Descendants (2015)

The teenage son of the king and queen of Auradon offers the trouble-making children of villains a chance to attend prep school in the kingdom.

Director:

Kenny Ortega

Writers:

Josann McGibbon, Sara Parriott

Stars:

Dove Cameron, Cameron Boyce, Booboo Stewart

Nominated for 1 Primetime Emmy. Another 2 wins & 2 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Dove Cameron	...	Mal
Cameron Boyce	...	Carlos
Booboo Stewart	...	Jay
Sofia Carson	...	Evie
Mitchell Hope	...	Ben
Melanie Paxson	...	Fairy Godmother
Brenna D'Amico	...	Jane
Sarah Jeffery	...	Audrey
Zachary Gibson	...	Doug
Jedidiah Goodacre	...	Chad Charming
Dianne Doan	...	Lonnie
Dan Payne	...	Beast
Keegan Connor Tracy	...	Belle
Wendy Raquel Robinson	...	Cruella de Vil
Maz Jobrani	...	Jafar

Storyline

Ben, son of Belle and the once selfish Beast, is poised to become next on the throne, however he is not ready and allows the villain kids from the Isle of the Lost to attend Auradon Prep. From there, things go way down hill.

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Plot Keywords:

snow white character | belle character | fairy godmother character | ravenna character | regina mills character | 

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Taglines:

They're not bad. They're just born that way.

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Genres:

Comedy | Family | Fantasy | Musical

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Certificate:

TV-G

Did You Know?

Trivia

Doug (Dopey's son) tries to name the seven Dwarfs when he meets the evil kids for the first time, but he keeps forgetting one (Sneezy). This is a joke that refers to when people are asked to name the seven Dwarfs, they nearly always forget one.

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Goofs

When the four children our trying to get inside of the museum you see the security guard sitting in his chair, but when it goes in for a close up of "Maleficent's spinning wheel" he is not in the chair. Then in the next scene he is back sitting in the chair.

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Quotes

[the villains watch Ben's coronation on TV. Snow White covers the coronation]
Evil Queen: [mocking] I'm Snow White, the fairest of them all.
[scoffs]
Evil Queen: Please, she's definitely had work done.

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Alternate Versions

Subsequent rebroadcasts of the film after 2015 moved the end credits to the beginning of the movie and removed the end credits video with Shawn Mendes singing "Believe", replacing it with the last few minutes of "Set it Off".

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Connections

Referenced in Late Night with Seth Meyers: Mariska Hargitay/Lizzy Caplan/Sam Fender/Terence Higgins (2019)

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Soundtracks

Set It Off
Performed by Dove Cameron, Sofia Carson, Cameron Boyce, Booboo Stewart, Mitchell Hope, Sarah Jeffery Jeff Lewis (uncredited), Destani Wolf (uncredited) and Dani Rose (uncredited)
Written by Sam Hollander, Josh Edmondson, Grant Michaels, Craig Lashley and Charity Daw
Produced by Sam Hollander and Josh Edmondson
Co-Produced by Grant Michaels

User Reviews

Not rotten, but more cheesy than it is nostalgic

Love Disney and loved the concept. Plus not all the Disney Channel films are bad, few if any are "great" but some are watchable, and Kristin Chenoweth is always worth watching.

'Descendants' is a relative waste of pretty good potential. Some good things save it from being worse, but it is sad to see one of the better concepts of any Disney Channel film done not enough with. Here's the good things first of all. Chenoweth is the best thing about it, she is gloriously evil as Maleficent and she once again how enviously amazing a singer and song interpreter she is (one will not believe how such a big voice with a wide range of tone colour could come out of a 4 foot 11 petite woman like Chenoweth), regardless of how she's recorded and what song is thrown at her.

Fortunately, her musical number "Evil Like Me" is one of the film's better and catchier numbers and Chenoweth sings the heck out of it. A couple of the other songs are surprisingly tuneful too, "If Only" and "Believe" especially and the rendition of "Be Our Guest", while not in the same league as the original, is fun. There are some nice vibrant and suitably Gothic colours and sets as well as some nice energy and playful references to the likes of 'Hocus Pocus'.

Not all the songs work though. Some are not that memorable and have some cheesy lyrics and either over-kinetic or limp choreography while others like "Rotten to the Core" have a major cringe factor all round. The cast all do their best but are undone by most of the characters being blandly one-dimensional, with most of the villains being under-explored and the heroes not being given enough likable traits to be rootable. The only really interesting characters are Maleficent and the Fairy Godmother, while doormat-written-all-over-her-forehead Belle is especially wronged.

Too much of the dialogue is an excess of cornball cheese, while the story generally lacks imagination and under-cooks too many of some good ideas and replaces them with too much intelligence-insulting absurdity. The costumes look amateurish and bargain-bin-special quality and the lip synching is sloppy. The photography is slick generally but there are drab moments too.

Overall, watchable rather than rotten but has too much cheese and blandness and not enough nostalgia and imagination. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Details

Official Sites:

DisneyNOW Official Site

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

31 July 2015 (USA)

Also Known As:

Descendants

Filming Locations:

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Company Credits

Production Co:

Bad Angels Productions, A 5678 Production, Disney Channel

Technical Specs

Runtime:

112 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

16:9 HD