Review: Julie and the Phantoms (season 1)

    I’m not a huge fan of standard-to-bad quality shows. I can’t stand the bad ones because… well, because they are bad, but it is even more painful to watch the standard quality shows because I know I could not do something better, so I often try to avoid them. I would have tried to do the same with this one, but my friend insisted so much that I should watch it because I was gonna like it, that I just couldn’t say no.

And I don’t regret it.

Let me explain.

'Julie and the Phantoms' is Kenny Ortega’s show on Netflix that adapts Julie e os Fantasmas (the Brazilian original) with a High School Musical feeling to it. It does not sound that good. And that is why I was so sceptical about it. But now, I see this was not the problem.

First things first, let’s start with the most obvious problem: the overused tropes. You know them, I know them, and probably both of us don’t like them. I just could not ignore them, especially when watching the mean blonde (it’s kinda ginger here) girl and her too-good boyfriend who likes the protagonist. No - just no.

This leads me to my second point: the characters are bad not so much because they are, essentially, overused tropes as because they have no development. And that is something I can’t stand. For instance, Julie overcomes her fear in the second episode with almost no process, and she achieves her goal altogether - yay! She’s joined the music programme! And we don’t hear from it in later episodes.

Then, there’s Reggie and Alex, who have their own ‘backstories’ that don’t actually affect their present. In fact, Reggie is the least developed of all the boys - there is not even the faintest reason for him to love the band and music so much. Luke is the ‘deepest’ of them all - so much that he even has ‘his’ own song and somewhat of a character whatsoever.

Flynn, Carrie, Nick and even Willie are not that much interesting - they are more like pawns in a chessboard (moved by a beginner) than characters with interests, fears, reasons, goals, dreams, insecurities outside the main character, who only gives a damn for her ghost band (and the cute guitarist) with no bigger aspirations (at least after the second and third episodes). Let me show you briefly: she ‘invokes’ the band when she tries to get back to music, but then gets naturally shocked at their appearance. With ‘Wake up', she’s back into music. After ‘Bright’, she gets into the school music programme. With ‘Flying Solo’, she gets her friend back. And before ‘Stand Tall’ (six episodes later), she connects to her mother. Yay! Makes total sense, right? But it’s all about ‘get, get, get’ and never ‘chase’, ‘succeed’ or ‘grow’ - there is not a major desire, a major goal, a thread that holds it all together. And that is the point I have been trying to make with every single character and the ‘journey’ I did not find in them (not even the beginning) - they should be agents of change in their destiny, not just fillers of a role.

I think I criticised it enough. Oh! Yes, you might be wondering why I said I don’t regret watching the show - the truth is, I don’t regret watching it with a critical view. I had a kind of fun time watching a funny (family-friendly and ‘motivational’/’inspiring’) show and learning cool pop songs, but I also learned a lot by studying it - and I never regret learning.