Disney has made a myriad of bad
made-for-TV movies, but I underestimated their powers until the night I saw Zenon. It was in January, 2000. I was frustrated, currently mixing and mingling disks between
Linux and
Windows, being stupid and wondering why it would want to mount the disk. So I took one of those breaks and turned on the television to find a movie set on a space station in 2049 AD. The fun was about to ensue.
Two preteen girls were seen walking together down a corridor. One is wearing bright pink tights with an electric blue miniskirt. I am immediately concerned. Apparently, in fifty years, our sense of fashion has taken this horrifying plummet back into the 1980's and we are wearing banna clips and tight dayglow pants.
I'm not a fan of Disney movies, for two primary reasons.
1. The situations are usually too bizarre for the people acting in them. Now if Disney made a movie which was clearly fantasy,I could at least have a mild sense of respect for the movies. But they're not. They are putting prepubescent kids in the same spot in every movie, portraying them as average people. Then they are suddenly thrown into some huge conflict that no one would ever let a thirteen year old tackle on their own. Thirteen year olds do not decide whether to sell multi-million dollar Hawaiian beachfront estates to huge corporations. Thirteen year olds do not have the scientific prowess or materials to clone themselves. And my GOD, thirteen year olds do not save an entire space shuttle from a sinister yuppie planning to wreck their space ship with a small disc containing a virus on it.
2. These movies are usually predictable to the point where you only need to watch the first five minutes to get an idea of what will happen. There is always the protagonist, who always wins of course. You get an idea of the setting and the family environment and you can already tell whether it will be a social conflict. Then you get a view of the romantic interest (which there will always be as well) and you will then see if the conflict is in anyway involving the protagonist's attempts to woo the romantic interest.
Well Zenon was exactly like this. Zenon Kar (the protagonist) and her best friend Nebula Wade, along with their families and a whole slew of blonde teenage boys resembling that new pop sensation, Aaron Carter, live on a space station in the distant future. The owner of the station, Parker Windom, comes for a visit and Zenon is told to stay out of trouble. Zenon, who regularly jumps into the recycling bin excavating for hot new fashion items (!) is confined to areas of the station that her parents allow her to access during the visit.
Zenon is amazed when a cute boy band announces plans to have a concert on the shuttle and enters a contest to dance on stage with the leader singer, Proto Zoa. She won the contest, but because she was nosy, she sneaked out of her room one night and spied on Mr. Windom. Apparently, Mr. Window's assistant was implanting some sort of disc into the system with a virus on it. Of course, like all great Disney movies, she is docked temporarily creating an "unthinkable" conflict.
Zenon is grounded on Earth, living with her aunt. There she is teased. But then she meets her romantic interest (and very late in the movie, I might add), Greg. Well, if I told anymore I'd be spoiling the movie, but I think this movie is spoiled already in a completely different sense.