Ever since I saw the teaser trailer for this movie, my inner book fan was squealing with joy. I've been waiting for this series to get adapted for the longest time. I was excited to see what they were going to do with this series and how they could improve upon it or highlight what made it so good.
This review will address both the good and the bad, but don't let the six-rating fool you, this movie is very campy and stylish, which might seem good to some, but others might seem like generic fantasy fluff.
For the positives, the set design was breathtaking, and the backgrounds were scenic and colorful, the schools each fit the aesthetics perfectly, the good school was gold with whites and pastels while the evil school was gothic, gritty and dark with lots of black colors, something akin to Harry Potter. The costumers deserve a raise because they made the prettiest outfits ever, aside from a few, they were gorgeous.
As usual with a star-studded cast, the A-listers were great in their roles, but the main focus were on the two Sophias and they were really good in their roles, especially Sofia Wyles as Agatha. Kerry Washington and Charlize Theron were the show stealers, and their pedigree shows. Shoutout to Michelle Yeoh as well, her scene where she snapped was cathartic. While the rest of the cast feels bloated, they did the best with what they could.
The negatives are why this film didn't get a high rating from me. Firstly, whoever edited this movie needs to go back to film school, because it was choppy, chaotic and badly shot. I had a hard time focusing on certain scenes, especially the action ones, and it was just a painful viewing experience because of how zoomed in things were.
While I praise the acting, the characters relationships aside from Sophie and Agatha's, were forced and had little to no development. This goes hand in hand with the bad editing and rushed pacing. Sophie's friendship with the other Never girls was done and dusted in under five minutes, they initially hate each other, but then after a makeover and truce suddenly they're besties, huh??? Hort is also a simp for Sophie which is in the books, but the way he's written just makes him come off creepy and desperate, which I guess fits but is kind of off putting.
Agatha's character doesn't feel like she progresses, if anything she stagnates. She doesn't necessarily grow as a person, but instead she stays the way she is, which kind of fits the story's theme, but it felt like her character was stuck on repeat with not much nuance other than being the "mom friend" who knows what's best for others, she's rarely wrong and the pure princess thing feels like an excuse for why her character barely feels fleshed out, but I guess that's what the sequel is for. Also, she rarely uses her magic and just stands around yelling at people to stop the violence, that's basically her character in a nutshell, half the time she feels underutilized and just there, but her actress made some of it work.
Sophie is the worst offender in this cast. In the books, sure she was whiny and bratty, but there was a gradual shift from book to book where it would show her change of character from wannabe princess to embracing her evil side, say what you want about the books, but here it was sloppily handled.
One minute she wants to speak to the manager about being in the wrong school, next she tries embracing her villainous side, then immediately gets teary eyed over a letter Agatha sent, she treats people like garbage and insists she's not evil, then she signs a blood magic pact with an evil guy in a mirror and then once a boy walks into the picture, suddenly she loses all common sense, and her agency goes out the window. She had her good moments, but it was undercut by the horrendous editing and rushed story pacing.
Speaking of rushed pacing, for a movie that is over two and a half hours long, it seemed in quite a hurry to be finish because they tried cramming in so much at once that it was just annoying. It started off great giving us a history lesson about the brothers, then cutting to the two main girls but after they're in the school, it's like the filmmakers gave up halfway, rushed the project, broke it into pieces, cobbled it back together at the halfway point and then Netflix streamed it.
This not only hurt the story which seemed to jump from plot point to plot point and also ruining the future sequel's development, but it hurt the characters too as I mentioned. Again, how did Sophie rally so many villains to join her side so quickly when they initially thought she was a brat and didn't like her. Her villain transformation is literally cut like a bad TikTok video with Billie Eilish music added on to sink it in. I just need to say it, because I'm so sick and tired of hearing "you should see me in a crown" in every single YA related adaptation or any story with a villainous character moment, please make something original or choose a different song, I know this series is for young adults, but please there are other pop artists out there than Eilish, please pick someone else.
Also, small nitpick, the music should have been fantastical or if you want pop music, do classical compositions or covers like in Bridgerton. Hearing techno or modern music in a fantasy setting was jarring and not anachronistic like how Shrek does it, there it served a purpose.
Also wasting Cate Blanchett for a simple voice role didn't do her justice, she deserved to be in a better role than just being a floating pen. This may be based off a book and its meta for a pen to narrate the story, but can we drop narration in general when it comes to movies, video games or tv shows. We can infer what's going to happen on screen without someone telling us outright what's going to happen, it feels patronizing if anything. A book can get away with this, since the writing needs to do the heavy lifting and describe everything to you, with a movie you can cut that out, but that's just me.
Lastly, if the sequel bait is going to follow the second book, then I hope it's done better because that material is going to be a wild can of worms.
Anyway, that's my review, I enjoyed how campy and stylish it was and it did appease the inner book fan in me, but if you're expecting the big budget to justify some of the weird choices made here, then you're looking in the wrong place.
My point is this show should have been a tv series. It overcorrected a lot of things from the books, and I felt that if it were a tv show, you could have explored these relationships and story beats better than what we got here.
This review will address both the good and the bad, but don't let the six-rating fool you, this movie is very campy and stylish, which might seem good to some, but others might seem like generic fantasy fluff.
For the positives, the set design was breathtaking, and the backgrounds were scenic and colorful, the schools each fit the aesthetics perfectly, the good school was gold with whites and pastels while the evil school was gothic, gritty and dark with lots of black colors, something akin to Harry Potter. The costumers deserve a raise because they made the prettiest outfits ever, aside from a few, they were gorgeous.
As usual with a star-studded cast, the A-listers were great in their roles, but the main focus were on the two Sophias and they were really good in their roles, especially Sofia Wyles as Agatha. Kerry Washington and Charlize Theron were the show stealers, and their pedigree shows. Shoutout to Michelle Yeoh as well, her scene where she snapped was cathartic. While the rest of the cast feels bloated, they did the best with what they could.
The negatives are why this film didn't get a high rating from me. Firstly, whoever edited this movie needs to go back to film school, because it was choppy, chaotic and badly shot. I had a hard time focusing on certain scenes, especially the action ones, and it was just a painful viewing experience because of how zoomed in things were.
While I praise the acting, the characters relationships aside from Sophie and Agatha's, were forced and had little to no development. This goes hand in hand with the bad editing and rushed pacing. Sophie's friendship with the other Never girls was done and dusted in under five minutes, they initially hate each other, but then after a makeover and truce suddenly they're besties, huh??? Hort is also a simp for Sophie which is in the books, but the way he's written just makes him come off creepy and desperate, which I guess fits but is kind of off putting.
Agatha's character doesn't feel like she progresses, if anything she stagnates. She doesn't necessarily grow as a person, but instead she stays the way she is, which kind of fits the story's theme, but it felt like her character was stuck on repeat with not much nuance other than being the "mom friend" who knows what's best for others, she's rarely wrong and the pure princess thing feels like an excuse for why her character barely feels fleshed out, but I guess that's what the sequel is for. Also, she rarely uses her magic and just stands around yelling at people to stop the violence, that's basically her character in a nutshell, half the time she feels underutilized and just there, but her actress made some of it work.
Sophie is the worst offender in this cast. In the books, sure she was whiny and bratty, but there was a gradual shift from book to book where it would show her change of character from wannabe princess to embracing her evil side, say what you want about the books, but here it was sloppily handled.
One minute she wants to speak to the manager about being in the wrong school, next she tries embracing her villainous side, then immediately gets teary eyed over a letter Agatha sent, she treats people like garbage and insists she's not evil, then she signs a blood magic pact with an evil guy in a mirror and then once a boy walks into the picture, suddenly she loses all common sense, and her agency goes out the window. She had her good moments, but it was undercut by the horrendous editing and rushed story pacing.
Speaking of rushed pacing, for a movie that is over two and a half hours long, it seemed in quite a hurry to be finish because they tried cramming in so much at once that it was just annoying. It started off great giving us a history lesson about the brothers, then cutting to the two main girls but after they're in the school, it's like the filmmakers gave up halfway, rushed the project, broke it into pieces, cobbled it back together at the halfway point and then Netflix streamed it.
This not only hurt the story which seemed to jump from plot point to plot point and also ruining the future sequel's development, but it hurt the characters too as I mentioned. Again, how did Sophie rally so many villains to join her side so quickly when they initially thought she was a brat and didn't like her. Her villain transformation is literally cut like a bad TikTok video with Billie Eilish music added on to sink it in. I just need to say it, because I'm so sick and tired of hearing "you should see me in a crown" in every single YA related adaptation or any story with a villainous character moment, please make something original or choose a different song, I know this series is for young adults, but please there are other pop artists out there than Eilish, please pick someone else.
Also, small nitpick, the music should have been fantastical or if you want pop music, do classical compositions or covers like in Bridgerton. Hearing techno or modern music in a fantasy setting was jarring and not anachronistic like how Shrek does it, there it served a purpose.
Also wasting Cate Blanchett for a simple voice role didn't do her justice, she deserved to be in a better role than just being a floating pen. This may be based off a book and its meta for a pen to narrate the story, but can we drop narration in general when it comes to movies, video games or tv shows. We can infer what's going to happen on screen without someone telling us outright what's going to happen, it feels patronizing if anything. A book can get away with this, since the writing needs to do the heavy lifting and describe everything to you, with a movie you can cut that out, but that's just me.
Lastly, if the sequel bait is going to follow the second book, then I hope it's done better because that material is going to be a wild can of worms.
Anyway, that's my review, I enjoyed how campy and stylish it was and it did appease the inner book fan in me, but if you're expecting the big budget to justify some of the weird choices made here, then you're looking in the wrong place.
My point is this show should have been a tv series. It overcorrected a lot of things from the books, and I felt that if it were a tv show, you could have explored these relationships and story beats better than what we got here.