Movie Review: Zapped

A little blast from the past. Well, my past at least.
Zapped is a one-hour-and-forty-two-minute long family fantasy movie. It was released on June 24, 2014, in the U.S., and was directed by Peter DeLuise, who is mostly known for his role as Officer Doug Penhall in 21 Jump Street. He also directed 16 Wishes with James Jandrisch who composed the themes for both 16 Wishes and Zapped. They both have a history of more mature fictional/fantasy movies and how either of them wound up on Disney is beyond me.
Zapped features Zendaya Coleman in the lead role of Zoey Stevens. We start by seeing the marriage between her birth mother and her new step-father. From the get-go, Zoey clearly hates the new arrangement. To be fair, going from being the only child/daughter living with a single mom to having three brothers and a football step-dad is quite the change. It's chaotic there. No one is adjusting to anyone and it causes a mess that stains Zoey's school outfit. Zoey and her mom try to take their time and be organized while her step-dad and brothers are messy and rushing. Alas, the boys v. girls theme sat within the rest of the movie and became a driving force. I audibly sighed the eighteenth time she brought up how gross boys are. How they even fit in a romance arc amid "cooties" is beyond me. Isn't she supposed to be a freshman in high school? As a fellow freshman, I'm insulted.
But, not only does the "boys suck" theme showcase Zoey as stuck up and entitled, but it also dehumanizing the boys of this movie. So many of them are disgusting, unkept, rowdy, loud, destructive--the list goes on. Sure, plenty of boys are like this, but only to a degree. The movie quite literally has four zombie-looking guys sitting in front of the school harboring in their own filth and flies. Yuck. If anything, other high school boys would relentlessly bully these vermins into taking a shower. Cruel, sure. But no fellow high schooler would excuse it with "boys, amirite?"
With all the male hatred the movie has thrown at us, all it takes is a boy to actually shower before school and follow the "lemme show you to your class" trope to form a love interest. Zoey walks into the wrong class and the misunderstood-bad-boy shows off his knowledge and refuses to take off his sunglasses. Jackson Kale, played by Spencer Boldman. (Yes, the pretty boy from lab rats.) He's sent to walk Zoey to his class and the two have a nice conversation. Cause he's a normal boy, and normal boys and girls can have nice conversations. He then looks her up and down, dubs her Smartphone because of her phone obsession and walks off. Honestly, Smartphone is such a dumb nickname I can't be mad at it. What I can be mad at is Taylor Dean, the entitled blonde, spying on her ex-boyfriend flirting with the new girl. Ugh, I hate that trope and by proxy, hate her.
And what do you know, Taylor's the dance team captain. And, what else do you know, Zoey's a talented dancer(she's played by Zendaya, why wouldn't she be) who wants in on the team. So, naturally, she turns out to be the only one who can dance but doesn't make the team because Taylor hates her. After some begging, she puts her on JV, the "bad" team. Which, freshmen rarely make varsity so why she thinks that's gonna demoralize Zoey is unknown. If anything, all it does is give her a chance to watch varsity from a distance and fuel her longing to join. Chanelle, the best friend, is kinda plopped in beside her. Her dance skills aren't really consistent. In the beginning, she has two huge left feet to allow Zoey shine, during practice she can suddenly keep up because the team has to sync up but girls can't follow the commands, and during the performance, the whole team is suddenly amazing. I would say a natural progression but...considering the dance-off is meant to "kick-off" the basketball season, I refuse to believe it's been more than a month.*
Onto the main plot, her phone becomes magic. In some freak accident you have to see to believe, Zoey's dog-trainer app now controls all boys/men. My initial question was why only boys? Well, "girls are too catty." That is quite literally Chanelle's quoted guess as to why and the closest thing we get to an explanation. This isn't okay.
And, as anyone with a magic boy-controlling app would do, Chanelle and Zoey abuse this. They start forcing people to do what they want against their will. Zoey, in the lowest point of the whole movie, even uses it to sabotage the varsity team into messing up their dance during practice. She then proceeds to berate Taylor, which is where I stopped caring for her character. Jackson sees and rightfully suggests they stop seeing each other. She then uses her magic phone to make him kiss her(cheek, this is Disney). The pinnacle of Zoey's hypocrisy. She preaches night and day about how competitive, reckless, and intolerable boys are and turns around to do this.
The practice is cut short(you all have a dance-off tonight, you can't stay in sync without a magic phone, and you end the practice because you're bummed out???) and Zoey goes home and wallows in shame. Not once does she look for her phone, and by the time she realizes Taylor stole it, Taylor's abusing it. Isn't your principal a woman? Report that a student stole your phone and outright refused to return it. Boom, charge her, suspend her, and get the phone back. Instead, they choose a more humiliation approach. Zoey gets on the ground and starts acting like a dog to entertain her. Her family and Jackson(who showed up too late to hear Taylor's commands) break free and join her. Cute, but this does nothing. Chanelle ends up being the one to retrieve the phone and Zoey really just uses the moment to show off her character growth. 
Now, the dance-off.
Well...varsity sucked. The outfits show a clear power imbalance that is showcased in the dance. Taylor and her minion remain in the front and center of the few lousy formations they pull off while the other dancers spend too much time turned around. I would understand this if Taylor was doing a stunt or a show-stopper, but no. She does the same moves as the others but with a brighter smile. And the choreo was way too slow/simple for the packed song they chose.
JV, on the other hand, was amazing. As expected. The Haka used at the beginning fit beautifully (though seeing as Zoey treated it with disdain earlier, it's a little disrespectful) and opened up the perfect song for their choreo. The formations give in to each other so smoothly and everyone in the group has a turn in the front to show off and in the back to give way. They win and Zoey somehow still gets Jackson to go on a date with her. Sigh.

*The timing for seasons is all off. This is meant to be the beginning of the year, so this is the fall season. The fall season for any sport always starts before the actual first day of school. I was thinking of auditioning for dance freshman year. There were training camps and medicals in June and July, tryouts were late July and early August and the official season started mid-August. Basketball follows a similar pattern. By the start of school, both sports should've been halfway through the season.