Fairy Tale Media Fix: Disney's Descendants 2.

Oh, goodie!  We have another one of these.

It’s been about two years since I gave my impressions on the first Descendants movie.  I remember that because I was recovering from heart valve surgery at the time I was doing it.  You can read my review of the first movie right HERE.

As a quick recap, Descendants is about four children of Disney villains who are chosen to leave the island prison that holds all the villains and their descendants and attend school with the children of Disney heroes and sidekicks at a school named Auradon Prep. 

Now, as a quick recap of the conditions that likely led to the creation of the Descendants concept: a couple years ago, Mattel (who used to make the Disney Princess doll line) decided to make a line of fashion dolls called Ever After High about the children of famous fairy tale characters going to a magical prep school.  On top of that, the line was also set to have a series of web cartoons, books and accessories.  Disney looked at it and said “Well . . . uh . . . we can do that too!  So, nyah!”  And Descendants was born.   (Okay, maybe that’s not exactly how it went but it’s how I imagine it went).

But if it was the case, then they’ve done what they set out to do.  There are Descendants books and  merchandise out there.  There was even a series of web cartoons called Descendants: Wicked World.  I watched a whole bunch of them (what can I say, I have a weakness for animation).  The characters of Jay and Carlos take a bit of a back seat to the other female characters in the movie.  The cartoon also introduces new characters like Ally (daughter of Alice), Freddie (daughter of Dr. Facilier), C.J. (daughter of Captain Hook) and Zevon (son of Yzma).

Got all that?  Well, it doesn’t matter if you do or not, because Descendants 2 uses none of it.

Nope.  None of it.  In fact, the actress who voices Freddie Facilier even plays a completely different character in Descendants 2.  They maybe used one song from the cartoon in the background of a scene and that’s it.  It’s kind of like how Ghostbusters 2 treated The Real Ghostbusters.

Descendants 2 starts a little while after the first Descendants.  Evie (daughter of the Evil Queen) has started up her own business making clothes for the other students, which is handy with a big cotillion coming up.  Jay (son of Jafar) is excelling as a student athlete, this time as captain of the fencing team.  Carlos (son of Cruella de Vil) is enjoying life as a converted dog lover with his terrier pal Dude.  Meanwhile, Mal (daughter of Maleficent) is doing her best to deal with the pressure of being the girlfriend of King Ben (son of Belle and the Beast) and is finding it weighs on her quite a bit.  So much so that she’s come to rely on using her mother’s evil spell book to meet all her responsibilities.  Meanwhile, the other characters are dealing with their own things.  Jay is dealing with the issue of Lonnie (daughter of Mulan) being barred from the fencing team because of her gender despite being very good.  Carlos is trying to work up courage to ask Jane (the Fairy Godmother’s daughter) to the cotillion (honestly, it’s kind of nice to see Carlos get even that little arc.  His whole story in the first one was “he gets a dog”).  Evie’s the only one who doesn’t get an immediate arc because hers is more tied to Mal’s.  You see, Mal soon finds herself overwhelmed by her new responsibilities and decides to return to the Isle of the Lost where she feels she fits in better.  Then, Evie, Ben, Jay and Carlos go to convince her to come back.  It’s then that we get Evie’s arc in that she’s seemingly going to lose her best friend because they’ve ended up in two very different places in that Evie thrives in Auradon while Mal feels crushed by the expectations placed on her.  She comes to a conclusion about that with the help of a new character named Dizzy (the daughter of Drizella, the wicked step-sister).  There is a more immediate threat though, seeing as Ben ends up getting kidnapped by Mal’s old rival Uma (daughter of Ursula, and played by China Anne McClain, former voice of Freddie Facilier) and her two henchman Harry (son of Captain Hook) and Gil (son of Gaston).

You know, I’ve often wondered if I was a little too nice to the first Descendants movie (I described it as “harmless” when maybe “stupid but harmless” would have been more apt).  I gave it a certain amount of leeway because it seemed to be so entirely sincere about what it was.  But I’m not going to lie, I kind of enjoyed Descendants 2.  I’m not going to say it was a good movie.  Heavens no!  But if you go into it knowing how high to set your expectations, you’ll be fine.  Sure, it still follows that “don’t sweat the details” approach to a back story (seriously, why is everything so modern and how did the Beast manage to unite all the Disney kingdoms across time and space?).  Sure, everyone in the movie is dressed like they walked off a toy shelf, especially the villain kids who seem to embrace brightly colored leather and studs like no one has since the 1980s.  But for the story they want to tell, they tell it well enough.  There are even a couple places where they surprised me a little bit.  They even skirted the edge of some heavier material with a couple of their lines (Mal asks Carlos “Don’t you miss when you could just scream at people and send them running?”  Carlos replies “That was my mom who did that and I was usually on the receiving end” suggesting it was something of an abusive relationship).  The soundtrack was catchy too.  I particularly liked a Michael Jackson riff they did titled “Chillin’ Like a Villain”.  They even improved on some stuff from the original.  I made a note in my review of the first Descendants that I had trouble with the actors playing the adult villains like Maleficent, Jafar and the Evil Queen.  Not only did the actors chew the scenery, but it’s just kind of sad to see formerly imposing villains having gone to seed.  In Descendants 2, the only thing we see or hear from any adult villains are one of Ursula’s tentacles and the voices of both Ursula and Lady Tremaine.  It’s true that there are things that I might have liked to see from these characters.  Like Evie actually meeting and developing a relationship with her step-sister (half-sister?) Snow White.  But, if you want to see complex family relationships on Disney Channel, it’s probably best to just watch Andi Mack.  Disney’s Descendants 2 is a stupid, juvenile but enthusiastic and sincere Disney Channel Original Movie.  In other words, it’s like every other Disney Channel Original Movie ever.  You can’t really ask more from it than that.

So there we go.  Not terrible.  Not great.  Just standard kids’ fare.  And now that Descendants has become big enough to have two TV movies, a toy line, a web cartoon, kids’ books and other merchandise, maybe Disney can finally get over this “Mattel envy” that they’ve had for so long.

I wonder what Disney Channel’s next big movie project is.  Let me just check Google really quick.

It says here that their next big thing is something called Zombies.  It’s apparently a musical about a cheerleader from a conformist small town who falls in love with a zombie football star who transfers in from someplace called Zombietown.

So, monster teens attending a modern high school and maybe dealing with the prejudices of normal people.  For some reason, that sounds strangely familiar.

OH, FOR GRIMM’S SAKE, DISNEY!

[Sigh]