Behind the Attraction, the new documentary series produced by Dwayne Johnson’s Seven Bucks company and Brian Volk-Weiss (The Toys That Made Us) is a tale of two wildly different shows…at least in the first episode.
One show is a docuseries designed for theme park and Disney fans reminiscent of The Imagineering Story (which is an amazing series on Disney+ this writer cannot recommend enough). It’s a show teeming with historical information, vintage footage, and talking heads shining the light on the historical and cultural impact of the featured Disney attractions in the series.
The other part of the show is eerily reminiscent of those not-so-funny shows you’d find on cable on Saturday or Sunday afternoon where a bunch of comedians make a lot of tepid jokes after an America’s Funniest Videos-esque clip of human stupidity.
This duality makes for an uneven watch – especially during the first episode about The Jungle Cruise. The humor is stuffed with enough dad jokes and half-baked puns to have you reaching for your remote to find something else to watch.
Now, within the context of the episode, this super-serving of humor makes sense, since one of the hallmarks of The Jungle Cruise ride is the puns and dad jokes delivered by the tour guides. However, the humor is so unrelenting and often does not hit the mark that not even the resplendent Padget Brewster (the voice of Della Duck on Ducktales) can salvage the episode.
Yet, stick around for Episode 2 about The Haunted Mansion. This is a much better representation of what the series truly holds. They finally strike a balance between humor and history. They allow Brewster to have a more conversational and witty style of narration so it sounds like she’s responding to her own words or reacting to what she’s seeing in the documentary instead of telling jokes that were written for her. Allowing her to be more natural makes for a much easier listen and cutting back on hyper-caffeinated sight gags makes for an exponentially better watch.
If you loved The Imagineering Story – which is an absolutely phenomenal series on Disney+ – then definitely give Behind the Attraction a watch. Episode 1 about The Jungle Cruise is a tough one to get through, but once you get passed that episode (and the episode does improve by the end), you’re in line for a fun and light-hearted yet richly historical and informative series about the rides that made Disney the standard-bearer for theme parks around the world.
