Bambi Moé, who served as associate producer for the music in A Goofy Movie, recalled a time recently when her work on the film came up in conversation. “I was out with a group of people and was talking with this young man and mentioned that I had worked on the music for A Goofy Movie,” said Moe ́ in a 2021 interview. “I thought he was going to pass out! He was so excited because he was a writer and a recording artist, and he had recorded a couple of songs from A Goofy Movie!”

Talk with many today about A Goofy Movie, and you will most likely get the same response. Released in April of 1995, the Disney animated feature starring one of the Studio’s most iconic characters came and went in theaters with little to no fanfare.

Thirty years later, the fanatical attention around A Goofy Movie is something that no one would have predicted when the film first debuted. “‘It wasn’t even a B movie. It was a C movie,” said producer Don Hahn in a 2020 interview with Vanity Fair.

Initially, A Goofy Movie came about thanks to the success of Disney’s animated series, Goof Troop. Jeffrey Katzenberg, then Chairman of The Walt Disney Studio, green-lit the film after a personal experience where he and his daughter bonded on a road trip. The relationship between a parent and child became the springboard for the plot.

Goofy’s teenage son Max (voice of Jason Marsden, the singing voice of Aaron Lohr) is terrified of turning into his father (he even has a nightmare where he does literally turn into his Dad).

Goofy (the one and only Bill Farmer, who has been voicing the character since 1987) is worried that he and Max are growing apart, so he decides that the two of them will take a road trip over summer vacation to “Lake Destiny,” a traditional family vacation spot.

This causes chaos for Max, who has a crush on Roxanne (Kellie Martin), a girl in his class who will be going to a party where all the kids will be watching a Pay-Per-View concert of singer Powerline (Tevin Campbell).

To cover his embarrassment at going on vacation with his Dad, Max tells Roxanne that he can’t make the party because he and Dad are driving cross-country to see the Powerline concert.

What follows on the road trip in A Goofy Movie is a highly entertaining film. There’s great personality animation and an emotional connection between Goofy and Max, a funny sequence featuring Bigfoot with well-staged sight gags, nicely choreographed dance moves as Goofy joins Powerline on stage for his song, “I 2 I,” and even a self-deprecating jab at Disney’s theme park attractions, as Goofy and Max stop off at “Lester’s Possum Park.”

Produced through Disney Toon Studios (at Disney’s studios in Paris and Australia), A Goofy Movie was directed by Kevin Lima, who would go on to co-direct (with Chris Buck) Disney’s Tarzan, as well as the Studio’s live-action films, 102 Dalmations (2000) and Enchanted (2007).

A Goofy Movie was initially slated to come to theaters for Thanksgiving 1994, but a technical glitch delayed that until Spring of ‘95. “‘In those days, you’d set up a camera looking at a large monitor, and you would film that monitor,’ Lima explained to Vanity Fair in 2020. ‘One of the pixels was blown out, and every single scene in the movie had a black dot on it. So, we had to go back and reshoot three-quarters of the film.’”

Released on April 7, 1995, A Goofy Movie didn’t ignite the box office, making only $35.3 million during its run (less than The Lion King made in just its opening weekend the previous year).

However, a generation growing up with Disney films on VHS later watched the movie over and over, and an obsessive cult following for A Goofy Movie began to snowball. By 2009, as Goofy Movie mania grew, a fan-made YouTube video featuring a live-action recreation of one of the film’s songs, “After Today,” became a viral hit.

It’s one of the film’s catchy numbers by Tom Snow and Jack Feldman, with Patrick DeReemer and Roy Freeland crafting the Powerline songs. “We wanted to create that feeling of a musical and that you’re about to go on this musical adventure,” said Moé in 2021. She also added, “What Tom Snow and Jack Feldman did so well provided that heart through the character’s songs. They know that the best songs and musicals are the ones where it moves the story along and adds emotional subtext.”

In 2015, when the film celebrated its 20th anniversary at Disney’s D23 fan convention, the reunion of the creative team took on the feeling of a “rock concert,” according to Vanity Fair.

Fans can now do something that they couldn’t do in 1995: buy A Goofy Movie merchandise and meet Max, dressed as Powerline in the theme parks. For the film’s 30th anniversary, not only is there a new wave of products available, there’s a special screening (featuring Bill Farmer, Kevin Lima, and more on a panel) at The El Capitan Theater in Hollywood on April 12th (2025).

There’s also a new documentary about the film, Not Just a Goof, that will debut on Disney+ on April 7th.

Thirty years later, so many have connected with A Goofy Movie’s breezy, charming tone and its universal theme about how the generation gap isn’t all that big. The film is now something it wasn’t back in 1995 – a hit – and audiences and the film are now finally seeing things “I 2 I.”