Descendants [2015]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

If you're thinking that this movie selection came from the fact that "Descendants" is currently the new Disney channel movie trend and we figured it was worth investigating because we mostly enjoyed the "High School Musical" movies (especially the second), you'd be wrong. The idea of watching this was actually planted in Kay's head by her friend, another Sara, who said that she loves the movie but also knows that it's awful and terrible and that she should be ashamed for liking it. This is probably the best way to sell a movie to us. It helped too that on top of all her shame, she admitted that the movie actually has some really interesting themes that could have been explored to make a better movie that kids might actually learn something from . . . but they didn't. Being all about wasted potential, this film immediately went on the watch list.

The universe of the movie is explained to us in the beginning with a sequence done on a tablet because gosh darn it Disney is hip and keeps up with what the youths like. All the Disney royals and villains exist in the same world but all the good guys live in the United States of Auradon and the villains have all been exiled to an Australia-situation on the Isle of the Lost. The Isle is a ghetto without candy, magic, wifi or other luxuries and Auradon is preppy wonderland, ruled by "the beast" a.k.a. Adam. Adam and Belle's son, Ben, is going to be crowned king soon (at 16? while his dad lives??) and he makes a request for a student exchange program where four kids from the Isle of the Lost are allowed to go to Auradon Prep to prove they are not like their parents. Those kids are Mal, Maleficent's daughter who wants to make her mom proud and brains of this gang, Evie, the evil queen from "Snow White"'s daughter who wants to lock down a prince, Jay, Jafar's son who likes sports and leather, and Carlos, Cruella DeVille's son who is possibly too gay to function and in love with Jay (unconfirmed but come on). They are introduced with a terrible song that has a dub-step breakdown. Adam wished for death.

Before leaving for Auradon, Maleficent tells Mal and crew to steal the Fairy Godmother's wand and bring it to her so she can take over the world. On their first day, they try to steal it from a museum devoted to all their stories, but the security is too high. Luckily, the wand factors into the upcoming coronation so they decide to steal it then. Mal decides that the way to ensure success is to slip Ben a love potion cookie so that she will become his girlfriend and will therefore be right next to him during the coronation. This is an odd plan since Ben seems to kind of already have the hots for her in spite of the fact that he is dating Audrey, Aurora's daughter. Ben has a terrible music number where he confesses his love for Mal. Audrey breaks up with him for Chad, Prince Charming and Cinderella's son and total Chad, who Evie had been after although he was just manipulating her into doing his homework for him. Perhaps lineage has nothing to do with not being a douchenozzle??? Meanwhile Jay plays sports and Carlos gets over a fear of dogs. And the four of them are in a class called Goodness, which is basically Remedial Decency. You realize the public education system on the Isle is probably under-funded and think of all the ways this classicist angle could have been an actual theme.

At the coronation Mal breaks the love spell only to find that it wore off a while ago and Ben actually likes her and is weirdly chill with the fact that she drugged him. Jane, Fairy Godmother's daughter, steals the wand during the ceremony to make herself prettier and ends up accidentally breaking a barrier in the wall around the Isle. Maleficent comes in, Mal and friends chose the side of good, and they fight her and win. Then there's a "We're All In This Together" music number and an obvious implication of a sequel.

The most painful thing about this movie was by far the music numbers. We dreaded every one of them. The worst was probably an acapella/rap cover of "Be Our Guest" but all of them sucked. And it was especially sad that they had Kristin Chenoweth playing a very campy Maleficent because she really should have better things to do with her time. Otherwise, the movie was silly in a lot of the right ways and very easy for us to make fun of. Also, as stated in the beginning of this post, there are a lot of interesting themes that could have been explored here like punishing/rewarding children for their parents, rigid class structure, queer coding of villains, the fact that the villain kids were all raised by single parents but the good kids all have heteronormative, married parents, and whatever is going on in the second quote below.

Will we watch the sequel? You didn't think this was the end of the story, did you?

Quotes:

"She bibadee bobadee booed the living dicklights out of her." 

[Note: The line was clearly meant to be "daylights" but we watched the clip over and over. She says "dicklights."]

"We don't really date much on the island. It's more like gang activity."

[Note: Mal is basically admitting to poly relationships and possibly group sex. That's what this sounds like semantically. Disney probably didn't mean this but. . . yeah.]

Also, at one point a girl walks in and basically says, "Hi. I'm Mulan's daughter." and it's so odd.

Spoon Rating: 5.5

Have the awful villain kid intro song: