My Review of "Not Just a Goof"

Not Just a Goof is a documentary that came out in 2024. It's one of the most unlikely documentaries you'd expect. The movie is not terribly. It's based on the animated movie called "The Goofy Movie". I reviewed this movie 2 years ago because I was just hearing how popular it was. Little did I know, it was more popular than I thought.

The film starts off with the explanation of how The Goofy Movie was an unlikely hit. Actually, it was a box office bomb when it first came out. It was a movie that nobody expected to last as long as it did. This movie, however, had influenced the film maker, Kevin, a great deal. He decides to go to the makers themselves to hear the backstory of how this movie was created.

For the next hour and a half we hear about the trials and tribulations that these film makers had to go through to get this movie up and running. There's so much that they had to deal with and it sounds like this movie was almost cut short many times. I'm sure that this is par for the course for many movie making studios. This one is a little different.

You see, the studios didn't really want this movie but there was a champion at the high levels that was backing this movie. They were basically able to skirt around bigger productions while making this small film. It's very interesting how they weave their narrations with animations to tell the story. There's even found footage from the time that the movie was made to help push the narrative of their stories.

The documentary has a very nice and easy flow to follow along. They segmented it so that it's very easily digested and understandable. I'm glad that they were able to dumb down a lot of the industry jargon and situations for us lament viewers.

What was interesting to see is how invested all of the players in the original film were. Even people with small parts seemed to be totally into the project. I could see some of the cast fighting back tears while explaining their stories. They are not actors so you can tell that these emotions are genuine.

The emotions rise up even more when you see how much passion as been implemented into this movie. I was gutted to see their reactions when the movie bombs in the box office and seemingly got negative reviews. As we know, from the making of the documentary that there is a huge redemption at the end. They go into it about how this movie became a cult classic as well.

I think for the most part they told what needed to be said in this movie but they did have a teaser at the end that indicated that the documentary is not quite done. There are elements that are missing because there's so much to this movie than meets the eye. We are just viewing this documentary through the eyes of the filmmakers of the time. It would be interesting to dive deeper into what the cult loved about this movie. There is a minor character in this movie that seems to transcend even the main characters of this movie. That character was teased for the next documentary.

Overall, I had a good time with this documentary. It gave me a better insight into the trials and tribulations of making the movie. I did want them to go deeper into the cult status of the movie but that is a totally different subject so I understand why they cut it short. There's a feeling that there's more to be revealed and that makes me interested as well. I have to give this documentary a 6.5 out of 10.