I Hate the New Descendants Movie

Disney released their latest addition to the Descendants franchise on Friday - Descendants: Wicked Wonderland - and so naturally, I watched that thing. This is the fifth Descendants movie, and it follows Descendants: The Rise of Red to expand the spin-off world that started there. The further we go into the incoherent, faraway land of desperately added characters, the funnier, arguably, it gets.

My favourite character, ugly Awkwafina cat.

I'm a devotee of these movies at this point, and so when this one opened on a deeply ugly multicoloured cat who is 1. the nasty daughter of the Cheshire Cat (okay, awesome), and 2. voiced by Awkwafina, I was screaming with joy and anticipation.

The Mad Hatter's son is here!

Each of these movies has the unenviable task of giving us a new hokey villain, and in this one it's the Mad Hatter, whose name is Maddox Hatter, obviously. The film opens with its best song, which is all about how weird it is that the events of the previous film (time travel alteration shenanigans) made our protagonists' mothers different. Red, the daughter of the previously evil Queen of Hearts (played by Rita Ora, who I'm happy to see anywhere outside of her notorious Primark line), suddenly has a new younger sister named Pink, who will be one of many pointless characters with nothing to do in this accursed movie, and Chloe, the daughter of Cinderella and Charming, now has a boring mother (?!).

The song sets up, seemingly, for a plot about dealing with the bizarre repercussions of the imperfect way they saved their little world. And it seems fun! How will they fit in to their altered social lives? How will they adjust to the stranger-fication of their respective mothers? Will Red punch and kick her new pink sister? But tragically, the movie utterly casts out this teased presence of a fun plot for a highly dull traipse through Wonderland with a few dull extra characters (the gently gothic son of the Mad Hatter, the stand-offish daughter of Captain Hook, the idiotic Smee twins, and Luis, the empty son of Encanto's Luisa Madrigal).

Confusing.

There was a deep incoherence to The Rise of Red, but as is to be expected, it gets even more nonsensical here. The plot goes in the incredibly uninspired direction of dealing with the vague friction between the HKs (Hero Kids) and VKs (Villain Kids) once more, but the crux of the conflict lies in a forced argument between Red and Chloe. It seems that the children of the Descendants universe are destined to be forever haunted by their lineage. There is no real transcendence of the culture (that is, being of villain or hero stock, genetically or whatever) they are born into. Time and time again, they return to the zone of disconnection. Perhaps their acceptance of each other can only be fickle. A Hero Kid must once again be wounded by nothing.

One funny thing about this movie is that Maddox Hatter basically doesn't do anything. What on Earth he wants is impossible to figure out, but his trapping of poor Rita Ora, which serves as the catalyst for the entire film, consists of like, vaguely putting some vines in front of her. He's trapping her in her castle, I suppose, but to what end I'm not sure, and it looks so fake. She's just standing behind a plant. It really doesn't look like she's trapped. The Mad Hatter does not feel like a genuine threat, he just feels like an annoying trickster. Can we have some peril, please?

Luis Madrigal is also a funny addition. He exists purely to be a sexy boyfriend for Red - they sing a romantic duet together - but he is pointless. Does he have any thoughts? Doubtful.

Two queens just cheesing.

Anyway, the kids travel through Wonderland, encounter some weird set pieces left for them by Mr. Hatter that they navigate in song, they learn the eternal lesson that VKs are fine, and they rescue the impotent queen(s) after an interlude where one of the hero characters tries a bit of villainy. All is solved, and all is boring. 

The saddest thing about this movie may well be the dullness of its songs, but it is a particular tragedy that the very first one is the greatest, partly because of the more involved, interesting, coherent sort of narrative it teases. All of the best ideas presented in the movie are rapidly abandoned. We don't learn anything about the Mad Hatter or his son, or indeed the Cheshire Cat's crazy daughter, who exists just to do a little bit of taunting. Really, if you can't think of anything for the hideous multi-coloured CGI Awkwafina cat to do, maybe you shouldn't make the movie.

Me watching this movie.

I enjoyed some of the more fun nonsense of this movie, as I always must, and the insanely saturated colour palette, but it was undeniably stinky. I can't wait for the next one.

Two bright pink women out of five.

★★☆☆☆