Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: JINGLE JANGLE – A CHRISTMAS JOURNEY (Netflix)

Move over Christmas Chronicles, Netflix now has a new (and better) Christmas movie for families to watch together every year, JINGLE JANGLE: A CHRISTMAS JOURNEY. I doubt that the Christmas Chronicles sequel, which releases next week, will over take this one for me, considering that the first movie is…only okay….sorry Kurt Russell. And if you have a problem with me saying that this is a ‘Christmas’ movie and not using the word ‘holiday’…well, not to mince words, but you can shove it up your butt hurt triggered 2020 asshole chimney. While the movie is shot, cinematography wise, like a television movie, and my wife and I discussed mid way through how this could easily be turned into a Broadway stage play in the future, the rest of the production is top notch. It has a wonderful production design, half way decent CGI for what it is, the musical song and dance numbers were fun and memorable, none of the actors phoned it in, including one of Forest Whitaker’s best performances in quite awhile…it has the Christmas works. Per IMDB, it describes Jingle Jangle with the following: “An imaginary world comes to life in a holiday tale of an eccentric toymaker, his adventurous granddaughter, and a magical invention that has the power to change their lives forever.” While the story ends up being a bit familiar (you know, the whole love, loss, redemption one audiences has seen a thousand times), and I would also say the movie is about 15 minutes too long (it’s a heavy 2 hrs and 2 minutes), the rest of the film was joyfully jolly and jovial enough to forgive it’s trespasses and go along with it for the rest of its wonderful journey.

Forest Whitaker is first billed here, and I’m glad that he wasn’t just playing himself in this one, as his character has some quirks to be kinked out, and his performance here earned the believability of his redemption arc. But he is not the true star of the show. That would be newcomer Madalen Mills, who plays his grandaughter, Journey. If it wasn’t for her pure of heart and delightful performance, Jingle Jangle simply couldn’t be what it ultimately is: very lovely. Ricky Martin voices a cute yet suspicious little CGI figurine come to life, whose MacGuffin-ness I dare not spoil here. There is a cute robot named Buddy 3000 that shows up halfway through the film that people are calling the next ‘Baby Yoda’, and although it is cute and made me smile, I think anyone who says that it is in the same ballpark of cultural impact that the new Star Wars character has, is just kidding themselves. The one actor that I felt got short changed in this movie is the other half of Key & Peele, the one that hasn’t won an Oscar, Keegan-Michael Key. He plays a wonderful little villain and has some great chops and can dance spectacularly with the choreography given, but other than his first big musical song and dance number, he isn’t in the film all that much. The climax of his character in the climax of the film is a bit anti-climatic as well, and although the movie had a bunch of very early set ups that were paid off during this scene, it just felt like Mr. Key was shortchanged a bit with his role. But maybe this could be an audition for bigger things for him. I hope it is. Anyway, if you want a decent streaming new Christmas movie because you won’t go to the theater and you’re are finally tired of watching the same Christmas stuff because the walls are finally starting to cave in on your 2020 bubble, Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey is here to blow some air into it to keep it from completely collapsing.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: OVER THE MOON (Netflix)

This review is going to be a bit biased, seeing how I called into work an extra day last week and my 3 year old sat by me, snuggled, and paid attention to the entire one hour and thirty five minute run time of this movie. Totally worth it. OVER THE MOON, if you watch it, might seem a little bit generic to you, and it is unless you are familiar with Chang’e, the Chinese Goddess of the Moon and her history in their culture’s folklore. It’s another one of those “learning acceptance to change” adventures, where a young girl, who lost her mother four years earlier to what I presume was cancer, is about to be integrated into another half family. The father fell in love with another woman after his wife’s death, and this woman has her own son she is going to bring into this new family. The young girl, who’s name is Fei Fei, gets upset and doesn’t want to accept this change or get over her mother’s death, so she builds her own rocket ship and blasts off to the moon (I presume this entire movie was in Fei Fei’s head), hoping to meet this Chang’e and prove that she is real. Fei Fei also hopes that she can help Chang’e (DO YOU GET IT YET?!? CHANGE!!!) with her romantic tragedy described in her folklore and in return maybe the goddess can help Fei Fei deal with the tragedy of her mother’s death. Tit for tat, if you will. The movie is a computer-animated musical adventure family dramedy, and it is a solid, albeit, very familiar film. Maybe because it has a lot of similar beats of another film produced by the same company, Abominable (my son’s first film in a movie theater). It’s a little fishy that Over The Moon is the only second film produced by Pearl Studios, yet it borrows (and sometimes blatantly rips off) their first produced film. This film has been getting some Oscar buzz for Best Animated Movie and the reason for that is that this is the last film written by storyteller Audrey Wells (she died of cancer in 2018), who brilliantly adapted the novel The Hate U Give into one of my favorite films of 2018. The film was directed by Glen Keane, who at age 66, and former supervising animator at Disney with classics on his resume such as Pete’s Dragon, The Rescuers, Aladdin, and Beauty In The Beast, gets his first gig directing an entire feature. These reasons were probably why Netflix was over the moon to produce and distribute this film…pun intended.

But the movie is good I promise. There are several great musical numbers, more so than the mediocre Frozen 2, and the film’s animation is bright and mesmerizing…at least to young children as my son kept saying “wow” throughout his experience. Hamilton’s Phillipa Soo, who was also recently in The Broken Hearts Gallery which was a good movie but didn’t really showcase any of her vocal talents, is in this, and uses her talents gloriously. She voices Chang’e, and her opening introductory number was a memorable enough song that I’m still humming it out loud randomly almost a week later. The voice acting is great all around here, with Ken Jeong playing a pangolin (funny if you consider the multiple stories of the origin of COVID-19) who is not introduced until an hour into the film for some odd reason, but it was just enough not to have Jeong over do it and become annoying. I tagged Sandra Oh and John Cho in this article, but don’t watch this based on just those two names alone as they have less than 15 lines between the two of them. It’s really the Phillipa Soo, Cathy Ang (Fei Fei), and Robert Chiu (stepbrother Chin) show as they are present for most of the run time, and they all voice act their hearts out. Soo and Chiu have a fun, musical, rhythmic ping pong tournament competing for a McGuffin prize, there is a hilariously fun motorcycle gang of antagonist biker ‘chicks’, and the ending, while predictable as all get out, will probably make your eyes release several pent up tears of emotion. The whole problem I had with the movie was the familiarity and predictable nature of it, so if that kind of plot beat for beat shit doesn’t bother you, then you will enjoy this movie even more so than I did. Netflix, from what I can tell, at least has an eye for their original animated films even though most of their live action ones are crap. I am over the moon that the streak isn’t broken…again…pun intended.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: THE HIGH NOTE

THE HIGH NOTE is just further proof that you can still make a movie that has been done before, with cliches galore, being mostly predictable, incorporating story beats either copied or completely ripped off of other things…but the pacing of the movie, the acting, the chemistry between the actors, and some original music can end up putting everything together into a very enjoyable, semi-new package. Or maybe my expectations were just really, really low? Doesn’t matter, either way I really enjoyed this film, and my wife who was going to do other things around the house, ended up sitting down and paid attention to the whole thing. This was yet another movie that was supposed to hit theaters early May, but due to the butt fucking phenomenon known as COVID-19, ended up being a premium $19.99 PVOD rental instead in late May. Cut to only a month and a week later, and this movie was available to OWN this week for only $14.99 (see: my patience is virtue quote in my previous review of Trolls World Tour). Yes, I could’ve waited for another 12 days for the rental to go down to $5 or $6, but I read some casual moviegoers reviews saying that the movie is much better than critics like me or grumpy old people were making it out to me, so I took the gamble and just purchased to own. I’m glad that I did, because even though the movie has about a billion familiar story beats with a story that has been done a countless variation of times, I enjoyed every minute of it and would probably keep watching it as sort of a ‘guilty pleasure’ type deal.

Also, the marketing of this movie was way off base. IMDB describes the film as “A superstar singer and her overworked personal assistant are presented with a choice that could alter the course of their respective careers,” and that’s how the trailers and tv spots sold the movie as, but that’s really describing only HALF of the movie’s 1 hr and 52 minute run time. Dakota Johnson plays the personal assistant and Tracee Ellis Ross (daughter of the incredibly talented singer Diana Ross) plays the superstar and the movie markets itself as JUST the relationship between those two, a la The Devil Wears Prada, except that Ross’s character is much less of an asshole than Meryl Streep was. The real other half of the movie is about Dakota Johnson discovering some new musical talent while she’s out shopping for grocery’s for Ross, a guy named David Cliff, and their relationship as she lies to him, selling herself as an experienced movie producer, because it seems as though Ross’s character doesn’t take any of her career suggestions seriously and Johnson’s career is likely to go nowhere because of it. This is where the movie’s true heart lies, as the acting between Dakota Johnson and the actor that plays David Cliff, Kelvin Harrison Jr. really uplifts, takes flight, and never gets uninteresting. Sure, the stuff between Johnson and Ellis Ross is still there as the Plot A style story, but the resolution of it ends up pretty much how you’d expect, except for ONE HUGE twist that I didn’t see coming, but maybe probably should have.

Doing some research on the crew of the making of this movie, I found out that it was no surprise that I enjoyed this film more than I should’ve, because the director of this movie, a Ms. Nisha Ganatra, also directly the incredibly entertaining movie Late Night, that starred Emma Thompson and Mindy Kaling that came out last year. While I still prefer that film out of the two, mainly due to Mindy Kaling’s incredible screenplay writing ability (not her acting), this film reaches those entertaining heights pretty closely at times. While I don’t watch Blackish, Tracee Ellis Ross is really great here and Ice Cube has now finally been in something decent in awhile since the 21 Jump Street movies. Dakota Johnson though, I think, gives her best performance yet, kind of proving that she probably should’ve said no to that Fifty Shades trilogy when she got offered the part awhile ago. The banter is witty, the dialogue feels fresh although familiar, and the time just passes by as you watch this. Oh, I almost forgot to mention the music! While there are a couple of cover songs, most of the things sung in this, mostly by Kelvin Harrison Jr., was original, felt fresh, and had a fun beat. I am very happy the movie didn’t go the route of having the whole thing just be covers of songs we’ve heard too many times before. The High Note definitely ended on a high note for me, as my wife and I talked about how decent the film was, how much we enjoyed it, how others we know would enjoy it, and that we’d probably enjoy it just as much again on a re watch or two.

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.

Zach’s Zany Movie Reviews: HAMILTON (Disney+)

So a little disclaimer about this review, I’ve technically seen and reviewed the stage play musical, HAMILTON, when it came to Dallas a little bit ago. Posted it right here on this blog in fact. So this first paragraph is just going to be me saying how the experience was while watching it on Disney+ and then I’m copying and pasting my old review of the content of the stage play. So if you already read that part of it way back when, other than this intro, you aren’t getting anything new. HOWEVER, if you’ve seen Hamilton on stage, and were on the fence about watching it again on your screen at home, mainly because you didn’t think it could re create the same magic, think again. This is the first required viewing, in my opinion, of something on Disney+ since The Mandalorian debuted last year. You get the original Broadway cast here, Lin Manuel-Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr., Daveed Diggs, the works. Their acting and showmanship are different than the off Broadway cast (not better or worse), and it feels fresh seeing different faces for sure. It’s still the same amazing play, but up close and personal. They didn’t just set a camera in front of the stage and film a live original performance. There’s different camera angles, close ups, fade in and outs, dissolves, putting you right smack dab in the middle of their performance as if you were standing with them on stage. So even if you’ve seen THE ORIGINAL MUSICAL WITH THE ORIGINAL CAST, this is still worth checking out. It’s a completely different experience, fresh even if you’ve listened to everything so much you can rap out lyric by lyric, word by word. This is one of the best musicals of all time. So you know Hollywood will one day, when it’s back up and running, try to make an epic of it on decorated sound stages and location shootings, and they could either knock it out of the park, or it could end up being another…Cats **shiver**. Let’s not think about that right now. The only really complaint I have is I wished they had filmed it without an audience…but then again maybe it wouldn’t have been as good of a performance? To be fair, it wasn’t as distracting as actually being there with a live audience, they never show the audience and the cheering was really short and cut off between small breaks into the next scene. Without further ado, my older review of Hamilton when I saw it with the off Broadway cast in Dallas not too long ago:

So the Broadway touring of HAMILTON is in Texas, and since it is the most buzzed about play since The Book of Mormon, obviously it peaked my interest (the next one to do that might be Harry Potter and The Cursed Child). And since I’m seeing less movies in the theaters nowadays, I thought I could write a short review on my thoughts. Is it worth the hype and all the awards it has won? Absolutely. And now other than The Book of Mormon, it would definitely be a play I could see multiple times and neither feel bored and I’d also feel like I got my money’s worth. Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote a masterpiece. Nothing short of greatness.

Hamilton is about the life of Alexander Hamilton. But everything is either sung or rapped, incorporates R&B, pop, soul, hip hop, show tunes, and also casts color-consciously of non-white actors as historical figures. The play starts out with his early life as an orphan throughout just the intro song and then we go into straight into adulthood to his tragic death. The play is in two acts, and I don’t think there is a word spoken that isn’t sung. But everything works so perfectly well. Apparently it took Miranda years to write it and do perfect the songs, perfect every single note, and it shows. It is one of the most intricate things I’ve ever heard, so much so that, like Book of Mormon, might be finding and buying the CD to it. Every song is great and catchy, and there are absolutely no lag moments in the play. My favorite part? Probably like a lot of people, I do enjoy when King George III takes the stage.

The stage itself is pretty standard. It consists of a lot of wood and stairs and rope, and then some fake brick to look like old buildings. And it doesn’t change. Not that its a bad thing at all, in fact, I would’ve be shocked if it had been any more intricate because it would’ve taken even longer to get the product out to audiences around the world. One thing that is a little unique about the stage is that it rotates in the middle constantly to convey movement, and is very impressive when mixed in with the choreography to song and dance numbers. As for the acting? It is all impressive. I didn’t take a Playbill from the April 28th, 2019 showing, but if you were one of the actors/dancers in the play, you did a tremendous job. Especially the leads like Hamilton and Burr, the way they could memorize all those songs, movements, and words and make it look like another walk in the part is nothing short of masterful.

So if you are on the fence about seeing this, why? Don’t be. It’s amazing and truly a thing that should be on your bucket list. Whether you are a history buff or even scoff at history, there is something in this play for everyone to enjoy. The play is 2 hours and 55 minutes (including a 15 minute intermission) but you could’ve fooled me, the time just whizzes by extremely fast. If this is the one thing that Lin Manuel-Miranda is remembered by, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. If there is real magic on the planet, this Broadway play is the closest that it gets to seeing is believing.