A step-by-step, paint your numbers biography of the favorite Mouseketeer girl, this is basically decent but "too nice", allegedly told through the perspective of the real Annette Funnicello who on screen narrator of the story, telling it to a little girl at a birthday party. Of course, it's easy to get drawn into an emotionally because at this point, she was struggling with multiple sclerosis and her speech was greatly affected, almost sounding saintly. Going from the winner of the talent show to part of an ensemble of. Walt Disney variety show to the only one of the cast held over after the cancellation to beach party girl, and her romances and friendships with Paul Anka and Frankie Avalon respectively.
The actresses playing enough throughout the years are amazingly accurate in looks and personality, showing her shyness and her devotion to her work and to her fans. I had to chuckle at the casting of Linda Lavin as her mother because she reminds me of a nicer version of Mama Rose, a role that Lavin played on Broadway. In fact, the talent show at the beginning is like the opening scene of "Gypsy". If she was a stage mother, she certainly only had her daughter's best interest at heart, not like other stage mothers who has been dramatized on stage and screen.
The film is sentimental, not maudlin though, and while there are definite elements of a tearjerker to be had here, it is basically a true story and definitely gives the viewer a sense of what Funnicello went through and how the adult version of herself remained as sweet as she had been as a teenager. No sugar coating, but you get the sense that more as a potentially scandalous aspects were not presented. Broadway great Len Cariou plays Disney in a saintly way that perpetuates the legend of Uncle Walt, and you have to wonder how much of it is true and what darker sides of him were cut. Enjoyable and nostalgic, not really giving the viewer anything that they probably did not know, so it's ultimately generic as far as storytelling is concerned, something audiences have come to expect from a Disney story.