‘The School for Good and Evil’ Review: Charlize Theron and Kerry Washington Get All Dressed Up for Nothing in Paul Feig’s YA Fantasy Misfire

Shaking off the mud of years in studio growth hell, Soman Chainani’s series-spawning YA novel, The College for Good and Evil, lumbers its method to the display screen trailing not solely the luggage of Harry Potter and Miss Peregrine’s House for Peculiar Youngsters, however that of too many knockoffs to listing. Given his inexperience with fairy story fantasy, it’s no shock that Paul Feig displays zero really feel for the style’s world-building. Nonetheless, it is a uniquely tiresome slog — madly over-plotted, thuddingly spinoff, insanely overlong and slathered in a giant symphonic rating that strives to infuse momentum right into a saga with minimal emotional stakes.

Acquired and put into manufacturing by Netflix after it stalled at Common, it’s a lavishly appointed function, albeit in a cloying, candy-colored method, and possibly younger teenagers and tweens who fancy themselves as princesses or witches may discover one thing to get pleasure from. Good luck to them. I by no means would have dreamt I’d don’t have any love for a film during which an offended teen fumes, “That hag is my mom!” However that is what we’ve come to.

The prologue immediately drops us right into a suffocatingly synthetic CG world the place twin brothers Rafal and Rhian (each performed by Equipment Younger), who created the college to keep up the stability between good and evil, have interaction in videogame-style swordplay in a spot ominously known as “The Duel Area” that’s by no means talked about once more. However after eons of peaceable co-existence, Rafal is out of the blue uninterested in the established order. “I choose chaos,” he tells by-the-book Rhian, who warns him that conjuring “blood magic” will eat him.

“Evil doesn’t cooperate. Evil doesn’t share,” Rafal tells his brother. “After I’m achieved, evil received’t lose.”

Reduce to a few years later in a faraway place the place a brand new story unfolds, periodically narrated by Cate Blanchett along with her crispest storybook authority.

Sophie (Sophia Anne Caruso) is an orphan, advised by her late mom she was destined to vary the world. However change appears unlikely in sleepy Gavaldon. Simply over the hill in one other cottage lives Agatha (Sofia Wylie), whose mom is a failed witch with excessive hopes for her daughter. The 2 women are finest buddies, laughing off the bullying of youngsters who name them freaks and carving their pledge of an everlasting bond into the village Wishing Tree.

Once they be taught of the existence of the College for Good and Evil (from Patti LuPone, no much less), Sophie crops her software letter within the bark folds of the tree. Earlier than lengthy, she’s being carried off by an enormous skeletal chicken known as a stymph, with Aggie latching on for the journey.

However the chicken drops them in what each women are satisfied is the fallacious college. Petite blonde Sophie, who desires of changing into Cinderella, lands in Goth Central among the many “Nevers,” presided over by archly malevolent dean Girl Lesso (Charlize Theron). (We all know she’s imply by the best way she snaps her using crop, like Joan Crawford in Queen Bee.)

Feisty Agatha, who would have been proper at residence with the aspiring witches and warlocks, finds herself surrounded by tittering princesses in pastel ballgowns among the many “Evers,” receiving instruction from sugary Professor Dovey (Kerry Washington). Magnificence lessons are carried out by Professor Anemone (Michelle Yeoh), the resident Tyra, who fails women for poor smiling approach.

Regardless of the insistence of Sophie and Aggie that there’s been a mistake of their enrollment, the College Grasp (Laurence Fishburne) insists there aren’t any errors. Their roles are already written within the pages of the Storian, a fairy story tome penned by a magical quill that explains the place all Blanchett’s plummy “And so it got here to cross, blah, blah, blah…” interjections are coming from. The one answer, apparently, is for Sophie to win her real love’s kiss, so she units her sights on Tedros (Jamie Flatters), son of King Arthur, who has half the college swooning. However relationship between Evers and Nevers is strictly forbidden, wouldn’t you already know it?

If all that have been distilled right into a clear narrative thread, it might need been considerably fascinating. However there’s a lot muddle in David Magee and Feig’s screenplay that we maintain veering off on dreary detours like a survival class in a forest of darkish enchantments run by an elf (Peter Serafinowicz) who’s like a foul standup act.

Principally, the plot revolves across the inevitable check of Sophie and Aggie’s friendship, which is additional corrupted by the return of Rafal in a whirling spiral of blood. His sinister guarantees of absolute rule seduce Sophie over to the darkish aspect. Cue the compulsory glam makeover, maniacal cackling and slo-mo energy strut as soon as she assembles her bad-girl crew. Then it’s all-out conflict throughout the Annual Evers Ball, with the Nevers hurling firebombs and different normal CG mayhem in a conflict that’s too busy and messy to observe.

It’s additionally simply by no means very attention-grabbing. In fact, Aggie will discover a method to save Sophie and the college from Rafal’s reign of terror as a result of the schematic nature of the convoluted story means the wannabe unhealthy lady is inherently good. And good conquers evil. Yawn.

Feig appears adrift in a film the place the comedy is incidental slightly than the driving power. Possibly he thought he was making a Princess Bride for a brand new era, however there’s nothing actual sufficient right here, even inside the elastic parameters of a fairy story, to elicit a lot funding. What makes an attempt there are at humor are largely so numbingly unfunny that you just may battle to imagine it’s directed by the identical man who did Bridesmaids and Spy.

Nor are the actors a lot enjoyable. Theron, Washington and Fishburne all look splendid in designer Renée Ehrlich Kalfus’ luxurious costumes, however their starchy mid-Atlantic accents inhibit their performances. At the least till they neglect about them. Yeoh is simply embarrassingly under-utilized. Caruso (who performed the Winona Ryder position in Broadway’s Beetlejuice musical) is caught with a personality so inconsistent she’s annoying, whereas Wylie brings some welcome spirit to beleaguered Agatha.

Proper all the way down to the sprinkling of pop — Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, 2WEI’s thundering cowl of Britney Spears’ “Poisonous” — the film panders to its target market with puppyish eagerness. However it’s a charm-deprived, thrill-free endeavor that by no means actually will get off the bottom.