Stitch compares himself to the story of the Ugly Duckling and the feeling of being lost but then being happy once he finally found his family. Now, which is the other lesson I took away from Lilo and Stitch is that not every family has to look the same. And I love that Disney win in the direction here and showing lil who struggles with not having her parents around and now being taken care of by her sister and having this kind of resentment and rage inside her much like Stitch does, but how her entire world has changed now that her sister is now the parent and guardian figure in her life. And what I learned in Lilo and Stitches that ohana means family and your family can be broken, doesn't have to look like everybody else's and there's kind of something special and finding beauty where it's not supposed to be. And that idea of Ohana from Leelo and Stitch has always stayed with me. And my favorite scene is at the end when they're going to take away Stitch and he gives the speech I'll do my impression of it now. He goes this, this is my family. I found it's all on my arm. That's a little I'm broken but still good. Yeah, still good. And if that didn't do it justice, here's the actual clip from the movie this is my Family, I found it all on my own. That's little I'm broken but still good. Yeah, star cuting. So that's what I learned from le Loan Stitch. Moving on now to finding Nemo, I think the one we all probably learned from this and the one that most of you sent in on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. Was that just keep swimming And what that really leads to is the overarching message and finding a Nemo. Yes, you do have to just keep swimming, and what that will get you will allow you to step outside of your comfort zone. And once you get out of your comfort zone, that's where all of your life is going to happen. That's where you're going to find the adventure. That's where you're going to find the real story here in Finding Nemo, Nemo was sheltered as a kid because he was born in tragedy. Starts out with all of his brothers and sisters and his mom passing away. He was the one that lived. So for that reason, his dad is very overprotective. He's not like all the other fish, so he doesn't want him getting hurt. He wants to keep him right in their little community right there, close to home. But Nemo, he's like, I gotta go see the world. I gotta get out of here. I gotta not be around my dad all the time and be my own fish. And I myself have found that in life it's hard to get out of that comfort zone. I was in my comfort zone for a long time, because stepping out of it scared me. Going back earlier where I was talking about how I am a relatively quiet person and for me, stepping out of my comfort zone means doing things like this, speaking on a microphone that I know other people are going to listen to. My job that I do every single day takes me out of my comfort zone. The first time I ever did stand up in front of actual people is something I probably would have never done because I'd have been so scared. But I had to get out of that comfort zone. So that was something I learned in finding Memo and how letting go is kind of just the part of growing up. Another one of everybody's favorite Pixar movies is Coco, and I loved, obviously, me being Mexican, loved the representation of my culture in a Pixar movie. And the main message of Coco, of course, is the importance of family and how the love of family is unconditional and it's forever and we should remember all of those who came before us. And in the movie you see this with them showcasing the day of the dead and how powerful memories are and those loved ones who eventually will leave you can live on through memories as long as you don't forget about them. Another Pixar movie that really got me in the field. Now, I was older when I watched this movie. I was twenty four years old when it came out back in But I love the concept and the message and inside out it's not only how we should embrace sadness, but how it's important with all the things you feel, that you don't bottle up your emotions and it's okay to feel things, and that you can't be happy all the time because in the movie, all of Riley's emotions are trying to make sure that she never feels pain and everything is just happy, go lucky, and they try the whole time to keep her sadness totally away, keep everything bad locked away from her. But you learn that that's not healthy. So I feel like this was one of the more impactful Pixar movies, especially in the last ten years. I would put this up there on like the must see movies that I showed my kids some day, and then let's talk about Soul, which when this movie came out and as I watched it, I didn't feel like Soul was a kid's movie. At all because the us in I learned in Soul, it's almost a very kind of existential crisis type situation, and the overall message is to not overlook the small things in life. The whole time, this guy thinks he wants to be this musician. He's had this dream forever, but he feels like since it's been reduced to him just being a teacher, that he hasn't really accomplished what he wanted to in life. And he spends the whole time trying to reach this goal, realizing he's had all the things that make up life really around him his entire time. All he had to do was really just look around. It really just shows us as adults how we spend all our time pursuing these goals, trying to achieve all these things, like all the time being focused on this big overarching goal because we think if we don't get there, we're a failure. And it really kind of shows us that you have to make time and focus on the things that make you happy, and they don't have to be that thing you were destined to do. It could be just enjoying food, spending time with your family, teaching a class, being a part of somebody else's life. It doesn't have to be this thing you were destined to be, and you don't necessarily have to have a goal that you live and strive for in life. You can find happiness and just the everyday things. And watching that movie, I feel like us as adults, we had that kind of inward look on our life of evaluating our jobs, like is this really making me happy? Is this really what I want to be doing with the rest of my life, which I feel is probably important for a kid to learn too. But I almost felt like that was Pixar's next step up of making an animated movie for adults. And if there was ever a time to have like a PG thirteen or maybe like an R rated next step level of Pixar movie, I could see it going in that way after something like Soul. Now, yeah, I know an R rated superhero movie makes more sense, but you never know, they may run out of kid friendly ideas that they have to go that route. But those are just some of the lessons I think we've all learned from Disney Pixar movies. There are tons of more movies, tons of more lessons I could have covered, but I do want to get into my spoiler free review of Turning Red, and I'll also tell you what I learned from that movie as an adult man. And I realized now that I'm having my own existential crisis after talking for that long about animated movies. So I'm gonna take a break for a second and come back after this. Let's get into a spoiler free movie review now. I want to talk about Turning Red, which is available to stream for free on Disney Plus. Yes it does not have the pay wall, just up there for free. I've been talking about Disney Pixar movies and how Pixar just gets more and more progressive of and I have to say, I think in the last five years, this is probably one of the boldest Pixar movies I've seen. It's about this girl turns thirteen years old, and all of a sudden, her life is completely different, not only going through changes that you would go through as a thirteen year old, but also having this battle of wanting to defy the authority of her mother be her own person. But now she has this bizarre thing that happens to her when she gets too excited or too emotional. She literally turns into a Big Red Panda. I'll get into a little bit of the controversy around this movie the lesson I learned from it, But first, here's just a little bit of the turning Red trailer, Red Moster, this happened? What did you say? Our ancestors had a mystical connection with Red pandas kids, little quirk rights in our family. So the movie is about Maitland Lee, who just turned thirteen years old. This is the first Disney Pixar movie directed by a woman, the first movie from Disney and Pixar to be set in Canada, and the second to feature an Asian lead. And it's a coming of age story. It's all about going through changes in your body. At the core of the movie, it deals with puberty and what comes along with that and a young girl's life. But outside of that, it's more of her struggle to not be this kid who has always done everything her mom has said and kind of go out and defy that and find her own way to be herself and not have to fall in line with everything that has come before her in her family. And what happens to her now that she is thirteen years old. She finds out about her family history and how all the women have had what it has happened to her now whenever she gets emotional, whenever she gets too stressed out or sad, she turns into a giant red panda. She completely freaks out. The first time it happens. Her mom lets her no the entire history behind it, and that if they perform this ritual they can keep it in check. But all she has to do is for about a month be able to control her emotions because if she's not able to, the panda will become a part of her and not be able to go away. And immediately while watching this movie, yet felt so different that I questioned it a little bit. I didn't know if I was going to be able to get into it. And again I'm fully self aware that I'm a thirty year old male watching this movie. So parts of it it was just hard for me to identify with and the movie was so different that it took me a second to get into just the visual concept around this movie. And I love that it's said in the early two thousands. I love all the references to things from the nineties and the technology at that time, from the tomagotchi to the flip phones with the T nine texting. I loved all that, and what I really loved about it was the animation style. They pulled a lot from anime, and the characters kind of have those big expressions and those fast, quick movements that really transferred well to Pixar and kind of gave it its own identity. And I loved all the characters in this how they all dressed in a certain color, and it just did a very good job at defining each of their different personalities and their obsession with this boy bend in the movie, which also was a call back to the early two thousands, but ultimately where it goes back to and why this movie kind of comes all the way back around and what makes it a great Disney Pixar movie is that it's all about growing up. It shows parents that you know, you need to give your kid a little bit of freedom, be who they're going to be, let them make mistakes, not take total control over their lives. And I think what I identified with it a little bit is having sometimes an overbearing family press and how sometimes that can cause more rebellion. And it also shows what kids go through with friends at this age, and the sad realization that I always make watching movies like this. How at that time, you know, friendship seems so important to you and the people with you are going to be friends for the rest of your life. It's really not the case, Like I don't have any friends that I've been with that long in my life, so maybe I'm a rare case. But at the time, as a kid, it feels like the most important thing, and betraying your friends, are letting down your friends, like it's going to be the end of your life. And the story and the lesson that this teaches is that even though you do damage those relationships, you know they can be repaired. So I think there are a lot of great lessons here on the surface level. Maybe it's uncomfortable for some people to show their kids a movie that does deal with things like puberty, but again going back to what I love about movies, And again I don't have kids, so I can't speak from a perspective as a parent, But when I was a kid, like I always talking think about earlier, a lot of the things I learned work through movies, and sometimes parents aren't there have the time to teach a kid about this, And I would just love if there is a kid out there like me who didn't have a movie like this when they were growing up, that this can kind of be a little bit of a moral compass, a little bit of like, I know what you're going through, and here is a very unusual, over the top story, but at the core of it, you can still identify and see yourself in this character. I loved maitland Lee in this movie. I think she is a very memorable character. She goes on a very incredible emotional journey in this movie. This movie checked all the boxes for me. It had the fun elements of whenever she would change into the Red Panda. It had the emotional elements when she's just trying to be a normal kid and make your parents happy, but also have friends. It had the animation I loved, and of course I was talking about all the nostalgic references. One of my favorite Pixar movies in the last ten years. I would give it four out of five Red Pandas I just thought it was really well done. Now it's time for the part of the podcast where I break down the movie trailer coming to you very soon in theaters or streaming in a segment I like to call it's time to head down to movie Mike Paul, and today we're talking about a brand new movie coming to Netflix called The Bubble. It is directed by one of the best comedic directors, Judd Apataw, and it's a meta comedy. So it's a movie about making a movie. And Judd Apatow has made some of the best comedies of the last twenty years, from Knocked Up to This Is forty the Four year Old Virgin. Most recently he came out with The King of Staten Island. And I feel like Joda Patel is a little bit hit or miss right now in this movie called The Bubble. Like I said, it's a meta comedy. It takes place during the pandemic around October of and this group of actors they get put into this bubble. They're all staying in a hotel trying to make this studio franchise movie. Before I get into more what I think about this, here's just a little bit of the Bubble trailer. Well, it's the start of production of Fifth Beast six. Thank you for joining us in our bubble. We are one of two movies in production right now. If we fail the studio is going to go down. This movie is gonna make the world forget about all their problems. What we're doing is edge. It's really crystal, just enough TikTok with a dinosaur. So this movie is coming out on Netflix on April one, April Fool's Day, And after watching that trailer almost thought, is this in April fools Prank? But it looks like it's very much is a real movie. And I love Judd Apatow, I just think in this stage of his career, a meta comedy is not what I'm looking for from him. I kind of want him to go back to his roots. And I feel like he is such a well established director now that he can set out to make the movies he wants to make, whether they come out in theaters or whether they come out in Netflix. I think he just has that power now as a director, and you know, and you know, more respect to him for that. But I kind of feel a little bit, at least to me, that Judd Apatow has fallen off a little bit as a director. You know, he very much boasts these long run times, and I'm all for long form content. I watched The Batman, which is three hours and love did. Before that, I watched the Justice League Snyder cut, which was four hours, and I love that. So I think certain material does warrant a longer run time. And the reason he makes comedies longer is because he says, while they are comedies, there are also like character studies, and he really wants to flesh out these characters. And I don't really think that really transfers the same way when I'm watching you Know, the King of Staaten Island? Do I really need an extra twenty minutes to flesh out a fart joke from Pete Davidson. I don't really think it's has the same kind of correlation. And this movie is two hours in six minutes, and I don't really know what to expect from a meta comedy for that long. Just from the trailer, it doesn't look like laugh out loud funny to me. It looks very inside, which could be good. Like I love movies, a movie about making a movie during the pandemic could be funny, but I just don't see it being funny for that long. W This movie does have going for it is a very big ensemble cast of a lot of comedic actors from fred Armison, Keegan, Michael Key, Pedro Pascal is a lead in this, so it's a pretty big range there. And they are also kind of at the same time doing a parody of Jurassic Dominion, which was also in production at the time of this movie, So that's what the movie they are making in this is kind of mimicking or poking fun at So I will watch this one, but I feel like it's one that if it doesn't have me after the first hour, I'm not going to commit to that second hour. I think his comedy is just at a certain point they just kind of stopped being funny. And I even see now that he's considering making a This Is forty Part two, which would be This Is fifty And I think of all the Jet Apatow movies to make a sequel to, that's like the one at the bottom of my list. I would much rather see a Knocked Up two or a follow up on the forty year Old Virgin. But again, that comes out on Netflix on April one. That's the bubble from Jet Apataw. This links addition of movie Law Paul Are and that's gonna do it For this week's podcast. If you made it to this point of the podcast. Well, you made it to the very end, and you can let me know that you made it to the end by tagging me in your Instagram story, hit a screenshot of wherever you're listening to, take a picture of your car dash and be like, hey, I made it to the end of the podcast. And I know that means you are a true dedicated movie crew listeners. So I really appreciate that. And this is the part of the podcast where I always give a listener shout out. You can do that by well doing what I just said, send me a tweet, email me Movie Mike d at gmail dot com. And this week's shout out goes to Ramon Sanchez, who sent me a d M and he actually asked me to come on as a guest to his podcast called De Stigmatized. He's a big listener of the Bobby Bones Show and a fan of this podcast. We got to talking about that too before we recorded that podcast, but I did an episode with him all about mental health, about my weight loss journey, about what it's like coming from hispan background having Mexican parents talk about my wife. So appreciate it. Ra'mon for having me on your podcast, and for being a listener of this podcast. If you want to listen to that episode, I'll put a link in the description of this podcast. Just click on that, and don't forget the Sunday night on ABC, the oscars are going down, so I'll be watching and tweeting along to those. You can follow me there at Mike Distro. And then next week I'll do the regular episode, but I'll also do a bonus emergency episode to talk about all the Oscar winners. So all that coming up next week. But until then, go out and watch good movies and I'll talk to you later.