Disney Channel Musical Month - Descendants

In particular with the older Disney films, there’s a real sense of fun that came with the villains, that trend carried on all the way through to the 90s Disney Renaissance but of late has been replaced with either a twist villain or having no villain at all. Whatever you may think of this, you can’t deny that the change of narrative structure to focus more on the hero’s journey has robbed us of the fun of the Disney villain, and they know it’s a lucrative market as Maleficent and Cruella De Vil have both had live action films dedicated to them alone.

And so we come to Descendants, a Disney Channel Musical attempt to cash in the same market, and quite a successful one, we’ve had 3 musicals, a CG series, a live action short and a terrible animated short.

So today we’ll take a look at where it all began with the original Descendants movie

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Descendants tells the story of the descendants of 4 big Disney villains, Maleficent, The Evil Queen, Jafar and Cruella De Vil. Their names are Mal (Dove Cameron), Evie (Sofia Carson), Jay (Booboo Stewart) and Carlos (the late Cameron Boyce). They’ve been stuck with the parents on the prison known as “The Island of the Lost” as the people of every fairy-tale kingdom united to form the United States of Auradon, including France and China of all places and rounded up and banished all the villains.

The rulers of Auradon are Belle and the former Beast. But because of reasons that have somewhat of a relevance to the plot, their son Ben (Mitchell Hope) is to take the throne and as his first order of business he plans to give a second chance to the children of the Isle, his initial selection being the 4 I just mentioned.

Maleficent sees an opportunity and tells her daughter to get the Fairy Godmother’s magic wand and use it to destroy the barrier around the Isle and set the villains free. But as Mal and her friends integrate into Auradon’s society, can they bring themselves to fulfil their mother/father’s wishes?

I think it goes without saying that this isn’t a masterclass in storytelling, the backstory alone has holes you could drive a truck through. But it was never really the point, it’s supposed to be more akin to a popcorn flick, just sit back and enjoy the ride. There’s a lot to like here, the costume design and general aesthetic is really eye-catching and the songs, regardless of whether or not they’re all good, are distinct and have personality.

Kristin Chenowith who plays Maleficent is a highlight for me. Her background in musical theatre really shows and she gets one of the best songs of the entire movie. Her acting is very over-the-top and hammy but intentionally so. Though she does overshadow all the other villains, and is the only one to show up and do anything in the climax.

Each of our main 4 have a little mini-arc as they adjust into the school hierarchy, and yes, it takes place at a school, 90% of these films do. We see Carlos overcome his fear of dogs that was instilled in him by his mother for some reason by bonding with the school’s dog Duke. Jay becomes a pro-athlete in another sport I don’t understand and Evie tries to seduce Chad Charming, but he uses that to his own ends.

Mal gets the main arc of the film, and to talk about her story means addressing the elephant in the room. Love potions are involved in this story, love potions used by the protagonist, love potions that are successful. The problem with love potions in all of fiction is that it’s used as a means to remove consent from the victim. That has horrifying implications, even if they don’t all play out here.

But here’s where it gets worse, Ben has a girlfriend, Audrey (Sarah Jeffrey), daughter of Sleeping Beauty, she’s a bit of a cow but they were until the potion came along, together without any real sign of fracture. Then the love potion comes along, Ben declares his love for Mal and they go on a date, the potion wears off because of magic water but he plays along, believing that Mal is crushing on him. I don’t know if it’s possible to be that dense, or whether really, he just wanted an excuse to break up with Audrey but this has horrifying implications.

The love potion is an element of fiction I’d rather see lost to history, but if one really has to use it, at least make it ultimately fail.

The Be Our Guest rendition including the line ‘this is France’ is just weird, actually the song even being in the movie is weird.

Descendants, despite flaws both minor and serious in its storytelling, rarely loses sight of the fun all whilst having an underlying theme of prejudice done much better than Zombies did. The songs aren’t all winners but there are a good number of great songs and even the less good ones had a deal of personality to them.

Rating 65/100