If House of the Dragon and The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power have one thing in common (besides pacing issues), it's that they take themselves very seriously – one could argue, more seriously than any franchise in which dragons are a thing should. The Netflix film The School for Good and Evil looked like the perfect antidote fantasy-wise. One film reviewer compared its vibe to Barbara Cartland, which made it an appealing prospect when I was looking for fluffy weekend entertainment. The film's length was a bit daunting at approximately two hours twenty minutes, but fairy-tale based fantasy is the part of the genre I enjoy most, so I had to give it a go.
Not long after I started watching I thought to myself: "I forgot fairy tales are usually meant for kids". Even if the film started getting into slightly more adult (or at least teenage) concerns later on, this reminds you more of early than late Harry Potter (I'm talking about the HP films here as I haven't read the books). If you're a grown-up, this is by no means required viewing. Having said that, I wasn't bored. It was light-hearted fun in the same vein as Harry Potter and the Disney Descendants films and had the sense to question its own daft premise.
Is The School for Good and Evil derivative, then? I think it's fair to say it is. It's based on a book series where the first book was published 2013, well after the Harry Potter craze had started – though, it has to be said, two years before the first Descendants movie. Just tell me if the film setup sounds familiar: The School for Good and Evil is a school where future fairy-tale characters are trained for the roles they are to play as good and evil protagonists in various tales. Two girls who feel out of place in a humdrum village read about it and one of them, who imagines herself as a princess, longs to go there. In the end, they are both taken there, but the princess-wannabe is dropped off at the School for Evil, while her no-nonsense friend (believed to be a witch in their home village) is dropped off in the School for Good. Much what-am-I-doing-here-ing ensues.
Yeah, we've seen this before. We've had magic plus school, fairy tales plus school, fictional characters plus school... Without having seen it, I believe the whole training for future roles in fairy tales thing was the premise for the animated series Ever After High which the Descendants films were accused of borrowing from. The critical look at what is considered good and evil in a fairy-tale context we recognise from Once Upon A Time and, I hate to admit it, the Shrek movies. Fervent Oncer that I am, I will always claim that Once tackled the subject matter best by nuancing the picture rather than just flipping the coin and making the good characters bad and vice versa: the villains, though incredibly charismatic, are still villains, and still have to reform to get their happy endings – well, sort of. For all that, I'm not above a bit of simple ragging of vain, empty-headed princes and princesses, but no-one can say that it's original.
The School for Good and Evil does less simple coin-flipping than the Shrek films or, say, Maleficent, and I liked the way it called out the nasty actions that "good" characters sometimes commit in classic fairy tales. On the other hand, the fairy-tale flavour is pretty generic: most of the school pupils are supposed to be the offspring of existing good and bad characters, but they don't particularly resemble their famous parents. Instead, you pretty much have goth kids versus popular kids. Sophie, the girl who's dropped off at the School for Evil, thinks she belongs in the School for Good because she's pretty, but her selfishness is supposed to make evil the better fit. But plenty of the princesses in the School for Good are equally self-obsessed, so her confusion is understandable. Seeing as the franchises I've mentioned aren't churning out new material, though, I can make do with this kind of fare. It's not the best fairy-tale-based fantasy has to offer, but it's not the worst either.
One thing I find hard to understand, though, is the popularity of the magic school. When Harry Potter rose to fame, I sort of saw it: there was the combination of two popular genres, (children's) fantasy and tales from boarding school à la Malory Towers, and it seemed like a fun enough idea for one book series for kids. But since then, I've come across magic schools time and time again. There's the Blythewood book series by Carol Goodman; the Winx TV series on Netflix that I've quite enjoyed (I know it's for teens, but... Robert James-Collier is in it, and that's my excuse); a book series by Naomi Novik which features a school that, I suppose as a contrast to other fictional magic schools, is sinister and not cosy at all; the list could go on. And here's the thing. Learning magic at school – even a sinister one – is lame. It deglamourises and demystifies magic. Maybe child readers fondly imagine that if they were taught spells and potions at school they'd enjoy it. Well, they'd be wrong. Even the most interesting subject loses its charm when you have to do homework on it.
I vastly prefer fantasy franchises where magic is either self-taught or the subject of one-on-one tutorials with suitably cool mentors. Learning the ropes from a (non-demonic) sorcerer who's at the top of his game: now that's what I call real magic. Being stuck in a school just isn't enchanting enough.
