Mom Can't Cook! A DCOM Podcast

While not officially a DCOM, Susie Q (1996) offered an opportunity for the Disney Channel to start experimenting with what works and what doesn't in a Disney Channel film. For example, high concept premise? Great, love it. Cute romance blossoming between reluctant companions? Also good, let's keep that. Shot of one of the main characters' smashed up corpse in the first four minutes? Probably we don't need to do that one ag...

The 2008 Writer's Guild of America strike was responsible for many things: Increased pay for writers, especially in the context of the burgeoning streaming era. A boom in unscripted reality television. And, most regrettably of all, the plot of the Disney Channel Original Movie Dadnapped, in which a dad gets kidnapped.

But not just any dad. This dad is Neal Morris, author of the Tripp Zoome spy novels, and with him missing, ...

Max Keeble has a lot of problems. His school's colourful bullies are out for his blood. An evil ice cream man wants to kill both him and skateboarding icon Tony Hawk. And he is friends with an unpleasant boy named Robe who wears a stinking bathrobe that canonically smells like diapers. But Max has an ace up his sleeve that none of these life obstacles will see coming: an imminent move to Illinois.

When Max's proto-furry fat...

Dedicating your life to scientific pursuits can have countless benefits for humanity, but you have to bear in mind the potential drawbacks. You could study something before its dangerous effects are known, like Marie Curie, invent something monumentally destructive, like J. Robert Oppenheimer, or accidentally fall through a time hole to the court of King Arthur like Dr. Vivian Morgan, the protagonist of the film we're here...

World's fiercest girl band The Cheetah Girls are back and heading to the hometown of Chanel's soon to be stepfather, who is a sexual Frenchman named Luc. That's right, we're heading to Barcelona, Spain!

Galleria, Chanel, Dorinda and Aqua are heading to Barcelona to enter a contest for undiscovered musical talent, but soon find themselves caught up in the charms of this wonderful and affordable city, to the detriment of thei...

Happy Monday, Mom Can't Cook fans! We've got a bonus episode for you today, courtesy of Extra Helpings, Mom Can't Cook's Patreon-supported bonus podcast. This episode originally aired on Feb 24, 2025, and covers Disney Channel Original TV Show So Weird season 3 episode 6, 'Banglebye'. Get access to over 45 (and counting) hours of bonus episodes by going to Patreon.com/ExtraHelpings!

Those video games that the kids are alway...

What would you do with the incredible power of time travel? No, look... no, you can't stop historical tragedies from happening because you can only go back in time 48 hours so- no, you can't buy a lottery ticket either because you're a teenager in this scenario, so you- no, you can't see wonderful things all over the world, you have to remain within a 20 minute travel radius of your school. You'd use it to stop nerds embar...

Imagine the situation: the Walt Disney company wants to turn your life story into a movie! It's a dream come true. That is, until the movie comes out, and you realise it's a crushingly boring series of basketball games and for some reason they've decided to name it "Double Teamed". You'd be livid.

Still, I suppose it has to feature some basketball, as Double Teamed tells the real life story of Heather and Heidi Burge, twin ...

Being a princess is hard work. You're the best person in your whole kingdom, and yet you're somehow expected to set an example for the scum who live there, and occasionally military dictators will stride into your throne room and declare a military coup. Luckily for those situations, we have the Princess Protection Program, a secret service just for young, female royalty, who will spirit princesses away from dangerous conf...

The title of this week's DCOM, Camp Rock, is misleading, because while it does take place at a camp, the only rocking taking place is the rocking back and forth by harrowed students who can't face another day of impromptu unaccompanied singing, people drumming on every available surface, and hip hop dance classes taught by Joe Jonas.

Apparently though, there are people who actually want to attend Camp Rock, on purpose, peo...

Parents might seem like they've got everything figured out, but it's worth remembering that they're just one failed time travel experiment away from crying, throwing temper tantrums, and liberally pissing themselves at the slightest provocation. Not so high and mighty now, eh?

That's the premise of 2001's The Poof Point, in which accomplished husband and wife scientist team Norton and Marigold Ballard decide to let a dog w...

We're back in the Wonderful World of Disney this week, to check out Life-Size, the 2000 comedy starring Lindsay Lohan as a grieving little girl who uses a necromancy grimoire to try and resurrect her dead mother, and Tyra Banks as a doll who comes to life and tries to have sex with that little girl's father.

Lohan plays Casey, a young girl who uses a mystical book to try and bring her mom back to life, but when some doll h...

High-schooler Jamie Bartlett finds herself thrust onto the world stage when an email error sees her fictionlised journal become a nationwide best-seller. But what will happen if her fellow students find out some of the characters are loosely based on them?!

If your answer is 'probably nothing?' then boy does Read It and Weep have a problem with you, buddy. Brace for one of the most incoherent DCOMs Luke and Andy have ever ...

High School Musical is back in High School Musical 2! Will this one contain an actual musical? No! And also it's not even set in a high school this time!

With school out for the summer, the Wildcats of East High find themselves working at a snooty country club owned by the parents of objectively best characters Ryan and Sharpay Evans. But as sports star Troy starts being groomed for a scholarship to the prestigious Univers...

Mom Can't Cook! returns on 20 Jan with High School Musical 2, but until then we thought we'd treat you to a feed drop of a classic episode of Extra Helpings, Mom Can't Cook's Patreon-exclusive bonus podcast. This episode originally aired on 22 April 2024, and covers Disney Channel Original TV Show So Weird season 2 episode 10, 'Oopa'. Get access to over 40 (and counting) hours of bonus episodes by going to Patreon.com/Extr...

Xmas is here folks, and what better way to celebrate than with a LIVE recap of a film about a violent kidnapping, let me finish, that takes place at Christmas?

That's right, it's Holiday in Handcuffs, the 2007 romantic comedy in which Melissa Joan Hart, recently dumped by her boyfriend and facing the prospect of a dateless Christmas with her family, kidnaps Mario Lopez and forces him to pretend to be in love with her. It's...

What if a snowman came to life? It'd be pretty horrifying I expect, on account of how he'd be like, three fleshy balls, precariously balanced on top of each other. But what if the snowman had abs? Pretty sexy, right? Also he has the mind of a child. Wait, come back.

That's the premise for Hot Frosty (2024), Netflix's smash hit holiday movie in which a sexual snowman comes to life to romance a bereaved widow looking to put ...

We return to The Wonderful World of Disney for this week's offering, 1999's H-E Double Hockey Sticks, which reunites Boy Meets World's Will Friedel and Matthew Lawrence as Griffelkin, a demon in training, and Dave Heinrich, an ambitious hockey player who would sell his soul to win the Stanley Cup, and then does do that.

But that's when things start to go wrong, not only for Griffelkin, who finds himself getting attached to...

In a last gasp for Halloween 2024, Mom Can't Cook is back with our live Halloween special, in which we're recapping 2004's Halloweentown High!

Marnie Cromwell, powerful witch and Best Person In The World is back with a new plan to unite the human world and Halloweentown: make a bunch of Halloweentown students attend her high school, in disguise, so that no one knows they're from Halloweentown. But having bet the Cromwell m...