Zoey's Extraordinary Christmas, on The Roku Channel
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This was released in December 2021, roughly seven months after the end of the NBC series Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist. It's a Christmas movie, and it works well as such, but I also think it makes an incredible finale to the series. (Even better than the technical finale, which was okay, too.)
I suppose I should start by revealing that by the end of season two, Zoey and Max were a couple. And at the very end of the season, Max obtained the same power as Zoey to hear heart songs. Now, the movie starts with Zoey basically giving a recap of some of the major plot points of the series, which at first I felt was a bit awkward. Like, I get that it might be necessary information for anyone who hasn't seen the series, though I wasn't sure it would necessarily make any sense to such viewers. Moreover, I wasn't sure anyone who wasn't already a fan of the series would bother watching the movie, anyway. But when we get some context for the recap, I really liked it. (But I won't spoil what that context was.)
Anyway, there's not a whole lot for me to say about the plot of the movie. Zoey is majorly stressed out about spending her first Christmas since her father died. And when it turns out that both her mother and her brother and his wife have their own plans for how to spend the holiday, Zoey isn't happy about it. Eventually, she convinces them all to cancel their plans and stay home for Christmas, which she intends to make exactly like the Christmases they all used to spend with her father. Naturally, things don't go quite as planned. Meanwhile, Max has been enjoying his new power, and doesn't really understand why Zoey's always been so upset about her own power. But he wants to do anything he can to give Zoey the best Christmas he possibly can. Also, Mo gets involved in the Christmas pageant that Perry's daughter Amirah is part of, and ends up completely taking it over. That really shook me, but Perry took it better than I expected him to. And in the end, Mo makes it up to Perry and Amirah, which I thought was great, but I still felt bad for the rest of the kids and their parents not getting the sort of pageant they expected.
Of course, I don't want to say how it all ends, for Zoey or anyone else. But I thought it was rather beautiful. And of course there were plenty of good songs throughout the movie. And I'm super grateful that I got to watch it, because Roku offered it for free, without a subscription or anything.