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When you look back on your childhood through a rainbow haze of nostalgia and Kool-Aid binges, everything looks pretty darn spectacular. Life was simpler, Saturday morning cartoons were your heaviest commitment, Twizzlers were a lot cheaper, and every movie was super awesome.

How awesome were they, though, when you finally recover from your Kool-Aid hangover? Look, it's tough to rag on kids' movies -- no one wants to be the person to call out adorable anthropomorphic animals. It's not a good look. But we're here to do the hard jobs: To save our children from suffering through some horrible sequels. To save you from watching the same terrible movie 12 times per week with tiny, obsessive humans. To cut through the crap once and for all.

'Son of the Mask' (2005)

Let's get this one out of the way. Jim Carrey is "The Mask." "The Mask" is Jim Carrey. The...

When you look back on your childhood through a rainbow haze of nostalgia and Kool-Aid binges, everything looks pretty darn spectacular. Life was simpler, Saturday morning cartoons were your heaviest commitment, Twizzlers were a lot cheaper, and every movie was super awesome.

How awesome were they, though, when you finally recover from your Kool-Aid hangover? Look, it's tough to rag on kids' movies -- no one wants to be the person to call out adorable anthropomorphic animals. It's not a good look. But we're here to do the hard jobs: To save our children from suffering through some horrible sequels. To save you from watching the same terrible movie 12 times per week with tiny, obsessive humans. To cut through the crap once and for all.

'Son of the Mask' (2005)

Let's get this one out of the way. Jim Carrey is "The Mask." "The Mask" is Jim Carrey. The...

Sequels and spinoffs are all the rage on the big screen these days, but the news that Disney is moving forward with a Frozen 2 still comes as something of a surprise considering the studio has been reticent to pump out theatrically-released follow-ups to its biggest hits - only The Three Caballeros, The Rescuers Down Under, Fantasia 2000 and Winnie the Pooh are part of the Disney Animated Canon.

However, throughout the '90s and '00s Disney had a lucrative side-business in direct-to-video sequels that were turned around quickly and cheaply and made the studio a fast buck. Many execs felt that these cheapened the originals and John Lasseter put the brakes on them, although the recent Tinker Bell films (branching out from Peter Pan) have their roots in this release model.

Digital Spy revisits 13 of Disney's most unnecessary straight-to-video sequels below:

Aladdin: The Return of Jafar (1994)

The very first...

We never get tired of the story of Cinderella, and whether we know it or not, the version we never get tired of is the one put forth by Walt Disney 65 years ago. The 1950 animated feature, released 65 years ago this week (on February 15, 1950) was an instant classic, and its this version we think of when we imagine all the visual details of the story -- the slipper, the pumpkin, the fairy godmother, the mice, and Cinderella and Prince Charming dancing all over the palace grounds.

Still, as many times as we've heard the story or seen the cartoon, there's still more to be mined from the 17th-century fairy tale. (Indeed, Disney is releasing a new live-action retelling next month.) As many times as you've seen the 1950 classic, there's plenty you may not know about it -- how the actress who played Cinderella landed the part without even knowing she'd auditioned,...

7 years ago, Pixar's seventh feature-length film Cars hit theaters. While it was not quite the critical success of its Pixar predecessors, the film was still reviewed fairly well and spawned a sequel as well as a massive amount of merchandise. (To quote Homestar Runner's Cheat Commandos, "Buy all our playsets and toys!") A spin-off, Planes, was produced by Disneytoon Studios, the animators behind Disney's direct-to-dvd titles including Pocahontas II and Cinderella II: Dreams Come True. Disney announced Planes with the intention of releasing it directly to DVD and Blu-ray, but in late 2012, they suddenly announced that Planes would be a theatrical release and available in 3D. Interestingly enough, Pixar similarly decided to scrap a direct-to-dvd sequel to Toy Story and ended up creating a fantastic sequel which was released in theaters. Disney and Pixar fans like myself wondered, though, whether Planes was so shockingly good that Disney executives insisted that...

People above a certain age don't seem to like the Cars franchise very much. Perhaps it's because the first Cars was, for many of us, the first indication that the geniuses at Pixar, for all their artistic accomplishments, were also part of a money-making enterprise; they seemed perfectly content creating a movie that merely entertained millions of kids and sold merchandise by the metric ton. (That said, the less said about Cars 2 — which even my 4-year-old refuses to watch — the better.) Planes was produced not by Pixar, but by the folks at DisneyToon Studios, the folks who for years have been gamely churning out direct-to-video sequels of classic Disney films like Bambi II and Cinderella II: Dreams Come True. So as soon as you see the "World of Cars" logo at the beginning, you can practically smell the corporate synergy.Ironically enough, the plot of Planes feels less like...

Moviefone's Blu-ray Pick of the Week "Tarantino Xx: 8-Film Collection" What's It About? This Blu-ray box set gathers all of Qt's movies -- even "True Romance"(!) -- in one cool collection, and is stuffed with more special goodies than a double order from Big Kahuna Burger. (The collection even comes with a massive mural, depicting all of his iconic characters in one colorful splash.) See It Because: Besides owning everything he's done in the first twenty years of his career, "Django Unchained" notwithstanding, the box set's special features include exhaustive insight into his work from friends, actors and critics, and offers a comprehensive biography of the unique filmmaker, his influences and his attitude. Pam Grier Talks About Working With Qt in An Exclusive Clip from "Tarantino Xx" Moviefone's New Release Pick of the Week "The Expendables 2" What's It About? It's "The Expendables" + Jean-Claude Van Damme, Chuck Norris and more...

Hopefully you've been keeping track of the daily Black Friday Deals Week posts I've been featuring each morning, if not here is today's, but of course there are also new releases to consider and today we have a few that may be of interest. Tarantino Xx: 8-Film Collection This eight-film Quentin Tarantino collection includes True Romance (which Tarantino wrote and Tony Scott directed), Kill Bill: Volume One, Kill Bill: Volume Two, Inglourious Basterds, Jackie Brown, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Tarantino's Death Proof from the Grindhouse double feature. All of these were previously available on Blu-ray before this collection was put together, but it does include a couple of newly produced special features of its own which include: Critics Corner: The Films of Quentin Tarantino - In-depth critics' discussion piece exploring Tarantino's films that redefined cinema and the impact of one of the most influential writers/directors of our time.

Blu-ray technology is a blessing and a curse. Because it’s now the standard in home media creation and distribution, the basis behind this innovation has perhaps become obscured. Some of the greatest films of all time have been given new life on Blu-ray, as recently as last week, for example. (One can only imagine how exquisite Lawrence of Arabia looks in high definition.) But film studios aren’t selective. Just about everything goes on Blu-ray now, for better or worse. So, the Walt Disney Company traffics in both the good and the…well, not-so-good. This week, they’ve offered up old and new entries in their direct-to-dvd catalog. Coming to Blu-ray for the first time is a duo of sequels, Cinderella II: Dreams Come True and Cinderella III: A Twist in Time. Santa Paws 2: The Santa Pups, conversely, is a new film out right in time for the holiday season.

Cinderella II: Dreams Come True

Directed by John Kafka

Written by Jill E. Blotvogel, Tom Rogers, Julie Selbo

Starring Jennifer Hale, Corey Burton, Russi Taylor, Holland Taylor

How low can expectations get? Because mine, regarding the Disney direct-to-video/DVD sequels, are as low as is humanly possible. I don’t actually expect legitimate quality from these films, but I forlornly hope for just a bit. And why not? Some people may scoff at this idea, or even raise their eyebrows quizzically when they realize that, yes, we’re going to look at all of the Dtv sequels on this podcast. But what frustrates me most about these films is the precise reason they exist: they’re cheap. Why are there so many of these movies? They make a ton of money, because they cost very little to produce. But because they cost very little to produce, the quality is low at best.

For any fan of Disney films, discussing their many direct-to-video sequels is truly going, to quote the line, where no man has gone before. This is the final frontier, and on the new episode of Mousterpiece Cinema, Josh and Gabe begin to explore it with 2002′s follow-up to a movie that didn’t seem to need one, Cinderella II: Dreams Come True. Listen to them discuss a movie that fellow co-host Michael dubbed a “cinematic atrocity,” one so bad he refused to watch it even for the podcast. Does Cinderella II live up (or down) to such hype? Is it perhaps a diamond in the rough? Or is it as bad as Josh feared? Check out the new episode to find out!

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This is the Mousterpiece Cinema schedule for the first six months of 2012:

January 7th, 2012: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs(1937)

January 14th, 2012: The Mighty Ducks (1992)

January 21st, 2012: The Love Bug (1968)

January 28th, 2012: Cinderella II: Dreams Come True (2002)

February 4th, 2012: Mary Poppins (1964)

February 11th, 2012: The Black Cauldron (1985)

February 18th, 2012: Herbie Rides Again (1974)

February 25th, 2012: The Secret World of Arrietty (2012)

March 3rd, 2012: D2: The Mighty Ducks (1994)

March 10th, 2012: Lady and the Tramp (1955)

March 17th, 2012: John Carter (2012)

March 24th, 2012: Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo (1977)

March 31st, 2012: The Wild (2006)

April 7th, 2012: D3: The Mighty Ducks (1996)

April 14th, 2012: Fantasia (1940)

April 21st, 2012: Cool Runnings (1993)

April 28th, 2012: The Fox and the Hound 2 (2006)

May 5th, 2012: Chimpanzee (2012)

May 12th, 2012: The Avengers (2012)

May 19th, 2012: Fantasia 2000 (1999)

May 26th, 2012: Herbie Goes Bananas (1980)

June 2nd, 2012: Wall-e (2008)

June 9th,...

Expect to see the influence of branding in the major releases Disney has planned for this summer. Three major properties aim to continue their dominance in the merchandising markets through the premieres of the newest movie in each brand. How they will perform is anyone’s guess, but here’s a look at the potential strengths and struggles of these films.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (May 20)

It’s been four years since audience members having been cheering “yo ho” at the theaters – that is, unless they have been drinking rum in the cinemas during other films recently. Pirate jokes aside, this has been the longest absence for a Caribbean movie since the three year gap separating Curse of the Black Pearl and Dead Man’s Chest. The previous three entries in the franchise have grossed greatly at the worldwide box office, with Pearl earning $654 million, Chest taking...

Cinematic fairytales now come with a postmodern wink as standard. But a return to Disney innocence might be hard, writes Emily Barr – fairytales were never innocent to start with

Here is a one-question quiz for you. An animation of a Grimm fairytale is due to hit our screens in a fortnight. Do you think that Tangled is a straightforward, retelling of the brothers Grimm's version of Rapunzel? Or might it be a wildly postmodern, turning-convention-on-its-head rollercoaster ride with a kickass heroine, a wisecracking dude of a hero, and a crone who is scared of ageing, in place of the "wicked enchantress"?

Yes, gather round, children, and sit comfortably, for it is postmodern fairytale time once again. The smashing of storytelling convention is so normal that it has become a convention all of its own. Take a familiar story. Mix it up a bit and wink knowingly at the audience over the characters' shoulders.