A stardustsprinkled underdog story
Debuting Friday, Jan. 17, on Amazon after making an impressive sprint through the festival circuit last year, “Troop Zero” is a charming fable shining a spotlight on quirky characters going about their quirky lives in a quirky slice of Americana. While the premise could easily have become cloying in the wrong hands, the execution keeps it just this side of saccharine. It’s the kind of movie that might have been lost in theaters, but it feels perfectly at home on a streaming service.
As directed by duo Bert & Bertie (Amber Finlayson and Katie Ellwood), “Troop Zero” has echoes of “The Bad News Bears” and “The Sandlot” in its depiction of colorful underdogs during a bygone era.
But it manages to stand on the shoulders of those films and also stand apart thanks to its winning cast and playful adventurousness, culminating in a fun bit of business involving — without getting into spoilers — David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.”
With a script by Lucy Alibar (“Beasts of the Southern Wild”), “Troop Zero” is set in 1977 in the small town of Wiggly, Ga., with our primary focus on young Christmas Flint (Mckenna Grace), a precocious preteen who lost her mother and lives with her schlubbybutgoodhearted dad, Ramsey (Jim Gaffigan, in a perfectly Jim Gaffigan role), a lawyer with the unfortunate habit of letting his clients get away with not paying him.
Picked on by her classmates because of her fascination with science and space travel, Christmas (“a human female,” she helpfully reminds us on voiceover narration) is driven to join the local chapter of the Birdie Scouts youth group when a representative from NASA says the winners of a Birdie talent contest will have their voices recorded for inclusion with the Voyager spacecraft upon its eventual launch in a few months.
Naturally, the primandproper Birdies, led by snooty Miss Massey (Allison Janney), want nothing to do with Christmas, but like any hero in an underdog story, she refuses to let that stop her and instead sets about forming her own troop by recruiting adorable misfits from around town, with cynical Miss Rayleen (Viola Davis) dragooned into service as den mother.
And thus is born: Troop Zero. (Zero because that’s the only troop number available, but as Christmas helpfully reminds us, also because it’s the number for infinity.)
This is a kid picture that sticks to a shopworn formula as it ticks off various boxes. So in one sense, there isn’t anything particularly revelatory here, but on the other hand, what makes it work so well and stand out from the pack (like its titular heroes) is its dedication to its own premise and all the eccentricities contained therein.
Holding up the center with poise and confidence is Grace. Spunky at times and vulnerable at others, she’s absolutely endearing throughout.
Christmas’ determination to stand up for herself even in the face of some nasty bullying (she got tagged as a bed wetter, and that kind of thing can be hard to live down) puts us squarely on her side already, but even more so when we see her willingness to stick up for her friends.
Among the grownups, Davis makes exactly the kind of vivid mark you’d expect as
Rayleen. There’s an inherent gravitas Davis brings to any role simply by being cast in it, but separate from that, she’s able to convey volumes with a simple eye roll or sigh while dealing with her “boos” (as she refers to the motley assortment of tykes placed under her care).
Davis makes for a nice contrast with the always delightful Janney (who has a habit here of quickly saying, “I’m just kidding” after every biting insult — in such a way that you know she’s really not kidding). Janney’s character here feels like a distant relation of Regina George from “Mean Girls,” but there’s an implied complicated backstory between her and Rayleen that doesn’t need to be fleshed out to still be compelling. (Never has
“I appreciate you,” as Davis says to Janney at one point, sounded like more of a threat.)
Gaffigan is able to do a lot with a little, and the comedian is a perfect fit for Ramsey’s gentle cluelessness. He’s effortlessly charismatic in this kind of role, and the arc of his relationship with Christmas is lovely for all the ways it doesn’t fall into easy, empty melodrama.
And that, ultimately, is what makes “Troop Zero” such a delightful confection. It’s not trying to reinvent the wheel with the story it’s telling, but it’s made memorable by all the ways it adds stardust to the formula. A little space oddity all its own.