Descendants, man.

[impy]

Yesterday after doing battle with Comcast (and by doing battle I mean I called and got the automated "we know we fucked up, but you can get more information by going online!" message. Which is a crock because I was calling because I had no service, dammit!) I managed to watch Disney's Descendants. And it was a strange little ride.

I put my initial thoughts up on Tumblr yesterday, so I'm gonna cut and paste here:



Forgive me, but it’s way past my bedtime and I feel like I got hit by a truck. So, obviously the perfect time to discuss a Disney Channel movie, yes?

First, lemme say a big ol’ Fuck You to Comcast for always knowing just when to drop my service. Yup, every single time. It’s a gift, truly.

Onward!

Spoilers ahoy, just in case you couldn’t tell.




Ready? Okay.

Confession: I was ready to hate the movie because seriously, you could feel the cheese from a mile away on just about every promo. However, I have a soft spot the size of Pluto for villains and I was intrigued by the dolls so what the heck, right?

I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. It would probably be easier to focus on the stuff I didn’t like than the stuff I did because it would be a shorter list. So kudos to everyone on that.

In keeping with the theme of the movie, let’s start with the bad:


KC chewing up every piece of scenery in sight and probably stuff my poor little Kindle couldn’t even see. Sometimes she was amazing (Evil Like Me) and sometimes she cranked it up to eleven. But not in a good way.

This could be said of a lot of the parents, though, so it’s not just her. I guess part of it was the need to balance the fact that hey, here’s a group of parents that don’t love their kids but we can’t dwell too much on that so let’s laugh at their inability to understand how to work a refrigerator. (Which is a bit I kind of loved.)


The population of Auradon Prep. Seriously, the only people who even kind of kept believing in the villain kids were the Fairy Godmother (loved her) and Ben. Everyone else started out strong (I’m looking at you, Doug) but caved in the face of what, exactly? Sleeping Beauty’s mother throwing a hissy fit and provoking a bunch of kids who had nothing to do with the actions of their parents? Lady, I’ve met Audrey and I’m left to conclude that if you’d had a hand in raising your daughter, she’d have been the same kind of ugh. Consider that the real gift from Maleficent.


I wish we’d had at least one other kid who managed to stay loyal to the Lost kids because the never ending parade of ‘good kids who actually suck’ was kind of painful. Audrey was every mean girl in any movie ever. Chad deserved a stick to the face. Lonnie was a severe disappointment and let us not even begin to discuss the weird fixation people had with Jane’s hair.
Doug’s the closest we come and even he backs off rather quickly at the first sign of trouble. Boo, Doug. Boo.

The CGI towards the end. Wow. I know you guys had a budget but wow. Just… wow.


Dove Cameron’s lip synching abilities. I feel bad commenting on this because maybe it’s better on a bigger screen or won’t bother people who love musicals in general, but it distracted the hell out of me. Ditto her “Ohnoes, I cannot swim!” scene.


Which leads me to the good:

I liked Mal a lot more than I was prepared for. When she was on, she was on, and I loved her scenes with Evie. I don’t have a pony in the great ‘shipping races, but she and Ben were cute and I could buy it.


The music is all ear worm and if you hadn’t figured that out already, well… enjoy trying to get them out of your head for the next forever. It ain’t happening.


Carlos is adorable, I wasn’t expecting Jay’s aggression being transferred to sports to actually be a bigger plot point than his flirting (or stealing) and he was fun to watch.
I’m pretty biased on Evie but I liked that they eventually remembered that she’s got a brain, too, which is impressive when you consider that she was castle schooled by the Evil Queen who clearly did not prioritize learning over primping.


I liked that we didn’t get the Lost girls fighting over a guy or anything (I suppose the backstory took care of that). I liked the hints of darkness (Lonnie realizing that the Lost kids didn’t get any feel better cookies from parents who loved them) that gave depth to the story and grounded it when things could threaten to be too fluffy.

My favorite thing was the bond between the Lost kids and how it was obvious in any scene with more than one of the characters in it. I wish we’d gotten some Evie and Carlos bonding, but I’ll allow Carlos and Jay roughhousing and drowning themselves in chocolate as a decent substitution.


Basically ended the movie and wanted all the Evie dolls and more story now, please and thank you.



So that's the tumblr take. With a little more time and distance, I figure I'll add a little as we go since I intend on watching it again sometime this weekend. Yes, I did download that blasted app and I have every intention of making use of it.

If you're a Disney purist, this will probably make you strangle everyone in your immediate vicinity. If you go in with expectations so low that not even a limbo champ could make use of your bar, well... you'll be entertained. It's like an alternate universe for an alternate universe, really.

But I want all the Evies for realsies and this whole waiting thing is bullshit.

Comments

[imogen-blue.livejournal.com]

I was looking at LJ's who like Kim Possible & found your post.
I haven't seen Descendants yet, so I haven't read this. It's not on in Australia until this weekend. I hope it's good!!!

[snarky-imp.livejournal.com]

Kim Possible is love!

I can't wait to hear from other people on whether they liked Descendants or not. Fingers crossed that you like it!