One Day at Disney: A [Mostly] Bob Iger Ego-Trip
The first feature-length documentary on Disney+ is here, well not really. Running at 59 minutes, One Day at Disney is a multi-platform event, with a book and a 52-episode short series complementing the “movie”. It’s supposed to showcase various employees who work at the Walt Disney Company, such as Robin Roberts of Good Morning America and Jerome Ranft of PIXAR, for example. Yet, for half of the film, all you hear (and see) is “Bob Iger, Bob Iger, Bob Iger, Bob Iger”.
Iger is portrayed as a God, which is no surprise, since Disney produced, financed and distributed the film. The first scene of the film has Bob Iger meeting PIXAR executives and everyone bowing down at him. Sterling K. Brown narrates, and shills violently on Bob Iger in the first-half of the film. The film wants you to believe that Bob Iger is the MAN of the hour, the one everyone aspires to be. Though it’s fun to see archival footage of Iger as a newscaster in 1973 talking about “The Greatful Dead” of all things, the Iger bowing down was a little too much. And the film is only 59 minutes long. Iger gets interviewed and celebrated as the true mogul of film. Sure, if you mean by killing movie studios and remaking their entire classics while milking the cash of every living being on planet Earth you could say that.
Ok, enough Iger talk, and let’s talk about the rest of the film, which is quite compelling and enlightening. There is a [fantastic] 30 minutes in which we see the work of different Disney employees. That’s what I came to see, and I got it, but with hints of Bob Iger shilling. The most interesting interview is with Robin Roberts and it goes in surprisingly grim territory as she talks about her own health struggles, while showing footage of her battling myeldoysplastic syndrome. The TV-G documentary should’ve been rated TV-PG, as the footage is quite raw and can shock little children. It’s where the documentary is at its most mature, and doesn’t hold back on touchy subjects like marriage equality, disease and death. Many testimonials from Disney employees explain why many “classic” Disney movies explore the theme of Death in such a raw and grim way, with meaning. I especially liked Eric Goldberg talking about the process of Disney animation, Jerome Ranft explaining how scultping for PIXAR works while also reflecting on his brother Joe, who died in a tragic car accident in 2005. All of these testimonials add a touch of humanity and makes One Day at Disney a more interesting documentary than the incessant shilling on Bob Iger’s “work” at Disney.
I did find the insights on the making of Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge and Captain America (Chris Evans)’s scales in Avengers: Endgame quite interesting to watch, though the documentary is a little too short. If the director Fritz Mitchell trimmed down every sequence in which one person (and the narrator) shill on Bob Iger (and Iger shills on himself), we would’ve gotten a fantastic documentary if it solely focused on the subject at hand. Sure, Iger is an “employee” at Disney, but I couldn’t give two shits about him. We talk about Iger too much, it’s time to showcase the TRUE imagineers and employees that work incredibly hard to make dreams come true, and the film only shows a glimpse of that. All of the scenes involving OTHER employees than Iger are a 5/5 (and there’s quite a bit of highly interesting and enlightening conent with them), so I’ll guess I’ll rate the film a solid 4. Seems fair.
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