Zip & Zap

Based on the poster, Zip & Zap and the Marble Gang looks like a Spanish knock-off of Harry Potter, but it turns out to be an excellent film for children that captivates with its fantasy world mixing hyper-stylised sets and costumes with adventure in the style of Amblin’s 1980s classics. The film is very loosely based on José Escobar’s comic books, but instead of their anarchistic humour and phantasmagorical plots (vaguely speaking, something like a children’s version of the Clever & Smart comic books), the filmmakers came up with a surprisingly orderly narrative that places characters similar to those from the original comic books in a classic adventure story full of big secrets, hidden treasures, secret passages and all kinds of fantastical mechanical devices. The central motif of the film becomes a celebration of play as opposed to the terror of education aimed at instilling obedience and dolorous study, which is conveyed by means of a totalitarian boarding school where children are supposed to be divested of their imaginations, but which turns out to be a maze interlaced with secret passageways providing a magnificent adventure. (04/04/2014)