Summary
➡ The text discusses a movie featuring Hilary Duff, where she plays a teenager who meets a famous pop star in Italy. The text criticizes the movie for its unrealistic portrayal of teenage life and the risky situations the main character gets into. It also discusses a theory that the main character might be dead, and the movie is her afterlife. The text ends with a discussion about the nostalgic feeling the movie brings and the possibility of a Hallmark movie podcast.
➡ The text discusses a theory that a character, possibly Lizzie McGuire, dies after falling in the shower and the rest of the story is her afterlife journey. The theory is supported by various scenes and symbols in the story, such as a veil that could represent a burial shroud, and a character named St. Peter, who in Christian tradition is the gatekeeper of heaven. The text also discusses the show’s departure from its original setting to Rome, and the character’s family’s sudden ability to afford a trip to Italy. The text ends with a critique of a potentially inappropriate relationship between a young character and an older one.
➡ The text discusses a movie where a young girl is manipulated by a 17-year-old boy who tries to ruin her singing career. The movie also features a surprising twist where the girl finds her identical twin. The text also mentions a discussion about the possibility of having doppelgangers and how it feels to encounter one. Lastly, it talks about different TV shows from the 2000s and how quickly one can age out of a show.
➡ The text discusses the speaker’s nostalgia for various children’s TV shows like Ren and Stimpy, Muppet Babies, and Pee Wee’s Playhouse. They also mention the Lizzie McGuire show and movie, comparing it to other shows like Clarissa Explains It All. The speaker also talks about how certain shows or movies are targeted at specific audiences, like a PG-13 horror movie for 14-year-old girls. Lastly, they discuss the careers of the Lizzie McGuire cast, noting that most of them seem to have avoided major scandals.
➡ The text discusses a show where most actors found success and changed their careers. The author also mentions a newer show that might have dampened the success of the original. The conversation then shifts to other actresses and shows from around 2003, with a focus on science fiction and fantasy. The text ends with a discussion about the challenges faced by child stars and how rare it is for them to maintain a successful and normal life after their early fame.
➡ The discussion revolves around the recurring theme in Disney movies where a child gets separated from their parents in the first few minutes. This theme is referred to as the “Disney proxy”. The conversation also touches on the careers of Hilary Duff and Miley Cyrus, their roles in Disney shows, and the possibility of celebrity doppelgangers. The participants also reminisce about old TV shows and comedians, highlighting the impact of media on different generations.
➡ The discussion revolves around the Lizzie McGuire movie, where Lizzie undergoes a significant transformation during her trip to Rome. The speakers analyze the film’s plot, comparing it to traditional narratives of foreign romances and hero journeys. They also discuss the movie’s appeal to its target audience, teenage girls, and its cultural significance in the early 2000s. Despite some criticisms, they conclude that the film is not bad and serves as an interesting time capsule of its era.
➡ A new comic, eagerly awaited for two years, is set to launch in late June. The comic, available at nasacomic.com, is about Stanley Kubrick directing the Apollo space missions, making it a great read for comic, Kubrick, or conspiracy fans. The creator also hosts a podcast where they discuss both good and bad movies, with Britney Spears’ Crossroads being a future topic. In addition, there’s a mention of the ’27 club’, a group of celebrities who died at age 27, and a hint at a trip to Italy.
Transcript
It was so cheesy. I can’t believe I used to like that. We’ll talk about it because we’re. I’m coming from a very different point. And we are. We are on the air now. So this is the occult. Not live. We’re not. We’re not live. We’re not live, but we are recording. Okay, so this is the adult, adult Disney podcast, a caught Disney podcast where we go to the mouse’s graduation, pull down its curtains and make a brazen fool of ourselves. As always, this is Matt here, joining me as a paranoid american house trix. I had my own little intro.
My intro was going to be, why not take a crazy chance? Why not do a crazy dance? Because if we lose this moment, we might lose a lot, so why not? There we go. Okay. That shows some psychological fortitude. So you’re looking at the artistic creation of the move or I’m looking at the most embarrassing moment of the movie and running with that. So I’ve got a good one today. And we also have kind of like a special episode because we’ve got another guest. And I want to introduce everyone to. To Megan, but also allow Megan to introduce herself to everybody.
All right. Hey, I’m Megan Claire Murphy. You can call me Megan. I’m an actress and youtuber. I have my own YouTube show called the Aunt Nay Nay show. It’s a kid show, and I’m happy to be here. Thank you. Thanks for popping in. And yeah, this is the Lizzie McGuire movie today. A movie as when we started talking, Megan, you were saying you were very into it when it was new and on the air as a 15 at the time for me, you know, I guess I was going to go see X Men two. It said this was released on the same weekend as X two, so I would have passed the post, have been like Lizzie McGuire, who’s the hell.
Who the hell is that? And then gone to see X two. You know, this wasn’t made for me on our list. It was kind of one where we didn’t know if we were gonna do it. Cause we were like, why is this on the animated film list? Not knowing that she does her, like, inner thoughts, soliloquies. It’s animation, things like that. And when you were interested in doing a movie, I put it on the list. And as soon as this was one of your choices, I was like, yes, I guess this is how we do this movie.
So thanks for being in on that. I think it officially counts after seeing it. It’s got enough animation. And the animation is not just throwaway stuff. It actually kind of moves some of the internal dialogue along and, like, the plot points. So I think it legitimately counts. Like, this isn’t a non animated movie, just shoehorned in. Yes. It’s not the gnome mobile, which only had animatronic animation. Yeah, you shut your mouth. That one was worth it. Oh, it was worth it. I’m just saying that had less animation than the Lizzie McGuire movie, so. Well, Megan, you were saying that you grew up with this a bit, so can you give us.
It might be cheesy now, but you liked at the time. So what was your trip with Lizzie? Um, I don’t remember what year the tv show first came out, but I know I was, like, in high school, or just about to get to high school at the time. I was probably, like, 14 or 15, but I loved it from the get go. I loved all the hairstyles and all the clothes and all the. She would wear makeup, and she was only in the 8th grade, you know, and I couldn’t wear makeup because my parents wouldn’t let me.
So I thought that was cool. And I liked all the. I guess I liked the characters, too. I like Gordo and her friend. Well, her. I forgot the name of her other friend, but it’s a female friend who is not in the movie. Not in the movie. On a. It said she’s on a family trip to Mexico City at the time. Oh, yeah. I. Oh, I’m actually looking at the movie page, which would not. Are you talking about the actress or the character in the show? Was on a trip to Mexico City. Oh, the character from the show was on the trip.
Yeah. The actor had just moved on to a new series, so it was not in the last few episodes of the series and was not in the movie. Okay, so this is Wendy Chang. Wasn’t that her name? I’m stumbling around on the wiki page, to be honest, but that sounds pretty sure. Perfectly possible. Oh, here we go. Margaret chan. Margaret chan. Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. Oh. Oh, no. That is the. The class president who is absent in here, who may have been a character in the show. I’m not sure. She was like, Lizzie’s. Lizzie had two best friends in the tv show was Gordo, who was the guy.
And there was a girl, too, Miranda Sanchez, played by the one named actor Lalanne. Okay. Yeah. American actress, singer songwriter and bassist. Okay, that’s cool. That’s her name. Anyway, I used to love that show because it was. I thought Lizzie and her friends were so cool and hip and had cool clothes and was she actually in 8th grade or was this like a 20 year old Hillary? I think I was in the 8th or 9th grade when it started. When the tv show started. By the time the movie came out in 2003, that’s the year I graduated high school.
So I was like 17 or 18. Excuse me. Hilary Duff was exactly age specific when doing the show. Born 87. Okay. Actually. Okay. And the movie. She’s graduating high school too, so that’s interesting that you kind of like. No, she’s actually junior high. I thought she was graduating junior high in the movie. Yeah. She’s only going into the 9th grade in Japan. Graduating from junior high is a big deal in the States. It’s not. I don’t even. I didn’t even have a junior. I didn’t go to junior high. I had seven years of elementary and the rest was basically high school.
So, yeah, I thought, I guess somebody commemorates that. But, yeah, for me, it was a little weird. My daughter’s 15. She’s third grade, junior high. Excuse me, I’m sounding very japanese talking about this 9th grade. Yeah. So I guess in that way, this movie should appeal to me because she’s supposed to take a trip to Australia with her class at the end of the year. It’s kind of the same setup here. Hopefully she doesn’t stumble and destroy the graduation. But, hey, you don’t know. She could do that. So I’m curious, what were the cheesy parts when you said you rewatched it now and it was cheesy? I took notes.
Like, there were so many musical montages. Like, I was. Let me read you some of the notes I wrote. This is Disney when I was watching. Fair enough. And I think that this movie almost felt like a vehicle to sell the soundtrack more than it needed to sell. Yeah. And Hilary Duff was trying to break out as a singer at the time. And so there’s a couple of songs that she sang on the movie soundtrack. But I just wrote down so many musical montages and all capital letters. And I wrote four musical montages so far. And then at some point I wrote.
And now they’re doing a dance montage. You know, when she’s learning how to dance with the pop star guy, we don’t like him. Yeah. See, for me, it felt like not so many musical numbers because. Because last week, for one of my other podcasts, I had to watch a Bollywood movie. So for me, this was pretty thin with, you know, every five minutes is like a five. Another five minute dance sequence. Right. So. And I went into this 100% blind never. So I’ve actually worked, I think, on some overdubbing for a Lizzie McGuire movie, but I was just doing, like, boring technical stuff.
But I’m almost positive that when I was at ideas, which was the post production studio for Disney, they had all sorts of, like, if someone messed up a line or if they. Someone decided to change a line because of who knows what reason, they would do it all through, like, high speed, they would do over the Internet, essentially, or over, like, phone lines had, like, a weird setup. So I think I’d worked on some of this, but that’s my only understanding, is that Hilary Duff was in it. And that was all I knew going in. So the musical numbers, I guess, didn’t really even rub me the wrong way because I knew it was two thousands movie.
And I was totally expecting this to just be a commercial for Hilary Duff. A lot of the tunes were catchy. I’m not saying I didn’t like the music. I’m just saying, wow, they’re doing this again. Another montage. I think it’s. And also, like, the teenage angst made it kind of cheesy. Like, Gordo gets friend zoned hard and this movie, and he’s so sweet. He loves her so much and he’s willing to do anything for her. And she’s so mean to him. She’s just really on the very end when they. I almost saw him as like a.
Like a toxic friend in a way, because think here, hear. Hear me out on this one, right? He sees her meet up with some random dude in Italy, like, doesn’t know him for more than 10 seconds, and automatically starts making excuses for her to go out and see this guy explore out in the city unsupervised with this creepy older dude that’s like, if he was 17 and she’s like 14 or 15. I feel like he would have done more than like facilitate this if he was like, truly a good friend because this is very risky behavior for a 14 year old.
Well, the guy that she Paolo is not just anybody. He’s a world famous pop star. Or he’s at least an italian famous pop star in Italy. Yeah, cuz she doesn’t know who he is when he introduces himself. Yeah, it’s also a little creepy that apparently he’s like, like going after, somewhat romantically, a girl that looks just like his ex slash partners. And he then calls his sister. Like, as soon as that came up, it was, I don’t know, it was weird. Like he, he was giving off creeper vibes immediately. Within like the first five minutes. Exactly.
My. I thought the same thing. I was like, and then he. Lizzie McGuire’s got to be like at most 14 in this movie, the character. And I was like 15. Wait, that guy’s 17? When they said he was 17, they make a point of it just so that it’s. We’re not talking felony here. That’s the main reason I feel like they, they shoehorned that particular line in the law. Disney’s lawyers had notes for them. He’s hurting 18 next week, so this movie needs to wrap up. I was thinking, you know, watching it just, I mean, my first thought is like, oh, obviously this movie isn’t for me.
Like I said, my daughter’s about that age and I can connect with that. I had my Europe class trip near the end of high school. I can connect with that. The version of this that was made for me would probably be that Spider man far from home movie. Right, because now you get Spider man as well. I mean, I saw that one, too. Yeah. Yeah. So. And I guess that has more of our postmodern humor where this has the early two thousands Disney channel humor, which might be what you’re calling cheesy now, but again, if you grew up on that, it’s, you know, it’s kind of like it still works.
Like, I’ve gone on several times on this, another podcast where I still weirdly watch saved by the bell. So I think I can pinpoint out at least something that makes it a very particularly early two thousands Disney. And that’s that. It’s like overly optimistic to where if, if we were watching the same exact movie in 2024, I think she’d be a little bit more snarky and people would be a little bit more self aware and like, kind of like negative and a little bit more snap back y. And then this one, she’s, like, legitimately like an amish girl.
Like, the first time out in the world. And, like, doesn’t necessarily do anything wrong. There’s no predators out in the world. Like, everything is so safe and vanilla in a way that, like, it’s in the true Disney universe. Like, if Disney Epicok, you know, really became a little self contained city, this almost, like, all takes place inside that little Epcot city. What’s funny, you mentioned that there was a canceled revival from about 2019. Fully canceled in 2020. But they did. Oh, yeah. I remember hearing about that film. Two episodes, which I guess no one has seen, but it says a Lizzie McGuire series with yourself.
Yes. Would have centered on Lizzie at the age of 30, navigating life, working as an apprentice. I can’t talk today as an apprentice. I did it wrong again. To an interior decorator. She would be living in an apartment in Brooklyn, New York City, engaged to a man who owns a restaurant in Soho, Manhattan. When Lizzie discovers her fiance cheating on her, she returns home to Los Angeles. The animated odder ego would return. Most of the actors, the thing that deep six did is after they did the two episodes, the creator last name is Minsky. What’s her first name? Terry Minsky.
Okay, that’s great. She was in on it. I guess they made two episodes and then she dropped out. And they’re like, I guess we’re not going to make it without the person who. It almost sounds like one of those hallmark movies, like the ones they play at, like, Christmas. That was Hilary Duff’s first role on television, I believe. Hallmark movie. That’s awesome. I don’t, I don’t hate Hallmark movies, man. Sometimes if I need something mindless, that’s, like, unoffensive, but also just interesting enough that it doesn’t irritate me to be on, like, Hallmark movies. Knock it out of the park.
Yeah, sometimes they do. We should we do an occult Hallmark, Hallmark show? I feel like no one’s in that space right now. No one’s doing like, a breakdown to Hallmark. You would get a lot of people who would want to watch that. We could kill it during, like, Christmas, too, man. Just always sprinkle in, like, all the pagan background. Cultural, then cultural. Dismiss the podcast. Which gate. That could be a great idea. No, I can’t say I ever had the affinity for Hallmark films. Makes me think of a Sunday afternoon with nothing to do. I don’t want to be stuck in the house of the Hallmark movie on the tv, on a Sunday afternoon, you know, I got hooked because I was on vacation once at Christmas, and we went to, like, a bar somewhere, and it was taken forever to get, like, the drink because it was, like, super busy.
And they had this hallmark movie on. And I just realized, like, the same way that not every pop song is necessarily great musically, but they know what the damn formula is like. They know the exact ratio between notes and cadence between notes, that it kind of, like, tickles a certain part of your brain even if you hear it. And you’re like, this is garbage. This is trash. AI could do better than this. You’re like, but it’s still damn catchy. And I almost feel like. Like Hallmark is just the cinematic version of that. What’s like, how the legacy sequels now? You know, like Ghostbusters, I think.
I think someone said Beetlejuice did a Deo. Like, it has the ominous opening shot with a theme being played on a tinkly piano. I mean, it’s kind of like the same thing you’re talking about where they’re trying to get this certain nostalgic vibe, melancholic vibe in you. I don’t hate it. I don’t hate it when someone uses nostalgia on me. Yeah. Trying to say, watching the Lizzie McGuire movie for the first time today since 20 years ago, it was very nostalgic for me, like, watching it back then. How I felt about it when I watched it in 2003 versus how I felt about it when I watched it today was very different.
I was like, I can’t believe, like, I used to think that this was good, you know, this. I mean, it is good, but it’s like, I guess it’s made for teenagers is why I’m at the age of 39 now that I’m like, oh, my goodness, teenager stuff. I found something a little deeper in it, I think. And originally, I wasn’t sure if I was just reading into it for the sake of having something to talk about. But the more I watched it through this certain lens, the more it made sense. And I. I didn’t look to see because I didn’t want to have my heart broken if someone already had this theory.
But I have a theory that the Lizzie McGuire movie is all about her being dead and that she dies in the first five minutes. Has this ever even come up before? Have you heard of this theory? No, I mean, I wouldn’t at the very beginning. Hear me out. I’ve got, like, a list of. Of things to back this up. In the very beginning of the credits, before the credits are even done rolling. She’s dancing in the bathroom and she slips and she falls in the bathtub. Right? She falls in the shower. And as soon as that happened, I was just thinking it would be funny if there was a thread here where, like, she’s a ghost now, and, and that, that’s not what happens, by the way.
She doesn’t turn into a ghost. But I was just thinking, like, what if she died here? And all of a sudden, every little thing that’s, like, started to fall into place all backs up this theory. So I just wanted to plant that seed, and I’m happy to go through it as we talk about it. Okay, so you’re going to 6th sense it, basically. I’m interested to hear more. Okay, well, so just for the sake of the argument, falling in the shower is a commonly fatal way for a lot of people to go out, right. This wouldn’t be like, a completely unheard of thing that only happens in cartoons.
This happens in real life constantly enough that this way of dying isn’t completely, like, Disney movie cinematic. Right? So right after, she has a clumsy girl, right? Yeah. And she is a clumsy girl. And right after this scene in the shower, they show an animated, I know it’s like nail polish or something, but it spills over and it’s, it’s kind of dripping, not like regular nail polish, just like that’s a lot. And it kind of looks like it’s dripping blood. That’s also maybe a little bit of a stretch. So it goes. They tell her that they’re going to go to Rome.
They mentioned that Margaret Chan might have gotten ebola, which is its own thread because I found, like, an old post from Twitter from, like ten years ago that links Margaret Chan to an actual ebola outbreak in the United States. But as soon as Lizzie actually shows up to her graduation, she stares into this big, bright light and can’t see anything else, like, because all of a sudden it’s thrown on her that she needs to make the speech. So now she’s looking into this big, bright light, and as soon as the speech ends, she kind of, like, falls.
But what happens is she tears a veil down all around everyone else and exposes the rest of the stage to everyone except her. She’s covered by the veil, and the veil is like a dark brown or like a tannish dirt color. So, like, all so. And this is just getting started, right, well, that’s like her getting buried. Exactly. She’s getting, she’s pulls the veil, she gets buried. And then, like, the mean girls in the audience, they have this quote, and they say, this is so sad. It’s like watching a fluffy animal get killed. So now they’re.
They’re legitimately making a metaphor between her or a simile, I guess, because they said, like, right, I. So they made a simile between Hilary Duff or Lizzie McGuire being this, like, animal that’s dying. They say, it’s so sad. And then the very next day, they say, oh, you were on good Morning America. Little wordplay. But when they actually go to Rome, the very first time, she wakes up. Right? The first time. And Gordo’s with her, and he’s like, come on, let’s go and look at the sunrise or something from the hotel. Like, like, all the bad stuff is after she’s gotten to Rome.
And as they walk out to look at this, like, new Roman City, basically the first time that she’s come out from under this veil that we’ve seen, and he’s wearing a freaking jacket that says St. Peter on the back, which is who you see after you die and you have to enter the gate in order to go to heaven. So, like, this whole sequence, I’m just wondering, like, she fell in the shower, she died. She goes to see St. Peter, like, in Rome. And now Rome is almost maybe like a divine comedy kind of thing. Like, maybe it’s like Dante’s inferno.
That’s good, because I was trying to take the. I was thinking Mickey Mouse club, right? Which Hilary Duff is a little bit after that. She’s in this little weird inter idol period between, you know, Gosling and Timberlake and Britney Spears and all that and the later ones. So Selena Gomez and stuff are calling her a, you know, inspiration to her. I. And, yeah, the most I could really find on Duff was she wore what people considered a distasteful native american Halloween costume in 2016, which is kind of whatever. And then a year later, she was complaining about her neighbors smoking cigarettes and weed too much.
So publicly. That’s it. That’s it. So, yeah, yeah, I definitely like the idea that we put a lens on the movie itself, and I kept doing the production research, and it’s just like, this happened. This happened to what’s the hook of the show. It’s about a girl growing up in junior high. It’s like, well, okay, I just wanted to show this. I don’t know if you can see it. Wow. Just because it says wow on the. Yeah, but this. Yeah, I see it. And it says St. Peter on the back of Gordo’s jacket. And this is literally the first time that they acknowledge that they’re in this.
This new sort of city, new area. So I just thought that was remarkable. Was it in 2003? Watching it was a bit disappointing. You watched the show. It’s all this junior high school stuff. And, yeah, this is like a split from the show, as much as I can tell, because we get ten minutes at home, and then it’s like, we’re off to Rome. Best friend missing. You know, it seems like it’s a pretty different vibe. I noticed the show actually was pretty highly rated, like, on rotten tomatoes. It’s like 80% for first season, 100 for a second.
This got a 40 with people just being like, well, if you like it already, you might like this movie. You know, take it and like it. I think I have a love hate relationship with this movie now. Now that I watched it again today. I mean, it has a good message at the end where she sings the song, this is what dreams are made of. And she’s talking about, like, how. How to be, what happiness is. And, like, that’s what dreams are made of. It’s happiness. And she gets to go after her own dream, or one of my dreams, at least, of performing on stage in front of thousands of people.
Lizzie McGuire does. Yeah. Now I’m just trying to tie in other Disney stuff. I went to the theme park Disneysea a few weeks ago, and watching this movie, you know, I mean, they’re in real Italy, where they have fake Italy stuff, and they’re having, like, a big. The fantasmic thing about dreams is the Tokyo version. So I’m like, well, there’s a running thread to the theme parks now. I mean, you know, Disney just loves to throw out, you know, dreams become wishes, which is your story for hope. You know, they just throw out these words all the time.
But I didn’t think of that when I watched it today. But you’re right, I didn’t. I don’t think it would necessarily have to be a disappointment that it doesn’t take place in her hometown, because this is kind of like the established canon of these teen movies is that they go outside of where they’re at. Like you mentioned, saved by the bell, right? Saved by the bell. Every time they had a movie, where do they go? Yeah, they go to Hawaii. So it’s just, like, a way to do the change of scenery. And I don’t know if, I think they shot some of those actually in Hawaii.
So it also feels like they work themselves in, like, a vacation by, like, writing the thing to take place on location. Oh, and don’t forget the Vegas vacation where Jessie Spano shows up only for the last five minutes looking like she’s come directly from the set of showgirls. I was just looking at my notes to see if there was anything else. Oh, and, like, Lizzie’s parents and her little brother, like, Lizzie’s family just up and goes to Italy to be with her. Like, how much money do they make that they can afford three tickets to Rome? Just like that bourgeoisie.
They’re going to be up against the wall first when the revolution starts, when, when Lizzie is looking out at the view of Tuscany or wherever she is, and she’s like, it’s so beautiful. And Paolo’s like, yes, you are. I was like, yeah. She told 14 year old is falling for the groomer. Like, and there’s an adult watching it happen. It’s like giving them tips. Yeah, see, I mean, I’m just watching this with sarcastic snark, being like, he’s gonna moped her off to some back alley italian film studio quotations. And not to just, like, give it an immediate dark turn here, but with, with all the child actor stuff that has been coming up in the news.
But also this. I was like, my ears perked up because of the very beginning of the movie. One of, like, the songs lyrics, because I always watch it with captions. And one of the lyrics, as the movie’s opening is a moment of pain for a lifetime of pleasure. And I couldn’t think for, like, what, in what context does that matter? And it starts out, like, literally the first frame you see in the movie, it’s the little brother that’s filming blackmail. So, like, you’ve got this weird blackmail angle. You’ve got this weird, like, moment of pain, lifetime of pleasure.
I don’t even know what that means yet. You’ve got, like, there’s a lot of weird things happening in this particular movie for the ultimate storyline to be around her getting groomed by a 17 year old, like, international, you know, creeper. I will put, my prediction was off. I wrote when I was doing notes, I said, this guy will become way creepier at minute 37 of this film. I was wrong. It was minute 74 when. When he makes his heel turn. What was in the movie turn moment when it’s revealed that she’s being put on stage to look bad so he can destroy Isabella’s burgeoning singing career.
Like, oh, it’s not him trying to go solo. It’s her and blah, blah, blah, kind of convoluted weird plan. Not a good plan. There’s better plans. Also, deep down, they both. Apparently, they both just suck at singing. And the only thing that they needed to take each other down was just to let an audience hear them actually sing without the auto tune, which it’s like, maybe they should both fail. Like, I don’t even know. I just saw the notorious Millie Vanilli press conference. Millie trying to turn Vanilli’s mic on. And Vanilli’s trying to turn Millie’s mic on.
Right. I remember watching that when it was, you know, when it was a new thing on the news. But it’s all a trick done by Paolo because Isabella actually can sing, and he said that she was lip syncing, but it’s the other way around. He’s the one who always lip syncs because he’s the one who cannot sing. But then Isabella comes on stage. Isabella and Hilary Duff comment. Well, they’re both Hilary duff. That’s why Isabella and Lizzie sing a song together at the end. You know what? They both seem so non plussed about being identical twins.
Like, that. Never notice it. But she doesn’t say, like, wow, this girl really does look exactly like me. Why is that? Let’s. Let’s look into this. That almost feels like a way more interesting story to, like, find out where my doppelganger came from versus let’s fall in love with a groomer. Know the twilight zone? Kind of that. A few times. I’ve seen a dude that looked just like me once, actually, at about age 15. You kill him. You know that, right? Well, there was a glass between us. He was inside the cafeterias eating a ham. I remember as you walk by doing the Donald Sutherland body statues point, maybe.
You know, they say that statistically, there’s, like, seven people in the world who look exactly like you. Only six. Not exactly, but, like, look very. Almost exactly like you. Like that guy you met eating the ham. I just saw him from a distance. Of course, there’s only one Nick cage, and he’s been around for. I’ve never meth a doppelganger of mine before. I have. I’m trying to think of any. Yeah, I guess that’s my only real doppel doppelganger. I sometimes have handwriting. Doppelgangers at work. I’m like, I don’t remember writing that. Oh, I didn’t write that.
That handwriting, slightly different. I’ve had two co workers with almost the same handwriting enough where I thought I wrote it for a moment. So that’s not as weird as seeing someone who looks exactly like you, though. But it was a weird move at the end, though, because it’s like, yeah, whose show is this at the end? At what point do the producers just cut the power also for this performance? I don’t know. Get the cane out. You know, if I was producing a show, I think, don’t think I’d be very happy about what was happening. Maybe it’s live.
I don’t know. So at least she had chemistry singing with herself. Was she trying to launch a singing career prior to that? Like in the tv show? Did she have lots of songs? No, Lizzie was not trying to do anything like that on the show at all. So this is the first Hilary Duff singer. Yeah, she was kind of two tracking it. So keep in mind, Hannah Montana is a few years after this, which actually was started. I mean, it didn’t relate to Lizzie McGuire at the end. The original idea was to do a spinoff show with the latina girl sister who’s gonna be played by twelve year old Selena Gomez.
And they were gonna have the animation and blah, blah, blah. And somehow that just morphed. I think they just decided to go with Hannah Montana instead, where it’s like, okay, now she is singer and pop star, partly. Disney, wanted to keep going. They wanted to make a second Lizzie McGuire movie. They wanted to keep making the tv show. And Duff was like, you know, duff out. I’m singing now. So first cd, when it first came out, like 20 years ago, I guess it was. Did you put that on after you saw the movie? Huh? Did you put it on after you saw the movie? Yeah, I think I must have.
How did it hold up? I have it in that drawer over there. Oh, you don’t mean. But I mean like, like this week. Did you relist? No, I didn’t. I should have it. I’ve recently become, like, extra desensitized to pop music because my wife is taken going around doing housework with an iPhone, playing like, Avril Lavigne or a Carly Ray Jepsen or something out of her pocket. So it’s like, I know she’s coming because I didn’t hear the pop music coming. Sometimes that’s sounds like my kind of music. Right, right. She seems to think it makes cleaning the house fun.
I guess that’s good. So because she’s like, let’s organize your room. I’m like, I don’t want to do that. Watts isn’t. Everything’s fine. A little bit louder. Like it’s a waco and she’s the ATF. Yes, yes, exactly. And then I go running out of the house screaming, which actually probably has happened once or twice, but that’s because I like to take walks. But, yeah, I guess this is the case where Disney learned from their mistakes for their next big kids show. What were the other, like, 2000 era Disney shows? This is icarly, like, several years after this.
I don’t. Icarly was like, after I graduated high school, I graduated in 2003. There was, it was like Lizzie McGuire and even Stevens with Shia LaBeouf as the little brother. And then they had an older sister, which I liked it because I have a little brother and it’s just me and my little brother. There’s no other siblings in my family. And so there was. I don’t, I don’t remember. That’s just the main two that I watched was Lizzie McGuire and even Stevens. Okay. I hadn’t even heard that name. I mean, you know that when this came out, I had.
What? Oh, yeah. I was off, off the grid for most of this sort of stuff. I, you know, university. I graduated in 2001. Then I spent a couple years going around to environmental education. So I was, like, stuck in the woods most of the time, which we stagger here because you graduated, like, high school, right, in, like the late nineties. And I graduated in 2001. And then, Megan, you graduated in 2003. So I definitely remember, like, the same sort of era stuff. But I guess it’s just so funny that. But you were just like a couple years, what, two years about what tv shows you thought were cool when you’re in middle school and high school.
Whereas now, I mean, if you’re, you know, 30 or 40 or 50, it doesn’t really matter the type of shows that you watch. But when it comes to kids shows, like, you can age out of a show within the span of two or three years, which is an interesting dynamic here. Right. We learned he was on board for Doug, whereas I had no clue what Doug Washington. I love Doug. Right. Matt has only seen my favorite Nick tune. He’s never seen Doug. He’s only seen Disney Doug because we figured out, was it red and rugrats and Doug’s all premiered back.
Doug’s. Doug all premiered back to back. Right. But by that time, I was already playing in a punk band. So. Man, you don’t know, bro. Doug is super pumped. Right? Right. No, I mean, come on, if watching your thirties or forties or something. Yeah, sure, watch it. It’s punk. But, you know, you can’t convince a 15 year old of that. I was, like, six years old when Doug. It was Doug and rugrats and Ren and Stimpy were the first three Nick tunes ever on Nickelodeon. In 1991 or 92, I think. But I was, like, six or seven years old when they first came out, and Ren and Stimpy did, like, they were showing, like, the close ups of the boogers and stuff.
And it was. It was so gross. See, that made the jump. We still liked Ren and stimpy in, I guess, those junior high years. As I already said, it didn’t actually go to a gym. That was probably the appropriate age for it. I was watching it when I was, like, seven. I mean, being a little older, what tv children shows. We’ve talked about how maybe Muppet babies was kind of my dug in a way. Yeah, I like Muppet babies, too. Pee wee’s playhouse, I was all in on Peewee’s Playhouse. But see, I would make. And maybe I can’t separate nostalgia from anything else but Pee wee’s playhouse and Muppet babies.
Even if I tried to rewatch it now, I don’t think they would hit as well. But I swear I can watch rugrats and Doug and Ren and Stimpy, and it still feels relevant now. And it doesn’t feel like it was talking down to, like, a literal baby. Kind of like Muppet babies is. I mean, it’s hard to not be a little down to what the name has babies in it. I mean, I got the first two seasons of the Muppet show, you know, just here. So if I need my Muppets. No, no, that’s my distinction. Muppet show plays gangbusters, you know, but I wouldn’t watch Muppet babies now.
Like, what I should be watching in Muppet show, right? You’ve grown up now, so just mutton. Actual Muppets now. I don’t want none of the baby animated Muppets. Give me real Muppets. I’m a Muppet man. I’m a manly Muppet. Yeah. But it is interesting, just, like, kind of discerning, like, what is made for who and Lizard McGuire movies clearly made for a certain group of people and not for other people. And also, there’s something that was unique to the Lizzie McGuire movie and Lizzie McGuire show because it was on Disney. Because at the same, around the same time, Clarissa explains it all was on Nickelodeon.
It was also about the same age middle school that, like, goes through some of the same sort of scenarios. But she definitely has that negative snark, and it’s a little bit more like it takes place in reality versus a weird, fabricated Disney reality I used to love. Clarissa explains it all. So, like, that’s another example that if you were to rewatch it, which I don’t even think you can, I think it’s a lot of, like, lost media, but if you rewatch it, it probably. I haven’t done it. Maybe we should. Maybe that’s the next one we break down.
The cluster explains it all, but it feels like it would be topical in that, like she was kind of real with what she was thinking and wanted to kill her brother and, like, all sorts of, you know, like she was trying to cheat or she tried to cheat her way out of, like, a poetry competition. Bye. Making an AI bot that wrote poetry for her, and then she turned it in, but then she, like, felt bad about it because it was, like writing better poetry than humans. I mean, that seems like anymore. Yeah, but think about what ever write an AI bot? I don’t know.
I didn’t see the show. Did she ever do anything? No, but she had a avatar, the little cartoon lizzie. Now, we would call that an avatar. Yeah. Kind of an inside out thing, right? Yeah. The Pixar movie, which we’ll be talking about, has that going on. Different. It’s different characters in her head, but kind of the same vibe, I guess. She’s also, like, miniature. It never shows her, like, real, like real size. Yeah, but no, I was thinking one thing on my podcast where you talk about supposedly really good movies and really bad movies. We recently had to do 20 nineteen’s black Christmas as a bad movie.
And what we had to come down on is it’s not so much as bad. It’s just this movie is not made for us. This movie is clearly aimed at 14 year old girls who would like to see some horror movies but are not ready to see, you know, maggots and blood and stuff, right? So here’s this pg 13 horror movie where if you’re a 14 year old girl, this probably hits the spot for your horror fix. If you are a 35, 45 year old man, this is not a horror movie for you. There are other horror movies you can watch if you want to watch some horror movies.
Not the best marketing slogan ever. This will be scary if you’re a 14 year old girl. Otherwise, don’t watch it. You find ways to say that, though, don’t you? Let’s see what they put on the Lizzie McGuire poster. Just out of curiosity. The only risk in taking an adventure is not taking it at all. Okay, I guess that doesn’t really seem like anything, to be honest. But I liked how the Lizzie McGuire movie ended with the song as the finale, and, like, Gordo and Lizzie finally kinda got together. I guess as a character, he makes it weird immediately.
Like, the first thing he does is he makes it weird. He goes, thank you. And then he’s like, anyways, we should get back now. Like, he does, like, the worst possible thing he could do. Because now I’m assuming in her mind, she’s like, oh, what happened? Do I smell? Am I grosse? Why? Why did he just react so nonplussed about that? My 9th grade school trip to New York City, I remember falling asleep on the bus and waking up with my hair braided. So that’s how you lost your virginity? Yes. On the school bus. No, no.
Yeah, it was a, you know, I had, like, the. The what? The nineties grunge slash proto emo hair where you could, like, eat your hair, you know, so gross. Yeah, yeah. The left eye over. You know, you’re doing your own occultism there. Not that I was thinking that, you know, you just watch MTV. And I was like, oh, the Soundgarden basis. Because I didn’t have super long hair. That was grunge era. So every musician had super long hair. I was like, well, sound garden’s bassist does, and I can look like that guy. So I had his haircut, basically.
But still, you’re taking your haircuts from the band you’re watching. You know, that’s always an interesting programming aspect. Megan, I’m curious if you know. Cause I haven’t paid attention or even know what any of the other Lizzie McGuire actors. But I guess I’ve always gotten this impression that Hilary Duff was one of the few that, like, made it out of child acting without having some major weird scandals and stuff going on. Are there. Are there any, like, fallen from Grace Lizzie McGuire actors that exist out there, or did McGuire avoid the Disney curse? Not that I know of.
I didn’t really follow what happened to the other actors after the Lizzie McGuire movie ended. She starred on the show. Gosh, what was it called? The one with Sutton Foster? It was, like, a few years ago. I think it was called you. No, with Sutton Foster and Hilary Duff. I think it’s called you. Y ou that last. The name of the show you. Is that the most recent thing that she’s done now? Here we go. Younger. Younger. Yes, younger. Okay. But I never watched that show either. And she’s, like, married with a few kids now. I think Hilary Duff is the father played by Robert Carradine, who is brother to John Carradine, who has one of the more infamous celebrity.
Oh, no, no. His brother was David Carradine, who had one of the more prominent, weird celebrity deaths, if you know about that, and or assassination. Yeah, yeah. True. But. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Carradine. I mean, that’s a big name, you know, Hollywood family kind of, I guess. Haley, are we implying that that was one of Hilary Duff’s ways into Hollywood? Is Carradine? No, I’m basically just looking for what happened to these people, and if any of them have any footprints, which, because I did note the teacher or the chaperone or whatever she was speaking, which why they only have one chaperone on this trip.
Alex Boristein was the teacher. I thought she was pretty good night. I looked on, and she hasn’t from tv, right? She likes to do some Seth MacFarlane stuff. Yeah, she’ll do voices for the family guy. It seems she had roles in Ted a million ways to die in the west. So I guess she’s just become, like Seth MacFarlane day player, more or less. But I thought she was good in this movie, so, yeah, she immediately calls half of her students mouth breathing trailer trash. I don’t know. I mean, that felt a little bit on the line for a Disney movie.
Yeah. But she was a walking caricature, so, of course she said that, you know, we just did recess schools out where we had the teacher saying the same thing, but it was an animated form. Right. Clayton Snyder. I guess that was the bro dude or whatever he just said. Yeah, no dirt on him, but he’s been acting consistently, so that was the thing. It sounds like they have. They avoided the Disney curse in a little bit. They did. They did. It’s like this is some weird side pocket of Disney where everything worked out okay. It seems.
Except that Lizzie’s dead. I do want to get back to that, of course. But. But, yeah, like, I’m like, every. I did more research for this than usual, because usually I start researching very quickly. I’m like, oh. Oh, that’s interesting. That’s interesting here. I’m like, okay, they want to make a show. It was successful. She didn’t. Most of them, like, either found, you know, changed their jobs or became a reasonably working B list or D list actor. So good for them. Yeah, everything’s coming up roses and the Lizzie verse, but maybe that newer show would have, you know, put some.
Put some rain on the. On the pudding, so to speak. Well, Megan you said that you knew about the show, but you never actually saw the show, so I’m assuming that means that. No, I watched the Lizzie McGuire show for years in high school. Right, but the, but the younger show that you said, like you knew about. Yeah, I never watched that one, so I worked on it, though. You worked on it as a background actor. So why did you not watch it, even to see yourself in it? It just. I don’t know. I didn’t have time or it just wasn’t.
My kind of show just wasn’t interested. Not because I don’t like Hillary Duff. It’s just cuz I don’t know, I just didn’t. Well, I mean, the point being that they’re like, maybe she lacks some of that, like staying power that other actresses maybe really bank on. And I’m curious, are there other, any other actresses grew up that you liked in 2003, around that time, I was watching like, Star Trek and Doctor who and Game of Thrones and shows like that. I like mostly science fiction and fantasy tv shows and movies nowadays. I guess around that time I was definitely watching probably all three of those.
I mean, Lizzie McGuire Game of Thrones crossover sounds like that would have. I’m sitting here looking at the younger plot description. It’s at New York City, blah, blah. It’s not that interesting. It’s. It sounds pretty soap opera y, but it’s. What’s the name? Like, who’s younger than who? Oh, let’s see. Hilary dove is younger than Sutton Foster, and they’re all trying to like, act younger or be younger than they are. Like they want to be young because she’s like 40 years old or something. Sutton Foster is. I guess that’s culturally significant, though, right? Because Lizzie McGuire movie, everyone’s acting exactly their age.
We’re younger. Everyone is trying to get back to something, you know, something they lost. Youth. I don’t know. I just keep going back to the moment of pain for the lifetime of pleasure. And now there, now she’s searching for eternal youth. Like, are this like a vampire story arc that it’s going to turn into? Maybe it’s a moment of pleasure, but if it was, maybe I’d watch it. Maybe it turned out to be a moment of pleasure for a lifetime of existential dread. I don’t know. Yeah, that’s more realistic, unfortunately, isn’t it? I wonder if maybe if Hilary Duff Washington a little bit more of like a train wreck, there would have been more staying power.
Like, they would have had the reboot and the reboot would have gone underway, but because she ended up just being just a normal person that ended up being successful and just use that success to her advantage, that there, I guess there wasn’t as much, like, energy to be, you know, like the energy. Vampires at Disney didn’t have as much of a feast there, so they had to go on to, like, the next train wreck. Now I have to look at what Lindsay Lohan’s up to these days recently. I think she’s married now. She’s got two recent Netflix movies, which means it’s a real.
It’s a real movie, but it’s not a real movie, I guess. And that, yeah, I don’t know how Netflix movies works, but it does seem she’s, like, working and stuff now, which is nice. But did she used to. Does she have her own baby this time, or did she try to steal another one? Yes, she. I think she had her own this time. That’s good. That’s an improvement. Good for. No, we recently, again, on the film we were supposed to be bad. We watched I know who killed me, which we just basically decided someone trying to make a David lynch film and having middling results.
That was our kind of our review for that. But she looks a little older than her years from this photo here, which I guess the years of hard living will do that to you. But, like, type in Lindsay Lohan, 2024. That’s what I’m looking at. Well, I’m looking at 2023. So honestly, she looks 45 in that photo. She’s 36. That’s my assessment. But, yeah, you live your twenties like that. It happens. I mean, look, Keith Richards, he’s looked 200 years old for the past 50 years or so. Well, I think she looks beautiful and a lot healthier than she used to.
Oh. Than ten years ago, for sure. I’m just like. You can tell. Yeah. She’s probably had a few rough years in there as happen. She’s definitely had some fillers or something done to her face. Yeah. Like, and is Britney doing Vegas now? What is Britney doing now? British is doing Instagram. I think that’s her main venue. Yeah. Okay. I’ve never, uh, I don’t follow her on Instagram or anything, so I’m not sure. I guess just because she’s been the most dramatic in terms of weird burnouts and things like that, you know, she also had like a, I mean, another Disney story.
Right. But that one almost was music, trying to turn it into tv. Like crossroads. Wasn’t crossroads right around the same time as a Lizzie McGuire movie. And that was her trying to bridge from being just primarily music and known for singing into acting. And it didn’t, didn’t, it never worked out. Okay. Wants to do a, if they had just known how much people like celebrity reality tv. Imagine before, like, keeping up with the Kardashians. There was like a Britney Spears reality series. It just followed her around in the early two thousands. That would have went great.
Like, that would have been not just entertaining, but it almost would have served like a real cultural, like, inventory in a way. Right? Like, it would, it would be studied in hundreds of years from now. But we don’t have that footage. Well, you’re not wrong about that. I guess it just takes a little controversy to bring, you know, teen idols to other people’s attention. Or at least it did 20 years ago. You know, I’m wondering, why do people care more about, like, teenagers going nuts versus, I don’t know, if you’re like 60 and you’re, you’re going off the chain, it doesn’t seem like people care as much the older you get.
Like, how much is just accepted, like, oh, they’re just sundowning and you don’t talk about it as much. Well, what’s, what’s more interesting, Britney shaving her head or Mel Gibson, you know, talking to the cops? Honestly, that’s a fair one. I mean, is it Monday or Tuesday? Yeah. Okay, good point. There’s, I guess Mel Gibson wasn’t 60 at that point in time. Or maybe he was. I don’t know how old he is. But there is a weird, yeah, I guess that’s a weird thing. I came into Lizzie McGuire thinking like, oh, I’m going to get to see some celebrity burnout stuff.
And it’s like, hey, everyone’s fine here. They’re good. Good for them. I feel bad. Seriously, man. Like, that is a statistical anomaly that not only is it that rare to make it so far in Disney Hollywood and be known, but also to come out of it and not just be a weird pile of mush for everyone else’s observation for the rest of your life to just go back out and to be somewhat normal. I don’t know that it feels like that is the absolute, like 1% of the 1% when it comes to child stars. Even if you just were to look at the movies that we’ve seen so far on this series, so many tragic ends and a lot of people that just disappear and you never, whatever happened to Jonathan Taylor Thomas and Lion King, for example.
Right. But like, I don’t know. There’s not a lot that’s that still are around that aren’t sort of like black marks. Yeah, I guess it’s just all these tv ones are, you know, being put in theatrical doesn’t have that weird, whatever that weird Disney spin is. That is kind of what we’re looking at because Doug’s first movie, recess, schools out. And this movie is just like, yeah, I’m sure this is relatively, you know, nice if you’re, if you’re of the age to watch it. And I have to point out that this movie does fall into a technicality of the Disney proxy, where she is removed from her parents in the first five minutes of the movie and she kind of removes herself from the only chaperone adult figure.
So just FYI, Megan, the Disney proxy is something that I guess we’re loosely, or I’m loosely, trying to find an ongoing theme with Disney movies, and it’s that in the first five to ten minutes, without fail, a child is going to be either kidnapped or lose. Like, they’ll lose themselves and get separated from their parents. And then the movie introduces a new character that kind of is a stand in for the parents. And it’s happened on pretty much every movie out of the last, like, 60 we’ve seen, except for, like, four or five that we can pretty much name, you know, on one hand.
But Disney Maguire movie, she’s removed from her parents within five to ten minutes, especially if you consider she dies. But even if she doesn’t die, she still goes to Rome without her parents. So I feel like this is technically Disney proxy. It is like the most low strength version, though, because her parents are still alive. They’re reunited at the end. I mean, she goes back to her old life at the end. It’s not even a hero’s journey. I mean, I don’t know, maybe she becomes an italian pop star now because I guess this is the end of the Lizzie verse as far as what they, Lindsay Lohan and I, they don’t really continue it this way.
But there’s nothing to say that they don’t swap, right? Like, like Lizzie McGuire swaps with her italian doppelganger, and the italian doppelganger goes back home to America and she, like, anything can happen. Like a parent trap. Exactly. Like a parent. Well, again, Disney did want to keep the ball rolling. They wanted to make another movie. They wanted to make another series. And Hillary was, I mean, she pro. Honestly, she probably made the right choice, you know, all things considered, because she was going to be even Morris stuck forever as Lizzie McGuire. She had done another series of the show and another movie, you know, so where she did have, she’s reasonably successful as a, as a pop artist.
Where did this compare to the Hannah Montana show? That’s why I was saying Hannah Montana is a. I never watched the Hannah Montana. That’s one of those shows that I was just a few years too old to get into at the time. It came out right out of. But since Hilary Duff was like, I want to sing and Disney’s like, we want you to act there. I think Hannah hana Hana. So I won’t say Hannah because it’s my daughter’s name and you say japanese style Hannah. Hannah Montana is okay. She’ll sing and act so Miley Cyrus won’t get too annoyed, which I guess kind of worked because her career, I mean, it’s like, it’s hard to figure out when Hannah Montana ends and it’s just Miley Cyrus, which.
That’s an interesting thing. I wish there was a movie of that for us to talk about. There’s got to be a Miley Cyrus movie, right? I’ll get looking on my man in the chair duties, but not that I can think of. Not Hannah Montana. There might have been like a straight to video or something for her. Yeah, that one I have a little, see that, that’s generational because my niece was really into Hannah Montana because she was like four when that show came out. So, which seems a little young, but maybe that one skewed a little younger.
I can’t imagine four year olds enjoying Lizzie McGuire. I feel like you need to be at least be eight or nine. We have noted that media seems to be pitched at the age right under. So Lizzie McGuire’s junior high, suggesting it’s actually going to be like, you know, 4th, 5th, 6th grade girls that are really into it, not, not the junior high girls. They’re going to look and say, this is stupid. This isn’t what my school’s like. Or, you know, whereas a little younger, like, oh, I’m about to go here, this will give me a taste of what I’m getting into and that sort of thing.
Oh, at 15 I’m going to get to wear makeup and glam up like, like Liz McGuire does, where chances are you’re going to, when you’re 15 and going to school, boy or girl, you’re going to look, you know, halfway dumpy. Right. At least I did. Yeah. I was so awkward in middle school and high school, I didn’t figure out how to fix my hair or how to do my makeup until I was literally, like, 22. I was a late bloomer. But that’s why I thought that Hilary Duff and her friend Miranda on the Lizzie McGuire show, I like their hairstyles and their clothes and their makeup and all that stuff that they had.
Sorry. There is a Hannah Montana, the movie, 2009. Not on our list because it has no animation, but, I don’t know. You toss in there if you want. Yeah. Losing Maguire because of this. The series, apparently, each episode only had two minutes of animation because they had no budget. So I guess the movie was able to stretch out the animation a little more, which was nice in the original show. Was the animation altogether, or was it kind of, like, sporadically placed, like it was in the movie? It was sporadic. The episodes were only, like, 30 minutes long.
So I’m not surprised that there wasn’t that much animation in each individual episode because it would only show up for, like, a few seconds, and then it go back to the real, real people. It gave me a little bit of, like, a Caroline in the city vibes with Leah Thompson. I don’t know if you ever saw that. That was almost like a. Like an adult version of Lizzie McGuire in a way, at the same. Around the same time. Yeah, I never saw that. I saw it when it was new on tv, but not. Not since. So she’s, like, a cartoonist, and she makes, like, a cartoon about her, but sometimes it’ll kind of cut.
So, like, a little version of, like, the internal dialogue. Now, of course, it’s not a exact, you know, fit, fit image. In most cases, there’s only seven people that look exactly like you. But I was sitting there wondering how, you know, how often we really are getting celebrity, you know, fake outs at awards shows, concerts, anything. I know there’s the comedian Gallagher where about, you know, 20 years, and people are like, wait a minute, there are two Gallaghers? And it turned out his brother was, like, doing the same act dressed as the same guy, which makes you think there might have been another two some out there as well.
So there’s a bunch of Gallaghers out there. So that’s kind of fun. Someone does need to remake the Spider man meme, but it’s all Gallagher’s holding mallets, like. Like, pointing at each other. You know, I’m talking about. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, I can. I mean, yeah, I know the Spider man meme, but I never heard Gallagher was a comedian that was, I guess, big in, like, the seventies or eighties, and he had, like, this like, long, frizzy hair. But his big thing was that he always smashed a watermelon on stage and that people in the front row would get covered in watermelon.
And I don’t know why that was, like, such a big shtick, but that became, like, the, like, people would go and sit through an hour of kind of crappy jokes just because they wanted to see this dude smash through on stage, which doesn’t sound like that entertaining, but the energy of the audience in, like, anticipation of this guy just smashing through and not even being funny about it, that itself, like, made it a worthy spectacle. I guess it’s hard to explain. Well, here’s part of the explanation. And the early video stores, vhs rental stores in the late eighties, I mean, of course, you get movies and stuff, but then there was stuff you could only get in the VHS store, and they were just shoving Gallagher and dwarf cassette tapes down your throat.
Dwarf being Tim Conway’s. Do you know dwarfenhe barely remembered. Oh, there are these dumb, like, quote, instructional sports videos where Tim Conway, he’d be on his knees, and they dig a hole in the ground, put little shoes, a very little man, who, like, couldn’t really. And most of the jokes are based on the fact that, like, you know, he’s just gliding in weird ways because his feet are, you know, his legs are in the ground. I gotta say that in living color. Did it so much better when it was the Wayans. Keenan Ivory Wayans and Damian Wayans.
I think that’s a head detective. But one of them was, like, the head, you know, talking. Yeah, the head detective. It was called the head detective. Oh, my God. So some. Some deep downs there. Um, but, yeah, I just wanted to throw out the celebrity doppelganger appearance. And you do wonder, how many times have we actually, like, fallen for that and just not noticed, you know? I don’t know. Here’s crusty the clown, but he will not be saying or doing anything. I think you only made it to St. Peter on your death trip, by the way.
Did you have any more on that? That’s fun stuff. I think people want to hear that if you got more. Yeah. So, yeah, the St. Peter thing. And also, when they bring her to the airport, I swear that it’s like almost a funeral that’s happening the way that the parents are kind of reacting to it all. But no, like, the St. Peter was kind of like the big crescendo of her being in Rome now. Because from there on out, I mean, you said that it didn’t necessarily have hero journey vibes to it, but it does have golden bow vibes because the whole concept of her immediately falling in love with this foreigner and just the whole idea of, like, these foreign romances, like, I’m gonna go to Paris for a summer and fall.
Like, that whole thing seems to come from that old matriarchal society where a foreigner would have to invade another land and then, like, claim the hand of the princess in order to take over that land of the father. And I feel like, if anything, if there’s no hero vibe to this, it at least has that aspect to where clearly, like, there’s a foreign romance happening in this sort of storyline. So that, I guess is heard going through this new life like, she’s in. I don’t know if Rome’s, like, the underworld in this aspect. I couldn’t find as many of the deep lines there.
But she clearly goes through a full character arc. Like, the old Lizzie dies in Rome. 100% the old Lizzie dies. Even her arch enemy admits that, like, oh, weird. There’s an inversion going on now. You’re all of a sudden the cool one. I’ll help you be cool, but you’re gonna, like, not tell anyone. So when we go back home, which I guess is her being resurrected back to life, that I’m not gonna tell anyone about this alternate life that you went through, even though it’s sort of the cat’s out of the bag because she’s in the news articles and everything as this, like, famous doppelganger.
So when she gets home, everyone knows about it. Famous in Europe. I mean, we could concede that the old Lizzie McGuire, the pre singing, the non singing Lizzie McGuire, does die in Rome. So even if Lizzie comes back to the States, it’s a brand new Lizzie McGuire at that point, taking the golden bell the whole way, you’re supposed to kill the king, right? So I guess that could be Paolo’s singing career, which he kills. Or Paolo gets his revenge by taking Lizzie McGuire’s family out, which would be, like, a true finale to the real golden bell, but okay, I just want to track your ball on the Lizzie being dead stuff.
And I actually had a little more past St. Peter there, didn’t you? I mean, I want to just speak for myself, but the movie held my attention just because with that as the context of watching it, it made it way more enjoyable. And I don’t even know if the music ever turned me off because every time they started singing, I was just like, they’re all dead. This is basically the end of the Beetlejuice movie when Lydia’s, like, floating in the air. That’s. That was basically the way that I watched this whole movie. I mean, if you’re watching a 2003 teen comedy and don’t expect to get pop blasted.
What. What are you doing? That’s gonna be. That’s. That’s gonna be happening. Sorry. Any other big thoughts either of you have on this? I think I’ve kind of bopped out most of my notes. Like I said, I just kept researching being like, okay. Everything was nice. How nice? Well, I guess it’s a lot different being a teenage girl watching this movie and being an adult man watching this movie, because a lot of the opinions that you and I and you have, they’re a lot different than mine. Yeah. Yeah. This is really not okay. I’m just saying it’s different.
And this movie was made for teenage girls, and I was a teenage girl. This is literally my first time ever watching a Lizzie McGuire anything. And, I mean, it was almost what I was expecting, although it delivered more than, like, a bad. Again, it was kind of like a Hallmark movie. Like, it had that same cookie cutter, formulaic feel to it that, I don’t know, it’s like taking a couple Advil. Like, it’s not the same as getting blasted, but, like, it’s certainly not flawed for what it is. It’s quite well made, you know? Like. Like, that’s what the reviews were, basically, when it came out.
Like, bad review. But if you like this, you’re gonna love this. You’re allowed to not like things, and so am I. Right. But it is interesting just to put something on the table, like, who’s this? Who is the audience? You know, which this one is. It’s pretty clear who the audience was. Sometimes it’s very not clear who the audience was. I mean, I’ll say this was better than bed nobs and broomsticks. I would rather watch this than bed knobs and broomsticks. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there’s probably. There’s probably another five, at least movies that we’ve seen that we could go through that.
I would rather watch this one than those when my daughter is, like, four or five. I kept seeing the straight to dvd Tinkerbell movies. I definitely like this better than those. I might even say the Pooh movie. I know that might not be a popular one, but I think I’d rather watch Lizzie McGuire movie than some of the original poos where. Where the inside joke is, how boring the movie is. They have to keep like, shuffling the pages. Yeah. That original poo movie drags a little bit like the Tigger movie, despite all the weird gaslighting, you know, popped a little more.
So, yeah, I don’t. I didn’t mind the Tigger movie. The Lizzie McGuire movie, surprisely, doesn’t go in the immediate, like, throw it in the trash bin. Like, it, like, it gets thrown towards the trash, but it, like, falls off and it, like, doesn’t go in. So you have to go back and pick it up later. So it’s tech. Oh, yeah. The technicality. It’s not a bad movie. And then you’re like, why did I throw it away? And maybe I want to keep this. You know, I’m not saying it’s a completely bad movie. All I said was it was cheesy and cheesy.
Sometimes what you like, it’s, you know, it’s a Sunday night, you’re chilling out. Let’s put on some cheese. You know, think about it this way, right? And this is. Maybe it’ll make us all feel a little bit older. But if you’re in the nineties and you’re watching, I don’t know, some 19 six, you’re watching Bewitched or something, and it’s just like, oh, this is so cookie cutter the way it’s like, oh, hi, Darren. And everyone’s like, so happy. Well, I mean, if in 2020, if you’re watching something that takes place in the nineties or the early two thousands, it’s that same, like, people weren’t that, you know, friendly.
Like, this is kind of like this weird, campy thing. So, I mean, us watching Lizzie McGuire today is like someone in the late nineties watching an old episode of Bewitched or I dream of Jeannie. Megan, you mentioned Star Trek, and I’m a pretty avowed Trek. And it’s like that. You look at modern Star Trek, this looks modern. You look at nineties Star Trek, which looked modern at the time, and now looks like cheesy nineties. I love those shows, don’t get me wrong. And the original series looks completely ridiculous. Now, do I regularly watch them? Yes, I do.
But I don’t know where we’re trying to go with this conversation right now. We love to flow through Tangentville, but we can bop that off. Yeah. I’m having final thoughts sputtering out because I’ve gotten through my notes, so I’m kind of like, my closing thoughts is that it’s not bad. Not bad movie. I don’t think it’s a bad movie. Either. But at the same time, it’s not my favorite ever. No, of course not. But it. I guess it’s more fascinating just to take as a piece of media from the early two thousands just work out, like, what exactly was this? You know, and.
And break it down. It’s like, it’s like, you know, cultural anthropology almost, especially for, like, a time capsule movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, this could only be made in 2003, which makes it somewhat fascinating. I guess we’ll break this one down for today, though. So, Megan, where can I look for you on the Internet? You can find. You can find me on YouTube.com. the name of my YouTube channel is my name Megan Claire Murphy. And the number two. So that’s Megan Claire Murphy two. And you can watch the aunt nay nay show. It’s my variety show for kids on YouTube.
All right, thank you. Let’s bop that ball over to UpA and what’s popping in your, your sphere. We’re taking crazy chances and we’re doing crazy dances. But no, the next big project is my NASA comic called never a straight answer with Stanley Kubrick directing the moon landings. And that’s going to be launching in sometime in June, maybe like late June. Honestly, I have to wait for Kickstarter to let me run another campaign because I’ve been blowing through them so quickly. But that’s going to be a fairly big one. People been waiting on this one for like two years now, and it’s finally here.
So hopefully all the emails and demands stop all the stalkers. Leave me alone. The comic will be out in people’s hands this year, so I’m pretty excited about that. And you can look@nasacomic.com to sign up for it. Alrighty. I mentioned a few times in this podcast I guess I’ll throw out today. I also talk about a bunch of films on films and filth, where we talk about what IMDb says are really, really good movies and really, really bad movies and try and work it out. Britney Spears Crossroads is sometime in the next few months, we will be watching that.
Lizzie McGuire is not on either list. So, yes, it’s nothing. Watch it just to see if maybe she dies in the beginning. Just look for it. The crossroads. Okay. Yeah. So the crossroads actually came up recently because I did a show on the blues, and there was that whole, like, what’s his name? Daniel Johnson or the guy that, like, Robert Johnson sells his soul to the devil so that he can make music. And, I mean, there might be something there with, like, britney Spears is like, selling her soul so that she can make music. But hers took more than Robert Johnson’s.
All that thing. He actually went out early. He. He got caught cheating or he was cheating on some other guys. 27 clubs. Yeah, he’s 1st 27 club guy. Oh, was he. Was he the first 27 club? Yeah, I think he’s the first big 27 club guy. As in celebrities that tap out at 27. Anyways, yeah, keep. Keep Robert Johnson in the 27 club. As you watch crossroads. I’m just curious if something will pop up. That’s a good call. I will be. As for now, I’m just suddenly gonna buy a ticket and fly off to Italy. Ready for a cosmic conspiracy about Stanley Kubrick, moon landings and the CIA.
Go visit nasacomic.com nasrcomic.com Stanley Kubrick put a song. That’s why we singing this song about nasacomic.com. go visit nasacomic.com go visit NASA comic.com comic.com CIA’s biggest con, Stanley Kubrick put us on. That’s why we’re singing this song about nasacomic.com go visit nasacomic.com go visit nasacomic.com yeah, go visit NASA comic doc never a straight Answer is a 40 page comic about Stanley Kubrick directing the Apollo space missions. This is the perfect read for comic Kubrick or conspiracy fans of all ages. For more details, visit nasacomic.com yeah, I scribbled my life away, driven to write the page where it enlights your brain.
If you just like my plane paper the highs ablaze somewhat of an amazing feel when it’s real to real, you will engage it. Your favorite, of course, the lord of an arrangement. I gave you the proper results to hit the pavement if they get emotional hate maybe your language a game how they play playing it well without lakers evading whatever the course they are the shapeshift snakes get decapitated meta is the apex executioner flame you out nuclear bomb distributed at war rather gruesome for eyes to see maxim out then I light my trees, blow it off in the face you despising me for what, though? Calculated it rather cutthroat paranoid American must be all the blood, smoke for real Lord, give me your day, youre way vacate they wait around, they hate whatever they say, man it’s not in the least bit we get heavy, rotate when a beat hits a thank us you well, fuck the niggas for real.
You’re welcome. They never had a deal? You’re welcome, man. They lack an appeal you’re welcome. Yet they doing it. Still, you’re welcome.
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