Y’know, I’m starting to think that Paul Feig is just a hack. After his take on Ghostbusters failed to please (and honestly, whatever defences I had for it just grow fainter in my memory in the years since I watched it), he seems to be trying to do anything except for the raunchy comedy that he showed skill at with Bridesmaids, The Heat, and even Spy. A Simple Favor had him put on his best French affectation, and yeah, it was pretty good, but that was mainly from the borrowed aesthetics rather than anything identifiably him. Then there was his attempt at a British rom-com with Last Christmas, which is still one of the most laughable misfires I’ve ever covered on here for how it mangled the songs of George Michael. And now, he’s trying to make a high fantasy school setting, some proper 1st wave YA material, and… yikes.
This has to be the least appealing fantasy setting I have ever seen. The titular School, from start to finish, is presented with overacted winks that it’s operating on an oversimplistic worldview of everything fitting into just ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’. When main characters Sophie and Agatha are dragged into the school, because this clearly isn’t the kind of place anyone would willingly choose to go to, they are put in what they keep insisting are the wrong schools, with the fairy tale afficionado Sophie (Sophia Anne Caruso) ending up in the Evil school, while weirdo and suspected witch Agatha (Sofia Wylie) goes to Good school. Except this is a place where Evil sucks and Good is even worse for how vanity-stricken it is, because this pushes the thinnest of thinly-veiled morality plays on how the world doesn’t work this way, while consistently failing to show how this world would work this way, even as a façade.
To add to the Divergent levels of failure in world-building, Feig’s direction and screenplay plays everything at such an obnoxious and shrieking volume that there is no sense of intrigue or mystery or even fun about any of it. Almost every actor here tries to walk the line between entertainingly hammy and just plain shrill, with most of them failing to split the difference, but the ones who are trying to sell this all seriously might be even worse. At least the ones who are performing for the cheap seats look like they’re having fun with it; the others just look miserable to be here, beyond the extent that the plot might allow for. It’s a fantasy setting that feels like it’s ashamed of being a fantasy setting.
This isn’t helped by the presentation, which goes even further beyond obnoxious into making me genuinely angry at what I was seeing. The fight choreography is admittedly pretty good, for as little focus is put on the action scenes here, but I truly hate these soundtrack choices. In a showing of a complete lack of fucks to give about the regal and mystical setting, the needle drops here consist of a lot of modern dark girlboss-pop from Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish (no, Bad Guy isn’t used, but that might be the only obvious choice that isn’t made here). Not dragging the songs themselves, bear in mind; just that their use here does not fit with the story. Then there’s the appearance of Britney Spears’ Toxic. Y’know all those slowed-down, melodramatic remixes of pop songs that seem to be in every movie trailer nowadays? Yeah, they used that version of Toxic here, in the actual film. Not even joking, this might be the worst use of licensed music I’ve ever seen.
It’s just so overengineered as to suck out whatever potential enjoyment there could have been in this. The school setting seems far more interested in Mean Girls clique bullshit than any kind of unique world-building, the actual fantastical elements are convoluted to the point of ridiculousness, and more than ever, I truly hate Paul Feig’s film craft here, managing to recreate all the unappealing smugness of Ghostbusters 2016 and not even being able to salvage it with a decent final act. I know that Netflix isn’t doing well nowadays, and they’re likely desperate for some kind of long-form franchise to lean on, but please, please, leave this one alone.
No comments:
Post a Comment