A Goofy Movie

Goofy is the single father of his 14-year-old son Max Goof, although the two have a tense relationship. On the last day of school before summer vacation, Max and his best friends P.J. and Robert "Bobby" Zimuruski hijack the auditorium in the middle of Principal Mazur's speech, creating a small concert where Max performs, while dressed as the pop singer Powerline. The performance succeeds in making Max a school celebrity and impressing his love interest, Roxanne, but he, P.J., and Bobby are sent to Mazur's office. While waiting outside of the office, Roxanne speaks with Max and agrees to go with him to a party where Powerline's concert will be viewed live on television. However, Mazur calls Goofy and forewarns him that Max's behavior may result in him facing capital punishment.

Oblivious to Max's plans with Roxanne, Goofy decides to take Max on a fishing trip to Lake Destiny, Idaho, following a cross-country map route he and his father took years ago. Before they leave town, Max manages to stop by Roxanne's house to call off their date, but when the heartbroken Roxanne mentions going with someone else, Max panics and instead fabricates a story about his father knowing Powerline, telling her he will be on stage at the concert.

Despite his son's objections, Goofy plans his own trip, with initially disastrous results. Max angrily hurts his father's feelings after Goofy inadvertently humiliates Max at an opossum-based theme park. Later, Pete and P.J. happen to meet up with them while camping by a lake. While P.J. informs Max of how all their peers back home anticipate seeing him onstage at the Powerline concert, Pete advises Goofy to keep Max under control. Goofy takes his son fishing and shows him the Perfect Cast fishing technique, accidentally luring Bigfoot to their camp. Pete and P.J. flee, leaving Goofy and Max to spend the night with Bigfoot. At night, while Goofy sleeps, Max alters the map's route to Los Angeles, where the concert is taking place.

The next morning, Goofy decides to make Max the navigator of the trip. The two go to different locations that satisfy both of them. Eventually, they stop by a motel where they meet Pete and P.J. again. When Pete overhears a conversation between the boys, he tells Goofy that Max has tricked him into traveling to Los Angeles. The next day, Goofy and Max come to a junction: one leading to Idaho, the other to California. Max chooses the route to California, making Goofy stop the car at the Grand Canyon and storm off in anger. With the brake loose, the car drives off on its own; Goofy and Max chase after it and end up in a river. After a heated argument, Goofy solemnly declares that no matter how old Max gets he will always be his son, and the two finally reconcile with each other. After learning of Max's promise to Roxanne, Goofy decides to take him to the concert in Los Angeles. The two nearly plummet to their deaths down a waterfall, but Max saves Goofy using the Perfect Cast technique.

Goofy and Max make it to the concert, and while attempting to sneak backstage, they end up onstage and dance with Powerline, watched by Pete, P.J. and Roxanne on separate televisions. Goofy and Max later return to Roxanne's house in their damaged car. Max tells the truth to Roxanne, though she accepts it and admits she always had feelings for him, ever since the first time she ever heard him laugh, "Ah-hyuck!"; thus, a relationship starts between them. Goofy's car suddenly explodes because of damage it had sustained, ejecting Goofy in the process, who then falls through the porch roof of Roxanne's house, and Max proceeds to introduce him to Roxanne.

• Bill Farmer as Goofy, a single father who works as a photographer at a photo studio in a mall department store.
• Jason Marsden as Maximilian "Max" Goof, Goofy's insecure teenage son.
  • Aaron Lohr provides Max's singing voice.
• Jim Cummings as Pete, Goofy's co-worker whom he and Max happen upon during their road trip.
• Kellie Martin as Roxanne, Max's high school crush and romantic interest.
• Rob Paulsen as P.J., Pete's son and Max's best friend.
• Pauly Shore (uncredited) as Robert "Bobby" Zimuruski, Max and P.J.'s other best friend at school.
• Wallace Shawn as Principal Mazur, the bad-tempered principal of Max's school.
• Jenna von Oÿ as Stacey, Roxanne's best friend.
• Frank Welker as Bigfoot, a monster who lives in the forest.
• Kevin Lima as Lester the Possum, a walk-around character at Lester's Possum Park. Lima also voices Roxanne's father.
• Florence Stanley as a waitress.
• Jo Anne Worley as Miss Maples, Principal Mazur's upbeat secretary.
• Joey Lawrence as Chad.
• Julie Brown as Lisa.
• Robyn Richards as a young girl at Lester's Possum Park.
• Klee Bragger as a tourist kid.
• Pat Buttram as the emcee at Lester's Possum Park.
• Wayne Allwine as Mickey Mouse, who makes a cameo appearance being seen hitchhiking alongside Donald Duck during Goofy and Max's road trip.
• Tevin Campbell as Powerline, a famous pop star celebrity admired by Max and his peers.

A Goofy Movie is based on Goof Troop, an animated Disney Afternoon show created by Robert Taylor and Michael Peraza Jr., that centered around Goofy and his son, Max.[7][8] When considering ideas for a TV special, Disney decided to produce a theatrical film based on the show, contracting Jymm Magon to write a feature-length script starring Goofy. The filmmakers chose to age up Max, who was shown as a young child in Goof Troop, setting the film several years later and putting him in high school.[9] The movie was the directorial debut for Disney crew member Kevin Lima, who went on to direct the Disney films Tarzan (1999), 102 Dalmatians (2000) and Enchanted (2007).[10] In 1995, Lima said that "Instead of just keeping Goofy one-dimensional as he's been in the past, we wanted to give an emotional side that would add to the emotional arc of the story. We wanted the audience to see his feelings instead of just his antics."[11] Magon stated that the father-son dynamic of the film was inspired by a story from Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg in which he and his daughter- with whom he had an estranged relationship at the time- went on a road trip together, during which they bonded and their relationship considerably improved.[4][12]

While the work was a Disney production, it was considered far less essential than the studio's mainstream works at the time such as The Lion King, and was given a far smaller budget compared to these films.[4] Thus, A Goofy Movie was jointly produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation, Walt Disney Television Animation, and Disney MovieToons and with outsourcing to Walt Disney Animation France and Walt Disney Animation Australia, along with additional Disney animation studios in Spain and Canada.[4] Pre-production was done at the main Feature Animation studio in Burbank, California, starting as early as mid-1993. The animation work was done at Walt Disney Animation France in Paris supervised by Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi, with additional scenes animated at Disney's studio in Sydney, Australia under the direction of Steve Moore, and clean-up work done at the main Burbank studio.[2][13] Additional clean-up/animation was done by Phoenix Animation Studios in Canada, and inked-and-painted by the Pixibox studio in France.[14] The film's planned release on Thanksgiving 1994 was delayed due to the monitor that they were using to capture the film's animation having a single dead pixel, forcing them to recapture three-quarters of the film again with a non-defective monitor.[4]

Most of the main voice cast from Goof Troop reprised their roles in A Goofy Movie, including Bill Farmer as Goofy, Jim Cummings as Pete, and Rob Paulsen as PJ. To conform to his difference in age, Max was played by Jason Marsden, who was in high school at the time, replacing Dana Hill from Goof Troop as the character's voice actor.[9] Alternatively, Aaron Lohr did Max's singing voice.[15] Other cast members included Kellie Martin as Roxanne, Jenna von Oÿ as Stacey, and Pauly Shore as Bobby Zimuruski. Farmer, who spent 43 days recording dialogue over the span of 2-and-a-half years,[9] was initially asked by Jeffrey Katzenberg to give Goofy a regular speaking voice as opposed to the character's signature, cartoonish voice, much to the confusion of Farmer, who insisted that audiences wanted to hear the Goofy they were all familiar with. After recording lines in this manner for a week-and-a-half, according to Farmer, Michael Eisner and Roy E. Disney told Farmer to speak in Goofy's original voice, after which the dialogue was rerecorded as such.[9][15] Farmer stated that he used a "mental image" of his 5-year-old son at the time in order to fully embrace his role as a loving father.[12] Magon named Principal Mazur after his own school principal from when he was in high school.[9] The character of Powerline was heavily inspired by real-life pop stars, including Michael Jackson, Prince, and Bobby Brown.[16] R&B artist Tevin Campbell, who was 17 years old at the time of production,[12] provided the singing voice for Powerline, recording the songs "Stand Out" and "I2I". Campbell recorded the songs in front of a green screen while performing his own choreography.[16] The film is dedicated to Pat Buttram, who voiced the emcee at possum park, as he died after finishing his voice work for the film.[17]

The score for A Goofy Movie was provided by Carter Burwell.[18] Burwell was the primary composer; after Burwell had recorded his score with Shirley Walker orchestrating and conducting, Don Davis was hired to rework his score rather than write a completely new one. Burwell later wrote: "My score had relied somewhat on unusual instrumentation – banjo, percussion and choir for example – and Disney wanted the sweeping scale and familiar affect of symphonic score".[19] Davis is credited with "additional music" on the movie and the soundtrack album. The songs "I 2 I" and "Stand Out" were performed by R&B singer Tevin Campbell. The soundtrack album for A Goofy Movie was released by Walt Disney Records on March 18, 1995.[20] Mitchell Musso covered the song "Stand Out" for the DisneyMania 7 album, which was released on March 9, 2010.[21]

A direct-to-video sequel to A Goofy Movie, titled An Extremely Goofy Movie, was released on DVD and VHS in 2000. The film centers on Max's freshman year in college. Characters that returned for the sequel were Goofy, Max, P.J., Pete and Bobby, but Roxanne is absent from the sequel and is not referenced. Roxanne later appears in the television series House of Mouse in the episode titled "Max's Embarrassing Date", where she is voiced by Grey DeLisle instead of Kellie Martin.

Within Disney, prior to A Goofy Movie's release, the film was frequently associated with Katzenberg, and by April 1995, Katzenberg had been let go by Disney's CEO Michael Eisner due to tensions between them, and the company saw the release of A Goofy Movie as simply fulfilling contractual obligations.[4] Its box office was considered weak, comparable with Disney's next major feature film Pocahontas, and the film faded into obscurity in the years that followed.[4]

However, the film started to gain success following its release to home media later in 1995, and soon gained a cult following, particularly among millennials who grew up with the movie from the home media releases. The interest in the film is attributed to a combination of the film's catchy soundtrack as well as its story of cross-generational connections between parents and children.[4] Farmer said "The situation rings true to people...Most people thought their dad was Goofy, or at least I did when I was growing up. I didn’t understand where he came from, he didn't understand where I came from in a lot of ways, but we overcame those differences and bonded."[39] The newfound interest led to waves of new merchandise based on the film to be sold at major retailers.[4][40][41] A live-action scene-for-scene remake of the song "After Today" made in 2009 drew more than 5 million views on YouTube.[42][4]

On August 14, 2015, a 20th-anniversary reunion for the film was held at the D23 Expo at Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California.[43] Those in attendance included Bill Farmer, Jason Marsden, Jim Cummings, Rob Paulsen, Jenna von Oÿ and producer Don Hahn. Wallace Shawn, Pauly Shore and director Kevin Lima also sent video messages.[43] The panel also included musical performances from Farmer, Marsden, and Tevin Campbell.[43][44] While the panel was not expected to be one of the largest panels at D23, it ended up with the largest attended, with around 1,000 fans attending, and forcing the expo to turn away some due to lack of seating.[4][45]

Disney has since embraced the fandom's love of A Goofy Movie in more recent promotions and works.[4] In 2016, Campbell uploaded a video of him partaking in a jam session with the band Enfield, in which he performed both "I2I" and "Stand Out".[46] In June 2018, a one-week event titled "Disney FanDaze" was opened in Disneyland Paris, featuring several dedicated performances paying tribute to Disney franchises. Among these was "Max Live! Gettin' Goofy With It", which featured Max Goof performing songs from A Goofy Movie.[47] In April 2019, singer Uché performed "I2I" during the Top 10 Disney Night of American Idol's seventeenth season.[48]

According to co-producer Frank Angones, the film was a strong influence during early development of the 2017 DuckTales series, particularly on its version of Donald Duck, as the creators "wanted [the] show to do for Donald what Goofy Movie did for Goofy".[49] The series itself featured several references to the film. In the season two episode, "Raiders of the Doomsday Vault", two of the main characters, Dewey and Della Duck, sing along to "Stand Out" with a Powerline CD near them.[50] In a later season two episode, "Happy Birthday, Doofus Drake!", supporting character Mark Beaks shows off family pictures of him and his robot son, B.O.Y.D., as part of a con; one of which shows they went to Lester's Possum Park.[51] In the season three episode, "Quack Pack!", Goofy makes a guest appearance while helping Donald and his family escape a 1990s sitcom by showing him family pictures of himself and Max; one of which shows the young Goof dressed as Powerline for Halloween and another that shows him with Roxanne.[52] Of this season three appearance, Angones said that "Because that’s how big a nerd I am, I too have always thought, what happened there [with Max and Roxanne]? We couldn't quite do everything we wanted to do in that episode or so far in this season, but there’s enough there that lets you know things have gone well."[39]

In 2020, Powerline appeared in the video game Disney Heroes: Battle Mode as a playable character. On April 10, 2020, in celebration of the film's 25th anniversary, DCappella released a cover of "I2I", and D23 hosted an online reunion and virtual viewing party.[53]

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