Shaking the dust of years in studio development hell, Soman Chainani’s series spawning YA novel, The school for good and evilmakes its way to the screen and doesn’t just drag the luggage of Harry Potter and Miss Peregrine’s Home for Weird Children, but that of too many knockoffs to list. Given his inexperience with fairytale fantasy, it’s no surprise that Paul Feig has no sense of the genre’s world-building. Still, this is a uniquely exhausting slog – insanely over-plotted, thumping distracted, insanely too long, and slathered into a large symphonic score that strives to bring momentum to a saga with minimal emotional stakes.
Acquired and put into production by Netflix after it stalled at Universal, it’s a lavishly decorated feature, albeit in a tacky, candy-colored way, and maybe young teens and tweens who think of themselves as princesses or witches will find something to love. to enjoy. Good luck to them. I never dreamed that I wouldn’t love a movie in which an offended teenager smokes: “That witch is my mother!” But this is what we came for.
The school for good and evil
It comes down to
Failure.
The prologue immediately drops us into a stifling artificial CG world where twin brothers Rafal and Rhian (both played by Kit Young), who founded the school to maintain the balance between good and evil, engage in video game-style swordplay on a place that is ominously called “The Duel Arena” that is never mentioned again. But after centuries of peaceful coexistence, Rafal is suddenly bored with the status quo. “I prefer chaos,” he says according to the book Rhian, which warns that summoning “blood magic” will consume him.
“Evil doesn’t cooperate. Evil does not share,” Rafal tells his brother. “When I’m ready, evil will not lose.”
Cut to many years later in a distant place where a new story unfolds, told periodically by Cate Blanchett with her sharpest storybook authority.
Sophie (Sophia Anne Caruso) is an orphan her late mother told her she was destined to change the world. But change seems unlikely in sleepy Gavaldon. Just over the hill in another cottage lives Agatha (Sofia Wylie), whose mother is a failed witch with high hopes for her daughter. The two girls are best friends, laugh at teasing kids who call them freaks and cut their promise of an eternal bond in the village’s wish tree.
When they learn of the existence of the School of Good and Evil (from Patti LuPone, no less), Sophie plants her cover letter in the tree’s bark folds. Before long, she’s carried away by a giant skeleton bird called a stymph, as Aggie clings on for the ride.
But the bird drops them into what both girls are convinced is the wrong school. The petite blonde Sophie, who dreams of becoming Cinderella, ends up in Goth Central among the ‘Nevers’, presided over by the wicked dean Lady Lesso (Charlize Theron). (We know she’s mean by the way she cuts her riding crop, like Joan Crawford in queen bee.)
Feisty Agatha, who would have been right at home with the aspiring witches and wizards, is surrounded by chattering princesses in pastel-colored ball gowns among the ‘Evers’, while receiving instructions from the sweet Professor Dovey (Kerry Washington). Beauty classes are taught by Professor Anemone (Michelle Yeoh), resident Tyra, who fails girls due to poor laughing technique.
Despite Sophie and Aggie’s insistence that a mistake was made in their enrollment, the schoolteacher (Laurence Fishburne) insists no mistakes were made. Their roles are already written in the pages of the Storian, a fairy tale book written by a magical quill that explains where all of Blanchett’s plump “And so it happened, blah, blah, blah…” interjections come from. Apparently the only solution is for Sophie to win her true love’s kiss, so she sets her sights on Tedros (Jamie Flatters), King Arthur’s son, who has half the school swooning. But dating between Evers and Nevers is strictly forbidden, wouldn’t you know that?
If all that had been distilled into a clean narrative thread, it might have been somewhat captivating. But there’s so much clutter in David Magee and Feig’s screenplay that we keep taking gloomy detours like a survival class in a forest of dark enchantments run by an elf (Peter Serafinowicz) who’s a bad stand-up act.
Mostly, the plot revolves around the inevitable test of Sophie and Aggie’s friendship, which is further corrupted by Rafal’s return in a whirlwind spiral of blood. His sinister promises of absolute dominion tempt Sophie into the dark side. Start with the obligatory glam makeover, maniacal cackle and slo-mo power strut once she’s assembled her bad-girl crew. Then it’s all-out war at the annual Evers ball, with the Nevers hurling firebombs and other standard CG mayhem in a clash too busy and messy to follow.
It’s just never very interesting. Of course, Aggie will find a way to save Sophie and the school from Rafal’s reign of terror, as the schematic nature of the convoluted story means the wannabe bad girl is naturally good. And good overcomes evil. Yawn.
Feig seems adrift in a movie where the comedy is incidental rather than the driving force. Maybe he thought he was a… Princess Bride for a new generation, but there is nothing real enough here, even within the elastic parameters of a fairy tale, to provoke much investment. What attempts at humor are usually so numbingly unfunny that you might struggle to believe it was directed by the same man who did it. bridesmaids and Spy.
The actors aren’t that nice either. Theron, Washington and Fishburne all look gorgeous in designer Renée Ehrlich Kalfus’ lavish costumes, but their starchy mid-Atlantic accents hinder their performances. At least until they forget them. Yeoh is just embarrassingly underused. Caruso (who played Winona Ryder in Broadway’s beetle juice musical) is stuck with a character so inconsistent she’s annoying, while Wylie brings a welcome atmosphere to the beleaguered Agatha.
Right down to the pop – Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, 2WEI’s thunderous cover of Britney Spears’ “Toxic” – the film targets its audience with puppyish eagerness. But it’s a charmless, thrill-free venture that never really takes off.
