The Biggest Worm

Setting: Hannah's living room floor. She is still using her living room floor as a table but is moving soon and hopeful that she can upgrade. We are eating chipotle and drinking a big ol' bottle of Rosé

So far, all the commentary for every Disney Channel Original Movie was just us saying "This is SO weird" over and over again for 1.5 hours. But it was all just preparing us for Can of Worms. We'd never heard of this 1999 movie. You probably haven't either. It makes no sense and has almost no plot and the villain doesn't even exist until the last 15 minutes. You guys, it's really really weird.

PLOT

This little dude is standing in his backyard, shouting at the sky, and asking aliens to take him away while activating his weird alien satellite thing. Then, it flashes back two weeks. "Great" start. Mike is on the football team and so obviously not into it but his dad is a jock type (literally wearing a letterman jacket) so his son is playing for him and not for himself, or something.

Hannah: Is he gonna run to the wrong goal or some shit?
Mike: *runs the wrong way*

Mike is knocked out during the game and instead of seeing stars like a cartoon he sees spaceships and shit, which is supposed to bolster the idea that he thinks he doesn't belong on earth and is an adopted alien. So we find out that he is a nerd and a football player but prefers to be a nerd. Mike tries to tell his dad that he doesn't want to play football anymore but his dad just won't concede and tells him "You can do anything. I don't wanna hear the word 'can't'." Note: he didn't say 'I can't' he just said 'I don't want to.'

Other characters in this movie include his best friend and repeat DCOM star Gilbert from Underwraps, a young neighbor boy that looks up to Mike and loves his stories, a mean jock on his football team that doesn’t like him because he’s bad at sport, and hottie Caitlin we find out he has a crush on (and she’s the lawyer sister in Parenthood).

After school, he’s hanging in the treehouse and his sister tells him hottie caitlin is in his room. He doesn’t believe her but then the sweet neighbor kid says “why wouldn’t she be there? You’re an interesting person!” He is a grade A sweetheart and our favorite character. He runs to his room to weird music and YES! Caitlin is in his room. She’s come to ask him to help her decorate for the school dance because he’s got tech skills and pulled off a great floppy disc pig prank in computer class.

We need to mention quickly that the main character’s name is Mike PILLSBURY.

The ball is rolling on this dance preparation and the Evil football player interrupts their “setting up the dance” montage to collect Caitlin but she’s like, “Hell no. You don’t own me by Lesley Gore. I’m going to stay to listen to a story.” Okay maybe she didn’t say that but close. Mike truly overreacts in front of her but she’s still diggin’ him. During the entire montage, no teachers were present and the kids have no supervision and unlimited power in DCOM movies.

The football player breaks into the school at night obviously to ruin the dance somehow since he was so upset a girl rejected him. Talk about an overreaction.

It’s the day of the dance and Mike is putting the final touches on his light up suit vest when his parents interrupt him to teach him how to dance since they never have before. The mom is recognizable, the judge in the movie Stick It  and the dad makes a weird face then they both dance away.

We are 30 min in and there is really no reason for any of this lead up. It is taking way too long like most of the movies we have watched so far.

His halloween display goes swimmingly until the jock villains fuck it all up and it starts freaking out and wreaks havoc. It literally catches fire and Mike is sprayed with a fire extinguisher. This is when he decides he does not belong on this planet and contacts the aliens via freak satellite.

He starts a fire (again!) in his backyard while using this satellite. He should maybe be arrested? His parents are maybe too supportive, they’re not even mad he blew up the lawn and school gymnasium. I suspect arson.

Caitlin snubs Mike at school the next day because he created a great dance and also destroyed it. He heads to his tree house after school and we FINALLY have our first alien, Barnabas a golden dog with a speaker box with blue lips. Barnabas tries to warn Mike of bad aliens but Mike runs away so Barnabas yells, “trust no one but me, Mike Pillsbury,”

Up in his room, a weird alien pops out of a pipe in his ceiling and spurts green goo all over his sandwich and other belongings. Surprise, at this inopportune time Caitlin calls to apologize but it goes very poorly and Mike blames a bathroom disaster on his weird attitude but really a blob alien is popping out popcorn after eating his corn on the cob.

His friend comes over and he tried to explain alien to him but he doesn’t believe him and Lindsay is very upset saying she would definitely believe Hannah if she told her that.

Mike goes to apologize to Caitlin and we meet a new alien wearing only white calf socks and penny loafers. This alien freezes time and messes up another interaction with the hottie. The penny loafer alien explains that Mike put Earth in jeopardy because he opened up intergalactic communication and they are no longer protected by their inability to communicate with other planets/space things.

Finally his friends see the aliens and believe him and Caitlin forgives him and they find out the twist to this situation. So basically, there's some evil person trying to find the perfect human specimen for his weird alien zoo and Mike lures the mean jock to his backyard so the alien can snatch him up but then they have to climb through the portal to save him. It doesn't really make sense, like at all. It's fine.

The young neighbor boy in involved somehow and gets taken too so Mike and Caitlin and his friend are all in a different planet zoo with 15 min left in the movie. While wandering the zoo we meet the ultimate villain, a human shape shifted into an alien and they somehow save their friends and another alien species Mike is aware of and feel affection for and maybe thinks is his real family.

They make it back to Earth and so does villain but somehow they get the villain back off of Earth and Mike decides he does belong on Earth and there is a scene of him enjoying football. He sadly says goodbye to Barnabas the alien that speaks through a box attached to a dog and Mike is back to his normal junior high life.

Side Notes

• Oh man he has a tree house!
• His friend is the same dweeb friend from "Under Wraps" only now he's a bonafide tween with terrible character
• Lindsay twists the bottle as she pours wine because she's Luxury
• Does mike have actual mental issues? Schizophrenia perhaps?
• "Disney movies are sponsored by milk. They're always drinking milk. I hate milk. Down with milk." - Hannah
• WHAT IS THE MOM IN THIS MOVIE FROM (She's just a judge from stick it) it takes us 10 minutes to figure out.
• Mike is young mulder. This movie is prequel to X-Files.
• “Why does Disney have so much dusty shit?”- Lindsay
• Mike is dateable
• These movies have long intros. Prequels
• Children in disney movies/shows really have free reign over organizing dances and their schools have weird dances
• Weird goop alien looks like Wallace Shawn
• Lindsay: He’s done Beige City a lot this movie.
  Hannah: He is beige NATION. Is this movie sponsored by beige? It’s like those commercials for cotton.
• “You can tell he’s an alien because he has way too much bottom gum. That’s the only reason.”- Lindsay
• When Mike tells Caitlin he's leaving for another planet, Hannah makes a hawk-like sound. She claims "In that moment, I was a hawk." It's so shocking that we had to go back and listen to our recording to hear it again, only it took us a long time because we were talking about Shawn Hunter from Boy Meets World and kept missing it. We <3 Shawn.
• Remember that episode of Boy Meets World where this girl in Shawn's trailer park is getting beat by her dad and Shawn takes her to Cory's house to be safe?
• Rider Strong (Shawn) has an infant son named Indigo. INDIGO STRONG.
• He's still a heartthrob, in case you were wondering!
• The intergalactic police literally look exactly like the grinch. Like pretty sure this is the actual costume they used in the grinch.
• Hannah: What was the name of that camp movie?
  Lindsay: Camp Bowow
  Hannah: Camp Sing Along or something?
  Lindsay: Camp Jonas
  Hannah: Ugh what was it? Camp Toodly Toddle?
  Both: CAMP ROCK
• If Trader Joe's in Pennsylvania sold two buck chuck, we would drink it every day of our lives. It would be cheaper than water. Sure we'd have wine-stained teeth and wouldn't be able to drive but it's $2!
• Towards the end, Hannah loses her goddamn mind because she comes up with Alien: The Town which is a version of The Town starring Ben Affleck but with aliens.

Stay tuned for more information about Alien: The Town.

Holloweenis

Setting: Lindsay’s couch on a cool evening, we are both wearing sweatshirts because we were not prepared. We have already eaten fancy brussel sprout pizza but still have plantain chips and presumably a sweet treat because it would be unlikely we didn’t.

This is a DCOM classic, but Hannah just quickly realizes she has no idea how this movie plays out.

It's halloween and this mom is holding her kids hostage at home instead of letting them trick or treat like normal kids. It'd be so weird if your seemingly normal mom had such a visceral reaction to halloween. The protagonist, young Marnie, is particularly peeved by not being able to celebrate this holiday because she loves weird shit. She points out to her buzzkill (and of course, dweeby) younger brother that the holiday is special because it's when their parents met. The little brother urges her not to talk about their dad because it would upset their mom because of course their dad IS DEAD. HE IS DEAD. There is always a parent missing in action.

Surprise! Grandma aka Debbie Reynolds shows up out of nowhere and the kids are excited but not confused in the slightest. She unloads outfits and toys and heads and candy and other halloween goodies from her endless Mary Poppins-esque bag creating chaos in the living room as the children shriek for joy. Their mom is peeved and wants grandma to leave but grandma wants her to move back to Halloweentown. Mom claims that the real world is "normal" and Halloweentown is full of chaos, which makes no sense since if you lived in Halloweentown you would think it was normal!

The grandma reads them a bedtime story, because for some reason all three of these different aged children have the same bedtime. She reads to them from a picture book about Halloweentown, a town with witches and ghosts and all kinds of shit. Marnie has an extremely enthusiastic response to this book despite the fact that it's basic as hell. She also freaks out because there's a witch in the book that "looks just like her." It doesn't. It's just a girl with brown hair.  

Oh no now it's time for grandma to go even though she got to town one hour ago. What if you only saw your grandma in 1 hour increments once a year on halloween? Normal.

After mom catches grandma Debbie telling the kids about Halloweentown, they get into a big fight about an evil force and how only a Cromwell witch can stop it. This seems elitist and weird. Not only is the mom aggressively stuffing fried chicken into a tupperware container while fighting, but Marnie eavesdrops the whole convo! She doesn't question anything, she's a witch now! But grandma's already left--what can she do??

Lindsay: This is going on much longer than I thought it would.

Hannah: Oh, this beginning part?

Lindsay: Yea!

Hannah: Oh yeah. I thought she'd be in Halloweentown like 10 minutes ago.

Lindsay: Two minutes in she should've been in Halloweentown. This should be "Prelude to Halloweentown."

In trying to convince her younger brother that everyone is a witch, she says: "Haven't you ever wondered why we're not allowed to talk about anything with the word 'magic' in it? Or why mom is so weird about halloween? Or why I have deja vu all the time?" There's a lot of witch mythology out there but frequent deja vu isn't usually part of it.

Ok now we're actually in H-Town and all the kids have somehow snuck their way onto the halloween bus full of weird creatures who probably are familiar with each other since it’s only a town without anyone noticing. Why does no one notice these things in DCOMs?! We're getting to the meat of the thing. There's a fat frankenstein, skeletons driving cars, and what appears to be just a human body with a jack-o-lantern for a head. This may or may not be but definitely is the same universe as Nightmare Before Christmas.

"I just feel like, why do these creatures all act just like humans? Like why does that skeleton want a baseball cap--wouldn't it have different taste?" - Hannah

This grandma just put witch's brew in the microwave and pressed a button that said "bubble" twice, “toil” once and "trouble" once. It was extremely on the nose. Also, why does all witch's brew boil like dry ice?

Oh no! Mom shows up in H-Town to take the kids back, but it's insane to yank them out that fast. Now they're gonna go to school and all their friends and teachers are gonna think they're on acid.

Hannah: Hold on. I just had an unrelated epiphany. You know how in Harry Potter the bankers are goblins and like evil--is that a metaphor for wall street?? Is that TRUE?!

Lindsay: Yea!

Hannah: Like is that a known thing and I just realized it?

Lindsay: Yea! I mean I never read anything about it but I just assumed everyone thought that.

Hannah: *Freaks out*

Since the next bus home isn't for hours, the family is stuck here, much to the kids' delight. They run into Kalabar, a magician/warlock/mayor who definitely isn't Jon Hamm but also could be. We both yell “NEW DAD ALERT!” He was the mom's old flame in high school and clearly still pines for her despite so many years, children and different worlds, but it is acceptable because her husband is dead, like in ALL DISNEY MOVIES. Did Disney just try to save money by never casting two parents? What. Is. The. Deal.

Also, there's this town punk named Luke who just keeps bothering the Cromwell family for unknown reasons. He's like 12 and keeps taunting this Grandma about how he's in contact with the evil force and she's not.

Hannah:  This is the weirdest relationship between 2 people I have ever EVER witnessed!

Lindsay: Yes, a young punk bullying a cool witch grandma. Or kind of a lame witch grandma.

Hannah: This would be like Malfoy bullying McGonagall.

Lindsay: Could you imagine? 'I'm a powerful force don't fuck with me Lucius!'

Hannah: Wait is that his name?

[Two minutes later]

Hannah: DRACO!

The grandma and the punk bully have a confrontation outside of an abandoned movie theater (is this another DCOM trope?). The punk leads the grandma into the movie theater so they can go make out in the old projector room. Just kidding, he's leading her to the evil force.

Oh god the old movie theater is weird. It's full of paralyzed/comatose bodies that are under some sort of curse. The grandma's been going on and on this whole movie about how people in town keep disappearing and it turns out they're all just in this movie theater?? AND NO ONE ELSE NOTICED THEIR DISAPPEARANCE!

Now the mom and grandma are confronting this evil spirit coming through the movie screen and Marnie and her siblings enter just in time to see them get hit with the curse. Now these literal babies have to save a Halloween-themed town that they didn't know existed until 1 hour ago.

The kids are running around town trying to find the rest of the ingredients for their grandma's potion. First they enter a werewolf hair salon so they can not-so-sneakily steal a chunk of hair. Then they trap a ghost in a hot box so they can fill a vial with ghost sweat. Next they're onto a dentist to collect some vampire teeth.

We pause to let the video load and also to shove plantain chips into our faces. So good. So salty. So, so dry.

Lindsay: Okay I have two lists going that we need to add to. Actors Who Could Be Jon Hamm: This guy, others. So who else can we add?

Hannah: A jar..of ham? Or a pig in a bathroom. Pig on a jon, Jon Hamm…

Lindsay: It's not a made up list, it's a real list of real men.

Hannah: Oh okay. John Stamos. And Mia Hamm.

The plantain chips were so dry. Too dry. We decided we needed a "salty wet snack" and cut up a raw zucchini.

Back in Halloweentown, the kids have finished gathering ingredients and are now making the potion. Note: A 13 year old girl who didn't know she was a witch until 1 hour ago is in charge of making this potion to save the town with an eight year old and five year old as her assistants. They've successfully made the potion but now the kids realize they have no idea what the spell is to activate the magic. But wait! The five year old sister who is for some reason better at magic than the older ones knows the spell. Just accept it and move on.

With the talisman lit (oh yeah there's an important talisman), they rush over to the creepy movie theater but the dark force isn't there to greet them. They realize the talisman doesn’t cure the petrified people, and instead somehow come to the conclusion that the talisman has to be installed into the large jack-o-lantern in the town square.

Finally, the dark force has realized he might be defeated soon and reappears. He reveals himself as the mayor and the whole town gasps together. Punk boy decided to help Marnie. Dark force mayor talks way too much. Marnie climbs up the pumpkin but she takes too long and he hits her with some sort of lightning. She hears her grandma’s voice telling her what to do while she is half conscious and dangling off of a giant jack-o-lantern. The talisman drops and the spell is broken! The petrified people wake up but the evil force is still alive. This whole scene plays out very slowly.

The grandma and mother find their children outside and ask Kalabar why he is so evil and he responds, “you could’ve had me! The most powerful warlock of all. You could have ruled with me!” He wants to control the monster and human worlds and is butthurt that a girl turned him down. This is basically just like Snape and Lily in Harry Potter. Like actually. Some stuff happens and they save Halloweentown. This scene also takes way too long to play out. Kalabar had about five minutes to run away and take over the world but instead he stands and watches them defeat him. The town also does not do anything but watches the entire scene.

Huzzah! Witches for the win! Family for the win! Debbie Reynolds for the win!

Marnie goes to thank the punk boy and he’s sulking on a hay bale because he's transformed back into his true form, a short little elf thing. He agreed to be evil with Kalabar because he turned him "handsome" but Marnie probably likes him better this way. Cue weird young romance that is very unnecessary but Disney thinks is crucial.

The grandma and mother make up when the mother asks grandma to come live with them and babysit when her PTA meeting go too long. Why leave Halloweentown, grandma? She's lived there for literally hundreds of years. I think that is against everything we have learned in this movie. And it is so difficult to be a witch in the normal world, hiding your true self is difficult!

Long story short, this movie does not hold up. It's not good.