I admittedly have been holding up this review for a while because the words to describe this movie have just been so difficult to put together. Now, I'm not gonna lie, I had massive doubts over this ever since its announcement and the set photos because it looked cheap & the plot felt very cliched & confusing with the continuity of the Disney films. And since this is one big Disney crossover like OUAT, that's the main reason why I decided to review this movie on this blog rather than my animation blog even if it clearly takes continuity directly from the Disney films. So...can this movie surprise me & be as good as the likes of OUAT & Kingdom Hearts, or this as rotten to the core as I was expecting it to be? Let's. Take. A. Look.
In the land of Auradon filled with beloved Disney characters & their now teenaged children, Prince Ben (Mitchell Hope), the son of Queen Belle (Keegan Connor Tracy) and the human King Beast (Dan Payne) orders that the kids of the villains of the Isle of the Lost are allowed to be admitted to Auradon Prep School before his coronation as king so that they can have a chance at redemption. The villains, in particular Maleficent (Kristen Chenoweth) take advantage of this & enlist their kids to steal the Fairy Godmother's wand so they can be freed from the Isle of the Lost. While it may work at first, Maleficent's daughter Mal (Dove Cameron) struggles with sticking to the status quo as she falls for Ben while the others learn the message that they are not their parents & befriend others at the school & learn about themselves.
As you can tell with this basic summary, the plot in this thinner than tissue paper with nothing to make it feel original other than having the children of beloved Disney characters taking over from their parents going to high school. And even with that, there have been many Disney crossovers which have done the franchises more justice & have taken it more seriously while still being fun. And despite OUAT's admittedly declining quality, it at least tries to take things seriously & the characters still have something called dimensions! This on the other hand feels like bad fanfiction without any actual thought into it or any regards to the continuity of the movies or even explaining how the world itself works. Why did Belle & Beast decide to unite everyone to Auradon? How did they get to/create Auradon in the first place if nearly every Disney movie is in a different time setting/location? How did the villains get revived & have their own kids? Who are the villains' significant others? Why did the Beast finally decide to marry Belle at 28 when he was saved at 21 (then again, I guess that's a better sense of pacing compared to other Disney couples waiting 3 days til they get married)? Did the Disney characters just decide to have kids at the exact same time if the teens all roughly the same age? Why didn't Ariel's daughter appear if she's already an established child of a Disney character? None of these questions are explained & it just felt frustrating because only the basics of the movies are mentioned instead of diving into them & therefore really affects the characters. Speaking of, the subplots added in to ebenfit the characters felt very shoehorned because they feel like cliches from every high school movie ever. And the fantasy twists added in don't really do any favours because the world is so inconsistent with the rules of magic & it leaves some incredibly cheesy moments thank to the lovesick Ben which ends up feeling more creepy than romantic in his scenes with Mal. In fact, the overall tone & structure of this felt like it was more suited for a (pretty bad) TV series instead of a movie & it felt like a season's worth of episodes crammed into one film, leaving no sense of pacing & the aforementioned numerous subplots cramming for attention, some of which don't end up resolved by the film's climax.
The characters may as well be paper dolls because none of them from Disney canon feel like their beloved animated counterparts & their children feel like cardboard cutouts of high school stereotypes with their own pointless little arcs to show the message of 'they don't have to be bad & they're not their parents'. The worst examples would have to be the villains who are just bumbling one dimensional caricatures of themselves with no sense of threat (along with horrendous miscastings with Kathy Najimy as the Evil Queen, Maz Jobrani as Jafar & Wendy Raquel Robinson as Cruella) up to the point that they don't feel recognizable & they feel so out of place together as a group. I mean, why Cruella? Compared to the others all she wanted was to kill dogs for a coat (while still being evil) while other more popular & evil villains are left to the sidelines. Where's Ursula? Hades? Heck, where's Dr Facilier?! And yes, Kristen Chenoweth is a lot of things, but the mistress of all evil is not one of them! While I do appreciate her attempts at hamming it up (even if she's without a doubt the funnest part of the movie), but even with that, she doesn't feel like Maleficent at all. Even Disney theme park Maleficents are better representations of the character! And yes, I'll quickly discuss the elephant in the room as OUAT's very own Blue Fairy Keegan Connor-Tracy plays Belle & she does a fine job as the queen of Auradon in this universe despite the awful material, messed up characterization & lack of screen time. And her husband, Prince Beast (SERIOUSLY?!) is no better as he just comes across as a bumbling dick most of the time. Although that's not really saying much given that Snow White is reduced to being a local TV news anchor...
None of this doesn't really helps because literally all the teens feel like they have absolutely no identity of their own because at every possibility the movie has to shove down our throats which beloved Disney couple they're the spawn of. The main characters have their own incredibly generic little subplots which ares quickly resolved with Carlos (pretty much a gay stereotype despite not mentioned as being gay) learning to love dogs in one scene despite his mother's affiliation with them, Jay (played Twilight's Booboo Stewart. Yes really.) learning he's a natural in sports & Evie learning that's she really is smart instead of having to cheat to get good grades. Others tend to have one character trait like Lonnie (Mulan & Shang's daughter) being 'bubbly', Jane (the Fairy Godmother's daughter) being a doormat who is easily manipulated by the villain's kids & Doug (Dopey's son) being a generic nerd that befriends Evie. I guess the only character that's worth caring about from the lot is Mal because of Dove Cameron's admittedly decent performance & she's given the most focus out of everyone, but even at that her redemption plot is cliched as hell & ends up feeling like a generic Disney Princess by the end. Even some of the characterization of the good guys is a bit skewed given that Aurora & Phillip's daughter Audrey is the stereotypical rich bitch and Cinderella & Prince Charming's son Chad is a jerkass dumb jock (despite both being the products of probably the nicest Disney couples in the Disney canon).
The musical numbers of this film just put salt on an open wound to this cliched mess of a plot. They're all either just dubstep/EDM 'cool & hip' music which date the movie instantly & are nowhere near as memorable as the Disney classics or out of place Broadway-esque songs to show off Kristen Chenoweth's powerful voice. Then again, given that the director also worked on the High School Musical that should be no surprise! Rotten to the Core is just an awful dubstep introductory song for the kids to just shove in our faces that they're evil without explaining why with a tune that was grating on me the moment it started playing. Evil Like Me is an out of place Broadway song which comes out of nowhere & despite Kristen's fun performance, it doesn't fit Maleficent's character at all & is just there for Mal to be reminded of her plan & stay evil. Did I Mention is a terrible song that the love potioned Ben serenades to Mal in a big pep rally that had no purpose & just left me cringing the whole way through. If Only just feels like your typical pop ballad from the 90s & is probably the 'best' song out of the bunch because of Dove Cameron's singing chops & melody, but the lyrics really make it fall flat with how generic they were/ But without a doubt the worst of the bunch has to be a remix of Be our Guest that Ben sings which sounded like a gun being continuously shot in my ears. Set It Off is just the big dance party ending number which shoves the message of the movie in our faces as if we forgot it & felt very generic & it felt strange ending with it when some plots went nowhere or were never properly resolved. In fact, every single musical number felt like a music video instead of actually being a song from the movie despite definitely not standing out on their own.
Disney Descendants feels like your typical bad fanfiction: it's story is all over the place with no regards to continuity or establishing the setting & the beloved Disney characters feel like cardboard cutouts of themselves while the new ones are one dimensional & uninteresting. On top of that, the visuals look gaudy & cheap & the musical numbers were just making my ears bleed with how mind-numbingly awful they were & date the movie instantly. I guess kids may like it since I'm not really the target demographic for this movie & this is probably the equivalent to High School Musical for this generation (I'll admit, I was MASSIVE fan when that came out cos I was definitely the target audience at the time). Despite the big names in this, this doesn't do them any justice & there are much smarter, funner & more interesting Disney crossovers out there which I can guarantee you'll enjoy. And given that there'll be a sequel coming out and there's an animated series & some books set in the same universe, I guess I'll just have to grin & bear & let kids have their own cheesy Disney Channel Original Movie franchises for now.
Rating: * 1/2
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