We're not gonna lie, "The School for Good and Evil" was fun especially for its primary target audience. But this was a little bit imbalanced to our taste spending a huge chunk of its 147 minute runtime on doing little but barrels down through a lot of its story in its last half hour. It's frustrating because we know this could have offered so much more than cool eye-candy. But it is what it is. Good or bad.
Bestfriends Agatha (Sofia Wylie) and Sophie (Sophia Anne Caruso) are from a small town of Gavaldon are suddenly transported into the School for Good and Evil. But there seems to be a mix-up as Agatha is gifted to the School for Good while Sophie is dropped in the School for Evil. Thinking that there was a grave mistake, the Schoolmaster (Laurence Fishburne) reveals that only true love’s kiss can change the rules and send the girls to their rightful schools. But when a dark and dangerous figure reemerges and targets Sophie, the girl's plan to find true love's kiss is set aside as the threat of a Never After ending happening becomes deathly real.
With an impressive cast and its stellar production production, it's pretty obvious that Netflix hopes that "The School for Good and Evil" will become one of its biggest properties. But did they do enough? Maybe for the young adult crowd they did but everyone else may beg to differ. Central to our hesitation was how the film actually felt while watching it. It may have looked amazing at times (for example, that finger-glow montage was easily our favorite scene) but there was something missing while watching the film. Most of it felt shallow, predictable, and missing that special sauce to be more than a run-off-the-mill fantasy film that we have all grown accustomed to. We also didn't like how the film breezes through key plot points in its last half hour or so as it tried to blaze through its story spending so much time on unnecessary build up of the schools. All was not bad though as we definitely loved the dynamic and chemistry between the Sofia Wylie and Sophia Anne Caruso as Agatha and Sophie. In their own scenes, they also found distinctive ways to shine on their own.
We actually thought that Netflix could have made this into a series instead of a film. With the amount of material the first book had, this could have worked so much better if it wasn't crunched down into a two and a half hour experience when it actually needed at least twice of its current length to be effective. For us, this was a missed opportunity and the approach wasn't the best one that Netflix could have taken. Unfortunately, "The School for Good and Evil" was entertaining but it's the kind of film you probably won't talk about right after it ends.
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