Tag: Kids Movie

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: MAGIC CAMP (Disney+)

How is this movie half way decent? No seriously, how? Because MAGIC CAMP literally had its first trailer a week ago, was just dumped on Disney+ yesterday, and the trailer sucked major ass. It doesn’t market or promote the film well at all. Although predictable, goofy at times, and even though it doesn’t challenge its audience, Magic Camp is better than it has any right to be because of its heartwarming core story, decent performances from everyone involved, and the fact that other than a very few couple of CGI shots, almost all of the magic tricks done in this film were performed without any computer trickery. When finding out that fact in the middle of watching it, it made me respect the film’s craft that much more. The movie is basically Heavyweights without all the poop jokes, body humor, no Ben Stiller like villain, combined with any Disney Channel movie you might have seen but with a bigger budget, combined with the entertainment value of any high school movie that’s worth its weight in silver, specifically I’m thinking of something like Mean Girls. Which is funny, because this film is directed by Mark Waters, who also directed that classic. While Magic Camp is definitely no classic, it is a guilty pleasure that is sure to get several more viewings from me, whether I need something light heartening to cheer me up, or something for Grayson to enjoy when he gets a little older.

It really is a perfect little family film. Yeah, the film is wacky and rips off a bunch of story/plot beats that I’ve complained about before in recent films like Feel The Beat and Work It, but it doesn’t do it in an eye rolling and “treating its audience as if they were morons” kind of way like those films did. Per IMDB, Magic Camp is described as such: “Andy, at the urging of his former mentor and Magic Camp owner Roy Preston, returns as a counselor to the camp of his youth hoping to reignite his career.” Andy is played by Adam Devine, and yes, even though he plays the exact same character in absolutely everything you have seen him in, just less crude and crass here, his limited acting range works well in this environment, especially when interacting with the group of kids he’s assigned to train and compete with against the other groups within the camp. This movie was shot back in 2017 and I was wondering why it took this long to release it. Well, I can tell you with 100% certainty it wouldn’t have made any money in a theater and its a little too good for the Disney Channel. Right when a certain actor appeared on screen that wasn’t in the trailer, it told me all it needed to know. Actor Jeffrey Tambor is a pretty big presence in this film, and it was shot before he was accused of sexual harassment and became part of the wrong side of #MeToo. But since that has died down and he wasn’t one of the major players, Disney knew they could just quietly put it on their new platform without any muss or fuss, which was honestly the best move they could’ve made with it.

The magic tricks were quite cool to watch, Gillian Jacobs is in this and it was fun to watch her be a little wacky and not just play Britta Perry from Community. I wish she was in it a little more but I loved her role which could’ve been cliche but instead subverts your expectations. But those two things don’t hold a candle to one of the central parts of the story. The movie is really about a young kid named Theo and his journey to become a great magician. He also just recently lost his father, and his father was the one to get him into magic. Now while the script and movie could’ve just had a throwaway line that is supposed to hit you in the feels, instead it actually cast a decent actor, Aldis Hodge, to play the now deceased dad in a couple of flashbacks that EARNS those feels it is trying to elicit from the audience. Combined with a little subplot with his Mom, I actually teared up a little near the end of the film, as it had a very heartwarming climax. Combine that with some fun sequences, some witty one liners that made me laugh out loud, and some wholesome family fun, this is a perfect little kid/family film. I just wish Disney would’ve made a little bit of an effort with promoting it, maybe starting a month ago, bringing some looked forward to fun in the middle of these shitty, shitty times. We all wish that coronavirus would just go away as fast as we could say “Abra Cadabra”, but the reality is we are in this for a little while longer, and if we can find some decent means of escape like Magic Camp, maybe we can look forward more to being put back together soon after 2020 has sawed us in half.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: TROLLS WORLD TOUR

“Patience is a virtue. Especially when it comes to $19.99 PVOD rentals.” – Zachary James Alexander

I know I had a couple of guest reviewers take a shot at their thoughts for TROLLS WORLD TOUR a couple of months ago when they foolishly paid $19.99 for a 48 hour rental. Want to guess how much I paid? $5. The kids Universal Dreamworks Animation film was available to rent regularly this week, and since my young little boy likes that kind of shit with a lot of music in it, five bucks seemed like a pretty good deal. And my verdict? It’s honestly not that bad, in fact, I would say it is a superior sequel, as I can’t even remember for the life of me what happened in the first movie, other than I knew I was bored to tears and didn’t care for it. So what made me think this one was decent? Well, it’s really just a harmless 90 minute music video meant for kids and teaches them that all races of people, no matter the skin color or personality, can and should live in harmony. Errr, wait a minute, I said that wrong. It teaches them that all of the different Trolls, with their different varieties and preferred kinds of music, can and should live in harmony. Ah, that’s better. The movie flies by in a fast and frantic pace and is really the movie that Frozen II should’ve been when trying to incorporate political and social messages into its themes. Frozen II went wayyyyyy too dark for children and its end message of “anti-Trump wall and racist values” was eye roll worthy. Argue with me all you want, I proved with instances in my Frozen II review that it was all there. Trolls World Tour is much more light-hearted and doesn’t get too dark even though it still kind of annoyingly wears its messages on its sleeve.

Per IMDB, it describes Trolls World Tour as: “When the Queen of the Hard Rock Trolls tries to take over all the Troll kingdoms, Queen Poppy and her friends try different ways to save all the Trolls.” To add on to that description, the Queen of The Hard Rock Trolls is actually trying to steal all of the Troll kingdoms musical strings (Pop, Funk, Classical, Techno and Country) and convert all of them to JUST hard rock. So basically Hard Rock is Nazi Germany in this instance. Oh, also, half way through the film they mention that the Troll World Map is “outdated” and that there are many more kinds of different trolls and music out there now. See what I mean when I say that it wears its messages on its sleeve? However, it’s harmless and tolerable because of how bright and chipper every story beat is to the very end, even on a 2 second downer note in the climax. It manages to still be a purely innocent kids movie, something that Frozen III should probably take notes on before the script and songs are written for that film in several years. There aren’t many original songs here, the film mostly consists of remixes of current and older songs that you might’ve enjoyed personally or with family and friends over the years. And the remixes are actually kind of cool and catchy. Anna Kendrick, Rachel Bloom, Justin Timberlake and others sing their hearts out in this, and it all sounds good and is enjoyable…to a degree for me.

I’m not saying the movie is great, it’s just half way decent. Probably because my expectations were quite low when hitting that play button. But my young son liked it and my wife and I paid attention to it. I got a little more out of it than I was expecting. Heck, I even laughed out loud a couple of times. Mostly scenes that involved Kenan Thompson, as a new troll named Tiny Diamond, whenever he would open his mouth and then a very dry humorish, 2 second, blind-and-you’ll-miss-it laugh involving a troll shaking its ass right in front of another troll’s face who is not amused (it happens in the country Troll scene if you are on the look out for it). There is also a side B, C & D plots that involve Timberlake’s troll actually being able to be in love with Kendrick’s troll (that’s what she said), a troll that lived in the Pop Music part of the world who realizes he’s actually from a different part of it, and a pinky promise that have tiny little pay offs that weren’t too shabby. I can’t stress this enough, it’s a harmless kids movie. It’s not as terrible as some of my friends and professional critics are making it out to be and it’s not the greatest movie ever that probably flew out of some kids mouths while in quarantine. It’s serviceable, it’s there, it easily kills 90 minutes of your boring quarantine life time. You will either jam to the beat of the music or, at the bare minimum, nod your head to it. It’s definitely not worth the $19.99 rental it was in April, but is sure more than a bargain at $5 now.