“If we listen to each other’s heart / We’ll find we’re never too far apart,” sang the fictional pop star Powerline (voiced by Tevin Campbell) during a 2017 screening of “A Goofy Movie” at El Capitan Theater in Hollywood.
The ecstatic reaction from those in attendance confirmed to Kevin Lima that the first movie he ever directed, originally released on April 7, 1995, had indeed amassed an adoring fandom.
“I sat amongst an audience who was singing along, repeating back dialogue with the characters onscreen, dancing in their seats,” Lima recalled during a recent video interview from his home in Mill Valley, Calif.
“A Goofy Movie” observes the often hilarious, and at times thorny relationship between Goofy (voiced by Bill Farmer), the lanky anthropomorphic dog from Disney’s classic cartoons, and his teenage son, Max (Jason Marsden), as they go on a road trip that will bring them closer.
Unlike most Disney films made during that time, this heartfelt father-son adventure was a contemporary story entrenched in the 1990s via its upbeat pop music and the characters’ wardrobes. Lima described it as “an animated film that feels like a John Hughes movie.”
Produced mostly in Paris by Disneytoon Studios, a television division with a far smaller budget than those for projects at Walt Disney Animation Studios, “A Goofy Movie” made a modest $35.3 million, not adjusted for inflation, during its domestic theatrical release, according to Box Office Mojo. Yet with time, it found its audience among young millennials watching it on home video, namely VHS.
Today, YouTube and TikTok are saturated with content about “A Goofy Movie.” Disney has capitalized on this interest by releasing new merchandise that outnumbers the products that existed when the film was originally released. And special Fork n’ Film screenings, at which audiences eat the food from the movie, have played to sold-out crowds.
“I’m very surprised that of all the films I’ve made, this one’s had such a deep connection with its audience,” said Lima, who also directed “Enchanted” (2007) and was one of the directors of “Tarzan” (1999).
That devotion has crystallized into “Not Just a Goof,” a documentary about the making of “A Goofy Movie,” streaming on Disney+, to mark the 30th anniversary of the feature.
The directors of the documentary, Eric Kimelton and Christopher Ninness, met in 2010 while working for Lima and bonded over their shared love of “A Goofy Movie.”
Kimelton is also Lima’s nephew and was inspired to pursue a career in filmmaking after attending the premiere of a “A Goofy Movie” at Walt Disney World in Florida as a kid. “I realized there was a whole other possibility to life and not just the small town I was living in,” Kimelton said.
It was in 2020, after watching the documentary “Into the Unknown: Making Frozen 2,” that Ninness thought he would like to see one about “A Goofy Movie” as well.
Initially, Kimelton and Ninness approached Lima with the intent of interviewing him for a short piece to discuss the movie’s legacy, but after Lima shared with them more than 50 tapes of never-before-seen behind-the-scenes footage, the project evolved into a full feature.
Ninness said that the way people connect with “A Goofy Movie” across generations is what makes it enduring. “If you’re a kid you can relate with Max, and now that I’m a father, I’m probably going to start relating to Goofy more,” he said. “Everyone considers their dad goofy to a certain degree.”
With Lima’s encouragement, Ninness gets personal in the documentary. He says that since he had a complicated childhood, his rewatching of “A Goofy Movie” provided a safe space. “I hope that when people watch my scene in the movie, they can maybe see themselves a bit,” he said.
While a whole generation of movie watchers has enshrined “A Goofy Movie,” many Black viewers in particular have embraced the film as a cultural cornerstone under the perception that Goofy and Max are a Black father and son.
That read on the movie became the basis of a 2022 episode of the series “Atlanta” titled “The Goof Who Sat by the Door,” which was conceived as a revisionist fake documentary that imagines “A Goofy Movie” as the brainchild of a Black man who became Disney’s C.E.O.
For one of the writers of the episode, Karen Joseph Adcock, creating this fiction was an exercise in reappropriation. “It was like, even if this wasn’t for us, we’ve decided that this is our thing now, and let’s all experience it and talk about it in that way,” she said during a recent Zoom interview.
Lima recalled being surprised when he learned about the “Atlanta” episode but understood at that moment that “A Goofy Movie” had earned a rarefied place in pop culture. “Here’s a whole community who took this movie and used it to represent something bigger,” he said.
Adcock said she appreciated that Lima’s movie shows Goofy, a character often portrayed as a simple-minded second fiddle to Mickey Mouse, in a more complex light. “This was a story that really fleshed him out and opened up his world to show that he’s going through it and is having a hard time, doing his best to be a good father and connect with his son.”
Lima admitted that it hadn’t been his lifelong quest to make a movie about Goofy, but he took the opportunity because he wanted to become an animation director. After watching the documentary, however, Lima realized that making his film had helped him grapple with his feelings about having an absent father. “I took something that wasn’t me and found a way to express myself through it,” he said. “This movie became a way for me to imagine what it might have been to have a dad who loves you dearly.”
“I personally think it’s a Disney classic that stands up with the epics of the Disney Renaissance,” said Ninness. “What ‘A Goofy Movie’ might not have in scope, it makes up for in characters and emotion.”
