2.0 out of 5 star rating<\/span> <\/span> <\/div> <\/div> Which is to blame, the Wizarding World and The Worst Witch? Or is it Once Upon a Time and Disney Channel\u2019s Descendants? Either way, any film about reimagined fairytales and magic schools is perhaps doomed to struggle in a market already well stocked with spells and storybook characters.<\/p>\n
That problem weighs heavy on this ponderous young-adult fantasy, adapted from the first in Soman Chainani\u2019s series of books. While director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids, Ghostbusters) seems a good fit for Chainani\u2019s theme of female friendship, the film\u2019s fantasy elements arrive as a gaudy pageant of the over-familiar, made stifling by the sheer weight of world-building involved. Essentially, there\u2019s enough lofty lore here to buckle Harry Potter\u2019s broomstick.<\/p>\n
After a blustery prologue, the story starts modestly enough with the bond between Sophie (Sophia Anne Caruso) and Agatha (Sofia Wylie), young misfits in the village of Gavaldon. While Sophie dreams of training as a fairytale princess at the mythical School for Good and Evil, Agatha has the makings of a witch. When a mysterious force whisks the duo to magic school, their roles are flipped. Is the sorting hat on the fritz, or does it know something we do not? Either way, Sophie is streamed into the school for Evil under Lady Lesso (Charlize Theron), while Agatha lands in the Good house under the beneficent watch of Professor Dovey (Kerry Washington).<\/p>
While the friends\u2019 attempts to fix this issue provide a solid storytelling spine, the plot soon loses focus. Faced with the demands of a secondary school story, expansive mythologising and a crowded intake of students, Feig and co-writer David Magee lean on exposition to navigate a muddled narrative, with deadening results. Making heavy weather of introducing the warring brothers \u2013 embodiments of good and evil \u2013 behind the school, the prologue alone groans with backstory.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, the dialogue labours the obvious. It\u2019s the kind of film where characters are compelled to say, \u201cI thought fairies were supposed to be nice\u201d when encountering vicious variants, lest viewers failed to spot the twist. The students, similarly, deliver thudding banalities about their place in the storybook continuum. \u201cMy father, Captain Hook, he\u2019s got a pretty awesome ship,\u201d says one. \u201cI\u2019ll try not to be too charming,\u201d says a prince, cheesily, when talk of \u201ctrue love\u2019s kiss\u201d enters the picture.<\/p>\n
Other gaps in plot are filled by Cate Blanchett\u2019s voiceover, which gradually emerges as a character \u2013 or, rather, a quill called the Storian, a self-consciously writerly conceit that has the inadvertent effect of making the film seem dead on the page. The production designers do enliven proceedings in some aspects; the \u2018Groom Room\u2019 and other environs flaunt a kitschier front than the Potter saga\u2019s tour of British castles, but the school is an extended Hogwarts otherwise, from forbidden forests to turrets, moats and great halls.<\/p>\n