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OUR RATING
4/5 stars
WHAT IS IT ABOUT:
Julie is a teenager who lost her passion for music after the death of her mother. She learns to embrace her music again when the ghosts of three teenage boys appear in her garage to help her form a band.
WHAT WE THINK:
When High school musical aired in 2006, it was a cultural reboot. A movie for tweens and kids that seemed to captivate people of all ages around the world. So Netflix knew what they were doing when they signed a multi-year deal with High school musical director Kenny Ortega.
For three decades, Ortega has been a part of some of the biggest musicals and teen content. To choreograph Dirty Dancing and Ferris Bueller day off to direct The “Cheetah Girls and The descendants franchise, Ortega has always been on the lookout for teen musicals that captivate a generation, and this one is no exception.
And much of the first season of Julie and the ghosts It will remind you of Ortega’s previous Disney projects, but there is something so special and polished about this production that I think it will live on in the minds of the audience long after the screen is turned off. Based on the Brazilian series Julie and the ghosts, tells the story of Julie (Madison Reyes), a teenager who lost her passion for music after the death of her mother. But while cleaning her garage, she finds a CD that she plays, and in a second three teenagers appear in her garage.
The boys were members of a band called Sunset Curve that died in 1995: singer-songwriter Luke (Charlie Gillespie), drummer Alex (Owen Joyner), and bassist Reggie (Jeremy Shada). The band is shocked to discover that they had been dead for 25 years, and now appear as ghosts only visible to Julie, except when performing with Julie and then seen by all who look. By playing with the boys, Julie finds her love for music again and shines as she should.
One problem that I generally find with Disney Channel content is that the plots were too simplistic. And that’s maybe because it’s aimed at kids and tweens, but Julie and the ghosts shows that you can combine popular themes like stardom, fantasy, and mean high school girls, with some real emotions youngsters grapple with. It also had a strong story spanning all nine episodes of the season. Once I started the first episode, I couldn’t turn it off and continued to watch all the episodes in one go. In many ways, it serves more as a nine-part movie than a series.
One of the most important general themes in the series is pain. similar to I have never, another teen Netflix series, Julie and the Phantoms introduces us to the main character after his mother has already died. But the pain seems to get over Julie, so much so that she can’t play music because music is what she associates with her mother. And the series is a journey for her to learn to use music as a way to connect with and remember her mother.
The series also follows the band members as they also deal with grief – the death of their dreams, learning that the world (and their families) had left them behind and having to deal with their current situation as ghosts. This is especially depicted in the eighth episode when Luke has to deal with unresolved issues between himself and his parents. To say that I cried during this episode would be an understatement, I screamed. Between the music and the acting of the characters, and when you think about how tragic it is to die when you are only 17 years old and you are about to make your dreams come true.
And honestly, he loved music. They weren’t just funny songs; they were really good. The lyrics had a lot of heart and the melodies were catchy and something that wouldn’t sound out of place on the radio. It’s like a mix of Alessia Cara and Dua Lipa. Even the music that Julie’s enemy Carrie (Savannah May) made is so good. And while the music is based on what happens in the scenes (it is a musical after all), it doesn’t feel as on the nose as many other Disney songs.
The casting of Madison Reyes was one of the biggest anchors of this show. Reyes is 15 years old and this is her first role, but she is incredibly talented and runs the show entirely. I challenge you to listen to her sing and not feel any kind of emotion. She is a powerhouse and Julie and the ghosts it’s a great launching pad for what I hope is an incredible race.
The guys in the band seem to be the strongest link to Disney shows. They reminded me a lot of the first season of Jonas with them acting similar to the way the Jonas Brothers acted there, with a Gen Z twist. The guys may have come from the 90s, but nothing but their fashion sense will remind you of teens from that time. . But somehow it works, there’s enough ’90s aesthetic to make Gen-Xers and millennials nostalgic, but not enough to alienate the younger generations.
Naturally, I thought that maybe I would like one of the boys and find the other two annoying, but that wasn’t the case, I loved all three of them. They were all very positive and encouraging to each other and to Julie, and the jokes between them were fun. While comedy can be broad, it was incredibly healthy to see this kind of teenage positivity on screen (I’m looking at you Euphoria).
Another thing I enjoyed was that Alex, one of the band members, is gay and this is not treated as a plot point or something that is a problem. The members of her gang know that she is gay and that doesn’t bother anyone else. A comment is made that his family does not agree with the fact that he is gay, but they do not go into this in detail.
Alex also begins a romance with another ghost he knows named Willie (Booboo Stewart) and although we can see that Julie has a crush on Luke, the romance between Alex and Willie is the one that unfolds the most in the first season. He’s adorable and charming, and I can’t wait to see what happens in season 2.
It’s also nice to see a healthy and cute LGBTQ romance on a tweens show, there have been so many queer characters inferred on Nickelodeon and Disney shows how great we are getting over this. I wish we could go back in time and give Ryan and Chad a High school musical the romance they deserved.
The only complaint I had with the show was that it tried to put too much in one season. The main antagonist is Caleb Covington (Cheyenne Jackson), a ghost of an early 20th century wizard who owns the Hollywood Ghost Club, a place where humans can see ghosts. Caleb’s attempts to get the boys into his gang and the nefarious ways in which he tries to do so lead to the climax of the first season.
This isn’t the only thing the gang has to deal with though: there’s a nosy aunt, a ghost hunter little brother, the ex-gang member who stole their songs, a bad girl trying to outshine Julie, and a possible love triangle. It’s too much, and it often bothered me that episode time was lost in one of these subplots instead of following the main plot.
However, I still really enjoyed the show and am excited to see what they will do with the second season if Netflix blesses us with one. This is a great show to watch with the whole family, as it has entertaining moments for younger children, moments related to tweens, and it won’t make older teens or adults cringe.
WATCH THE TRAILER HERE:
WATCH IT NOW ON NETFLIX
