Don't listen to the negative reviews

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Tiger Cruise is an absolutely amazing movie probably my favorite Disney Channel movie ever made. However on September 11th, 2008 this movie was not broadcast on Disney Channel. It's like they don't care anymore. Just because this horrendous catastrophe occurred 7 years before the date, that doesn't mean Disney should just pretend it never happened. Thousands of lives were lost and they deserve to be remember. I was only 6 when it happened so as many other people I learn as much as possible about it and depriving children of learning about what happened is horrible. I think we should all speak out against this and get Disney to play and make movies like this more often.

High School Musical, pure torture and ear-bleeding singing. Jump In, utterly forgettable, but good none the less. Here comes Tiger Cruise. The best made-for-TV movie, and unlike most Disney Chanell movies, it doesn't do extremely serious situations and joke on them unsuccessfully (Dad caring only about his sons basketball skills in High School Musical, etc.) This takes serious topics and portrays with, ummmmmmmm, seriousness.The film begins with a girl who eagerly awaits her father coming home from being a captain on a navy ship for so many years. And this is at the beginning of the school year of 2001, so you can guess what will happen from there.This is perhaps a career highlight for almost everyone involved, including Hayden Paniterre and Brenda Song ( who would later go on to be on TV's awful 'Suite Life') this is the perfect film for kids so they can understand what happened on 9/11. A good film.

I have a special interest in propaganda films and how they're made. Unlike a film made to merely entertain or distract, a propaganda film has a specific and identifiable goal. It is concocted to get an audience or at least a part of the audience to think and act in a particular way. I am interested in relating the films to each other- to compare the various WW2 propaganda films from different countries and to distinguish the various sub-types- propaganda films used to stimulate civilian domestic production efficiency, for example.TIGER CRUISE is the first example I've seen of a Navy recruiting film aimed at teen-aged girls. The story is this: A "tiger cruise" apparently is the last days sailing of a ship after its been rotated out from a long term deployment. In this case the super carrier Constellation is sailing back after have been in "the gulf". On these tiger cruises relatives of the compliment are invited along on the last leg. (Did anyone realize that we paid for this?) So the story opens with the relatives preparing for their flights to Hawaii to meet the ship in Pearl Harbor. Ominously the first date superimposed over the action is "September 2001". I know. I kept thinking about the HMS Hood too.The story centers one one teen age girl, apparently a member of the Disney teen age girl assembly line, the greatest kitch-pop teen queen production outside of Japan.Her father, Bill Pullman, is the Executive Officer on the Constellation and she wants him to quit the Navy and come home so they can be a real family. He insists that this is his job. It takes 9/11 to convince her that her father's work is more important. Of the some 800 relatives making the trip the only identifiable people are teen queen's (she actually has the blond corkscrew curls popular in barnstorming melodramas of 125 years ago) circle of two friends, a Hispanic girl and an African-American boy and a little boy played by the actress's brother. An older man visiting his son, a baker, provides a sub-plot which stresses the importance of even the peripheral jobs in the Navy even though dad promises his brother in the Pentagon could find him something more important. The brother is killed on 9/11. The other girl, not as pretty, is there because her big sister (what a knock out even if more than a little bit butch) is a jet fighter pilot, so I guess who says girls can't do that? The boy is an undisciplined tearaway who learns the seriousness of things because of 9/11. Meanwhile there are tours of the ship and the various jobs and tasks on display as well as the amenities. Exhibitions of patriotism are frequent and taken for granted. It all reminded me of the episode of The Simpson's where Bart joins a boy's band whose existence is merely a front for a Join the Navy campaign. If a certain number of teen age girls who see the picture are inspired to join the navy and prepare biscuits five or ten years in the future then the picture will have done its job. Except for some really cheap rear projection work meant to show the ship at sea, Disney has certainly come a long way in the 50 years since they spent a season on the Mickey Mouse Club showing how cool it was to fly TWA coast to coast. (And that airplane was a Constellation too.) After all, propaganda is just advertizing for a concept rather than a product.

This movie shows the struggle of families of those in the military. While the teenage girl and the situation with her father are at the for front there are many other stories that touch at father son relations, growing up, and having courage. This is a wonderful movie to talk to kids about the situation on 9-11 because it makes it personal without making it to violent. The girl in the story has always struggled with her father being in the military her first purpose is to ask her dad to retire. After the attacks she sees the courage and passion her father has for what he does and it is inspiring to her. In this movie she is given the chance to help other and that is where she truly learns her lesson. The movie shows all of the emotions that we all felt on that terrible day/week shock, sadness, depression, and the uncomfortable feeling after you laugh for the first time after the attacks. An all around great movie unlike most made for TV Disney flicks