On Disney Channel original movies
Or, unnaturally colored hair and heavy handed metaphors
In the last two weeks or so, my children have become near-obsessed with the live action Monster High movie (and apparently Monster High 2, although I clearly can’t tell when they’re watching one versus the other, as I’ve only seen about half of the first movie). I have a line from the opening song (“I might be nervous but I’m an optimist”) stuck in my head most days. If you are not familiar, they are movies that are part of a franchise that originated as Mattel dolls to capture the tween demographic after they lose interest in Barbies. There’s a mummy, vampire, half werewolf/half human, Gorgon, Frankie Stein, a…yeti? Various monsters, basically. And yet no Microwaves Fish at Work Guy??
Strictly speaking, these are not Disney Channel Original Movies, as they’re Nickelodeon, but they are the spiritual descendants of the genre. You have some wholesomely attractive late teen/early 20s kids playing supernatural characters with very stylized wardrobe and wigs in unnatural colors. The two main franchises for these are Disney’s Zombies and Descendants franchises, which I now shall proceed to give you way more details about than you ever wanted. I don’t have time to do a full rewatch of all six-plus movies, so we’ll be working off memory and wikis, which is always extra fun.
Descendants series
Descendants
We’ll start with the Descendants franchise, since it kicked them off in 2015. Directed by Kenny Ortega (who you might know from directing Newsies, Hocus Pocus, or even Julie and the Phantoms) it is about the children—or descendants, if you will—of various Disney villains and heroes.
Quick plot (or the long plot): The villains and their kids were banished to the Isle of the Lost, but now that Belle and Beast’s son Ben is taking over Auradon, he’s going to create a program where some of the villain kids (VKs) get to cross the enchanted barrier to go to school. Children not being punished for the sins of their parents, everyone deserves a chance, etc.
It’s a musical, and most of the songs are fairly forgettable, but you know who plays Maleficent? KRISTIN CHENOWETH. Like, c’mon, that is a get for your direct-to-Disney musical movie! (It also has the jewel Kathy Najimi as the Evil Queen. And Dove Cameron, who isn’t exactly a huge star, but has subsequently appeared in the beloved Schmigadoon!)
Anyway, the VKs struggle with their new environment, being accustomed to the petty villainy of living in what is essentially a slum, but they do eventually Choose Good, there’s a big musical number at the end, Mal and Ben are in love. It’s a fun premise, the music is mid, overall I’d give it a 6.5.
Descendants 2
We’re back in Auradon, but now the VKs are fully integrated. Or are they? Mal feels compelled to change to fit in (even using a spell to make her purple hair blonde, ew) and because of her insecurity she and Ben have a falling out and she hoofs it back to the Isle, where she meets some new VKs, led by Uma (Ursula’s daughter).
Again I am underwhelmed by the songs, with Uma’s song being a notable exception. It runs a little long, but it’s catchy as heck. Uma has the very valid beef of being mad at the handful of kids who got to leave the island, while everyone else was left behind. No one is free until all of us are free! No token hires! etc. Ben is like, “Okay, you can come too” but that doesn’t really solve the underlying problem, well meaning white boy who isn’t even old enough to vote let alone run a country. Uma has other plans. I don’t remember exactly. I guess because Cotillion is on a boat, and so she’s got water powers? Idk, but she pulls an Ursula and goes full giant monster, Mal turns into a dragon (?!) to fight her, wins, reunites with Ben who actually loved her for who she is all along, big song and dance finale on the boat with some water.
The soundtrack is again uneven, with Uma’s song and the other VK song (“Chillin’ Like a Villain”) being the only ones I could sing off the top of my head. It also relies on a couple of Menken/Ashman covers, which is cheating. I give Descendants 2 two and a half stars.
Descendants 3
Okay, this is where it gets good. And also maybe convoluted, but whatever, I’m in it for the music. The songs are better overall, and we meet Hades. Played by Cheyenne Jackson. Perhaps not a household name, although you might recognize him from Julie and the Phantoms, a handful of episodes of Glee, or my personal favorite, the Xanadu Original Broadway Cast Recording.
Okay, story time. The latest batch of VKs are headed to Auradon (still segregating, tsk) and as they cross the barrier, Hades attempts to break through. Ben proposes to Mal (you are still children, no, at a prep school??) and she accepts, which makes Audrey (Sleeping Beauty’s daughter, and Ben’s ex) like, really TOed. So she steals some magical artefacts and becomes villainous! Because of the theft and Hade’s breakout attempt, Mal suggests permanently closing the barrier. Et tu, Mal? Classic case of the oppressed siding with their oppressors in order to maintain the small amount of power they think they have (*cough* women upholding the patriarchy *cough*).
Audrey curses Mal, so she’s got to steal the only object powerful enough to break the curse: Hade’s ember. So she has to go back to the Isle of the Lost and sneak into his lair (there’s a great bit with Cerberus) which brings us to my favorite number in the show, her duet with Hades…her absentee father. I’m just saying, they need more Broadway stars in these movies.
Meanwhile Audrey is wreaking havoc. Sleeping spell across the kingdom, turns Ben into a beast, turning people into stone—she’s on a spree. Mal is forced to team up with Uma in a very tenuous truce (another good musical number) to try to stop Audrey, at some point Mal is obliged to admit her plan to seal off the island, people are obviously furious, she has a great number that is so like, off-off-Broadway over the top Disney ballad, it’s fantastic. Mal is on her own trying to stop Audrey, Uma realizes she has to unite with Mal to reignite the ember (oh, did I mention the ember was extinguished? still not sure what the ember is, or why it is the source of his power, or why we had to create an entirely new object, but we’re going with it), thus defeating Audrey and lifting her spells. Mal asks Hades to use the ember to revive Audrey, and he makes the very good point that they are so willing to forgive her for her crimes and she’s not considered a villain, because she’s one of them. He’s calling you in girl, because that is a double standard. Anyway, everyone wakes up, makes up, they decide to relace the barrier between the two lands with a bridge, big finish, the end. I deem it 89% fresh.
There are other Descendants properties—some animated something or others, and a spin off movie, Descendants: the Rise of Red, which I was underwhelmed by the beginning of, then missed the rest of because they didn’t pause it while I made dinner. The spin off was necessary because the actor who played Carlos passed away and they basically refused to do another one without him.
Zombies series
Zombies
Okay, shifting gears to talk about the other major Disney franchise, Zombies. Zombies is set in the candy-colored town of Seabrook, where 50 years ago an accident at the power plant turned half of the town into brain-eating zombies. So obviously they had to build a wall to keep them away from the perfect non-zombies (red lining!). Then they created Z-bands that suppress the zombie impulses, so now some zombies get to transfer to Seabrook High (integration!). Zombie Zed and perfect cheerleader Addison start dating, but they have to keep it a secret (discrimination!). Zed joins the football team after fellow zombie Eliza hacks his Z-bank to let him tap into his zombie side. Evil head cheerleader Bucky finds out about it and gets his lackeys to use Eliza’s laptop to turn her, Zed, and Bonzo (don’t worry about him) into “full zombies” which gets them taken away by the zombie patrol. Most people actually support the zombies and Addison is all “they’re not the monster Bucky, you are!”
So Bucky kicks out all pro-zombie cheerleaders (blacklisting!) but then the cheer competition comes and now the Seabrook cheer squad doesn’t have enough cheerleaders to compete! So then Zed’s little sister—who isn’t even old enough for high school, so I don’t know why they allow it—joins them and tries to help, but she gets booed. Nevertheless she persists, the other zombies join in and obviously all know the same routine, the crowd rejoices. Zombietown and Seabrook tear down that wall (Mr. Gorbachev!) and celebrate with a block party.
The music is better than Descendants, overall. I particularly like the “Someday” and reprise, which they end up using throughout the whole series. The cheerleader songs are pretty good too, and of course the finales are always strong. I declare this one favorable [can you tell I just googled ways to rank things? I’m running out of ideas].
Oh wait, I forgot an important plot point: Addison’s blonde hair is a wig, which she wears over her slightly lighter “white” hair, that she feels compelled to hide in order to blend in. This becomes important in…
Zombies 2
Next up, Zombies 2! The zombies have pretty much assimilated into life in Seabrook. Awesome, wow. They cheerleaders are on their way back from cheer camp when the bus goes off the road into the forest and they discover evidence of the werewolves. Surprise, there are werewolves in Seabrook. Apparently the town founders battled with them over control of the moonstone and drove them into the woods.
The mayor finds out about the werewolf sighting and reinstates the anti-monster laws (were they still on the books, people? what happened to democracy??) which means now the zombies can’t go to Prawn (which is actually their pretty amusing version of prom). So Zed’s going to run for class president so that he can…go to Prawn? I don’t think that would actually give you permission, buddy, but I like your spirit.
Anyway, evil cheerleader Bucky also wants to run for class president, which he can’t do concurrently with cheer captain. So if he wins, Addison might get to be cheer captain and be less evil about it, but if he loses then Zed gets to be class president. How conflicting!
Meanwhile, the werewolves. They technically live in city limits and can go to high school, so they show up. But they refuse to take the zombies’ advice to assimilate and stick to their werewolfishness (hang on to that culture, gang!). But alas, their moonstone necklaces are losing power, and they are looking for their moonstone. And or their alpha, who is prophesied to be a girl with white hair…like Addison’s!!
Turns out the moonstone is under the power plant, but they want to demolish it, which would damage the moonstone, so the werewolves try to get Addison to claim her position as alpha. But it turns out she ISN’T!!
Prawn night comes, all the non-humans decide to crash it (civil disobedience!) and while they’re there the ground opens up and they realize the moonstone is fine, but blocked by a boulder, so Zed takes off his Z-band, hulks out, saves the day. They go back to the dance, everything is great. Until Addison goes to sleep, a blue meteor crashes to earth and makes her white hair glow blue!
The music in this one is even better than the first; the werewolf songs are the best. They also have a lot of purple makeup. A couple years ago I dressed up as the werewolf Wynter, her white hair pattern rather matching my own, and while adults had no idea who I was, several children were impressed, which is truly the highest praise. I give Zombies 2 a B.
Zombies 3
We’re in the home stretch! It turns out that blue light meteor was…aliens!
So Zed is trying to get a football scholarship to Mountain College, where Addison is going to go, and has to win the Big Game in order to prove his worth, I guess? Working twice as hard to get half as much, apparently. But the aliens show up the night before the game, looking for their Utopia. The aliens use the cheer competition as a cover for why they’re there, but the werewolves are suspicious.
The aliens discover the moonstone is lethal to them (why?) are going to alter Zed’s grades so he can get a scholarship on a loophole for improved grades, one of the aliens is I think nonbinary and has a crush on Zed (but then learns he’s taken and respectfully backs off), Addison gets accidentally beamed up to the mothership and finds out that “the Scout” was Addison’s grandma! Meaning Addison’s white hair is apparently because she’s an alien. It turns blue at some point, although I don’t remember when exactly. Her alien power causes Zed to zombie out during is college admission interview whoops, and the aliens suspect that the prized Seabrook Cup in the Cheer Off is actually the map back to their home planet. Everyone figures out that the aliens are trying to win the cup, but for some reason that’s bad, so they get them disqualified (how? I don’t remember) so Addison and the Mighty Shrimp win instead.
The werewolves crash the stage to out the aliens (c’mon guys, be cool) so they run out, realize the map to Utopia is actually in Addison’s DNA, so she has to go back with them. Zed wants to go too, but he can’t survive the ships energy (they do something with the moonstone and Z-bands for power or something?) then Zed beams back to earth. They take off, Zed is sad, but Addison is back just a couple days later, because they decoded that her grandma wanted the aliens to move to earth (because her granddaughter was her utopia or whatever) so they all come back, they have a big song and dance number, the non-binary alien is apparently with the non-alpha leader of the werewolves, Willa. Nonbinary, non heterosexual characters! (I think Willa is a lesbian, but that’s not canonical.)
The soundtrack is decent, although I think I still like Zombies 2 better. It’s hard to rank this one, because while I gotta give extra credit for non-cishet representation, the plot is uh..convoluted. But also, WE STILL DON’T KNOW WHO THE ALPHA IS. I just feel like that’s a big plot hole!! I give it a mild grimace on the pain face scale.
They might still tie that up, though, because apparently there is another Zombies movie in the works, this time with (drumroll lease) vampires! There are a looots of Zombies extra features and little videos and whooseits and whatsits, and I’m pretty sure my kids watched them all multiple times during the panini. But for parallelism’s sake (not to mention the length; if anyone is still reading this, I feel like I owe you a dollar) we will only recap the main three.
Do I even need to tie in a book to the chaos that is recapping six Disney Channel original movies?? Let’s give it a go.
I’m not generally into high fantasy novels; I’m not really a “ooh, there’s a map in the front” person. I’m definitely a *sees family tree in the front matter* *deep sigh* person. (I listened to the audiobook of One Hundred Years of Solitude a few years ago at work and literally had to download the family tree to my work computer to follow along. I do like a little light fantasy or paranormal. Witches and magic and that sort of thing.
I very much enjoyed A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon and A Demon’s Guide to Wooing a Witch, by Sarah Hawley. Some light paranormal, but nothing too out there. So I am quite looking forward to return to Glimmer Falls with A Werewolf’s Guide to Seducing a Vampire in a few weeks. Alas, I can’t tell you much about it, because I haven’t read an advance copy. I’m not nervous or an optimist, but I’m confident that it will be good.
When my kids were obsessed with the Descendants franchise *I* became obsessed with the Descendants franchise and honestly they moved on and I didn't. I still find those movies/songs fun as hell!
My favorite Cheyenne Jackson role is Danny on 30 Rock who starts as one of those guys who pretends to be a statue (or robot, maybe?) on the street for money and then becomes a cast member on the show within a show. I think he’s only on 30 Rock for a few episodes though.