So, yesterday I watched a Rachel Zegler double feature. I don’t know if I’ve made it clear before, but I don’t believe Zegler has ever had a bona fide “hit” of a film.
West Side Story was supposed to make her the biggest thing in Hollywood since sliced bread, but it fizzled.
The less said of the poor Shazam! sequel the better.
The closest she could say to have come is The Hunger Games prequel: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, which I believe managed to make money but not launch the franchise back to prominence.
Let’s not even mention her appearance in the theoretical to-be-released-in-2025 Disney blockbuster wannabe, “Snow White and the endless reshoots.”
That’s a cluster all the way around right now.
Instead, let’s look at the now in Zegler’s filmography.
Released on Netflix recently is Spellbound, an animated fantasy adventure, and opening on Thanksgiving weekend, a horror-comedy from A24: Y2K.
What did I think?
**NOTE: Read Mark’s reviews below. Remember, though, you can listen to all our discussions of this and every other movie directly over on ACAST. Stay tuned.**
Spellbound
Review by Mark Woodring
Much online chatter about this one led me to watch it. People seem mostly concerned about Spellbound’s message, which we’ll get to in a moment. But as I hate to take a “controversy” at face value, I figured I should give this one a look and see for myself.
109 Minutes, Rated PG
Written by Vicky Jenson, Lauren Hynek, Elizabeth Martin
Directed by Vicky Jenson
Synopsis:
Spellbound follows the adventures of Ellian, the tenacious princess who must go on a daring quest to save her family and kingdom after a mysterious spell transforms her parents, the King and Queen of Lumbria, into monsters.
As the synopsis indicates, Spellbound‘s lead is Ellian, a “tenacious princess,” which some folks are going to read as “strong female lead” and immediately poo-poo all over this one. I get it; Hollywood hasn’t been very good at writing decent female leads of late, and the online community is rightfully suspicious of poor writing.
In my opinion, though, the character of Ellian is fine. She’s 15, been hiding her parents/monsters for a year, and handling the entire situation about as well as anyone could expect. She’s not “over-powered” or super competent at things she shouldn’t be; she’s simply trying to find a way to get her parents back.
The rub is, of course, what I posted to X after I watched it:
Yes, the entire #movie exists to say, “Divorce is okay.” Whether that’s a problem is up to each viewer, but it’s absolutely undeniable that’s the message.
So there’s that.
Look, Spellbound works fine as an animated adventure movie. The voicework (yes, including Zegler) is top-notch, with John Lithgow turning in perhaps my favorite performance. I did find a lot of the lyrics (yes, it’s a musical) to be clunky or just downright bad, but the cast delivers them with aplomb, which makes up for some of the material’s shortcomings.
In the end, you will need to decide whether you want to watch a movie that was apparently designed from the ground up to deliver a very specific message. How you feel about that is up to you; I can only advise you on the movie as a movie.
And as a movie, Spellbound is fine. It doesn’t reach top-tier animation status, but it’s an entertaining enough fantasy tale.
Check it out.
Spellbound is now streaming on Netflix and features the voices of Rachel Zegler, John Lithgow, Jenifer Lewis, Javier Bardem, Nicole Kidman, Nathan Lane, and Tituss Burgess.
The second half of the Rachel Zegler double feature was the upcoming horror-comedy from A24 (one of our favorite studios here at VSMP):
Y2K
For those of us of a certain age, the eventual joke that Y2K became was preceded by a long period of increasingly catastrophic talk about the ending of the world, lol.
Then it happened. Or rather, it didn’t happen.
93 Minutes, Rated R
Written by Kyle Mooney, Evan Winter
Directed by Kyle Mooney
Synopsis:
Two high school nobodies make the decision to crash the last major celebration before the new millennium on New Year’s Eve 1999. The night becomes even crazier than they could have ever dreamed when the clock strikes midnight.
I know I’m calling this part of a Zegler double-feature, but really, Y2K is Jaeden Martell’s movie. Zegler is important, but she’s not THE LEAD, if you take my meaning.
Anyway, Y2K unfolds like a vintage 90’s high school comedy, with the losers trying to make a break into the big time, deciding the New Years’s Eve party hosted by the cool kids on the eve of Y2K is the perfect time to do it.
Julian Dennison is the cooler of the two, comfortable in his nerdiness, who has no trouble just letting loose and making his mark at the party… but then the clock strikes midnight and all hell breaks loose.
What follows is a pastiche of conventional horror, tech horror, high school raunch comedy, and period-ish fashion and music, all thrown into a cinematic blender set to “puree” before being vomited back onto the screen.
It’s like it was written by someone who thinks this is what it was like then, which is weird, because Writer/Director Mooney and Winter were both around back then, so it’s not as if they don’t know.
Perhaps they are trying to craft (?) a product to appeal to the current generation instead, to convince them of how their parents used to live.
Regardless, authenticity isn’t the overarching concern of this one, and that’s a good thing.
Most of my fellow critics tended to be negative about this one coming out of our screening, but I find myself of two minds on it.
First, I agree that it’s not, objectively, a very good movie. The script as it plays out is a little incomplete, not fully realizing or explaining some of the characters or elements. Overall, it’s nothing but what we’ve seen before in a hundred other movies, and better. Jaeden Martell plays the nerdy kid with the long-time crush on the popular girl, while Rachel Zegler plays said crush, but one who harbors a nerdy secret of her own: she’s a computer programmer.
I’m sure we can see where this is going to end up.
But, on the other hand, Y2K has it’s moments of genuine silly and wacky fun for me, and the performances are generally entertaining enough to justify the watch.
Seeing the Singularity of Y2K co-opt and evolve humanity’s various technologies into walking, talking robotic overlords got quite a chuckle out of me. They absolutely evoked all those great old cheesy sci-fi films of that wonderous time before the ubiquity of the internet and the all-too-present fears of Artificial Intelligence.
So, Y2K is a rare non-hit from A24, but personally, I found it to be enjoyable enough that I don’t regret having watched it, and that’s saying something, considering some of the films I’ve watched this year.
While that does put me at odds with some of my peers (who believe it to be the worst film of the year *COUGHCOUGH* Madame Web *COUGHCOUGH*), that’s also the wonder of film: we can all find something to enjoy in it.
Y2K hits Friday, November 29, and stars Jaeden Martell, Rachel Zegler, Julian Dennision, Daniel Zolghadri, Lachlan Watson, Kyle Mooney, Eduardo Franco, Mason Gooding, The Kid Laroi, Lauren Balone, Alicia Silverstone, Tim Heidecker, and Maureen Sebastian.
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