Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey - Holiday Movie Musings

Kicking off the holiday movie watching season with this new entry from Netflix, Jingle Jangle, which touted a promising cast with Phylicia Reshad, Forrest Whittaker, Keegan Michael-Key, and Ricky Martin. Not far into it, we get to meet the glowing young Journey, played by the magnetic Madalen Mills. Costumes are incredible, sets fantastic, and the musical numbers SHOULD GO AWAY. There was just...no reason to make this a musical. We nearly turned it off during the umpteenth fairly unoriginal, cookie-cutter musical interlude.

Pros: Aforementioned costuming was amazing.. The attention to details in this universe of wild color and patterns were exciting for me. I would watch it again just to see that again. The world-building in the concept of magic was a little weak, but the sets were incredible. We felt thrust into a sort of old world theme park—reminding us of Diagon Alley in Wizarding World at Universal, in fact, in a good way. It was interesting to see a Dickensian landscape with a diverse cast of characters, and African dance inspired choreographies (the ones we didn’t fast forward through...)

Cons: The magical, evil doll storyline was central, but never really felt compelling. And the arrogant Latin-lover trope was tired.

Overall: Recommend, and if you’re not into musicals (we are, but this just wasn’t good for us), you can safely skip those sequences and not miss any plot points. This show is eye candy, and acting was good.