“Not Just a Goof” - Much More Than a Typical Documentary about a Movie

by Jonathan Keating

Movie Review

May 8, 2025

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There’s a common sentiment in Hollywood that you really don’t know if a film is truly successful or not until it hits the ten-year mark.

Ask Steve Martin about Three Amigos, ask Jake Gyllenhaal about Donnie Darko, ask Tim Curry about Rocky Horror Picture Show – the story usually goes the same. They made a movie that they were passionate about, and were proud of the end result, but the film came out and it was either a financial disappointment, scourged by critics or shunned by audiences at the time of release. Years later, however, the cast and crew are shocked to find out that their project from so long ago is now a beloved classic in the eyes of certain audience members.

This is very much the story for the filmmakers behind A Goofy Movie – a story which the recently released documentary Not Just A Goof seeks to tell.

There has been a trend in documentary filmmaking to make a project about an audience’s response to a beloved movie. Without naming names, I have felt that many of these entries have been lackluster. They seem to exist within a cookie-cutter format which involves assembling a series of talking heads who will chatter about how much they love a particular film for ninety minutes. I think a good term for these types of documentaries are fandom documentaries. In other words, they are made almost exclusively for and by people that already love the subject that is being discussed. There is nothing inherently wrong with this – they certainly have their own worth and I have been known to consume a few of these films that have resonated with me over the years.

With the asterisk out of the way, this is generally the flavor of documentary I was expecting going into Not Just A Goof. Imagine my surprise when it turns out that I think Not Just A Goof is a film that transcends the fandom documentary genre entirely to be an integral documentary about the filmmaking process.

It’s very easy to assume what Not Just A Goof would be – especially since Disney purchased the distribution rights to stream the film on Disney+. Have a couple of vague film historians or bloggers talk about how the movie was originally a disappointment and turned into a cult classic. Rinse-and-repeat to hit a feature length runtime and then pack up shop.

Instead, Not Just A Goof provides an extraordinarily interesting insight into how this type of animated film is made from start to finish – and how the final product survives after the actual act of filmmaking is over. Because one of the filmmakers behind the documentary is the nephew of the director of A Goofy Movie, they have access to previously unseen behind the scenes footage of the making of the original film. This creates a dynamic way of telling the story of the production of A Goofy Movie – allowing the Not Just a Goof to cut between what the original filmmakers are thinking while making A Goofy Movie and what they think about the same situation now almost thirty years later. The technique that frames the film allows the audience member access to all the struggles and victories that come along with making a feature length film. You can see the comradery of the team, the anxiety of being responsible for a feature film production, the strain of studio politics, the derailments that lead to both setbacks and glorious accidents. While A Goofy Movie is certainly the framing device for the picture, it is ultimately a documentary about the crazy process of making a movie.

Towards the end of the film, there is an extended series of clips of fans talking about how important A Goofy Movie was to their lives. On paper, this sounds like the type of documentary I was (lightly) criticizing earlier, but as with every other aspect of Not Just A Goof, the filmmakers handle this concept with intelligence and creativity. These clips directly correspond to the thesis the film is trying to convey. If the documentary was a fictional narrative, these clips would be the release the audience feels when the protagonist ultimately escapes danger. The hard work, the disappointment and all the efforts of the crew behind A Goofy Movie ultimately paid off because it did what any film strives to do – emotionally resonate with its audience.

In Not Just a Goof, someone says “It has no right to be this good” in reference to A Goofy Movie. Well, that phrase is just as applicable to the documentary about A Goofy Movie as it is the original movie. What should be a puff piece about a nostalgic animated movie from thirty years ago is really a heartfelt love letter to making movies – yes, even the horrible, difficult, wonderful parts of making movies.

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Jonathan Keating is a contributing writer and photographer to DisneyBizJournal.

Walt Disney ranked as one of the great entrepreneurs of the 20th century. In 10 Points from Walt Disney on Entrepreneurship, Ray Keating, editor and columnist for DisneyBizJournal and a leading economist on entrepreneurship and small business, turns to Walt for inspiration and insights on what it means to be an entrepreneur, on embracing entrepreneurship, and on learning lessons for the entrepreneurial journey.

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