For its latest cable movie musical, Disney Channel tries to graft some familiar Disney characters into a “High School Musical”-style plot and the results disappoint.
At 111 minutes, “Descendants” (8 p.m. Friday, Disney Channel) feels too long and overly tactical (a final-seconds tease of a potential sequel seems like a grafted-on afterthought that is particularly presumptuous).
When: 8 p.m. Friday, Disney Channel.
Starring: Dove Cameron, Kristin Chenoweth.
Director/choreographer Kenny Ortega, who made “High School Musical” a hit, is hamstrung by a paint-by-numbers plot in a script by writers Josie McGibbon and Sara Parriott, veterans of “The Starter Wife” and “Desperate Housewives.” The musical numbers are spaced far apart and few of the songs are catchy or memorable.
The movie’s premise is clever enough: Disney villains Maleficient (Kristin Chenoweth), the Evil Queen (Kathy Najimy), Cruella de Vil (Wendy Raquel Robinson) and Jafar (Maz Jobrani) have been banished to an island away from the storybook mainland of Auradon, where Ben (Mitchell Hope), the 16-year-old son of Belle (Keegan Connor Tracy) and former beast King Adam (Dan Payne) from “Beauty and the Beast,” is about to take the throne.
For his first official act, Ben wants to give the children of those four Disney villains a chance at rehabilitation on the mainland at his prep school.
Maleficient’s daughter, Mal (Dove Cameron, “Liv and Maddie”), is sort of the ringleader of the group, supported by Evil Queen’s daughter, Evie (Sofia Carson); Jafar’s son, Jay (Booboo Stewart, “Twilight: Eclipse”); and Cruella de Vil’s scared-of-dogs son, Carlos (Cameron Boyce, “Jesse”).
The four start out singing about how bad they are (“I’m rotten to the core/I’m not like the kid next door”), but this is Disney Channel so by the end of the movie you can bet they’re on a path to bettering themselves, particularly Mal, who falls in love with Ben. (“I can look into your eyes and tell you’re not evil,” Ben assures Mal.)
“Descendants” allows Ms. Chenoweth a song, and for nostalgia’s sake the Auradon Prep Family Day features a hip-hop version of “Be Our Guest” from “Beauty and the Beast.”
While “High School Musical” couldn’t lay claim to staking out new territory in teen drama, it benefited from a lack of TV musicals at the time of its pre-“Glee” premiere, a fresh cast with chemistry, and some toe-tapping earworms.These elements made “High School Musical” a fresh attempt to push the Disney Channel movie form through experimentation. The dull “Descendants” has none of that; it just seems like a widget – albeit an occasionally cute, harmless widget – churned out by the Disney machine.
TV writer Rob Owen: rowen@post-gazette.com or 412-263-2582. Read the Tuned In Journal blog at post-gazette.com/tv. Follow RobOwenTV on Twitter or Facebook.
First Published: July 26, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
