Viola Davis as a Reluctant Baby Sitter in ‘Troop Zero’ is a Freakin’ Delight

If you’re the sort of person who watches any movie with Viola Davis because she’s just that good, you won’t be disappointed by Troop Zero, a new comedy-drama released straight-to-streaming on Amazon Prime today. And if you’ve ever thought to yourself, “I want Viola Davis to firmly but playfully berate me while also encouraging me to be true to myself and pursue my passions,” you definitely will not be disappointed by Troop Zero.

Directed by Bert & Bertie and written by Lucy Alibar (co-writer of Beasts of the Southern Wild), Troop Zero is one of those cute, nostalgic, coming-of-age stories that will bring you those warm last-day-of-summer-camp feelings. It stars Mckenna Grace—aka the child actor who played both young Margot Robbie and young Brie Larson in I, Tonya and Captain Marvel respectively—as Christmas Flint, a feisty and tomboyish elementary school girl growing up in the deep South in 1977. She knows her destiny is to make the First Contact with the aliens in outer space, but she doesn’t know how—until a statewide “Birdie Scout” talent show offers a first prize of getting a recording on NASA’s Golden Record, aka the audio time-capsule sent out to space intended to be a message for extraterrestrials.

When none of the existing Birdie Scout troops will accept her, Christmas decides to create her own troop. This band of fellow misfits includes her BFF Joseph (Charlie Shotwell); who is bullied because he prefers fashion to sports, “Hell-No” (Milan Ray); a mean girl who sees the light, Smash (Johanna Colón), who likes to well, smash stuff; and Anne-Claire (Bella Higginbotham) a religious fanatic with an eye patch. But most importantly, there is Viola Davis as Miss Rayleen, the reluctant troop leader.

Miss Rayleen works for Christmas’s father, Ramsey (Jim Gaffigan) at his unsuccessful and haphazardly-run law firm. Having already put up with enough of his poor decisions at work, Miss Rayleen has no interest in also being responsible for his kid, too. It’s not exactly a groundbreaking character—the tough-love secretary who looks after the incompetent man’s child—but Davis breathes so much life into Miss Rayleen, I couldn’t help but fall in love with her.  From muttering at the characters on her black-and-white TV set, to effortlessly switching from angry hollering to her customer service voice, to her immature “Nu-uh!” to Allison Janney, every single second that Davis was on screen was a second worth watching.

With Davis at the helm, Miss Rayleen is both fed-up and fun. She’s quick to criticize Ramsey and the girls, but she’s just as quick to a laugh and a smile. This is a character who is childlike and playful, and coming off of Davis’s recent, excellent, but very serious roles in Widows and Fences, it’s a freakin’ delight to see her do it. Though at first Miss Rayleen wants nothing to do with the troop, she’s proud of her girls and wants them to succeed. That’s why she doles out frank but useful life advice like, “Don’t puke before you get the money, boo,” when little Anne-Claire is so nervous she throws up while going door-to-door for fundraising. She also has some beef with the revival troop leader (Janney), which leads to some tense Davis vs. Janney showdowns. (Sidebar: A Davis vs. Janney showdown would be a great guest star plot on the next season of GLOW. You can have that one for free, Netflix.)

Troop Zero premiered at Sundance last year to mostly positive reviews. It’s maybe trying a little too hard to be the next Little Miss Sunshine—especially when it comes to the final scene at the Birdie Scout talent show—but truly, Davis makes it worth the 97 minutes. What a legend.

Watch Troop Zero on Prime Video