under wraps (1997), the original DCom

One of my 2025 resolutions was, as last year’s, to watch more movies.

I always strive to dedicate myself more to the arts, and especially art out of my comfort zone. And while I cannot say that my comfort zone is small (it is, in fact, incredibly spacious) there is a project that I had been wanting to start for a couple months now, and I figured January would be the perfect time – especially given I am on vacation.

Disney Channel Original Movies, also known as DCOMs, are a long series of movies produced and aired by the Disney Channel, between the years of 1997 and 2023, having then changed their names to Disney Original Movies, which doesn’t quite have the same ring to it. also, given the mouse owns pretty much everything now, everything is a disney original movie.

As a child of the new millennium, I grew up watching many of these movies, and others that I just assumed were disney channel movies, and they make up a large portion of my childhood. A lot of them, however, like the one we’ll be discussing today, were very far from my radar as it came out 3 years before I was born, and didn’t enjoy any reprises that I could remember. Which given its content, makes a lot of sense.

My official challenge for January 2025 is, indeed, watching and reviewing every single Disney Channel Original Movie, and any adjacent movies that might float around the category. And to begin, I have watched, for the first time, the 1997 film Under Wraps, which unknowingly started the dynasty of DCOMs, even though it doesn’t feature any of the usual quirks typically associated with Disney movies.

Under Wraps is a comedy-monster film directed by Greg Beeman and shot mainly in Chico, California. It stars Bill Fagerbakke, Adam Wylie, Mario Yedida and Clare Bryant in a plot that follows three middle schoolers journey to recapture and befriend a mummy they found in their creepy neighbours home, after he passed away from a heart attack.

The movie opens in a much too familiar scenario for the 90s – two of the main characters, which compose the main trio of the movie, Marshall and Gilbert, are at a movie theatre watching what is possibly the worst horror movie ever made, except the audience doesn’t find out it is a movie-within-a-movie until a couple minutes in.

In this scene, we establish two important characteristics of the movie: Marshall, the proper main character and unsung leader of the group, is a horror lover; while his friend Gilbert is the hypochondriac scaredy cat typically associated with the more loveable goofs of Stephen King.

After exiting the theatre in fear, Gilbert is later joined by his friend, who explains the rest of the movie to him as they discuss their personal lives. Marshall’s mother is divorced and has recently acquired a boyfriend, a friendly guy named Ted whom Marshall is not too fond of. Ted is played by Bill Fagerbakke, who also doubles as the mummy of the film, although he does not speak when under wraps.

Marshall then finds out Gilbert, who is a newspaper boy, has not been paid by the creepy Mr. Kubat, their neighbour, and a target of many legends by the kids. Mr Kubat, who seemingly dies not 5min after being confronted for newspaper money, serves as the main antagonist of the movie, as the kids find out while committing some light breaking and entering felonies that he had an extensive collection of egyptian artifacts – including a real life mummy, who comes to life when the boys, joined by their third friend Amy, start snooping around the allegedly dead man’s house.

As we can imagine, several hijinks ensue as the kids, who have just awakened and let loose a thousands of years old being in their small town, try to recover and understand their new monster friend.

In terms of Disney Channel Movies, this one doesn’t quite hit the mark. That is, of course, because it is the very first of its kind, and therefore doesn’t have any formulas to follow, something that is as much to its detriment as it is to its fortune.

Under Wraps feels like a low-budget 90s movie in all the worst ways. The camerawork isn’t great, the colouring is all over the place, the kids are not very good actors (although there is something sweet about that) and the writing screams more indie than Disney, even if it is cliche at times.

There are a couple really creepy jokes at the expense of Amy, the middle schooler who seems to be the boy’s only other friend and serves, at the last second, as Marshall’s love interest. She first mentions, unnecessarily, that she’s now wearing a bra, to a much younger kid, as a sort of ‘gotcha’ that is supposed to inform said kid and the audience that she is no longer a kid, but entering puberty – and therefore able to develop romantic feelings for others. To that lovely piece of news, Gilbert reacts weirdly, emphatically repeating “a BRA?” as he tries to wrap his little brain around breast support.

Later in the movie, while they trio is biking at night, Amy makes a mocking comment about Gilbert’s pajamas, making him blush, and she then shoots back that she, a tween, sleeps in the nude (verbatim quote), causing the boy to crash his bike in a flustered state.

Not only were these two scenes extremely random and awkward to watch, not to mention sexualising a literal middle schooler in a children’s movie, but they also imply here that Amy would be interested in Gilbert, or at least interested in toying with him – but he is not the main character, so she ends up with Marshall.

Overall, Under Wraps is boring. The premise is interesting enough to make you want to watch it, but the execution is all over the place and shows a Disney Channel that had yet to find its footing in terms of appealing to a tween audience of mixed gender.

There is a remake that came out in the 2020s, in a completely different era of Disney, so I am excited to get there and find out what has been improved, but, as I will be reviewing the movies in order, that is still a long time to come.

My final score is 2.5 out of 5 stars, and I believe to be a VERY generous score.