Godmothered (2020)

By: Mike Ward on Saturday, December 05

PG Running Time: 110 mins

SHOULD I SEE IT?

YES

An easy watch for the family during the holiday season.
Jillian Bell is an underrated actor who dives feet first into the role. Her enthusiasm is infectious and Godmothered is better with her in it.
It’s hard to bash this too hard. Has the potential to be a holiday movie families return to year after year.

NO

Amusing, but feels cobbled together and created from bits and pieces of other movies and themes we have seen many times before.
You just cannot help but wish that this thing was a little more edgy and not so dedicated to a tried-and-true mystical being fixing everyone’s issues. But, here we are.
Put the energy you have in watching this and also jump over to Netflix because Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey is sitting right there, waiting for that click.

OUR REVIEW

While I am not sure how well Godmothered would have performed in theaters, this new holiday-themed fairy godmother family comedy, premiering on Disney+, is an amusing, if not slight diversion. Starring Jillian Bell as a fairy godmother-in-training, who sets out to prove that her kind still has necessity and meaning in the world, the film is cobbled together from a whole lot of other movies we have seen before. To criticize it harshly is probably akin to being a Scrooge or Grinch when it comes to being a movie reviewer. So, instead I will be nice and stay on Santa’s good side – just in case.

Bell plays Eleanor, a wide-eyed, innocent fairy who is stunned to learn that her godmotherly pursuits may be shuttered due to a lack of belief of magic throughout the world. She takes it upon herself to grab a letter from a young girl seeking help, and breaks away from her school. Eleanor enters a portal and arrives in modern-day Boston, looking for a girl named Mackenzie. By granting her wishes, she believes she will prove to the headmistress (Jane Curtin) that magic has a place and the boarding school she attends should remain open.

A thousand guesses as to what happens next. Eleanor is a fish out-of-water and Mackenzie (Isla Fisher) is now a grown woman who barely remembers even writing the letter Eleanor discovered. She has two daughters now and is reeling from the loss of her husband a few years prior.

Mackenzie thinks Eleanor is crazy. Eleanor is wearing a massively large fairy godmother dress and is as lost in Boston, as Will Ferrell was when Buddy the Elf descended upon New York City. Since the film is set around the Christmas holiday, elements from Hallmark Channel holiday movies feel like inspiration, and it is hard to watch all of this and not envision Amy Adams’ fantastic performance in 2007’s Enchanted, a notable and beloved Disney film.

Bell, who is criminally underrated as an actor, seems stifled a bit here and there, but still conveys great comedic timing and dives into the role feet first. Directed by Sharon Maguire (Bridget Jones’ Diary), the film may run long at 109 minutes and runs short of the magic necessary to make this film feel all that special.

One subplot is simply distracting. Mackenzie works as a producer for local news and is constantly berated by a caricature of a boss (Utkarsh Ambudkar), while forced to work with the guarded but kind reporter Hugh Prince (Santiago Cabrera). The boss complains the news program is in fifth place and constantly chides the duo into sensationalizing their news stories. Attempts to crowbar this into the main plot fail exponentially and each time we revisit this subplot, Godmothered loses its glow.

Additionally, Mackenzie’s two daughters should be more of the focus as a widowed mom, with help from her sister (Mary Elizabeth Ellis), struggles to be available for a daughter fraught with anxiety over pursuing her passions and another daughter caught up in trying to be the “adult” of the family. Instead, we gloss over those elements of depth and generate more situations for Bell to look like a buffoon and/or misread the situations she finds herself in.

The film’s potential may wane from a mediocre screenplay, but a lilting holiday-themed score by Oscar winner Rachel Portman nudges us along, while Bell’s energy and commitment to the role keeps us watching. If you set your expectations for “fun and disposable,” you can certainly pick far worse movies than this to spend time with. While certainly not great, Godmothered is nonetheless an easy choice for a family movie night during the holidays.

CAST & CREW

Starring: Jillian Bell, Isla Fisher, Jane Curtain, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Santiago Cabrera, June Squibb, Jillian Shea Spaeder, Willa Skye, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Stephnie Weir, Artemis Pebdani, Ken Kansky.

Director: Sharon Maguire
Written by: Kari Granlund, Melissa Stack (screenplay); Kari Granlund (story)
Release Date: December 4, 2020
Disney+

An easy watch for the family during the holiday season.

Jillian Bell is an underrated actor who dives feet first into the role. Her enthusiasm is infectious and Godmothered is better with her in it.

It’s hard to bash this too hard. Has the potential to be a holiday movie families return to year after year.

Amusing, but feels cobbled together and created from bits and pieces of other movies and themes we have seen many times before.

You just cannot help but wish that this thing was a little more edgy and not so dedicated to a tried-and-true mystical being fixing everyone’s issues. But, here we are.

Put the energy you have in watching this and also jump over to Netflix because Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey is sitting right there, waiting for that click.