Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Intertwined’ On Disney+, Where A Teen Goes Back To 1994 To See How Her Mother And Grandmother Had A Falling Out

Somehow, Disney has a knack for making family drama into light teenage fare. In their Argentinian original Intertwined, a teen finds a bracelet that takes her back to 1994 so she can figure out why her mother and grandmother no longer speak to each other. Fun, right? Read on for more…

INTERTWINED: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Late at night, a teen girl puts her earbuds in her ears, pulls up a song from a soundtrack called Dressed For Success, and imagines she’s the one performing it.

The Gist: As Allegra Sharp (Carolina Domenech) imagines that the crowd is chanting her name, her mother, Caterina (Clara Alonso), interrupts her. Not only is it 4 in the morning and she’s making noise, but Caterina doesn’t understand why Allegra dreams of musical theater when she has school and her responsibilities at their book store.

Allegra, even more determined, forges her mother’s signature on a permission slip; this will allow her to try out for the Eleven O’Clock Theater Company’s production of Freaky Friday. It’s the same production that her grandmother Cocó (Elena Roger) directed a couple of decades ago. However, Caterina doesn’t even want Allegra to mention her grandmother’s name to her, and she won’t tell Allegra why she and her mother had a falling out, well before Allegra was born.

She enlists her friend Félix (Kevsho) to delay her mother the next morning while she sneaks out to audition. It’s her first audition, and she comes close to nailing it, impressing both Greta (Paula Morales), the demanding director, and theater exec Diego (Benjamín Amadeo). But when Caterina finds out where Allegra is, she busts in and drags her out of the audition; Allegra seems a bit surprised that Greta and Diego know her well.

As they argue about it on the way home, their car is t-boned in an intersection, and Caterina is laying in the hospital unconscious. Allegra calls Cocó in, and meets her for the first time in the hospital; they return to the home where Cocó raised her daughter, decrying that “so much has changed.” When a frustrated Allegra throws her ballet statue into the wall, she sees a glow coming from the hole.

In the wall is a case with a bracelet. When she puts the bracelet on, she’s suddenly lifted up, then disappears. She finds herself in the same house, but a blaring radio tells her that it’s 1994. She sees her mother (Manuela Menéndez), now her age. Young Caterina still has issues with Cocó, and she endeavors to have a writing career, but she also is in the production of Freaky Friday her mother directs. She and a young Greta (Tatu Glikman) are competing for the main role, and she’s dating a young Diego (Manuel Ramos). There is also Greta’s boyfriend Marco (José Giménez Zapiola), who caught her eye earlier that day.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Sliders and Back To The Future, for teens, made in Argentina.

Our Take: The story of Intertwined (original title: Entrelazados) is designed to go back and forth from 1994 to the present. Even though we don’t see Allegra jumping back to 2021 in the first episode, we know that this isn’t a situation like Back To The Future, where she’ll stay in one spot and then go back to her present life and see what changed.

What it looks like is that Allegra is going to work the situation in both time periods, trying to get her mother and grandmother on the same page in the present while befriending the teenage version of her mother in 1994. It’s a fun way for the story to be told, because all Allegra wants to do is get her mother and grandmother back together, and get to the root of why the two of them stopped talking to each other to begin with.

Will there be lots of ’90s nostalgia on the show? Maybe. We hear “The Sign” by Ace of Base and other ’90s pop tunes, and of course there’s lots of flannel and cassettes and no one’s carrying around cell phones. But it does seem that we’re going to be seeing more of Allegra dealing with mending the various relationships than wallowing in ’90s minutiae, and that’s just fine with us.

What we wonder is: How will Allegra’s actions in 1994 affect her life in 2021? It’s not just the fact that she is going to try to keep the rift between Caterina and Cocó from happening, but what else will be different? Are the show’s writers going to consider the “butterfly effect” of Allegra’s time travel? Or, because this show is a light teen dramedy, they’ll completely ignore it? We’re not sure we care either way; the characters are engaging enough — both in adult and teen versions — to keep us interested in this story even if present history doesn’t change all that much.

What Age Group Is This For?: We’re pretty sure kids 8 and up would enjoy Intertwined.

Parting Shot: Allegra comes to young Caterina’s aid when Caterina turns an ankle practicing a jump Cocó told her she’s not nailing. Allegra goes to hug the young version of her mother, and Caterina understandably recoils. “Who are you?” she asks.

Sleeper Star: Elena Roger is regal as Cocó, and the makeup that ages her up in the present day is pretty darn good.

Most Pilot-y Line: Allegra has Félix try to pull off a modern-day Ferris Bueller, with recordings he has to play to convince Caterina that she’s still in her room. They’re all on his phone, but he blows it. Ferris had to use a cassette deck and 1980s technology, and he made it work.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Intertwined is a light and entertaining teen dramedy that keeps to the relationships — in both time periods — instead of leaning on the nostalgia factor.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Intertwined On Disney+