"Don't you wanna be evil?"
The High School Musical trilogy was the tweener sensation of the aughts and a massive cash cow for Disney. When the series wrapped, Disney Channel needed to fill the gap. In addition to High School Musical spinoff content — a Sharpay direct-to-video film, a nationwide concert tour, and a Disney+ series — the Disney Channel Original Movie pipeline has released three original high-budget musical series in its wake. The first came in 2013 when choreographer Jeffrey Hornaday directed Teen Beach Movie. In 2015, High School Musical’s Kenny Ortega launched his follow-up trilogy, Descendants (not to be confused with the Alexander Payne film four years prior). And in 2018, Disney Channel old-hand Paul Hoen debuted the Zombies films (with the annoying stylization of Z-O-M-B-I-E-S).
Credit to Disney: They took some swings. These are some weird and ambitious movies. Teen Beach Movie (a near-masterpiece) is a film-inside-a-film pastiche of the 1960’s AIP Beach Party movies. It’s a thermonuclear blast of retro bangers, movie meta-commentary, and gender norm upheaval. Zombies weaponizes both a garish pink-green color scheme and progressive identity politics into a devilishly bizarre across-the-tracks romance. That leaves Descendants as the most straightforward of the three, but not by much: It’s a sprawling, campy homage to the Walt Disney Animation Studios canon with hints of class awareness. This IP stew was a bit more radical in the pre-Ralph Breaks the Internet, pre-Disney+ days; the sheer novelty of live-action versions of beloved animated characters crossing paths must have been mind-blowing fan service to some Disney-heads.
The story takes place in a Auradon, a kingdom helmed by Belle and the Beast. For reasons unexamined, all Disney characters live in Auradon. The villains have been shipped off to a ghetto called Isle of the Lost while the heroes live in swanky castles with man-servants and croquet. One day, twenty years in the future, the prince, Ben (Mitchell Hope) makes a royal proclamation that the children of villains should be rehabilitated and given scholarships to attend Auradon’s high school.
Out in the Isle of the Lost slums, four children of villains are recruited into this program: Mal (Dove Cameron), Jay (Booboo Stewart), Evie (Sophia Carlson), and Carlos (Cameron Boyce). They are the progeny, respectively, of Maleficent (Kristin Chenoweth), Jafar (Maz Jobrani), the Evil Queen (Kathy Najimy), and Cruella de Vil (Wendy Raquel Robinson). Before they ship out, Maleficent whips up a plan for the villains to take over Auradon (I keep almost-typing Audubon). The four kids will steal the wand of the Fairy Godmother (Melanie Paxson) and give it to Maleficent, providing her sufficient power to take over the kingdom.
This premise raises about a million questions, and most of them are left unanswered. If these are the children of single-parent villains, who are the other parents? Did they spawn asexually? Did the events of all of the Disney movies occur at the same moment in this universe’s history? Why are villains who died or transformed in the climaxes of their movies back in their original form? What is the economic basis of this society? Is everyone in this universe connected to movies, or are the various extras we see ordinary people? If so, are they second class citizens to the well-known, magical movie characters? Why is the prince having his coronation as a 16-year-old when his dad is still healthy and apparently in his forties? Sadly, we don’t learn any of these answers; I guess villains with sexuality is off-limits for Disney Channel.
The film is a musical but it’s not nearly enough of one. The soundtrack includes only five original numbers (plus a cover of “Be Our Guest”). With a 112 minute runtime, we’re sometimes going 20+ minutes between songs. There should be about twice as many songs; twice as many chances to show off Ortega’s terrific group choreography. And the songs themselves are largely forgettable in comparison to the soundtracks of the High School Musicals or its contemporary, Teen Beach Movie. I couldn’t hum a line from most of the songs with a gun to my head.
There is one absolute banger, though, “Did I Mention,” sung by the prince when he’s under the spell a love potion. It’s a ‘60s R&B-inspired, Sam Cooke-esque number built around a cheerleader-chant, call-and-response chorus. It’s written and produced by the late, great Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne, my favorite songwriter ever. Go give it a listen.
As a result of the thin soundtrack, the movie starts to sag in the second half. The runtime really drags on. A bunch of side characters are introduced and the thrust of the conflict is stretched out too long. But the story never totally flies off the tracks, staying focused on the villain teens breaking good and growing consciences. It has a couple of good twists, and Dove Cameron in the lead does her damnedest to sell the big moments.
The film’s cast is a solid B+ overall. The teens include some veterans from Disney Channel sitcoms that have the chops, including Cameron. She’s no Zach Efron, but she’s got charisma, and she has good chemistry with her castmates. The other teens are solid, too; I quite like the kooky energy Boyce (RIP) brings to the film’s dumbest subplot — Carlos, Cruella de Vil’s son, getting over his fear of dogs.
Of the entire cast, nobody pops quite like Chenoweth. She is bringing 110% to the role. She goes full vamp vaudeville villain as Maleficent, chewing through every scene and line. She even gets her own song to cackle and expound how eeevil she is. Quite honestly, “Kristen Chenoweth as singing Maleficent” is enough of a pitch in itself for the movie.
The production is fun but unserious in a theater kid sort of way, with elaborate, colorful costumes and hair dye and set designs. The film’s climax has a questionable CGI dragon. It’s not as bad as the CGI some later Disney Channel Original Movies like Upside-Down Magic would feature, but it’s still gimmicky.
If the film had a much higher density of catchy musical numbers or a leaner story, it might actually be fun to sit through. I’m always a fan of original musicals that have a sense of fun and color about them with some strangeness on the edges. But the truth is that in its current state, Descendants is just a little bit too lethargic and community theater to get a recommendation.
Descendants would get two Ortega-directed sequels featuring much of the original cast. And just in the past few weeks, a fourth Descendants film was released; it’s pitched as a reboot with a new cast. A Zombies 4 is on its way, too. I, for one, am glad that Disney keeps churning out these wacky musicals, I just prefer the ones with more energy than Descendants.
Is It Good?
Nearly Good (4/8)
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3 replies on “Descendants (2015)”
Xanadu’s Kenny Ortega, by gum. (Also One From the Heart’s, which causes me more and more shame the more time passes and I haven’t watched it yet.) Though in fairness Ortega may prefer your formulation.
The other Disney junk musicals are all varying degrees of appealing, but I just can’t with The Descendants. If it were animated, maybe–I’d still think it was crass and extremely IP-sploitative, but in live-action, it feels like there’s literally nothing between the series and a bunch of cosplayers performing bad mash-up AU fan fiction. That’s probably overly harsh and snobby, but it’s very hard to get over. (Doesn’t sound like the first film really tries to help one get over it, either.)
It is absolutely “IP-sploitative” and “cosplayers performing bad mash-up AU fan fiction.” I wouldn’t care too much if the music was more fun and it was more self awarely silly, but it’s not quite there.
Drop the “the.” Just, Descendants. It’s cleaner.
I was gonna say “so not like the punk band,” but they do it, too. Insanely wrongheaded.
I never got it right with Eternals, either, which definitely needed the “the.”