Bisa Kdei puts ghana on world map with feature in Hollywood Christmas Movie

Ghanaian artiste, Bisa Kdei, gets feature role as composer in Hollywood Christmas movie

Bisa Kdei puts ghana on world map with feature in Hollywood Christmas Movie
Bisa K dei

Bisa Kdei has been featured in a yet-to-be-released Christmas Hollywood movie titled "Jingle Jangle".

The movie, which will be procured by American record producer John Legend and directed by renowned American playwright David E. Talbert will debut this weekend.

Bisa Kdei's new and old composed tracks will be performed in the movie as he has been recruited as one of the music composers of the movie together with the likes of Usher Raymond, John Legend, Phillip Lawrence, Davy Nathan and Michael Diskint.

His track "Asem" was carefully curated in this movie "Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey” which is creative and a groundbreaking musical film.

He will now perform in a movie that reportedly took 20 years to produce. 

The movie begins, in its Disney-esque way, with sitcom mom Phylicia Rashad (the erstwhile Clair Huxtable, rising above the wreckage of the now-cancelled “Cosby Show”) opening a gilded storybook, from whose pages computer-animated automatons pantomime the film’s expository passages (visually, the most impressive segments).

What follows, we’re told, is “The Invention of Jeronicus Jangle” — the tale of how a talented tinkerer (played by Forest Whitaker for most of the movie) had his life’s work stolen from him, fell into ruin and eventually learned to believe again, thanks to the positivity of his granddaughter, Journey (Madalen Mills).

As inventors go, Jeronicus is so gifted that this Christmas movie has no need for Santa Claus. It boasts a workshop every bit as exciting as the apocryphal North Pole, except that here, jauntily dressed Black customers spring into movement at the first blasts of the opening song.

"This Day.” Right off the top, Jeronicus unveils his most intricate creation, an astoundingly expressive robot with a mind of its own, Don Juan Diego (voiced by pop star Ricky Martin, whose lone song sounds like a watered-down version of scheming “The Lion King” anthem “Be Prepared”).

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The instant Jeronicus leaves the room, Don Juan sets about “seducing” his disgruntled apprentice, Gustafson (Miles Barrow and then later, Keegan-Michael Key), into stealing his master’s plans and manufacturing those ideas as his own.

Thus, the inventor’s career is nearly ruined, while his protégé goes on to become the most celebrated toymaker in the land — an injustice that spans nearly three decades and destroys the Jangle family in the process. His daughter Jessica (Anika Noni Rose) grows estranged, and Jeronicus becomes remote and curmudgeonly. Whitaker is well-suited to this tragic transformation, which stands in stark contrast with his granddaughter Journey’s positivity.

As the eager-to-reconnect young woman, Mills is a little charmer, and the movie picks up steam when she enters the picture. Like her mother, Journey shares Jeronicus’ smarts, sketching math equations in midair and figuring out how to operate the robot that could be Grandpa’s big comeback, the big-eyed Benny 3000 — a throwback to various ’80s-movie companions, from “E.T.” to “Short Circuit,” although CG is no substitute for the magic of practical effects.

It’s great to see Talbert championing STEM achievements among his female characters, and even though the movie itself doesn’t seem to know the first thing about engineering (which is all about design, as far as its creators are concerned), the message comes through loud and clear: Anyone can achieve anything if she puts her mind to it.

That may seem modern, but Talbert goes old-school in the staging, especially where the musical numbers are concerned. (“Dreamgirls” editor Virginia Katz is one of three cutters credited, though this movie is nowhere near as audacious.)

From the look of things, the director’s approach relied on play-it-safe coverage: shooting each song from multiple angles and piecing it together in post, as opposed to conceptualizing bold, boundary-pushing montages.

Press notes suggest that Talbert considered making “Jingle Jangle” for the stage. Digital embellishments aside, this fairly conservative production would port over well to a standard proscenium.

Familiar choreography features characters stomping up and downstairs or zipping along sliding ladders, as they sing to camera. A more spirited exception occurs during a boys-against-girls snowball fight, during which Journey and Jeronicus use a little creative physics to outwit each other.