Cooler Than Homework #001 – Under Wraps & Childhood Fears

Nicole Sweeney 0:18
Hello, and welcome to the first episode of Cooler Than Homework, a podcast where four friends get together and watch every Disney Channel Original Movie. I am Nicole Sweeney and I am the co-founder of Snark Squad and co-host of Snark Squad Pod.

Matthew Gaydos 0:35
I am Matthew Gaydos. I am the host of the podcast I Love it.

Marines Alvarez 0:39
My name is Marines. I am co-founder of Snark Squad and also co-host of Snark Squad Pod.

Ceri Riley 0:44
And I’m Ceri. I am mostly a science communicator on the podcast SciShow Tangents. But I also do media stuff sometimes.

Nicole Sweeney 0:51
So for our very first episode we are discussing Under Wraps. There is some controversy as to what constitutes the first Disney Channel Original Movie. We are just going by the list on Wikipedia. Feel free to yell at us about this on Twitter. If you are really passionate that we should have started with Northern Lights or whatever

Matthew Gaydos 1:12
Big Northern Lights fans out there.

Ceri Riley 1:16
That’ll be like the Patreon bonus episode.

Matthew Gaydos 1:18
Yeah.

So we’re starting with under wraps. And we’re going to start this episode where we intend to start every episode, which is by talking about this cast and where they are now.

Yeah, so that’s gonna be my little segment here. So I’m going to run down this cast list we have which is just full of stars. And talk about who we’ve got in this movie and what they’re up to now, other things that they’ve been in that maybe you would have seen. Our main character is Marshall, who’s played by and sorry for butchering some of these names. His name is Mario Yedidia. Actually, this was like the last thing he ever did. The main kid.

Marines Alvarez 1:57
Aw.

Nicole Sweeney 1:57
Oh dear.

Ceri Riley 1:57
Oh.

Matthew Gaydos 1:59
Yeah, he stopped acting. That sounded like he may be died. He didn’t.

Ceri Riley 2:07
It did sound like the mummy got him at the end. Like that was it.

Marines Alvarez 2:11
And that was the last thing he ever did.

Unknown Speaker 2:14
Spoiler for the end of the movie: he actually died. But no, he is now a political coordinator, and works with United Here in San Francisco, which apparently is a organization that represents workers in the US and Canada that work in hotel, gaming, food service, and airport industries. And he’s just like political organizer now, and yeah, he seems like a good dude based on his Twitter account.

Matthew Gaydos 2:39
The subheading of this segment is going to be Matt evaluates these people’s Twitter accounts.

Some of these people, well it was hard to like find out a lot about them via like IMDb or Wikipedia, because if they only did like one or two movies and then stopped, they didn’t have a lot of information. So I had to try and find the right version of them on Twitter. And that’s, unfortunately impossible for some of them. But for him, he’s very out there. He’s very public. In his bio, it even says, like former child star.

So I’d say second billing, maybe not officially, but in my heart is Gilbert. The best friend and the film played by Adam Wiley, who is one of those actors who if you google him and see his face, you’re just like, Oh, it’s that guy. He was the little kid in every TV show in the 90s. I think more recently, I guess I recently, this is like 15 years ago, he was on Gilmore Girls playing Brad, a guy who goes off and does Broadway stuff and is kind of a jerk about it on Gilmore Girls.

Nicole Sweeney 3:38
We have a little tag on Snark Squad that’s called that guy from that thing for basically anytime you have a face, you’re like, I know that guy from that thing.

Matthew Gaydos 3:47
Is that guy, he’s definitely that guy. There is one actor who played in this film who unfortunately has passed since the film and that’s the actor who plays Mr. Kubat. And that’s Ed Lauter. He died in 2013. But he’s also a prolific actor, much like Adam Wiley. He was in Cujo and I don’t know why I pulled this as my second example, but he’s also in Not Another Teen Movie,

Nicole Sweeney 4:09
Of course, classic.

Matthew Gaydos 4:11
Those two very similar classic films. Pulling double duty in this film is another name which I’m gonna butcher, which is Bill Fagerbakke. He plays both Ted, the the boyfriend of the mom, and he also plays Harold the mummy.

Nicole Sweeney 4:27
What?

Ceri Riley 4:27
Oh!

Matthew Gaydos 4:29
Yeah, he plays both those characters.

Ceri Riley 4:31
Weird. I guess that makes sense? Sort of? But-

Matthew Gaydos 4:34
That’s why you never see them in the same room at the same time.

Marines Alvarez 4:37
Yeah, and I noticed like the first time we saw Ted, the boyfriend that he was like, really tall. “Wow, that’s a large dude.”

Matthew Gaydos 4:45
You might know him. He played Dauber on the show Coach in the 90s. But more famously, he’s the voice of Patrick on SpongeBob.

Ceri Riley 4:52
No way! That’s…a thing that I know! You mentioned all these things, and it’s like Gilmore Girls, I recognize the name, but I never watched it. But SpongeBob. That’s me.

Matthew Gaydos 5:05
We’ve also got Marshall’s mom who’s played by Corinne Bohrer. She’s still acting in a bunch of things that I am not as familiar with. But I know she was on Veronica Mars. Correct, Nicole?

Yes, she is Veronica’s deadbeat mom.

Oh, yeah, I do not– I did not recognize her from this alone. But I looked at her IMDB page. I was like, Oh, you’ve just been in a ton of things. Getting back on track of people who have like leading somewhat normal lives now, Amy also one of my favorite characters in this, played by Clara Bryant, is now a DUI and DWI attorney in Chamblee, Georgia.

Nicole Sweeney 5:40
Oh wow!

Matthew Gaydos 5:41
Yeah she’s in another DCOM movie later on that we’ll get to, but she gave up acting at a certain point and is now an attorney.

I wasn’t gonna– I was gonna put a pin in this and revisit this when we got to True Confessions but — which is the other Disney Channel Original–

Yeah

Nicole Sweeney 5:56
— that she’s been in but I… that’s going to be who knows how long it’s going to take us to get to that 2002 film.

Matthew Gaydos 6:04
That’s a little ways off.

Unknown Speaker 6:05
It’s a it’s a ways off. I– when I look– I looked her up. I was like, I know this, this face. And I realized she was in True Confessions. We’ll have a lot to say when we get to that movie. But I had this like moment of really intense realization that like 14 year old Nicole had a crush on her, and like didn’t know, I was like, “Oohhh”

Matthew Gaydos 6:29
She’s definitely crush-worthy.

It’s all making sense now. Clara Bryant was also on Buffy. She was one of the potentials in season seven. She’s the one who has the terrible British accent.

Marines Alvarez 6:41
Oh. I don’t remember her face. But I remember that accent.

Matthew Gaydos 6:49
Alright, so the last two people I want to mention that I think ar my– again, two great characters in this film– are Bruce and Leonard. Bruce is played by Ken Hudson Campbell, who you might just recognize he’s in Groundhog Day. He’s the weird Santa in Home Alone. He’s in Armageddon. Most recently, he plays a bear named Boomer and the animated film Wonder Park. So he’s still out there doing it. Whereas Leonard, the little kid who stole my heart in this film is played by Joshua Dennis, who only has one other credit and is from 2016, where he was a cinematographer on a film that doesn’t look like it was ever actually released anywhere. Yeah, so that’s what that cast is up to these days.

Marines Alvarez 7:31
Joshua Dennis, if you’re listening to this, we’d love to know what you’re up to.

Matthew Gaydos 7:37
Still walking around with that rag?

Nicole Sweeney 7:38
Send us your life updates.

Now that we know what all these people are doing with their lives what they’ve done since 1997, Mari, what was this movie? What did we just watch?

Marines Alvarez 7:54
I’m doing the synopsis not because I’m any good at this at all, but because that’s the way cookie crumbled.

Here we go. We start this movie with a family gathered around the dinner table and the little brother is scared of a potential monster. And his sister is making fun of him his dad has been– basically yells at him to not be afraid anymore because yelling at somebody who’s afraid of something especially a child is always you know, really useful. Jokes on dad though, because there is actually a monster and they get attacked. Joke’s on us, because this is all a movie within a movie.

So we are watching Marshall and Gilbert watch the scary movie. Here we quickly learned that Gilbert like his defining character thing is that he’s a scaredy cat. He leaves the movie he, like, he can’t handle it and he leaves. And then Marshall just sits there and watches the rest of the movie. And I was immediately like, “I want to know what the friend protocol is here?” Like you’re here with a friend in a movie and they’re like “no man can’t, ” and they bolt. Do you sit and watch the rest of the movie by yourself?

Nicole Sweeney 9:06
It depends on like the dead the friend dynamic. You know? I don’t know. Who is this friend to me?

Ceri Riley 9:16
Yeah, I would agree with that. I’d say if it’s like someone that I know and love and care about, instantly would get up, make sure that they’re okay. If it was like a bad first date or something. Get out of there. I’m watching this dang movie. And you can leave.

Matthew Gaydos 9:31
I think I probably would have not gone with him at first. I would have been sitting there, assuming he might come back? Like maybe he’ll get his his nerves back and he’ll come back. So it would just be a series of me like watching the movie, and thinking like “yeah, he’ll probably come back soon.” And then just…

Marines Alvarez 9:49
One hour later

Matthew Gaydos 9:50
“Oh I guess he didn’t come back. Well that was a good movie.”

Marines Alvarez 9:57
Alright, fair. I guess everybody would have left Gilbert by himself, like, in the lobby.

Matthew Gaydos 10:02
Sorry, Gilbert. I also probably would have been Gilbert instead actually. I would have been also scared as a child so, I would have gone with him.

Marines Alvarez 10:09
Hard same. Maybe that’s why I’m asking is because I would have been alone in the lobby, like, “is my friend ever coming?”

Okay, Marshall does not go and join him. We cut to them after the movie on the walk home. The boys talk about Halloween and trick or treating. They pass by a creepy neighbor’s house and Gilbert admits that while he’s supposed to deliver creepy neighbor’s paper every day, he’s been doing that but he actually hasn’t collected payment for like two years. So Marshall is like we’re gonna, you know, march on over there and demand payment. And the creepy neighbor answers door, and basically sicks his dog on these children. So that’s cool. They run home in fear, as they should.

Back at Marshall’s house, we learned that his mom is dating a super nice dude named Ted (the actor who doubles as the mummy from later.) And Marshall is like zero percent about the super nice dude named Ted, like he doesn’t want any part of it. Also, we see Marshall’s room and it’s– I don’t know if it reminded you guys of this, but it’s like the super horror, little kid version of Dawson’s room from Dawson’s Creek.

Matthew Gaydos 11:18
Yes.

Marines Alvarez 11:19
like that was Dawson’s room when he was a child for sure.

Matthew Gaydos 11:22
But like, even more so because this kid had things that Dawson could never afford. I don’t know where he gets the money for all this, but his mom does not question it.

Nicole Sweeney 11:32
Well his parents are divorced, so maybe dad? You know?

Ceri Riley 11:38
Dad just bought a life-sized mummy to suck up to his kid.

Matthew Gaydos 11:43
I like this theory.

Unknown Speaker 11:44
We never see this dad, right? So i don’t know maybe like dad has a lot of money and he just like sends him money but doesn’t you know isn’t really there? Thinks that he can just like send him money in lieu of parenting.

Matthew Gaydos 11:55
Yeah, yeah, that’s that feels true.

Marines Alvarez 11:58
Canon.

Matthew Gaydos 12:01
I mean, you can’t prove us wrong with the movie. So there’s nothing to prove us wrong in any canon so we can just say that it’s true.

Marines Alvarez 12:09
Later at school, the third in our trio of friends, a girl named Amy, shares the news that the creepy neighbor has actually died. Creepy neighbor used to work at a museum and now Amy’s mom is clearing out his house and trying to sell the house. The kids cook up a plan to break into keep creepy neighbors now empty house and check it out for themselves.

Once they’re there that night in the basement, they find that the creepy neighbor had a sarcophagus? Question mark? And because of like the moon and Halloween magic, the mummy inside the sarcophagus gets reanimated? They are obviously very scared of the mummy at first but then he uses a toilet and is fascinated by like digital watch. So they decided that the mummy is probably pretty alright, and they’re going to name him Harold and keep him around for basically the rest of this movie.

The kids visit their horror shop friend who does some, like, light mummy research and figures out that they need to get Harold back into his coffin before midnight on Halloween. Or if not, he’s just gonna, you know, be dust. I guess I know he’s going to cease to exist. The problem is that creepy neighbor isn’t actually dead. He faked his own death and stole that the sarcophagus this was all a like money making plot. So for the rest of the movie that kids have to keep Harold hidden. They have to dodge creepy neighbor’s henchman. They have to figure out a way to put Harold back into his coffin. And also, I don’t know Harold has a mummy girlfriend?

The creepy neighbor manages to get Harold back with the kids breaking free returned him to the museum where he gets to see his mummy girlfriend again for a hot second. Everybody says very emotional goodbyes. And after Harold is gone, Marshall un-Dawson’s his room. He decides to give super nice guy Ted a chance. And we’re kind of led to believe he might have feelings for Amy but they’re kids. So we end this movie with the three of the kids just going back to see another scary movie. And that’s the end of that.

Nicole Sweeney 14:16
Okay, so before we talked about this movie, we have to do a nostalgia factor check. Had you watched this movie before sitting down to watch it for this podcast?

Matthew Gaydos 14:30
No, I don’t think so. I watched a lot of DCOMs as a kid. But going into this one I think I had heard of it, but I was waiting for that moment of,like, nostalgia to pop up and for me to be like, “Oh, right, this scene” but that never happened. So I’m pretty sure I have never seen this movie.

Marines Alvarez 14:49
Yeah, same. I recognized, like, the visual, like, the movie poster of it? Like I feel like I saw commercials about it on Disney Channel or something like that. It felt similar in that way. But I’m almost certain I never watch this movie. Any nostalgia that I got from the movie was from like, clothes and flannel. And I don’t know, the little kids being little kids. But I don’t I– This was my first time watching it

Nicole Sweeney 15:17
Same on pretty much all counts. Like the definitely had been– had seen images of the movie as a kid. Like, I don’t know, probably– definitely is too strong. But I also am pretty sure I never actually watched this movie all the way through, which surprised me because I thought I had seen most of these. But uh had not seen this one. Ceri, what about you?

Ceri Riley 15:39
Uh, definitely no. So, for context, I have not seen a single DCOM and I know nothing about any of them really, with the exception of a couple that got very big. To the extent that when I started watching this, I was like, okay, is this going to be like Scooby Doo where the mummy is going to be a man and a mask? Like was he the mummy the whole time? Or do these movies get supernatural? I just never watched the Disney Channel as a kid. So I have no context for any of these actors, or characters, or franchises. And this podcast is gonna be a wild ride.

Matthew Gaydos 16:21
I would say like surprisingly supernatural is like a good tagline for most of these movies. Definitely not all of them. But there’s a number of them that you’re like, “oh, oh, that’s okay. That is true in this world.”

Ceri Riley 16:35
Yeah. And so it’s just like, I don’t have no expectations. It was like, okay, there’s magic. There’s moonlight magic, and this mummy is coming to life and I’m along for this ride. And yeah, just gonna have a good time.

Nicole Sweeney 16:47
This is also something that we typically do when we’re doing recaps on a Snark Squad we try to have somebody who we refer to as a snow as in Jon– as an “you know, nothing Jon Snow.” So that’s, that’s a big part of why Ceri’s here.

Matthew Gaydos 17:04
Ceri, the eternal Snow.

Ceri Riley 17:09
I am. I’m usually, my brand is the person who knows all the things and so this is refreshing, this is so fun, I get to just goof around and ask the questions.

Nicole Sweeney 17:19
So did you guys like this movie? How did you feel about it? I mean, did you like it? This is like, this is also our brand. This is where we tend to start. Did you like this movie?

Matthew Gaydos 17:31
I enjoyed it. I found some of the writing and some of the jokes genuinely funny and enjoyable. Mostly Gilbert’s lines. I feel like he had like a joke wisdom beyond his years, like clearly like a 40 year old man was writing his jokes for him. And then I also really liked for similar reasons, the character of Amy because she was so clearly like smarter and more mature than her friend.

Nicole Sweeney 18:00
She was also shockingly scandalous for the Disney Channel?

Matthew Gaydos 18:02
Yeah!

Nicole Sweeney 18:04
She had a couple jokes. And I was like, “oh, ok Disney Channel”

Matthew Gaydos 18:08
Yeah, talking about celibacy, and how like basically saying Gilbert’s gonna like be celibate forever.

Ceri Riley 18:12
That was one of the questions I had is like, Is this normal? Are these things that would have just gone over my head as a kid? Probably, maybe, who knows?

Matthew Gaydos 18:24
I think that’s what they’re constructed to do is like they’re there to be right on that cusp of like, what a 12 year old might think is dirty. But they also don’t go too far. So that way, like the six year olds aren’t necessarily going to be asking their mom, “what does celibacy mean?” They might just like take it at face value as what the movie presents it. So I think that is maybe a common thing throughout DCOMS of like, just barely pushing the envelope a little bit, but never to any– Like, I think this might be the most extreme example.

Marines Alvarez 18:56
Well, I’m curious now. Like, I’m curious if this feels extreme because we never saw this one, and we’re coming back as adults or if like, we’re gonna watch the rest of it and be like, “Oh, my God, so much went over our head.”

Matthew Gaydos 19:07
Yeah, I’m thinking the latter just because I do recall some jokes, like, slightly sexual or like, referencing, like, below the belt humor, I guess is the nicest way to word it, in a way that I think looking at it now will be shaking our heads a little bit more than we were as kids.

Nicole Sweeney 19:27
Yeah, there’s definitely a couple of movies that I can think of that have… They’re built on some things that I’m like, “Oh, that’s gonna be– that’ll be interesting when we get to that movie,” where the whole movie is gonna read real different in 2019

Matthew Gaydos 19:42
I think we have the same movie in mind. But to save Ceri’s, like, brand of not knowing that these things are

Ceri Riley 19:51
Yeah I have no idea. You’re laughing ominously. Which one do I have to guess is the bad movie to watch in 2019.

Matthew Gaydos 19:59
Gender plays a big role in a handful of these movies.

Ceri Riley 20:02
One thing that I did like about this movie is how it was self aware. The ways in which you have to, I don’t know craft a plot around kids having an adventure. Like when Bruce was invading the warehouse with them. He was like, “I gotta get some friends my own age.” And that was like genuinely very funny. Like, yeah, what are you doing with your personal of Halloween things, running around with kids and beating mobsters, or tax evaders over the head.

Marines Alvarez 20:32
I also surprisingly, I found this enjoyable. I liked the three kid actors. Like the center of this, I thought it had like funny lines. But also, I was a little bored. I feel like that was mostly because like, this movie is not for me. And there were moments that I would like tune back in and like laugh and like, “Oh, look at the way they did that trope.” Like it was it was fine. I’m not, it wasn’t a better than I expected movie. But also, I was a little bored. Sometimes that was my general experience.

Nicole Sweeney 21:07
I was super bored for a lot of this movie. There were definitely quite a few moments where, like, something funny was happening. I think, for me, my experience of watching these– my takeaway from this first experience is that the nostalgia is going to be a big determining factor in whether or not I like the experience of watching it now. You know, so the fact that I wasn’t familiar with this movie, like I didn’t have that necessarily to hold on to, it was just like, “Okay, this is a movie for children. I am not a child, I am quite bored.” That’ll be an interesting part of this of this project. Looking ahead at the next few movies. The next one, I think is the only other one that I haven’t seen. And then it’s a whole string of movies that I have seen. So

Marines Alvarez 21:54
That’s a wild like brain thing to be like, “this is a movie I have not seen, brain is bored, this is a movie I have ALREADY SEEN. The pieces of this movie are already in my brain. But this one I want.”

Matthew Gaydos 22:12
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, though, cuz that’s how I feel about like, I was not as bored. As you guys. I think there was one chunk where I was a little bored. And it’s like when they gave the mummy, the majority of the lines in a scene, and he can’t speak. And I’m like, why is this happening? And why is it happening for so long? On that topic of like nostalgia for something you’ve already watched, I am very much that way with a lot of like 90 sitcoms, where I can go back and rewatch like any episode of Roseanne, Boy Meets World, Full House any of the shows that I have seen every episode 10 times. I love it because of that, and I can go back and watch it and enjoy every episode. But if I go back and try to watch like a random episode of Step By Step, like Step By Step, or Family Matters, things that I didn’t keep up with as much when I was younger. Those aren’t seem very like dull or cliche or cheesy, in many the same ways that I’m sure other people look at Boy Meets World and Full House as cheesy or boring, but I don’t see that because those are my– Those are my babies. I love them.

Nicole Sweeney 23:19
Right you have the emotional hook.

Matthew Gaydos 23:20
Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 23:20
That’s interesting, because I wasn’t bored. Also barely at all. And maybe my emotional hook was just like, orienting myself in the DCOM universe. Coming from a complete blind spot and then being plunged all of a sudden into like children and mummies and wacky goofs and skateboarding mummies and walking through a hospital physical humor– Just like figuring out what the possibilities and one of these movies is, was entertaining for me. I don’t know if it’ll hold up. I don’t know if I’ll start getting bored as we move on to later movies where you guys all have really strong nostalgic connections to them. And I don’t. But yeah, I was thinking about that, as I was watching, because I was like, this is a lot more fun than I expected. Like I’m having a good time goofing around. And like the writing was better than I expected. My other maybe hypothesis is that I watch. I watch cartoons still as an adult and media geared towards children, sometimes like Steven Universe, and She-Ra, and they’re all — a lot of these cartoons have big adult audiences, but they are still written for kids. So maybe, like even the media that I consume now as an adult is still sometimes more childish, so it’s easier for me to slip back into, “okay, I’m just going to enjoy this thing. I’m not going to worry about plot twists, I’m not going to worry about I don’t I’m not here to be surprised or amazed, or what a dramatic villain character built up. I’m just here for the the one liners, about your blanket that’s a rag.”

Nicole Sweeney 25:01
Which is also interesting to me, because it seems like the other sort of way this can go too is that after watching more of these movies, and like getting more acclimated to, like watching children’s media again– Which because I don’t watch a ton of children’s media outside of this. I talked about it on pretty much every Snark Squad Pod episode where I had to consume a piece of children’s media, this wasa discussion point for me. But you know, as we start to watch more of these, sort of the other side of this is that even the ones that aren’t nostalgic will at least be like… I’ll be more… I don’t know. Yeah, having the the frame of reference that you’re describing from consuming a lot of media that is intended for children.

Marines Alvarez 25:44
Okay, I want to come back around to this because now hearing you guys talk, I also think that my experience of this movie– Well, you know, Nicole, and I do the Snark Squad Pod thing, week after week where our whole jam is like piece of media, talking about it in depth for an hour. And so I sat in front of this movie with like, my notes and like, “Okay, I’m gonna like dissect the movie,”

Nicole Sweeney 26:05
Which also as like, behind the scenes thing, you watched it first, and you were like deciding how we were going to do this too,

Marines Alvarez 26:12
Right, and so I think that that is, like, not the correct way to watch this movie. Spoiler alert. I think we all need to do the Ceri probably and just like sit down and enjoy. See what happens. And it’s going to be like flip, or like switching from one gear to another I think for some of the other stuff that I consume media for into just like, “Hey, this is like a silly funny, maybe sometimes bad, maybe sometimes good kind of thing we’re doing but not necessarily like sit down with a pencil and a paper for notes.”

Ceri Riley 26:49
Yeah, I sat down with tacos and was like, a kid, just eating dinner in front of the TV watching whatever’s on. So that’s what I recommend.

Matthew Gaydos 27:04
From now on, if we have to do the Ceri we all have to get tacos before watching.

Ceri Riley 27:08
Yeah I’ll text you all what I’m eating. Maybe I’ll do like Kid’s Cuisine or something too. Like, TV dinner

Matthew Gaydos 27:16
Control experiment–

Nicole Sweeney 27:20
Pairs nicely with a–

Marines Alvarez 27:23
With a Capri Sun pouch!

Ceri Riley 27:26
What’s the snack of the episode!

Matthew Gaydos 27:31
I think a good snack to go along with this one is actually– like you guys taking notes– Most of my notes or just like weird things I liked about this movie or weird questions that came up. But one of the notes that I wrote down had to do with a snack because at one point, Amy’s wearing a shirt in this movie that I really think we all need at some point to celebrate, like, the anniversary of this podcast in the future. She has a shirt on that is like a generic Oreo shirt that has like a picture of two Oreos and just says “chocolate cream cookies.” It doesn’t like– it doesn’t say like “I love chocolate cream cookies.” It doesn’t say “buy chocolate cream cookies.” It just says “chocolate cream cookies.” And there’s two pictures of like cartoon Oreos. And I’m like, What? What?

Marines Alvarez 28:17
Yes.

Matthew Gaydos 28:17
I paused the movie and googled, see if this was a thing. And I couldn’t find the shirt anywhere online. So I don’t know. So–

Marines Alvarez 28:25
Please make it, a whole line of like generic fruit or generic snacks on T shirts with just a generic name of the T shirt. And that’s it.

Matthew Gaydos 28:36
I would wear that shirt.

Nicole Sweeney 28:37
Amazing.

Marines Alvarez 28:38
My other snack contribution is also via Amy, I don’t know why I took this note. But they are at the very beginning of the movie they’re at lunch. And they’re talking about like a dead neighbor and like breaking into this house. And Amy keeps pausing to ask everybody if she can have their peaches. And like, “can I have your peaches, can I have your peaches.” And finally Marshall is like “just eat all the peaches, just have all the peaches. I don’t even know why you want these. They’re so hard.” And she says,” if you just suck on them for a while, then they’re okay.” I was like, um okay. Why is this here in this scene? I don’t know, but fine. Okay peaches.

Matthew Gaydos 29:19
I feell ike Amy has a whole life outside of the movie that we don’t get to see. Because at one point, they’re like standing by the lockers talking about everything that’s going on in their lives. And this like kid comes up and is trying to like ask her out. And we don’t learn anything else about him other like outside of that scene and he walks away. And she just like says to her friends like, Oh, yeah, I think he has a crush on me, whatever. And we’re like–

Nicole Sweeney 29:42
“It’s not gonna happen”

Matthew Gaydos 29:43
Yeah, and it’s like, wait, but why? Who is that person? Like? What is your life?

Nicole Sweeney 29:49
Yes.

Ceri Riley 29:50
I also want to know more about Gilbert’s mom, like she’s just–

Matthew Gaydos 29:54
Esmerelda

Ceri Riley 29:56
Esmeralda, but that was just the name that she chose for that day. I don’t know. I just wanted to mention it as far as like characters with a rich life outside of the movie.

Matthew Gaydos 30:06
If anyone has a backstory, it was her.

Marines Alvarez 30:09
Yeah, she collects dolls. She takes the dolls to the movie, she sometimes buys her dolls popcorn.

Matthew Gaydos 30:15
Once! She did that once. She makes it very clear.

Marines Alvarez 30:20
But that’s a whole movie on its own is all I’m saying.

Matthew Gaydos 30:23
Yeah I just wanna pan over when they’re at the movie at the end. Like I just want to pan over two rows over and there’s Gilbert’s mom with her dolls.

I wanted to ask you guys, when this movie started, and since none of us had seen it previously, we didn’t know that I was necessarily a movie within a movie. Did you think the beginning of this movie was way too scary for the Disney Channel?

Marines Alvarez 30:44
Yes, absolutely.

Ceri Riley 30:45
It was terrifying.

Nicole Sweeney 30:46
Yeah. All the camera work– like yes! I was like this is spooky!

Matthew Gaydos 30:50
It felt like a like traditional bad horror movie. Like there was a knife and broken glass and a big scary monster.

Marines Alvarez 30:55
Yeah. And the thing. What’s the thing called in the–

Matthew Gaydos 30:58
Warthead?

Marines Alvarez 30:59
No, the — What do you call the thing that you turn on in the–

Ceri Riley 31:02
garbage disposal?

Marines Alvarez 31:03
Yeah!

And the garbage disposal like that was that on its own? Like if you get stuck somehow, with?

Ceri Riley 31:14
Yes.

Marines Alvarez 31:14
–in a garbage disposal. There was a knife and broken glass. And it’s like they were layering. Like how creepy this thing was at the beginning. So I was immediately like no thanks.

Matthew Gaydos 31:23
And it wasn’t shot like a kid’s thing. It was shot like a traditional horror movie. And it was like it was genuinely terrifying. And I’m like, this movie is weird!

Ceri Riley 31:32
Yeah, I had similar like scared feelings because there’s a — spoiler, whatever death in Orphan Black where someone dies because of a garbage disposal. And when his head was being pushed down towards the knife in the garbage disposal, I had like a visceral reaction to this. Like, what did I get myself into? These are Disney movies. I thought this is gonna be a fun podcast. I’m eating tacos.

Nicole Sweeney 32:03
Well, this transitions nicely into the theme of the episode, if you will, I don’t know. I feel like maybe we should come up with a better thing for it, than the theme of the episode, but here we are.

Because this is a movie that begins with this horror movie, and then and you know, we have the character of Gilbert whose defining character trait is being afraid of things. What are some other things that scared you as a kid?

Matthew Gaydos 32:33
I mean, I think I like I said earlier, I think I might have been Gilbert a little bit. I don’t think I was at such a level. I don’t think I was quite at his level of scared of everything being my character trait. But I remember specifically being taken out of the theater during Jurassic Park because the T rex was too scary. And I think I was definitely the kid of, hey, let’s go break into that abandoned house. I’d be the kid be like, No, you know what, I’m good. I am gonna stay home. I don’t want to do that. My mom said no.

Ceri Riley 33:07
I think I was similarly scared in that way where I was scared of breaking rules. But I was not scared of horror tropes in general. So I like my grandpa inundated me with B horror movies. And so like fake blood gushing out of places, or like people getting their limbs cut off was very normal for me, or normalized to a scary amount when I was so young. But things that definitely scared me were like, a very irrational fears. So like that I would slip through the bars at the mall and fall from a big height when everything else was very safe, or that my house would burn down. Because for some reason, people always asked like, what is the thing that you would save during a fire? And then in my mind, that would build up to an anxiety of my is my house gonna burn down at some point in my life? And like, what, what will I save if I don’t know? Gotta like have contingency plans for all these things?

Marines Alvarez 34:02
I am still currently in 2019 a scaredy cat. Like I want to be the Amy I am 100% the Gilbert, that is that is my life. That was me as a child. I was scared of everything. Really, you know, grew up in a like, overprotective, like we weren’t allowed to do a lot of things. So I was just scared because I didn’t know like I didn’t ever get exposed to much of anything. So scary things like horror tropes definitely got to me, but also like other things like Ceri’s mentioning. So my reoccurring stress dream during the child– during the during the time that I was like in elementary school was that Batman would show up at my house and take me away from my mommy.

Every night just me and Batman taking me away from my mommy.

Matthew Gaydos 34:59
Batman’s a good guy!

Marines Alvarez 35:03
I was scared of him for some reason. And that’s the way that that went. So yes, also still some holdovers from when I was a kid like any sort of like being buried alive. Hate it hated it as a kid.

Nicole Sweeney 35:19
Are you still afraid of Batman?

Matthew Gaydos 35:21
I mean, when you said it, there was like a shiver down my spine. And I’m like, “Oh, I’m apparently afraid of that too.”

Marines Alvarez 35:32
Wait Batman or being buried alive?

Matthew Gaydos 35:33
The Buried Alive one, not the Batman one, me and Batman are cool.

Nicole Sweeney 35:40
Yeah, I am probably more afraid of things now as an adult, than I was as a kid. I had like, the opposite upbringing to you in that it was like, lawless. I don’t know, I — my mom had a very strict upbringing. And so she was like, I am not going to be my fucking parents. And was very, you know, “you can do whatever.” And I also had an older brother. And so I– I was probably afraid of more things, but spent so much time like posturing my way out of fear. You know what I mean? Like, because it was, I would have gotten laughed at or made fun of by my older brother, if I presented fear. And so I spent so much time and energy, like not presenting fear that I became desensitized. And just, you know, like we watched, we watch scary movies and stuff when I was pretty young. So I had enough exposure to a lot of that kind of stuff.

Honestly, most of the fears that I remember having as a kid were like big existential fears. Like, I remember being maybe seven years old, and driving somewhere with my mom. And I was sitting in the front seat. And like, I looked over at her, and I had this thought that what if, um, what if what I was seeing and hearing wasn’t real? Just sitting in the car and being like, “I’ll never know.” Like, what if she’s really and like I was conjuring, you know, just like really terrible images up like, maybe she’s actually this. And like, you know, she doesn’t really love me because she’s not real. Like, my nightmares were basically versions of like, everything that you believe about the world is wrong, or a lie, and you can’t trust your senses. These were my fears as a child.

Matthew Gaydos 37:23
Yikes!

Ceri Riley 37:26
Was it like, life is a simulation?

Nicole Sweeney 37:29
Yeah, like, sort of, so I mean, like, I definitely didn’t have like that language–

Ceri Riley 37:33
Yeah.

Nicole Sweeney 37:34
–as a seven year old. But that is– that’s basically the crux of it, was it like my life was actually sort of some sort of, like, simulation, concocted by evil creatures.

Marines Alvarez 37:44
Batman?

Ceri Riley 37:48
Very different from that, that reminded me of another one of my fears that is so hyper specific, where like, I was a very strong swimmer. I not afraid of real life drowning or anything, but drowning in video games was the scariest thing in the world to me. For some reason, like, in Sonic games, and Mario 64.

Matthew Gaydos 38:10
That’s the worst!

Ceri Riley 38:11
The drowning music that surrounds you, and I’m like, you know, your character’s dying. That was the worst. I think one time that happened and I started crying because it was like, I felt so bad that I let my character die. And it was so scary. But real life fine. I was fine swimming. Very different in simulation.

Matthew Gaydos 38:36
I feel like my childhood fears were pretty similar to yours, Ceri, where I was also I was okay with like watching horror movies and stuff like that as a kid. I was not ever afraid of like Freddy Krueger or Jason coming to get me but, like, the dark, people breaking into my house and kidnapping me, storms. Like these are the things that freaked me out as a kid like those really realistic uncontrollable things/

Nicole Sweeney 39:01
The dark! I am still lowkey afraid of the dark. I do not like to be in a pitch black room. I’m not into it. I have like, like a little I’m asked that I’ll sleep with and so they like it’s actually like pitch black inside like my eyes. But I can remove the eye mask and see things and like that is still that is still important to me.

Marines Alvarez 39:22
I don’t believe anybody who says that they enjoy being in the pitch dark. That seems fake to me but, sure.

Matthew Gaydos 39:32
Pro tip for not something to not do if you don’t want to enhance your fear of the dark. When I was a kid–

Nicole Sweeney 39:39
Matt no!

Matthew Gaydos 39:42
This is what to avoid! When I was a kid I had like a cardboard cutout in my room. I made the mistake of when I first got that cardboard cutout of putting it in front of the window. Because I thought it’d be funny for like people outside driving by to be able to see. But the way that works is when you wake up in the middle of the night. It looks like a grown man is standing in your room. And then you freak out and run to your mom’s room. So don’t do that. If you have a cardboard cutout. Don’t put it by a window.

Nicole Sweeney 40:11
Matt was a life size cardboard cutout of yourself?

Matthew Gaydos 40:14
No, it was a Ricky Rudd, a NASCAR driver.

Nicole Sweeney 40:21
And now we are nearing the end of this first episode of this podcast, with pro tips in mind, after watching this children’s movie, it’s important that we discuss the lessons that we learned from this children’s media. Matt, what would you like to share with the class today?

Matthew Gaydos 40:40
The lesson I gleaned from this movie was: if two people like each other enough, they should definitely be married. Because that’s what Marshall teaches us at the very end of the film. He’s like he asked his mom, “do you love Ted?” And she’s like, “Yeah, I think so.” He’s like, “you should be married.”

Nicole Sweeney 41:00
Yup, that’s how it works!

Marines Alvarez 41:01
Great.

Matthew Gaydos 41:03
And then immediately he’s like, “Now I have to court Amy. This is how life works. I saw two mummies fall in love. Now everyone must be in love.”

Nicole Sweeney 41:12
Now kiss!

Matthew Gaydos 41:12
Yeah, kiss everyone.

Marines Alvarez 41:15
My lesson came really early on in the movie. Gilbert is trying to tell Marshall like “listen, you you like scary movies. I’m just not like that. Like I just am a scaredy cat. It is what it is.” And Marshall wants Gilbert to learn the lesson about being brave. But Gilbert very astutely argues back that he would like to learn his lesson from the comfort of his own home. And they don’t listen to Gilbert. Nobody listens to Gilbert. And so they have this whole adventure — kidnapping and creepy old people and stuff. But I feel like things would have been pretty chill if people had just listened to Gilbert. So I would like to impart this knowledge with all of you that Yeah, you know, maybe you can face your fears or whatever. But mostly try to do that from the comfort of your own home.

Ceri Riley 42:08
I think my biggest lesson that I learned is that everyone needs to find their own Halloween. Because it’s the perfect setting for this movie, where Harold the mummy could just walk around in the world and exists and go on all his antics, and no one questioned him. And if it happened during any other time of the year, everyone would have been like, what the heck, there is this mummy walking around. Everyone was so kind to him. He got hit on at a party and kind of an uncomfortable way. A kid said rude things to him and his mom was like being nice to the man. But this was the time of year where he really thrived. So just find the time of year where you thrive and then go out into the world and do good things. Find love. Make friends. Be less lonely.

Nicole Sweeney 42:57
That was a really beautiful lesson?

Marines Alvarez 42:59
That was really good!

Nicole Sweeney 43:02
My my lesson is less beautiful. But it’s that tax evasion is for evil people. Only evil people do tax evasion.

Because we are making our way through these movies in order we we know you too can go look at the Wikipedia list and find out what we’re watching next. But Ceri, who knows nothing — As we end of this episode, Ceri is going to guess what the next movie is about based on only the title. So the next movie that we are watching is You Lucky Dog, a 1998 Disney Channel Original Movie. Ceri, what do you think this movie is about?

Ceri Riley 43:44
Oh. You Lucky Dog. Okay, well. Going– My only–

Given that my only experience is Under Wraps, which is pretty straightforward. Wraps = Mummy. You Lucky Dog. It’s gonna be– there’s gonna be a dog very prominently in the movie. It’s gonna be a stray maybe that is adopted to a loving family. It might be, I never watched any of the Air Bud movies, but that’s like what I’m picturing in my head, like a small boy, brown hair, very lonely, plays baseball.

Then, the dog comes into his life. He learns responsibility. He learns friendship, he learns that he has the confidence to succeed. And then like the dog comes in during one of his baseball games when he’s crying. And like inspires him to catch the flyball that wins them the game.

And maybe continuously throughout the movie — Now that he has this dog best friend — because of course it’s a boy and a dog. He’ll have a girl sidekick but like the boy has to have the dog. He has good luck, so that’s why you lucky dog is part of it? So he maybe– maybe he’s a down on his luck kid, and just very unpopular, and then he becomes very popular because, of course, dogs make you popular. That’s my guess.

Marines Alvarez 45:14
I want to watch that movie. I don’t know if that’s next week’s movie, but I want it to be. Like I want to watch that movie.

Unknown Speaker 45:21
Well, join us next time and find out if that’s actually what You Lucky Dog is about. Thank you for listening to this first episode of Cooler Than Homework. We will have a post dedicated this episode up on SnarkSquad.com that you can comment on. Or you can find us all on Twitter. I am @SweeneySays

Matthew Gaydos 45:46
I am @MatthewGaydos

Marines Alvarez 45:48
You can find me @mynameismarines

Ceri Riley 45:50
and I’m @ceriley

Nicole Sweeney 45:52
Thank you to Stefan Chin for the theme music that is playing us out right now, and we will see you again next time.