Jingle Jangle review — your new Christmas movie family staple | Times2

★★★★☆
It’s easy to forget about Forest Whitaker. He has drifted, in recent years, into that dreaded casting category of “solid supporting player” and is thus frequently granted secondary status in mainstream blockbusters such as Rogue One, Arrival and Black Panther. Yet given half a chance, and a meatier role, the 59-year-old Oscar-winner (for The Last King of Scotland) can be nothing less than mesmerising.

He is, for instance, the still centre of gravity for everything that’s busy, wonderfully gaudy and hyperactive in this Christmas musical about a Victorian-era toymaker called Jeronicus Jangle (Whitaker) who has lost his mojo. When we first encounter Jeronicus, on the lightly snow-dusted “English” streets of Cobbleton (they have the Royal Mail, bobbies on the beat