(The Disneycember logo is shown, before showing clips from Descendants: The Rise of Red)
Doug (vo): Well, I reviewed the other three, why not review number four? Though you may notice there's not a four in the title and I think that's intentional. This isn't really a grand reunion of all the characters, and I guess to some extent, you can see why. I mean, one of them did pass away and they do address it, they are pretty respectful about it, not going into too much detail. I feel like if they made up some kind of excuse like, "Oh, this happened to them" or whatever, it'd feel kind of lame. Everybody knows what happened in real life, so we're just going to say the same thing happened here, he passed away and it's sad, but we always remember him. But he's not the only character that's absent. This installment mainly follows Chloe, the daughter of Cinderella, and a new character named Red, the daughter of the Queen of Hearts. And you know what? Fair enough. This is something I kind of wanted to see Disney do a little bit more of. Like, instead of Frozen II, why don't you just call it Anna? Instead of Toy Story 4, why don't you just call it Woody? Simplify it, you don't need to work in all these characters, especially when you don't have the ability to sometimes. So half the other characters are off in bullshit land doing whatever and we're mainly just focusing on these two. And I'll be 100% honest, for a little bit of time, I was kind of having fun with it. Oh, make no mistake, this is complete garbage, but I grew up in the '80s, I'm used to having something that's clearly a commercial, but it goes all out with it. Like, it's soulless, but it's creatively soulless, and for the first chunk of this movie, it's pretty entertaining.
Story[]
Doug (vo): Auradon has done quite a good job making a connection with the Isle of the Lost, so now they're extending an invitation to Wonderland, where the evil Queen of Hearts as you probably guessed rules with an iron fist. But there's one who stands up to her tyranny, her daughter, Red. That's right, it's another one of those "I don't like being a princess, I don't like my mother" movies. And do you really care? Look at this place, it looks amazing. This is one of the cooler, more original Wonderlands I've seen in a while. They're doing kind of a foreign exchange student thing, which is the idea of Chloe's parents, Cinderella and Prince Charming, played by...oh, someone who's already played Cinderella and Charming. Okay, that's...eh, it's kind of cool to see. But on top of that, Ursula's daughter, the pirate queen Uma is now running the school and she's going to run it like a pirate captain.
Review[]
Doug (vo): Okay, so there's a lot of possibilities for this, and like I said, for the first maybe 20–30 minutes, it goes all out crazy. I mean, look at this, they are not holding back. They don't care, they know this is bonkers and clichéd and has a lot of stuff you've seen in a million other things, but they're going to give it to you in a way that's silly, over-the-top and extremely creative. My initial thought was, "Oh, Red's going to get to the school and maybe Chloe's going to go to Wonderland and we're going to see these two different worlds collide", and obviously, the Queen's going to try and take over and maybe turn the school into kind of a Wonderland-type school. And again, the pirate queen being the principal is going to be really creative, going to turn into more of a ship. Heck, they don't even take that long to get to it, they just jump to the queen trying to take over, like, as soon as they arrive. Okay, cool, we're going to get to the good stuff.
(Various footage is shown, mostly focusing on Chloe, Red and the younger versions of Cinderella and the Queen of Hearts)
Doug (vo): But then...(sighs) Rose* has a time-traveling watch and they go back to when their mothers were kids. And you guessed it, this is where we spend the majority of the movie. Goddamn, that's lame. How much money did you spend on these sets? How long did it take to design this world? You have a literal Wonderland waiting for you and you just go back in time to a more boring version of the school?! And a lot of it is exactly what you think it would be, the two of them don't get along and then when they encounter the mothers, they're not exactly what they thought they'd be. And it's not awful, it's just forgettable, bland. Don't you know exactly what's going to happen here? Don't you know these two are going to get along? Don't you know they're going to discover something about their mothers they never discovered before? And yeah, this movie wasn't exactly that unpredictable, but again, it brought a fresh energy to it. This time-traveling thing just sucks out all the possibilities that could have happened with this.
*Red is the name of the character, not Rose.
(Footage focusing on the relationships between Red and her mother and Chloe and her mother is shown)
Doug (vo): Now, with that said, some of it works. I kind of like that Rose's mother is more loving and understanding to her when she's closer to her age, like neither of them have anything to be afraid of from the other, and because they are at similar points in their time, they can help each other out more. I guess I also like that Chloe finds out that in order to do the right thing, it doesn't always mean following the rules. That's actually not that bad a lesson to teach. But then again, the whole idea is showing, "Oh, don't judge a book by its cover," which I kind of like. I feel like in the last movie, they were just saying prejudice is bad, but they didn't dive that much into it, they just said, "Hey, anyone that's prejudiced is a bad person," and that's it. No, here, they actually can show that someone who you thought was bad maybe came from a good place...unless you're just a bad person.
(Footage focusing on the Disney villains is shown)
Doug (vo): Yeah, the villains are still here. There's all the really big baddies, Captain Hook and Hades, they're all just kids now. And yeah, no, we don't need to understand them, they're just bad. They can just be bad, they're the villains, but don't we have to be sympathetic to the Queen of Hearts? When will we understand that everything is not surface level except for these characters, that's 100% surface level?
(Footage focusing on Uma is shown, along with footage of Chloe and Red near the end)
Doug (vo): They spend a lot of time building up the pirate queen, but she's taken out of the picture almost immediately. As soon as the queen takes over the school, she's gone. Well, that's a letdown. Why promise all these cool things you're not going to deliver on? But okay, we have to sneak into this room to get this magic book to set everything right, and you know that's going to build up to the big climax at the end. Well, okay, they get the book, they say the magic spell, so how are we excitingly going to get to the ending? Well, I hate to tell you, you're already there. Yep; there is no climax to this movie. I don't even think there's really a third act. I was really legitimately shocked watching this, saying, "Wait, that...that's it? No, that...that can't be it." This is like the Wizard telling Dorothy, "You have to get the witch's broom," and then she just walks into the place, grabs it and then she's sent back home. And then the movie has the balls to tease another one, like, "Oh, you thought that was the happy ending?" I'm thinking, "Okay, well, maybe there is like a secret climax that they were hiding," but uh, nah, it cuts to the credits. I guess we were teased another one.
Final thought[]
Doug (vo): Oh, what a disappointment, and that's so weird saying that about a Descendants movie 'cause it's not like I really got that much into them to begin with. But sometimes, there's a little creativity, and again, I think it has fun with how imaginative it is at selling itself. You can tell people did put a lot of hard work into this, it usually shows on screen. And yeah, here, I can sense the hard work, it's just really misguided when it comes to following through with an idea 'cause it starts off with a lot of good ideas, like, this could be really crazy and enjoyable. But for whatever reason, they just throw it out halfway through. So yeah, I guess as a guy in his 40s, I didn't like it, but I don't think it's made for guys in their 40s. I can see maybe a handful of kids just sort of liking it for the songs and dancing, and they get to see people close to their age look cool in costumes and sing like pop stars. But I don't know how many are going to return to it. Like I said, I didn't really get into the previous movies, but I can see why others did, and I can see why kids would watch them over and over. I can't really see that happening much with this one. It's a shame, it built up a lot of potential, but for whatever reason, pulls the plug on all of them. I don't know if this is the last of these movies or not. I mean, they're certainly building up like there's going to be more. But if this is the direction they're going in, this franchise has clearly lost its wonder.
(The scene where Chloe and young Cinderella dance and sing together is shown)