Well, I have mixed feelings about this. I'm not turned off from such light and cheesy fluff as this, but it made me cringe! It wasn't horrendous, but it was indeed weird. And not to mention blaspheme! The choreography was indeed exaggerated and off! Remarkable that Kenny Ortega is behind this. Who wonders if he came up with the idea.
every time I see an ad for this on DC it looks worse and worse, its basically just another DC tween movie with a princess/villains franchise wrapper. I dont think I could sit through it.
Well I saw it, and I liked it. It was bad, but I liked it. I liked the first song and the one Mal sings about love. Didn't expect how the ending would turn out. I liked that, too. I felt so bad for Jane.
No shame, I really enjoyed this! You have to go in knowing its a campy DCOM, just like all the others before it. Do that, and sit back and just enjoy the fun!
I saw this thing last night and I honestly was cringing the entire time.
The worst thing about this movie is that it had potential. It had potential to be good and you can see seeds being spread throughout the whole movie, but ultimately, I think Disney Channel was too busy trying to make this hip and cool like HSM to the point that they forgot what they wanted to do.
My problems with the movie:
1. Way too many characters. I think that having just Mal and Evie would have been better. Their story lines were the most prominent and had the most relevance to today. Jay's story was ok, but seriously underdeveloped and way way way too childish for a movie aimed at tweens. Carlos was pointless. Really really pointless. I don't even know why he was in the movie. His character development was very weak and revolved around loving a dog? His transformation was really rushed too. As a person who is afraid of dogs in real life and can't stand being within an inch of them, i can safely tell you that I would never just willingly hold the dog up and be ok with it. It's just weird!
2. I don't need to talk about the villains because honestly... This is what Disney thinks of them. They took some of the most powerful villains and dumbed them down to Power Ranger level villains.
-The Evil Queen sustained the least damage because she wasn't far off from what she used to be... just funnier in Disney's terms.
-Jafar was just offensive. In the original animated movie, he had a british accent and had a menacing demeanor. In this movie he's basically a useless crazy indian-accent shop owner... like basically every heavy indian-american accent holder in other shows. Very disgraceful.
-Cruella was stripped away from her regale and terrifying demeanor only to become a crazy old lady. The worst part about this is that I thought the actress was an amazing fit for the character and when she would occasionally go bonkers and start yelling she reminded me a lot of the animated Cruella. Sadly... she had to be dumbed down.
-Maleficent... Well... at least she's evil this time? Something about this bringing down every villain and making them dumber and dumber.... I love Chenowith, but this was the wrong role for her. I can't talk anymore about this character because Disney has stripped Maleficent of EVERYTHING that made her unique and terrifying.. And she should really feed herself better, her dragon form was really scrawny when compared to the animated movie.
3. Next up are the choices made for the characters. This really bothered me because it seemed like Disney was going with popular characters rather than common sense. I would in no way count Cruella as one of the worst villains. Disney has an amazing library of villains and they picked villains that were popular rather than the worst ones. Are you kidding me? Their choices for the good guys was also weird.... How did Aurora's daughter turn out to be so self absorbed? What about Cinderella's son? Isn't Cinderella all about being nice to people.. Mulan's daughter is in this movie but she's a popular girl who cares about what she looks (which I'm ok with, but felt it really brought back what Mulan was all about). Why wasn't she part of a sports team in other scenes? These choices were all just really weird.
4. The songs were terrible. This isn't my first Disney Channel movie. I've seen the HSM movies as well as Camp Rock and Lemonade Mouth. Camp Rock and Lemonade Mouth had some good songs, as well as some of HSM movies... Not all of them were good, but they were not terrible. This movie however, had terrible songs! Rotten to the Core was bland and really bad because it was too modern trying to appeal to the hip-hop generation when the actors themselves don't even know how to sing hip-hop. It was just incredibly annoying and seemed very amateur for a Disney production. None of the other songs had a strong hold, even Mal's song about love was very over the top, especially one of those final shots where the camera was going back and forth from one side to the other. Just horrible...
THE WORST OF ALL!!
5. The lack of effort. This shocked me a lot! I thought the lack of effort in this movie was pretty bad... and undismissable. For example, in the museum scene were Maleficent was singing, she lifted up by a wire and that's it. You'd think that theyd have her cape floating and she'd be acting as if she was flying, but no... All I could see from that scene was someone who was being dangled. The church in the coronation scene looked INCREDIBLY fake! Are you kidding me? The whole thing was a green screen and you can tell how bad it was and how flat it looked! That was a pretty important set piece, why was it completely CGI? just horrible! The acting is no better. Ben's actor did not know how to act and so did most of the actors. He was the worst by far. Actually I take that back... The worst acting was when Maleficent froze everybody... THEY COULD NOT STAND STILL FOR ONE SHOT! The simplest thing to do was to take a panorama single shot and then move the camera along the image if they actors really couldn't hold still. It looked pretty jarring seeing them all fidgeting when they're supposed to stand still. Was the director sleeping when this scene was shot??!! Even the choreography was bland and uninventive.
Ok... I've ripped this movie enough...
As for the characters, my favorite was Evie. I liked her transformation. Going from someone who was only looking for a prince to a smart student. I liked that. I liked that in the end she was just that. They didn't make it seem like she cared more about dating Doopey's kid than school.
I hated how Mal just wanted to go to school and be in love with a guy... Because that's what our main character needs to be... I don't think they showed us her studying even once in the movie lol.
And the CGI in the shorts looks absolutely horrible, hopefully they're still working on it.
"In every age, Family is king,
and the bravest journeys, are never taken alone."
-Brave.