The Disney Channel Original Movies were something special towards a certain age group. They didn’t have the same kind production budget as Holl๊ywood films, and a lot of the acting was pretty amateurish in many films. A lot of the writing in these motion pictures was also very evidently aimed towards young children. However, despite all that, many of these films hold a special place in people’s hearts, mine included. The production values for these films will never match with anything you’ll see in a blockbuster movie, but there is surprisingly a lot of heart in making some of these Disney Channel flicks.
The infamous High School Musical trilogy is probably the biggest budgeted and most well-produced of any of the Disney Channel movies. The choreography is pretty top notch, and the acting is above the usual Disney Channel performance. Meaning they are above okay! Though, to be completely candid, I was never really a fan of the High School Musical movies. I won’t deny that the trilogy is made in a much higher quality than most Disney Channel films, yet the stories never clicked with me. I was also never a fan of musicals, to begin with. The films also felt more manipulated and commercialized as the series went on, losing🅺 the soul of what made them special with fans in the first place.
With that said, I won’t deny the impact that the trilogy left in the greater Disney Channel pantheon. Nonetheless, I think the film series kind of overshadows other truly great Disney Channel films. The Disney Channel Original Movies have a large variety of films in their catalog. A lot of them, I would argue, are just as good as High School Musical; if ✱not, better. That’s why today I’ll be going 🌼over 21 Disney Channel Movies That Are Better Than High School Musical.
21 T♍𒈔his Is Halloween
Let’s all be honest with ourselves, the original Halloweentown is only on this list for sentimental reasons. The child acting and sets are not good, and the story is almost too kiddie to enjoy as a grown-up. However, the first Halloweentown has a lot of ima🌱gination and heart, o🌳vercoming many of these issues. Nostalgia also helps makes this film very enduring.
Halloweentown centers on three siblings, who discover their Grandma is a witch that lives in a magical place called Halloweentown. The only way to get to Halloweentown 🌟is through ꧋a portal that opens only on Halloween. The siblings and their mother go to Halloweentown to check out the magical creatures there. They discover they all have magical powers, not unlike witches, and get swept up in an evil warlock’s plot to take over Halloweentown.
The movie has the typical Disney Channel fluff, like the cute little sister and the plucky pre-teen hero.
The child actors are not good, yet the lead cast members do have an enduring chemistry with each other that makes the original Halloweentown very watc🐼hable. The late, great Debbie Reynolds plays the grandmother and she is fun to watch. It’s hard to say this film is a good film, but for the sentimental sake this movie holds a special spot for a lot of kids’ hearts, mine included.
20 Techn🍰ology Can Be Spooky
Smart House is🉐 a prime example of how to make a silly premise work. This Disney Channel Original movie is one of the most well-received among all the Disney Channel flicks, and for good reason. The film is about a family who, not long after losing their mother, are having difficulty keeping up with all the chores and other responsibilities the mother use to take care of. They then win a Smart House – a house that is maintained entirely throu💖gh a computer. All of the housework is taken care of thanks to the computer.
The AI that runs the computer begins developing its own persona though. It starts becoming an overbearing housewife, who bec💎omes increasingly more protective towards the family. This leads to the house being more hostile to outsiders; including a woman the father has begun seeing.
The movie is pretty c♐heap and overall pretty cheesy, but the acting and the directing makes the whole movie work. Katey Sagal plays the hologram that the hous🅷e uses to communicate with the family, along with providing the voice for the AI, and she’s amazing to watch in this film. The other actors, including the kids, are not that bad either. There is also a lot of pathos to the plot, especially with how the family deals with the demise of the mother. It's a movie that shouldn’t work yet does.
19 🔴 The Ultimate Unlucky Day
I’ve watched a lot of Disney Channels Original classics, but my favorite has always been Luck of the Irish. A Saint Patrick’s Day movie, it is all about a ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚteenager who has gone throughout his whole life being incredibly lucky. After he loses his lucky gold coin, all his luck begins fading away. Not only that, he also starts shrinking and his ears get pointy. His mother reveals to him that he is turning into a Leprechaun, and he needs to get his lucky coin back to stay a normal human.
There are a lot of practical effects in the movie, that s🦩hockin🌟gly aren’t that bad.
The green screen to showcase the tiny leprechauns is kind of wonky, however, when the movie uses real sets and props to make the leprechauns seem smaller than they are, that is where the effects hold up. Since there aren’t any major little kid characters in the movie, there isn’t any bad kid acting. The teens acting isn’t bad, and all the grown-ups are pretty good. Special shout out towards Timothy Omundson, from Psych fame, as the main villain.
The themes of Luck of the Irish are pretty interesting too. The belief in luck, and how we make our own luck, is what gives us the con🔯fidence to achieve in life. The exploration of the many different cultures in the film is also fascinating, never shying away from the hardship that Irish people have gone through.
18 Cheesy But Entertaining 🌄
Phantom of the Megaplex is very corny and kind of dumb movie. It is about a teenage employee working at Megaplex during the night of a major movie premier. He is forced to bring his siblings with him. His brother becomes entranced with an elderly movie fanatic. Meanwhile, he starts encountering strange things during the lead up to a premier. This includes equipment going on the fritz, and tied up employees. It is eventually discov🍸ered that there is a mysterious masked figure lurking in the Megaplex. It is up to the lead and his siblings to find this “phantom of the Megaplex,” and make sure the premier goes on without a hitch.
The story is very evidently silly, and even the major plot twist with the phantom is a little stupid. With that said, Phantom of the Megaplex has a clear love towards cinema, particularly to old school movies. The younger brother’s fascination with movies was similar to my own interest in films, which may explain why I loved this movie so much as a kid. The late, great Mickey Rooney is sweet as the elderly man in the Megaplex. His genuine enthusiasm for motion pictures is evident in Phantom of the Megaplexജ. It is a silly movie very much aimed at kids, h꧂owever, it is great for how much it glamorizes old school cinema, something many Disney films don’t even bother with.
17 Dis🤪ney Gets Sci-Fi Rightℱ
It is weird that quite a few of Disney Channel movies are sci-fi. Science fiction stories generally need large budgets, especially if they plan to showcase a lot of futuristic stuff. Fortunately, Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century is a sci-fi movie with a very modest story. Despite taking place in the not-so-distant future where a chunk of humanity live🍒s within a space station near Earth, most of the movie actually takes place on the Earth.
The lead character Zenon used to live in the space station. She is punished by going down 🌜to Earth and living with her aunt for a little while. Zenon has trouble fitting in with her new classmates and understanding how society works on Earth. She later discovers a plot that puts the whole space station in trouble, and it is up to her and her friends to saﷺve the day.
The entire premise and story of Zenon is very much rooted in children's fantasy.
The sets look cheap, but at least they are interesting to look at. Despite releasing in 2001, the fashion is still hilariously 90s. Honestly, what makes Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century a classic Disney Channel film is because it is actually pretty well-written for a kids’ movie, and the lead actress is actually really cha🤡rming. Kirsten Storms as Zenon may be the best thing about the movie, which explains why Disney had two sequels for it.
16 S🎃o Much Drama!
I was always puzzled with Kim Possible. Was it a girl show, or was a show for both boys and girls? I watched a lot of episodes as a kid, so I assumed I liked it. But I also adored Cardcaptors as a kid, and I knew that was a girl's show. I know in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter, as a good show is a good show no matter what. Kim Possible was a g💯ood show no ꦗmatter what the intended gender it was aiming towards. It was just something I thought a lot about as a kid.
Kim Possible was apparently so popular that there were two Disney Channel movies. Kim Possible Movie: So The Drama was the second animated film released on Disney Channel. While I don’t think So The Drama is as good as the first Kim Possible movie (which I’ll get to later on in the list), it is still a pretty entertaining movie. Both Kim Possible films are a little bit darker than the main series, which is always good in my book. I think films should always be darker and more serious than the TV shows. So The Drama had a more direct influence on the Kim Possible TV show than the previous film. This movie ends with Kiꦇm finally kissing her longtime best friend/sidekick Ron Stoppable, and from that point oღn they would begin dating in the show.
15 Mermen Deserve Screen T✨ime Too!
There are a lot of stories about Mermaids, but how many stories do we know about Mermen? Disney Channel appeared to recognize this large oversight and decided to create a film starring a teenage boy who discovers he is a merman. The film is called The Thirteenth Year.
After turning thirteen, young Cody Griffin begins experiencing weird things with his body.
He starts growing scales, and he is swimming much faster. Not 𓆏only that, he can also manipulate electricity for some reason. Having been adopted, he soon discovers his birth mother is a mermaid. The father of his best friend, who is obsessed with mermaids, decides to use him in order to lure out his mermaid mother and capture her.
There is a lot of weird stuff in this film, including Cody learning to control electricity. Some of the mermaid co෴stumes and effects are kind of hit or miss. The scales growing on Cody at first look pretty good. When he turns full-on mermaid though, that’s when he looks a little ridiculous. There are some☂ dark aspects in this film, especially with the stuff that includes the friend’s father. There is a surprisingly large amount of grit with the father’s performance. It is overall a fun movie that takes the silly premise serious enough to make it actually feel palpable, yet still avoids making it seem too stern.
14 The Girl That Started It All 🐼
Hilary Duff was, in many ways, the predecessor of future Disney teen idols like Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez. She starred in the very popular Lizzie McGuire during the early 2000s, and had a successful music career. She isn’t in the starlight as much as she was back then, but I remember her being one of the first Disney Channel stars. During the midst of the Lizzie McGuire show, she took time to make this Disney Channel Original movie called Cadet Kelley.
Duff plays Kelly Collins, a free-spirited young girl who is forced to move away from her artsy school after her mother remarries. Her new step father gets a position in a military school, and Kelly is forced to start attending there. She has a hard time connecting with the other students, and develops a rivalry with her superior, played by Christy Carlson Romano from Kim Possible and Even Stevens. She eventually di𒐪scovers an interest in joining the drill team.
Despite having a lot of Disney Channel clichés, the acting is actually pretty okay. Duff and Romano have always been good teen actresses, and they are the glue that makes this movie work. The drill scenes where they twirl around rifl🌌es and marches are pretty impressively well choreographed. It’s an overall a solid ou꧒ting for Disney Channel.
13 Great Show, Great Moܫvie 🍰
It’s weird for me to think how big of a celebrity Shia LaBeouf became after Even Stevens. In my mind, he will always be that young teen on that show, which is odd considering I actually rarely saw an episode of Even Stevens. It was always advertised on the 💦Disney Channel though, so I would recognize him all the time.
Despite how seldom I actually watched the Even Stevens TV show, I watched The Even Stevens Movie a lot as a young kid.
The movie focuses on the titular Stevens family going on vacation t🔴o a tropical island. Louis Stevens, played by LaBeouf, does something foolish to make the locals upset and shun his family. Eventually, it is revealed that the island is a hoax, and they are all being filmed for a reality prank show called Family Fake Out. 💎The TV crew keeps throwing more and more horrible things at them, including a killer squirrel.
The premise is a little bit crazier compared to the relatively tame TV show, though it is a lot of stupid fun. Seeing Shia LaBeouf run away from a rabid squirrel is both idiotic and funny. Chemistry of the cast, who have been doing the show for a few years at that point, is pret൩ty ☂solid. LaBeouf and Christy Carlson Romano, who plays Louis’ sister Ren, carry the movie with how well they play off of each other.
12 ꦇ Kid's Spookfest Done Right
Even though Disney Ch💞annel prides itself for how kid-friendly it is, the channel is actually home t⛦o a lot of “scary” movies. When I say “scary,” I mean scary movies for kids. You won’t see anything super violent or gory on Disney Channel. Still, there are quite a lot of horror movies among the Disney Channel pantheon. They are usually Halloween movies. While most, if any, were hardly scary, a lot of these Disney Channel horror movies did have impressive make-up and costumes. They were also a lot darker than most Disney Channel films.
One of the best horror movies on Disney Channel was Don’t Look Under The Bed. 📖This “scary” movie is about young teenager name Frances, who is being framed around town for many extreme pranks. She encounters an imaginary friend, who can only be seen by young children and her. The imaginary friend informs her that a boogeyman is framing her for all the weird stuff around town.
The story is actually really imaginative, and the concepts the movie brings up about imaginary friends and boogeyman is actually interesting. The fact that boogeymen are created when childr💦en stop believing in their imaginary friends too early is actually really creative and fascinating. The story is a little bit more mature than the usual Disney Channel flare, and it is a pretty fun film to watch.