‘America’s Got Talent’ review: Jimmy Rose, Kenichi Ebina, KriStef Brothers: An awesome night
Tonight on “America’s Got Talent,” we don’t even have to worry about getting into superlatives: This really was one of the best performance shows ever at this point in the competition. Everyone tonight was at least pretty good, and there were no duds. We really can’t predict who America is going to actually vote for at the end of the night.
We’re going to go through all of the acts individually as always, and we’ll try to make some sense of a night of crazy happenings, Howard and Howie kissing, and a guy choosing to dance with himself in a very weird way.
D’Angelo and Amanda – The interesting thing about this performance is that it was Latin ballroom, but it lost some of the frenzy courtesy of the Michael Jackson song choice. We really didn’t care at all about the first sixty seconds of it, but the end with the water? Pretty cool, and something that was a little bit different for this show.
Marty Brown – Let’s start with the good news for Marty: This was not a complete car crash like last week. He was mostly in tune, and there were also a few moments where we actually enjoyed it. His biggest problem is that he’s still a hokey country singer who doesn’t know when to not interrupt people. We just don’t get it, but who knows? America may vote him through again, anyway.
Chicago Boyz – Before the live shows, we really did not think of these guys as threats. We’ve changed that now. They have managed somehow to do new jump-rope tricks every week; not only that, but they don’t make mistakes doing things that are more difficult than almost what any jump-rope act has done before.
Leon Etienne and Romy Low – Much better than their last attempt on the show, mostly because there was literally so much going on. The biggest issue that we had was that none of these tricks were brand-new to us, save for maybe the bowling ball trick at the end which we actually really loved. If they had just themed this whole act around that, we would have been really happy with it. (By the way, we actually loved their last performance upon re-watching it; we’re not sure the judges quite got what they were seeing.)
Anna Christine – A million times better than her last vocal performance on the show. Anna knew that she did a better job when she smiled at the end of the performance, and this smile for us was almost our issue with the song this time. The notes were there, but we did not fully get the emotional connection. She may have done enough still to advance, though, based on America’s love for singers and her advancing last time on what was basically a dud.
Kenichi Ebina – If we were a little kid watching this show, we’d want to be Kenichi when we grew up. He’s an amazing dancer without a doubt, but just to go along with that, the man is also a heck of a great entertainer and a visual artist. We did not know how he could really improve from what he did last time, but he pulled it off courtesy of another half of him, who was still trapped in his glass box at the end of the act while the judges spoke.
John Wing – A very good performance from John Wing yet again, and it’s hard to really expect anything less from him as this point. The interesting thing about him is that while we do not necessarily think that he is uproariously funny, he is very mainstream and should do very well with voters in middle America.
Branden James – We don’t know for sure if Branden makes it through, mostly because he did that weird move of taking a non-classical song, translating it into another language, and then trying to make it classical. We really do not love this sort of thing most of the time, given that while he was very good, imagine him singing something theatrical and meant for his voice. It would have been incredible, and he would have easily advanced.
KriStef Brothers – Holy (bleep) is all we have to say about these guys. Okay, so the retracting sword was fake and that was a little bit disappointing, mostly because our mind was blown during it, but with that being said, this is still our favorite strength act of all time on this show, and they are also hilarious to boot. You can’t ask for anything more and get away with it.
American Military Spouses Choir – “Arms of an Angel” is such a sappy song at this point, and we want to sit here and be cynical, but we really can’t. It was a pretty nice performance from the group. We almost wish we could cut a couple of acts from last week’s show and add a couple more from this one; while these ladies are not our favorite of the competition, we respect all of them for what they do and know they will have quite a career after this.
Timber Brown – This is what happens when you have such a dangerous act: There are mistakes that happen. Trying to combine water and hanging onto ropes can make for a really tough experience. We appreciate him for trying something new, but he probably failed at what he did more than anyone else tonight.
Jimmy Rose – The issue with Jimmy singing “If Tomorrow Never Comes” is that we still identify this as the Kevin Skinner song from years ago, when he completely blew us away. We don’t think that he’s an amazing singer, but he has some Southern charm and a great gift as a storyteller. But we don’t really think it’ll be hard for him to get the votes to stick around. This is the second time he’s closing the show in the past few weeks, and that’s also a huge advantage.
Who did you love tonight? As always, we want to hear some of your thoughts below! If you want to read some more “America’s Got Talent” news, including contestants rankings and more, just be sure to click here.
Photo: NBC