At long last, David Lynch comes to Disney+
In January, David Lynch shocked and surprised fans whose sensitivities to shock and surprise have been dulled by years of David Lynch movies by bringing a new short film, What Did Jack Do? to Netflix. Not to be outdone, one up-and-coming challenger to the streaming giant’s throne has found its moment to seize on a suddenly housebound populace’s yearning to delve into Lynch’s singularly warped perspective. That challenger is, of course, Disney+, the video-on-demand service owned by the media conglomerate that distributed the Twin Peaks creator’s 1999 swerve into G-rated, fact-based filmmaking, The Straight Story.
Lynch’s dramatization of Alvin Straight’s 240-mile-long trek on a riding lawnmower is among the upcoming Disney+ additions announced today, arriving April 3—the same day subscribers get a chance to see all the awful, sublimated societal ills wriggling around beneath the surface of the Donald Duck short “Don’s Fountain Of Youth” and seasons one through three of Sonny With A Chance. In celebration of Earth Day, April will also bring a slew of National Geographic and Disneynature documentaries to Disney+—none of which, unfortunately, shed any light on how man turning his back on Mother Earth and toward industrialization could produce such an unnatural abomination as the Eraserhead baby.
But that’s all the type of surface-level read that has fueled easy jokes about The Straight Story for more than two decades. Content aside, it’s really not that much of a departure for Lynch: It still teams him with frequent collaborators like Mary Sweeney, Angelo Badalamenti, and Harry Dean Stanton; it still possesses a sense of Americana that’ll pair well with fellow upcoming Disney+ additions “Man In Space” and “Mars And Beyond”; its protagonist still harbors a difficult secret. And besides, if you’re a Disney+ subscriber looking to get a more traditionally Lynchian take on the gnarled American soul, you won’t have to wait very long: nine seasons of America’s Funniest Home Videos are yours for the taking beginning April 23.