SHADY MOVIE THROWBACKS: The Secret of the Hunchback (1996)

Yeah, yeah. I know I promised at the end of my last review that if I ever reviewed another shitty animated mockbuster, I'd start with Ratatoing. But there are a few reasons why I'm reneging on that promise.

SHADY MOVIE THROWBACKS: The Secret of Anastasia (1997)

The name echoes through hallways, in near-empty rooms and abandoned warehouses, in corners of bars and off the lips of 21-year-old animation students smoking weed in their dorm rooms. Don Bluth. Don Bluth, they say.

SHADY MOVIE LISTS: List of Disney sequels by Rotten Tomatoes rating

In the mid-90s to mid-2000s, Disney went absolutely insane producing cheap, ugly sequels to everything ever. Before the sequel to Aladdin, The Return of Jafar, came out in 1994, Disney had absolutely no direct-to-video sequels. In the 14 years that followed, they produced dozens of them (32 of which are included here, as well as others that aren't included, like several Recess and Tinker Bell films). They really hit their stride in 2004 and 2005, and then, they just stopped - after 2008, no Disney home video sequels have emerged that aren't about Tinker Bell. And no sequels about Tinker Bell have come out since 2015. It's the end of an era.

In honor of Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2 - which will become the first theatrically-released Disney sequel (and whose trailer dropped this week) - I'm going to be looking at Disney's infamous direct-to-video pantheon. Most of 'em are terrible. Most of 'em are forgettable. But all of 'em are Disney. (By the way, the average score is 35%. Not... completely terrible?)