The School for Good and Evil is a derivative piece of work… and not just Harry Potter but any number of other properties like Once Upon a Time, The Descendants, and Percy Jackson. A pair of dissimilar girls (and best friends) from the same small village are magicked away to the titular School for Good and Evil. They are placed in what each thinks is the wrong side of the school where they meet various offspring of storybook heroes and villains. Of course, there’s a Big Bad to contend with once they get past all the character setups and interpersonal drama.

I didn’t hate most of this movie… it’s perfectly serviceable, if pretty fuzzy brained and obvious. I guess to some pre-teens, the googly-eyed idea of a school catering to pretty princesses and nasty warlocks would be enticing and the idea that human nature isn’t so simply drawn might blow their minds. To the rest of us, you saw these big dramatic reveals coming and it’s all pretty pedestrian.

But the movie moves at a decent pace despite its improbably runtime and they pull a Harry Potter and hired actors too big for this movie to play some of the smaller parts. It’s nice to see Charlize Theron gleefully chew the scenery as the School for Evil matron… and Kerry Washington plays the school for good matron. Michelle Yeoh, Cate Blanchett’s voice, and Lawrence Fishburne round out the seasoned veteran cast.

Sophia Anne Caruso and Sofia Wylie play the two leads and, in between it being a nightmare calling them to set (Sophia… no… I meant Sofia!), they pull of their roles well enough. They aren’t deep characters but I’m sure they had fun with it, especially Sophia (not Sofia) who gets to dress all naughty goth and strut to cool music as the gal in the School for Evil.

The final act is pretty dreadful and repetitive as the movie descends to a bad action movie with tons of clichés (not like the dialog up to this point hasn’t been bargain basement clichés already). It comes close to ruining the movie as the final half hour is just lame attempts at thrills and excitement.

But there’s still some decent things in the movie. I can only hope if they get their obviously setup sequel, they find something more interesting to do with the generic School for Good and Evil. It might be worth watching.

Score: 74