When I ask, "where's the magic?" I'm not talking about the magic that turns Tim Allen into a sheep dog. I'm talking about the "Disney Magic." I realize that a bunch of you have already commented on this, but now I'd like to add my two cents.
The original "Shaggy Dog" movie was released in 1959 (my parents were about three years old). I constantly watched it on video when I was a kid. It was cheesy, sappy, corny, etc. Even though the story was silly, the acting bad, and the special effects tacky, it had a certain charm and squishy Disney cuteness that made it appealing. I watched it recently, and I still liked it even though I'm a 26-year-old man now.
The fact that the new movie sucks has nothing to do with the fact that I'm old and jaded. It doesn't have to do with the bad acting (except for Tim Allen, who, as always, did well with what he was given) or lame special effects. Disney has lost its magic. You can only do so many remakes and sequels of a movie before it turns into a cliché and loses all the creativity and charisma of the original. This is about the fourth or fifth remake and/or sequel of the original, and it's not cute any more. It's the Xerox effect. If you keep making copies of something, you lose the all the sharpness and clarity that you began with.
Disney has perfected this over the last ten years. They've ruined just about every classic they ever made by coming out with a cheap remake or thrown-together sequel. The Shaggy Dog has gone from being a silly story about an awkward teenager trying to deal with life as all these crazy things start happening to him (totally relatable story, by the way), into a goofy special effects showcase about a lawyer who's prosecuting a tree-hugging hippie teacher, only to find out that the teacher isn't a criminal but was framed by these evil scientists who are doing genetic testing on animals (I could go off on how Disney always tries to put some liberal message into all of its new movies, but this isn't a political website).
If the good people at Disney would put more time and effort into making new and original films, they could once again become a great company. Instead they make mediocre original stuff and lackluster rehashes, and they're wasting their money. If all their resources would go into new ventures, we would probably see fewer movies from them each year, but we would once again be astounded and mesmerized by that Disney magic.
