Jingle Jangle — More Than a Christmas Movie
If you believe it is!
The Christmas season was replete with an assortment of festive movies, like it usually is, with its array of romcoms, family dramas, and children’s fare of tinsel and sparkle and saccharine sweet stories. 2020 was a year different from the others and I was looking for something beyond what generally fills up my holidays— in both books and movies. Idly scrolling through Netflix while deliberately avoiding the “trending” movies, I chanced upon Jingle Jangle. A musical with children seemed like the plethora of holiday films doing the rounds, but then I spotted Forest Whitaker — someone whose acting I have always admired — and I wondered what he was doing in a musical. And so it began!
Jingle Jangle is a dream-like feature film in a Dickensian era; a musical fantasy that’s like watching a painting roll by. Our protagonist Jeronicus Jangle is an inventor and toymaker who runs Jangles and Things — a shop where dreams come true, quite literally as Jangle can envision any toy and create something for his customers’ wishes (including a formula for the square root of Possible). But he finds himself betrayed by his apprentice Gustafson, who steals all his designs, sets up his own toy shop as an “innovative” maker, and causes Jangle to go out of business.
Cut to the present day, an aging Jangle (played by Whitaker) is visited by his granddaughter Journey over the Christmas season ( one who he had never met before, having sent away his daughter — the child’s mother — years ago). What follows is the little girl’s endeavor to bring back the magic Jangles and Things was famed for, from all the stories her mother had told her about the shop and its magician of an owner.
On its surface, Jingle Jangle seems like any other film gearing up for a happy ending. But it stands out on so many levels. Being a musical, a majority of the cast are trained singers and dancers, including the children who might be debut actors, but are definitely trained performers. And among all that you have Forest Whitaker — the Oscar winner who downplays his superstar status in keeping with the downtrodden Jeronicus, and still shines through every time he’s on-screen. When well-known actors take up lead roles in unconventional movies, there’s a tendency to stand out and make their celebrity status clear amongst the supporting cast. Whitaker does no such thing and is a delight to watch just as he is in any other movie. Whether his soulful singing to connect with his long lost daughter, or dancing with children when egged on by his granddaughter, I found that a great lesson on how less can be more.
The crux of the film is about a talking robot named Buddy that Jeronicus can’t seem to get to work; a design he’s keen on bringing to fruition to keep himself from going completely out of business. He fails to find the one missing ingredient, which his granddaughter effortlessly brings to the fore and gets the robot to not only turn on but also talk and fly. The toy runs on Belief! And therein lies the magic of Jingle Jangle, parallel to what makes Jangles and Things memorable itself — you need to believe in something to bring it to life.
Whether a dream or goal, aspiring without faith and belief in yourself and what you do will not get you anywhere. The great Jeronicus created all those magical toys and innovative designs and formulas for success, but facing betrayal and losing his wife and daughter caused him to lose his creative spark, his belief in himself, his abilities as a toymaker, his value as a person. His creativity and craftsmanship were still the same but found themselves locked inside a place of no hope and trust.
That a child and her toy could unlock that space, teaches us a lot about how carefree we are as children, with our imagination and fantasies creating entire worlds to play in and explore. We believe these worlds exist, and so they do. Somehow the metaphor gets lost in adulthood, where we want and hope for things, but don’t believe in them with all our heart. Belief! The key ingredient to make life work; to pursue and succeed.
The presence of Buddy the robot as a central character is the metaphorical essence of friends in our lives; the ones who believe in us and don’t let us lose faith in ourselves. And I loved how Buddy, Journey, and Jeronicus bring this magic alive through music, song, flight, and dance. The music is upbeat with original songs by John Legend and Philip Lawrence, the acting phenomenal from every single cast member, the choreography is stunning, with stellar direction from David E. Talbert. An absolutely wonderful movie, not just for Christmas, because we need to believe all through the year. Jingle Jangle has certainly raised my belief in movies that go beyond their storyline and offer insight and reflection.
