There's story-telling and then there's Disney Channel story-telling. From a talking house to Tyra Banks as a Barbie brought to life, there's no question that Disney Channel movies have tested our suspension of disbelief time and time again. Here are some of the craziest plotlines.
The Luck Of The Irish
A St. Patrick’s Day classic, a popular basketball player struggles with learning that he is half-leprechaun and must retrieve a magic coin that was stolen from him so that he can pass for human again. The movie ends with a leprechaun-on-leprechaun basketball game and a grim life sentence in Cleveland.
Pixel Perfect
Roscoe, a teenage tech-whiz, borrows his father’s holographic equipment to create the hologram named Loretta, a girl singer and dancer to lead his friend Sam’s struggling band. When Loretta escapes into the Internet, Sam has to lead her band and winds up falling off the stage and slipping into a coma. Somehow, Loretta can enter Sam’s brain, and Sam lets her borrow her body until lightning strikes her and Sam regains control, realizing Loretta is now gone forever.
Wendy Wu: Homecoming Warrior
Wendy Wu goes from struggling to win Homecoming Queen to struggling to prevent an ancient evil from destroying the world in this wild ride of a film. Finding out she is the reincarnation of an ancient Chinese warrior, Wendy trains for battle with her schoolteachers who weirdly become possessed by Chinese martial arts masters. Wendy winds up fighting the evil spirit, which appropriately possesses her Homecoming Queen rival.
The Ultimate Christmas Present
Two teen girls find a weather machine in the woods that belongs to Santa and they use it to make it snow in Los Angeles. When the snow gets out of control, two elves manage to track the girls down, but a jealous weatherman has already taken the machine and plans to use it to become the best weatherman in history. The girls, the elves, and Santa reclaim the machine and manage to stop the snowing after the weatherman falls into a chocolate vat in a chocolate factory.
The Thirteenth Year
Cody Griffin begins noticing his body changing after he turns thirteen. Seems pretty normal, right? Wrong, because he is actually turning into a merman. It gets weirder. Cody has to avoid a “mermaid hunter” and reunite with his mermaid mother who is able to communicate telepathically.
Now You See It…
Allyson is a teen filmmaker profiling Danny, a competitor in a reality show searching for the world’s greatest kid magician. However, they soon discover that Danny has real magical powers, and accepts a ring from Max, the competition’s host, and another real sorcerer, that he claims will help his growing powers. However, Max uses the ring to attempt to take Danny’s powers and kill him off, with only Allyson knowing the truth. The movie ends in a weird sort of magic show duel.
Twitches
Tia and Tamera Mowry of “Sister, Sister” fame star as long-lost twin sisters who reconnect and discover that they have magical powers, coining the titular portmanteau. Things get hairy when they learn more about their past: The twins are actually from a magical realm that is being plagued by an evil force known as the Darkness. In order to save their realm, the twitches must travel there to fight this mysterious black fog.
Eddie’s Million Dollar Cook-Off
Eddie is a typical teenage boy and the star of his high school baseball team, but when he discovers his love of cooking he has to choose between attending the baseball finals and a million dollar cook-off, which are (coincidentally) at the same time.
Halloweentown
This thrill ride centers on thirteen-year-old Marnie discovering that she is a witch, and following her grandma Aggie into the spooky realm of Halloweentown, where people have been going missing. It turns out that Kalabar, the town’s mayor, and Marnie’s mother’s old flame, is secretly a demon and behind the mayhem, and she defeats him by putting an amulet into a big jack-o’-lantern.
Smart House
Teenager Ben Cooper is tired of all his chores, so he enters his family into a competition to move into an artificially intelligent “smart house” named Pat. The Cooper clan wins and things go great at first until Pat becomes too controlling and locks them up in order to protect them from the dangers of the outside world.
Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century
The year is 2049, and a large community of people has begun living on orbiting space stations. Zenon Kar is a rambunctious teenager who is eventually grounded (literally) by being sent to Earth. But when she learns about a plot to destroy her space station home, she hops a ride with her rock star idol Proto Zoa and thwarts her middle-aged nemesis with a computer virus.