15 Things About 25-Year-Old TV Movie “To My Daughter With Love”
A qua
rter century ago, today, CBS’ The Magical World of Disney debuted a TV movie called To My Daughter With Love. The film stars Ricky Schroder as a father trying to cope with the death of his wife.
The movie is a little melodramatic, in comparison to traditional Disney fare, but it still makes for an entertaining feature.
Here’s fifteen observations about the January 24, 1994 program:
1. Alice (Megan Gallivan) and her daughter Emily (Ashley Malinger) performing on home videos at their piano is almost the prototype for all those family YouTube channels.
2. Watch your average TV movies, and the cartoon playing on the TV is a forgotten public domain short. With Disney, it’s a Mickey and Minnie cartoon.
3. The family has a really nice looking house, they’re building a house from scratch, and they have a grand piano, but Ashley tells Joey (Ricky Schroder) that they have financial troubles?
4. The soundtrack isn’t terribly exceptional, but it was scored by Brantford Marsalis. Serious hiring for a TV movie.
5. Emily’s school requires a zero-waste lunch, so her lunch sandwich is wrapped in a cloth napkin. Is that a thing? Also, there’s plastic sandwich containers in the cupboard.
6. Usually kids face their backward in a shopping cart, towards their parents. Is a forward-facing shopping cart an American thing, or something the producers invented for the film?
7. Joey can’t afford groceries, so he ends up buying a gargantuan takeout tray of spaghetti, one of the cheapest foods to make at home. Good grief.
8. If Pixar ever wanted to create a midquel to Monsters University and Monsters, Inc., they already have a plot pitch from Joey. He comforts his daughter by telling her: “There aren’t any monsters on this street, there aren’t any monsters in this neighbourhood. They’re off at a monster convention.”
9. If this movie was ever remade, I doubt that the kids would be fighting over colouring books at their after-school co-op program.
10. Clothes from the 1990s sure are distinct.
11. Seriously, how do they have such a nice house, if they’re on the brink of financial doom? Their second, new home doesn’t have a neighbour in sight.
12. Emily’s grandmother Eleanor (Linda Gray) stops her from playing “Side by Side”, the standard written in 1927. It was made famous by performers like Jiminy Cricket voice Cliff Edwards, Hayley Mills, and Dean Martin. Really? That’s the kind of music that Eleanor was criticizing Alice for liking, early in the movie?
13. Joey interviews for a new construction job in a suit and tie. Is that a thing?
14. “You have to finish it, Joey?” “What for?” “To live in it!”
15. I don’t which would be easier to find in 2019: bowling alleys or hot air balloons. They’ve both largely disappeared from daily life.
