Zapped (2014)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Brilliant and touching

a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

I'm glad Disney and Marvel later made Guardians of the Galaxy to make up for this monster. Zapped! is a cheesy movie filled with the same cliches of My Little Pony: Equestria Girls. To begin, I'll list the biggest problem; Disney made a movie that >promotes< sexism towards men. Disney, who made Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Prince of Persia, specifically for young men, made a girls movie that >promotes< sexism. Z-O-M-B-I-E-S was also bad, but at least that had a good message to it. Personally, I think this beats Z-O-M-B-I-E-S as the worst Disney movie.

I could tell from a mile away that the bully Taylor Dean would acquire the phone! Just like in Aladdin where Jafar acquired the lamp. Except Aladdin was a great movie and this one has clichéd plot points.Furthermore, you can't call this movie a comedy if it doesn't make you laugh at all. All the jokes are lame. The step-brothers are ridiculously and cartoonish. Why would one make disgusting entrees and another keep getting the house dirty?

Another teen comedy/fantasy out of the ever busy creative minds from the Magic Kingdom. Zendaya stars in Zapped and before I get started it has nothing to do with the Scott Baio teen comedy/fantasy from the Eighties.Keeping up with the times this concerns Zendaya whose mother recently remarried and it's into a family of alpha males, gentle ones to be sure, but ones who are certainly need of housebreaking more than their dog.One fine day Zendaya who lives by her phone App sees it drop into the dog food after it's been electrically charged a few times. This App now has super powers, but only over the male of the species, the human species that is.Zendaya arranges and changes the behavior of all the men around her, at home and in school and things are looking pretty good for a while. But when she tries out for the school dance team in lieu of Physical Education she gets relegated to the B squad and humiliated by her rival Emilia McCarthy whose the teen queen from hell. That App gets her team especially trained and motivated like performing dogs.Mind control does not provide all the answers to Zendaya's problems as she learns in time to provide a happy ending for all but her rival.This is an innocuous Disney Studio teen film, better than the new series Zendaya is in, but this young woman has the right stuff to be a major musical star. I hope Disney or someone else gives her a chance to prove it.

When "Zapped" was announced three weeks before the premiere on Disney Channel, I thought was another teenage movie with stereotypes, simple jokes and a moral lesson at the end as "Be yourself" or see the life of other person through his eyes. Well, that was come on my mind when I saw the commercial on Disney Channel. Do I was wrong? No, no and no! At the first five minutes (or ten) we are presented the routine of Zoey, a typical American teen. Her mother was married again and the girl needs to be patient with her new life. Before, she was the only daughter; attentions were always directed from her. And now, the three sons of her stepfather are living with them. This routine is shown of a fast way, at the beginning, the marriage ceremony and after, the change. Until here, nothing new I could see. But when Zoey goes for her new school is where I can see that teenage movies are really the same thing. It's how if all American schools are the same: full of stereotypes. The brain, the jock, the rebel, the recluse, the Beauty (this was perfectly shown on "The Breakfast Club"). Her tedious routine is broken when she downloads an app to control the dog and, accidentally, it's damaged. After this, she discovers that the app doesn't control animals anymore, but men. With this magical thing on her smart phone, Zoey has the chance to change the men as she wishes. Well, the movie is about this… and nothing more. There's no problem teach moral lessons, it's a good thing. Television must be a cultural and moral vehicle; it's really a marvelous thing. The problem is how it does this. Saying another way: how the movie work with this. The tendency is produce an easy film, short (between 80 and 100 minutes, more or less) and "packaged", moral lessons are thrown on the face. It's how if were any other way to teach these things for young people, it's how if they were donkeys (sorry, it's the only word that came to me) and with incapacity to create they own moral lessons. A "packaged" movie, it's a nice describe for "Zapped"! It's a teenage movie and because of that, the word that better describe is "predictable". With more or less 100 minutes, "Zapped" have moral lessons commons on this kind of film: friendship, brotherhood, family and so on. For kids or teens, a good movie, make laugh with simple and extremely predictable jokes. But for an adolescent or adult public, is a trouble. It's how if Disney and these films stopped in the time, in a world of stereotype schools and social types.