Zapped : Une application d'enfer !

Don't look at the 6.0 ranking this movie gets in IMDb. Just because a hundred of fans scored a 10 for this one, doesn't make it a good movie. After leaving Shake it Up, I thought that Zendaya would give a really good turn to her career, especially after watching her getting' silver in DWTS. Unfortunately, making this absurd collection of shots that some people calls movie was a terrible decision. "Zapped" has some ingredients that only the very bad comedies have: nasty and filthy boys, fart jokes, overacted queen bee, and I stop counting. I don't know what Zendaya was thinking, but maybe she was kinda cheated before signing the contract. She is talented, she's got everything, she's young and not desperate at all to make things like this. It was enough with three years of Shake it Up. I hope I'll never watch Zendaya in a Disney production for TV. Never again.

This movie.

Not only is it incredibly sexist and degrading toward men, but I think the worst part of all is the Jackson character. He's a cardboard-cut-out pretentious beanie-wearing hipster white boy who constantly talks about how "everyone is always on their phone" and "phones are bad" and, my personal favorite, "I don't even own a phone." In fact, I don't want to call him the worst part of the movie, if anything, he's the best part, because it's just so laughable. Especially the part where he's reading To Kill A Mockingbird in the park and acting like he's so knowledgeable and poetic for even reading such a book.

Don't watch this movie. Unless you want to laugh at it.

I have always liked Disney movies primarily because I can watch them with my kids without worry of them hearing or seeing something I would prefer they didn't, until I saw Zapped. Even my kids made comments about how it was "about controlling boys" and was "kind of insulting to boys". Those we're they're words, not mine. The movie is about a girl who downloads an app to her phone. The app is for training "dogs". The app turns out to have magical powers. The magical powers are that it allows the owner to control boys (implied dogs) with verbal commands. Anything the owner says into the phone, boys have to do. It's a dog training app, that controls boys. Does anyone see the (probably unintentional, but still there) unspoken message there? But that isn't all. Boys are presented as immature, "untrained", disgusting, farting, and ridiculous fools. And that is before the controlling app is even introduced. It was one of those movies that I kept growing more uncomfortable with the more it went on. I kept thinking, "OK, the whole demeaning-to-boys thing will end soon and it will get better". But it never did. If the gender of the characters were reversed in this movie and it portrayed girls like this, it never would have been released. Remember, the target audience of this movie is kids. What message is this movie relaying to kids? To boys, it says, "You should be embarrassed of yourself". Disappointing.

I know this is a movie but it is a bit too unrealistic in my opinion. The whole scenario just doesn't seem plausible. First of all Zendaya's character would never wind up in this situation as her mother would never be attracted to a man like that and if she was their relationship would fall apart after living with children like his. Everybody is so obnoxious and rude.

The overall concept is interesting and once you get over the stupidity of it you can kind of enjoy it but it is super full of clichés and is pretty corny. Actually it's a little bit of an epic fail with a couple of fun and entertaining moments. I'm not sure but it could be the actors fault. As their characters develop towards the end they do get better though. It's just not a very successful movie.

I did not know why there was so much hate on this film. I never give any preference to those criticisms. Instead, I always prefer taking chances and that's how I saw this film. I was not expecting much. Like usual any Disney films, I thought it would be fun, but my prediction went totally wrong. I am really sorry to join those criticisers, but this film is the worst I have seen in many years. Seeing the bad films are part of my watch, but I never expected this low. The last time I rated this low probably half a decade ago.

There's nothing much different in the story comparing with other Disney films such as the recent 'Adventures in Babysitting' and 'The Swap'. But those films fared decently, while this one was utterly crap. Firstly, the cast was unbelievable. It was totally a disaster, including the lead, Zendaya. The only bright spot was the Chanelle Peloso.Especially the mean girl was very annoying. Not as a character, but as an actor with her character execution.

The film was based on the book called 'Boys are Dogs'. But the narration was very slow in the film, it took forever between each scene. Only by dragging the film got past the 90 minutes, otherwise it is an hour long film. Only her fans might enjoy it. Not even the little kids or the grown-ups would do that, so I totally recommend to stay away from it. I never used such words that I wrote here for my reviews. I regret for that, but the fact remains that the film is not good, not even average, only very bad.

2/10