Jin­gle Jan­gle: A Christ­mas Journey

When David E Tal­bert, the writer and direc­tor of Jin­gle Jan­gle: A Christ­mas Jour­ney, went to show his son the movies which he had loved as a child – Chit­ty Chit­ty Bang Bang, Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry and Doc­tor Dolit­tle (the orig­i­nal, not the Eddie Mur­phy remake) – he saw that some­thing was miss­ing: Black peo­ple. So he set out to make a film that encap­su­lat­ed the won­der of these sto­ries with a cast that reflect­ed him and his fam­i­ly; to show that peo­ple of colour can exist in mag­i­cal worlds too.

Jin­gle Jan­gle is a musi­cal spec­ta­cle, telling the sto­ry of Jeron­i­cus Jan­gle (por­trayed at dif­fer­ent ages by Justin Corn­well and For­est Whitak­er) who was once the most renowned toy inven­tor in all of Cob­ble­ton, the fic­tion­al Vic­to­ri­an town where this tale unfolds. When his dis­grun­tled appren­tice Gustafson (Miles Bar­row and Kee­gan-Michael Key), spurred on by the toymaker’s lat­est cre­ation Don Juan Diego (Ricky Mar­tin), steals his book of inven­tions, Jan­gle is left unin­spired and unable to recap­ture the mag­ic of inno­va­tion which he once possessed.

Decades lat­er Jan­gle is bit­ter and alone, hav­ing been forced to turn his once thriv­ing toy busi­ness into a pawn­shop, and not a par­tic­u­lar­ly prof­itable one at that. If he doesn’t come up with the mon­ey to pay his out­stand­ing bills or deliv­er on the long over­due promise of a new, rev­o­lu­tion­ary inven­tion by Christ­mas, he will be thrown out on the streets. Enter Jour­ney Jan­gle (impres­sive new­com­er Madalen Mills), the estranged grand­daugh­ter who is deter­mined to con­nect with her mys­te­ri­ous kin in spite of his vocal dis­in­ter­est. Jour­ney rep­re­sents every­thing that Jan­gle has lost: joy, hope, won­der and a belief in the pow­er of possibility.

Though the diverse inhab­i­tants of Cob­ble­ton imme­di­ate­ly set the film apart from many fan­tas­ti­cal fes­tive films of the past, what fol­lows is a rel­a­tive­ly tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas nar­ra­tive. Jin­gle Jan­gle is a sto­ry about love, fam­i­ly and redemp­tion, with moral­is­tic lessons on the impor­tance of accept­ing each other’s differences.

But this is not to say that it is entire­ly con­ven­tion­al. Black cul­tur­al influ­ences on the film are seen through­out – a wel­come respite from the his­tor­i­cal white­ness of the genre. Jeron­i­cus and Jour­ney have a snow­ball fight to the sounds of a fes­tive high­life remix (Bisa Kdei’s Asew). Towns­peo­ple per­form a step dance break (inspired by the tra­di­tion­al African-Amer­i­can dance form) dur­ing the rous­ing song ​‘Make It Work’. There are echoes of pur­ple, green and gold Mar­di Gras cel­e­bra­tions in Gustafson’s brass-infused musi­cal num­ber ​‘Mag­ic Man G’, a won­der­ful­ly over the top per­for­mance from Key as the mous­ta­chioed, bejew­elled cane-tot­ing villain.

The film is an unde­ni­ably impres­sive affair, with daz­zling cos­tumes and music from Gram­my-win­ning song­writ­ers includ­ing John Leg­end, and it is worth watch­ing for Sharon Martin’s inno­v­a­tive take on afro-Vic­to­ri­an hair alone. But at points this is still not quite enough to main­tain atten­tion. The pac­ing of the sto­ry feels off – it is slow to get going, Jour­ney isn’t intro­duced until 30 min­utes in, and the film lags in parts. It also takes on an unnec­es­sary sto­ry with­in a sto­ry nar­ra­tive struc­ture for the pur­pose of a final reveal that ulti­mate­ly doesn’t pay off and is a bit non­sen­si­cal. There are just too many char­ac­ters and mov­ing parts.

For all its flaws, how­ev­er, Jin­gle Jan­gle is a charm­ing and long over­due film. The impor­tance of see­ing Black joy on screen in what has been a spec­tac­u­lar­ly dif­fi­cult year should not be underestimated.