Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey features a truly all-star cast of performers stepping
into a magical world of lavish costumes, musical numbers, and a little holiday magic.
The film includes standout performances from Forest Whitaker, Ricky Martin, Phylicia Rashad,
Anika Noni Rose, and of course the young lead Madalen Mills.
But even among all of them, Keegan-Michael Key manages to stand out.
Key's reputation as a comedic performer willing to put tremendous physicality and commitment
into every role is well known, and he certainly brings that to Jingle Jangle.
But as the thieving toymaker Gustafson, he gets to do something many of his best-known
projects haven't offered: Play a villain.
Key pulls off several scene-stealing moments throughout Jingle Jangle, but among all of
them, one in particular stands out and makes us love him even more.
Just moments after his flashy introduction, Key's character has a dramatic heart-to-heart
with another important player in the story that shows us just how far he's willing to
go to get what he wants.
We first meet the older version of Gustafson through a flashy musical number that ends
when his new invention, the Whirly Twirly, backfires on a crowd of onlookers.
Until that moment, Gustafson is upbeat, happy, full of swagger, and never betrays even a
hint of self-doubt in terms of the man he's become.
Then, in our key scene, Gustafson retreats to his office, where the film reveals that
the Matador who talked him into stealing Jeronicus Jangle's inventions all those years before
is still very much the power behind the throne.
In this fantastic scene, Key has to shift his acting talents from being the showman
Gustafson tries to be in front of crowds of customers and turn into the scared, insecure
toymaker who's terrified that he'll never be more than a thief.
And yet, even with the dramatic tension in the scene, Key manages to insert some of his
comedic skills into the moment, truly showing off his range.
"And you want to know why?
Because I'm the toy maker of the year.
Toy maker of the year.
Toy maker of the year!"
When we meet Gustafson as a young man, he's an aspiring inventor who just can't quite
seem to get things right.
Then his fortunes change when Jeronicus Jangle's new living Matador toy manages to talk him
into taking Jangle's book full of invention designs.
"But that would be stealing."
"Borrowing... indefinitely."
By the time we meet Key's version of Gustafson, many years have passed, and he's a very wealthy,
very popular man.
He's also deeply committed to a cartoonish public persona.
But the glamorous stylings of his public appearances are offset by the reality of Gustafson's world.
As we see in this scene, he feels like a constant fraud in need of some affirmation.
The cartoonish side of him is a performance, and yet the serious side of him has to contend
with a talking action figure.
That's cartoonish in and of itself, which means that Key has to play both sides of Gustafson's
personality - and he manages to do it while making it look easy.
Jingle Jangle is, in some ways, about the parallel stories of two toymakers and their
intertwining and shifting fortunes over a period of many years.
And that presents some interesting acting challenges for Key.
As Gustafson, he is clearly set up as the villain, but in many ways he's not really
that different from the man whose life and reputation he ruined, Jeronicus Jangle.
When we meet Jeronicus later on, he's a broken man, tinkering around in a darkened shop,
having lost his family and his faith in himself along with his toy ideas.
What we perhaps don't realize at first is that Gustafson, for all his wealth and acclaim,
is actually going through something similar.
There's a real darkness to Key's first scene opposite the Matador, because it becomes clear
that Gustafson also feels like he's losing everything.
Of course, the difference is that, unlike Jeronicus, he's willing to sacrifice his soul
to change that, something Key plays with real energy and vulnerability.
"If you hadn't forced me to burn your designs, I could have mass produced you."
By the end of the film, it's clear that the true mastermind behind all the devious schemes
is the Matador, Don Juan Diego, who was so obsessed with not being mass-produced that
he decided to basically ruin Jeronicus Jangle's life, using Gustafson as a pawn.
Gustafson has been tricked into believing that he will one day achieve fulfillment all
by himself if he just keeps taking from others, a belief that is tearing him apart inside.
The first scene with Key's version of Gustafson and the Matador is so compelling because Key
basically has to find a way to play all these elements all at once.
He has to be silly and vulnerable, because this moment becomes the driving force of everything
that will come after, setting up the parallel stories of the two toymakers.
Of course, in the end, Jeronicus shows Gustafson that all he really needed was a little patience,
and their conflict would have been avoided.
Both men learn, in their own ways, that closing themselves off is not the answer, and that
they need to trust others if they're going to win.
The tragedy of Gustafson is that he learns it too late.
"I would have shown you everything, if only you'd waited,"
All of these emotional threads are present in Key's first scene with the Matador, and
he's able to keep them all active right up to the conclusion of the story.
Thanks for watching.
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