Entertainment

This ‘DCOM’ Is So Underrated

by Kristie Rohwedder

Here is a question for you to mull over or chew on or whatever it is you like to do with questions: If there was a Mount Rushmore for Disney Channel Original Movies, which four DCOMs would you select to represent the catalog? I know there are a lot of iconic made-for-TV feature films to choose from, but when I listen to my heart, my heart says Smart House, Xenon: Girl of the 21st Century, and The Cheetah Girls on the DCOM Mount Rushmore. (Don't @ me.) And as for the final slot? I'd like to give it to a wildcard pick. I hope that is OK. I realize what I am about to say is bold, but here goes nothing: oft-overlooked Disney Channel Original Movie Pixel Perfect should be part of the monument. I know it isn't, like, the most popular DCOM to ever DCOM, but it should be.

On Jan. 16, 2004, Pixel Perfect, a movie about a high school kid who uses computer magic to create a three-dimensional rendering of a human being, premiered on the Disney Channel and taught me everything I know about holograms. Pixel Perfect truly has everything I could ever want from a DCOM: a lifelike hologram, a human who falls in love with a hologram for like five seconds, original music performed by a hologram, a hologram climbing into the internet and traveling by email, a hologram climbing into a human’s brain in order to save that human’s life, and a ghost of a hologram. Yeah, yeah, lessons are learned, friendships are tested... but holograms.

Just watch this clip and tell me this is not a masterpiece of a DCOM.

Every pixel in Pixel Perfect is perfect. (I most certainly will not apologize for that cornball of a sentence.)

Nothing’s wrong with you, Pixel Perfect.

Image: Disney-ABC Domestic Television