Anna Daniels
Troop Zero follows a space-obsessed oddball (Mckenna Grace) who discovers that the local girl scouts are participating in a contest where the winners will be able to record a message for the Voyager spacecraft. So naturally, she gathers her fellow misfits and forms her own troop to try to win that prize, while the feuding leaders (Allison Janney and Viola Davis) clash along with their troopers. Check out the film’s first trailer below.
Troop Zero Trailer
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi4C6GncmQ4?feature=oembed&w=740&h=416]
You’ve seen this type of movie a dozen times before, but as I indicated in my review from this year’s Sundance Film Festival, this one is charming enough to be worth a watch on a lazy afternoon. The trailer leans heavily on the precocious bits and makes it seem a bit more cloying than it actually is, but I found the film’s humor (many of its cheesy jokes fall flat) to be offset by the way it genuinely seems to care about its characters. It’s all very old-fashioned and might be a bit too earnest for its own good; I stand by my assessment that it’s like School of Rock meets Little Miss Sunshine with 100% more Southern accents.
Written by Lucy Alibar (Beasts of the Southern Wild) and directed by Bert & Bertie (Dance Camp), Troop Zero also co-stars Jim Gaffigan and Mike Epps.
Here’s the film’s official description:
In a tiny Georgia town in 1977, a motherless girl dreams of life beyond the confines of her trailer-park home in Troop Zero. When her quest for connection leads her to reach for the stars in a competition to be included on NASA’s landmark Golden Record, it becomes clear she will have to depend on some new friends to take her the last mile.
Every night, Christmas Flint (Mckenna Grace) sits under a starry sky with a flashlight, signaling to extraterrestrial visitors that never arrive. Sensitive, imaginative and deeply lonely, Christmas and her equally eccentric best friend Joseph are the ultimate misfits in their rural hometown of Wiggly, Georgia. When Christmas learns that the winners of the annual Birdie Scout Jamboree talent contest will be included on a recording to be sent into space for posterity, her mission in life becomes to join the Scouts and win Jamboree.
When she is blackballed by the snobbish local Birdie Scout troop and their uptight leader Miss Massey (Allison Janney), Christmas rallies a group of elementary-school outliers to start their own chapter. With grudging help from her dad’s irascible office manager, Miss Rayleen (Viola Davis), Christmas and her crew have to bypass every roadblock Miss Massey can find in the fine print of the Birdie bylaws in order to reach the Jamboree and their chance at immortality.
From Christmas’ solitary late-night vigils to a final show-stopping musical performance, Troop Zero is an endearing and magical tale set against a backdrop of beloved hits of the ’70s, as Christmas forges friendships that will change her life and help her find a real family.
Troop Zero debuts exclusively to Amazon Prime Video on January 17, 2020.
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