Remember the good old days? Where you could flip on the television and watch "Lizzie McGuire" and "Even Stevens" after school? Then, you'd try to scramble in all of your homework before 8:00pm so you could watch the Disney Channel Original Movie of the night! Which instead of showing every so often, there was a different one played every night. As a DCOM fanatic, here are some of the best Disney Channel Original Movies that were released between 1998 and 2005; the best Disney Channel Era!
1. "Brink!"
Released in 1998 revolving around a group of serious inline skaters, who called themselves the "Soul Skaters", they made it clear that they were in it for the fun of it, not for the money. Who didn't love these meaningful, sport-related movies?!
2. "Smart House"
![]()
Easily one of the most underrated DCOM movies that were released. It truly gave us a warning sign on how eventually technology was going to backfire on us. A computerized house takes over the family role as an overprotective mother to the point where the whole family is forced to stay inside.
3. "The Color of Friendship"
This has to be one of the most influential Disney Channel Original Movies to this day. It focused in on racism, not fitting in, and how the color of your skin along with where you're from doesn't matter when making lifelong friendships; it's what's on the inside that really matters.
4. "Quints!"
Revolves around an only child who has her every move traced by her parents. That all changes one day when she wishes for less attention. She is "granted" this wish when she finds out her mother is pregnant with not twins, not triplets, but quintuplets! Talk about a full house. She resents her new siblings at first but learns to love them, regardless of what she originally thought about them.
5. "The Ultimate Christmas Present"
Every Upstate New York kid's worst dream: a weather machine that makes it snow whenever certain controls are clicked. Two young girls find this machine in a recycling bin and use its powers to make it snow in Los Angeles for Christmas for the first time ever. They soon regret this task after it causes a huge blizzard to take over a huge portion of the state. Maybe it wasn't the ultimate Christmas present after all...
6. "Cadet Kelly"
A spunky Hillary Duff (Kelly Collins) is forced to attend Washington Military Academy after her mom remarries and has to move upstate to go along with the new husbands job. For a good portion of the movie, Kelly is very against the Military Academy and does everything possible to rebel, which doesn't work in her favor at all. She sees that everything doesn't revolve around her and starts to adapt to the military academy lifestyle.
7. Eddie's Million Dollar Cook-Off
A classic DCOM where the son, Eddie, doesn't want to disappoint his father, the coach of his baseball team, by telling him he doesn't want to play ball anymore, and that he'd rather participate in a cook-off instead of the baseball finals. He doesn't want to displease his father, but he doesn't want to throw away his dream. Ultimately, his teammates and father finally see how much cooking means to him, and he leaves the baseball finals to cook his heart out.
8. Tiger Cruise
Shout-out to Disney on this release honestly. It's a fictional movie based on the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It brings reality to the children watching these movies in a non-traumatizing way. A teenager, Maddie, participates in Operation Tiger: where she can see how her father lives on his military aircraft career, in an attempt to convince him to come home where he belongs. The day of the attacks, Maddie, realizes how important and reliable her father is on board, especially during an emergency.
9. Cow Belles
Two very oblivious and spoiled sisters get everything they desire. They're so used to living day by day getting whatever they want. One day, when going on an expensive shopping trip, the two nearly burn the house down because they left the stove on AND a towel on top of it. This causes their father to put them to work on the not-so-fabulous dairy farm the family owns, hoping that they will learn the value of a dollar and gain some responsibility.
10. Read It and Weep
It starts off with a typical high school outlook, Jamie has three best friends, one who is obviously crushing on her, and then two gal pals along with an edgy older brother who just wants to do his own thing. When trying to email her best friend Lindsey a copy of the English assignment, she accidentally emails her private journal which has all of her dislikes and critiques of her classmates. Even worse, it gets published into a novel: every high school girl's nightmare. Jamie lets all of the success and fame go to her head, leading to all of her friends to hate her. Jamie realizes how wrong she's been acting and does everything in her power to fix everything.
