Disney Channel Original Movies (DCOM) Zone

I Watched Smart House (1999) in 2020

Smart House is one of my favorite movies from my childhood. Can you imagine a house that tells you what temperature it is? You can just shout out and ask what time it is? Have it play your favorite songs? ….. Oh wait.

Smart House tells the story of a family comprised of an overworked and single father along with his young adolescent son and his nine year old daughter. The boy, Ben, is a self proclaimed computer whiz who works overtime to take care of household essentials, such as cooking dinner, feeding the dog, and watching out for his little sister, while his dad is working to provide for them. He enters his family in a contest to win a free house (how does that even work?) with its own virtual assistant who can do pretty much anything. Soon enough, PAT (short for personal applied technology) starts to overstep her role and tries to become larger than what she was made to be.

Watching Smart House in today’s technological state is jarring. Smart House is something I deemed unimaginable when I was a kid, and yet here we are. Although most houses can’t make strawberry smoothies on command like in the movie, Alexa and Google Home do perform a lot of menial tasks. Twenty years ago, Alexa’s capabilities could not be imagined. Now, it is uncommon for a household to not have any technological capabilities such as those mentioned above. Here are some of my thoughts as I watched Smart House in 2020.

Is this what they thought the future looked like?

Reality could be even darker than it is in the movie

Man, Ryan Merriman is so much younger than I remember, and no longer hot

This is way too much responsibility for like a 12 year old to have. No wonder this kid wants to win this smart house- he acts like a damn parent himself

Okay BOTH of these kids are parenting their dad, not just the 12 year old.

Okay, the dad said I love you a ton, and the kid asked if he loves her two tons, or six tons? TALK ABOUT I LOVE YOU THREE THOUSAND (Endgame reference) 20 YEARS IN THE FUTURE.

Lol, the internet is tying up the phone line. 90s problems.

“Big Brother is watching you, but Big Brother turns out to be your house”. Um. WTF?

These observations were just in the first twenty minutes. There are too many other thoughts and observations throughout the rest of the movie to write them down. I will say that this movie does explore some dangerous technological consequences. Just as we saw in Aral Balkan’s video, this “fake” technology in Smart House steals the family’s information and eventually holds it against them, holds them hostage, and basically tries to kill them. Not taking into account the attempted murder and physical hostage holding, so much of our technology does very similar things. Google knows everything. Alexa knows everything. Apple knows everything. And we need to be careful with the information that we put out there.

The quote “Big Brother is watching you, but Big Brother turns out to be your house” was a particularly meaningful quote that popped out to me. Like I mentioned before, we are always being watched. Not only does Google, Alexa, Apple know everything, but the government has access to this information as well- if they wanted information on any given citizen, they could probably get it from one of those big companies that learns information about us. I must say, Smart House really foreshadowed some technological uses a long time ago- maybe we should have paid more attention, and should pay attention to what movies are saying about technology today.

Comparing High School Musical and High School Musical 2’s Soundtracks

The High School Musical series is one of the most famous, if not the most famous phenomenon to come from Disney Channel. Starring Zac Efron (who is still my biggest crush), Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, and Lucas Grabeel, this series was integral to my childhood and early adolescence. Growing up, I was obsessed with the High School Musical series, and still kind of am. With my obsessions generally comes analysis and comparison. I’m a purist when it comes to most things- I tend to value the first of a series. That being said, I absolutely prefer the second High School Musical’s soundtrack over the first one. If you compare almost every single song between HSM 1 & HSM 2, you will find that HSM 2 beats out its counterpart song every single time, except for one or two exceptions. Another reason why HSM 2 is superior is because Zac Efron actually sings in the second one. In the first one, Drew Seeley sings for Troy Bolton. Having the actor actually sing, like Efron does in the second movie, makes the HSM 2’s soundtrack feel much more authentic. With that being said, I decided to go through the two soundtracks and weed out my top three favorite songs. Here are my results:

1. You Are The Music in Me

When I think of High School Musical, I think of this song. This song is so, so sweet. The way Troy and Gabriella look at each other during this song is #goals. That, and when everyone else joins in, it just feels like the happiest moment that will never end. Even just listening to it while having no visual makes me so happy. The nostalgia and the love within this song just takes the cake, so that’s why it’s my number one.

2. Everyday

This is a very close second. I was thinking of making this one tied for #1, but since I’m only doing my top three songs, I thought that would have been a cop out. The only reason it does not take the number one place is because I don’t get as magical of a feeling while just listening to it. However, that being said, while watching the actual movie, this song- and this moment- is absolutely beautiful and breathtaking.

3. Breaking Free

Overall, I did say HSM 2’s soundtrack is better than the first one, but come on, this song is just ICONIC. Back in the good ole days (2006), you could easily just scream out “WE’RE SOAAAARIN’…” and have a bunch of kids belt back to you “FLYYYYYYYIN’” to complete the famous line. Once again, watching this moment in the movie in the movie itself is even more magical and awesome. I distinctly remember trying to copy Zac Efron’s moonwalk multiple times. I never got it.

*While HSM 3 is also a Disney movie, I decided not to include it in this debate because it was not a DCOM- that is, it did not premiere on Disney Channel- it came out in theaters.