A Goofy Movie hits dif­fer­ent as a parent

When it was first released it kind of came and went. Sand­wiched in between 1994’s The Lion King and 1997’s Her­cules – two heavy hit­ters of Disney’s sec­ond Gold­en Age renais­sance – a plucky com­ing-of-age tale about one of the studio’s old­est char­ac­ters wrestling with father­hood wasn’t exact­ly seen as the most excit­ing thing ever for Disney’s young audi­ence. So why are we still talk­ing about A Goofy Movie three decades later?

Make no mis­take, the empha­sis here lies firm­ly on the ​“we” bit of that sen­tence. A quick Google search on the lega­cy of this over­looked film shows plen­ty of fans who now con­sid­er A Goofy Movie any­thing but a long-for­got­ten after­thought of Disney’s (most­ly) crit­i­cal­ly-praised 90s oeu­vre. In fact, Dis­ney+ have recog­nised as much, pro­duc­ing a whole doc­u­men­tary on its unex­pect­ed after­life, Not Just a Goof, to coin­cide with the film’s 30^th birthday.

So why has Goofy’s first head­line out­ing endured despite a slow start? Viewed through the lap­top-weary eyes of an over­worked adult, this eas­i­ly dis­missed father-and-son tale emerges as some­thing whol­ly dif­fer­ent from just anoth­er colour­ful, kid-focused ani­ma­tion. What’s more, if you first viewed the film as a child and now find your­self as the par­ent of one, A Goofy Movie wastes no time hit­ting you square in the feels.

Like many pop-cul­ture lovers cur­rent­ly drudg­ing through the sludge of their late 30s, I remem­ber A Goofy Movie com­ing and going pret­ty well. Sto­ry-wise, it was harm­less enough. Direct­ed by Kevin Lima, it told a touch­ing tale about Disney’s gap-toothed anthro­po­mor­phic dog (he is a dog, right?) strug­gling to main­tain a rela­tion­ship with his awk­ward teenage son Max. In an attempt to sal­vage things, Goofy takes Max on a cross-coun­try road trip – but it’s soon pulled off course.

As a kid, your entry point into A Goofy Movie is very much the lat­ter part of this dynam­ic. Strug­gling with his place in the world while long­ing to be one of the pop­u­lar kids, Max’s main inter­ests are high school crush­es and Pow­er­line, a slick-danc­ing pop star that’s def­i­nite­ly not Michael Jack­son but also total­ly 100% Michael Jack­son at the same time. Much like Max, many of us would be lying if we said our child­hood pri­or­i­ties lay any­where near the urge to solid­i­fy a stur­dy bond with a hot mess father fig­ure who’s – quite lit­er­al­ly – a giant goof.

How­ev­er, cut to three decades lat­er, and the wor­ries at the cen­tre of Goofy’s pure-heart­ed yet bum­bling attempts at bond­ing with his only son are impos­si­ble to ignore, espe­cial­ly if you’re a par­ent. For 90s kids who now find them­selves as mil­len­ni­al dads pre­tend­ing to know what the heck they’re doing when it comes to steer­ing the life of a lit­tle one, A Goofy Movie ends up hit­ting far clos­er to home than any oth­er Dis­ney oth­er movie of that era.

It’s some­thing many fans have picked up on, forc­ing them to reassess the film. Even if your child is years away from expe­ri­enc­ing the strug­gles sim­i­lar to Max’s angsty ado­les­cence, it’s hard for new dads to watch the film and not put them­selves in Goofy’s over-sized shoes. How do you remain part of your child’s life when every fibre of their being is yearn­ing for inde­pen­dence? What is the right bal­ance of hands-on and hands-off par­ent­ing at such a raw time? How would you deal with a sud­den loss of inno­cence as your child becomes a young adult – and could any of us hon­est­ly say we won’t one day end up embar­rass­ing them just as much as Goofy?

As we realise none of us have any answers, we also notice that our entry point into A Goofy Movie has switched. Instead of empha­sis­ing with school­yard cliques and musi­cal fan­dom, it’s Goofy’s urge to ensure he rais­es a lov­ing, empa­thet­ic and well-round­ed adult that becomes the film’s focal point. Sure. It isn’t exact­ly on the same cul­ture-shat­ter­ing wave-length of Netflix’s sober­ing hit Ado­les­cence – but its over­ar­ch­ing themes of doing the right thing as a par­ent are exact­ly the same.

There’s an entire Red­dit thread ded­i­cat­ed to this whole tricky top­ic – and hon­est­ly, it’s kind of heart­break­ing to read oth­er people’s father­ly con­nec­tions to the film. Sud­den­ly, seem­ing­ly inno­cent scenes – like Goofy telling his son about his love of alpha­bet soup, some­thing baby Max called ​‘Hi Dad Soup’ due to his love of using it to spell out lov­ing phras­es – take on a teary new weight. Do sim­i­lar con­ver­sa­tions await us in our future? If they do, fin­gers crossed we’ll han­dle them half as well as Goofy did.

Like­wise, this table-turn pro­vides a new per­spec­tive on the rela­tion­ship you had with your own par­ents and what they must’ve thought about your goofy teenage mess-ups. Were you too hard on them at times? If you could go back and be eas­i­er on your embar­rass­ing folks, would you? Both sides of this quandary are summed up in an exchange that has aged like a gut punch. ​“I have my own life now,” Max yells at his Dad dur­ing a cli­mac­tic con­fronta­tion at a key moment. ​“I know that,” says Goofy, solemn­ly, ​“I just want to be a part of it.” Oof.

For all of its obscu­ri­ties (Dis­ney sure wast­ed no time mak­ing Goofy a wid­ow in his first fea­ture film) and weird­ness (Max’s sur­name is Max Goof – does that mean Goofy is called Goofy Goof?), few Dis­ney films – of this era or any oth­er – have aged as well as A Goofy Movie. By putting as much love, atten­tion and depth into its adult-front­ed sto­ry­line as well as its danc­ing Sasquatch kids plot, Lima’s film man­ages to do what all Dis­ney movies aspire to do but few actu­al­ly achieve: tran­scend gen­er­a­tions and be mean­ing­ful­ly enjoyed by future audi­ences. For that rea­son alone, the title of Disney’s new doc­u­men­tary couldn’t be more apt.

As if that wasn’t enough, I defy you to rewatch A Goofy Movie and not end up get­ting Powerline’s (Tevin Camp­bell) gen­uine­ly catchy music stuck in your Spo­ti­fy for the fore­see­able. Like Goofy’s (and pos­si­bly future you’s) attempts at being seen as a cool dad, it’s phys­i­cal­ly impossible.