The School for Good and Evil

Recommendation

More than any of the other movies that I’ve reviewed so far, this one has the largest disparity in my mind between the my actual opinion of the movie and my willingness to recommend it. I debated giving this a 4/5 because I think it is so bad that it’s good at a few points.

The middle portion of the movie, after the premise has been established and the characters introduced, was actually quite enjoyable. The film brings up some interesting commentary on the state of fairy tale stories in our current culture and makes an argument for friendship and empathy over black and white narratives.

Unfortunately, the entertaining portions of the movie are bookended by solid 30 minute chunks of pretty uninteresting exposition and resolution that don’t really tie in with the heart of the movie.

Ultimately I recommend this for the middle portion. There are moments that are unexpectedly violent and others that are completely bizarre that made that section of the movie interesting. If you are curious and have a Netflix subscription, I would say give it a watch. In particular, the target audience for this movie seems to be kids ages 8-14 or so. I suspect they would have enjoyed it much more than I did.

Thoughts

The Main Takeaways

There are two main arguments being made by the film that I mentioned in the recommendation section as having elevated this movie for me out of simply being “bad”. It takes the stance that the morality of fairy tales is inherently overly simplified and fails to acknowledge the middle ground where actual humans live. Additionally, it comments on the current state of fairy tales and talks about how someone truly “good” behaves.

Throughout the film, the two sides are at odds with one another and the characters on either side play out the roles that are given to them without questioning it. Only the protagonist, Agatha, seems to take issue with the system and at several points calls it out for being brutal and wrong when it is. The film clearly conveys this to the viewers by not shying away from some truly horrific scenes.

For example, there is a character that doesn’t really fit in with the hero school. He is constantly failing because he would rather be a grocery store owner than a hero in a story. When he does ultimately fail out, his body is disintegrated by a lightning storm in a grim scene. Letting that scene play out shows us that Agatha’s perspective is correct. It is no longer a theoretical discussion about right and wrong, but instead someone being shredded to pieces because the system demands it. It is clear that the system is cruel.

To add salt to the wound, they even resurrect his character and then promptly murder him again just to double down on the point. This is what I’m talking about when I say this movie does things that elevate it from something that can be simply written off as “bad”.

In response to Agatha’s comments about how horrible the school is and how it should be changed, the main teacher in charge of the school for Good lets down her facade and points out that Agatha’s behavior is correct and right, but what the current culture demands. As the viewer, this is the point where we’re told what the movie is trying to say. She talks about how they are teaching the princesses to be “good” in the way that culture currently prescribes them to be. It is shallow and self-serving, whereas Agatha’s empathy is how the heroes / the Good should really behave.

The Issues

If the movie were just the middle portion, I think it would be better in people’s estimations, but instead it is padded out with a lot of unnecessary plot on either end. The main problem is that the movie makes Sophie the antagonist, but also tries to resolve the wrapper story about the head of the school and his plan for world domination.

Imagine if Rafal was omitted from the story and instead it focused on how Sophie was made into a villain simply due to her circumstances. I think that would fit better with the core message and would help cut off a lot of the cruft. Add in a satisfying resolution to Sophie’s character arch and the result would be a much more focused and enjoyable film.

The actual ending of the movie is both unsatisfying and drawn out. Sophie is willing to sell out everyone up until Rafal tells her he intends to simply kill them all rather than rule them. I’m not actually sure why she’s comfortable with ruling over all of them as slaves, but draws the line if they die. At any rate, there’s no clear reason why she chooses to repent at that point. Her character simply does a 180 because the plot demands it. It doesn’t come off like any lesson was learned.

The movie then devolves into the heroes fighting the main villain which is sort of exactly what it was earlier arguing against doing. Instead of an ending that pays off Agatha’s perspective about people being both good and bad, it has an ending where the heroes kill a black and white, cut and dry, villain. It is completely internally inconsistent, and for me that’s why this movie falls down.

Random Galadriel

The movie is narrated by Cate Blanchett using the same exact tone and cadence as she did when she voiced Galadriel for Lord of the Rings. Because the movie is in a similar setting and genre it came off almost like a parody. It was very jarring to hear as someone who is a fan of the Lord of the Rings movies and gave the immediate impression that this was some cheap ripoff.

My best guess is that the filmmakers thought that her voice would transport people into the fantasy mindset in the same way that it did for Lord of the Rings, but because Galadriel is such an iconic character there’s really no way to hear the narration on not jump to those movies. It is transportive, but not in the way they hoped.