After Beast's curse was broken by Beauty's love, he led a crusade that swept the magical kingdom of Auradon. All the villains and their sidekicks were banished to an island off the coast, sealed behind an impregnable barrier beyond which there was neither magic nor wifi.
Twenty years later, the Beast is ready to hand over the crown to his son, Prince Ben. For his first royal proclamation (despite not actually being king, yet ...) the young Prince announces that he will allow four of the children of the villains back into Auradon. After all, he reasons, they are not responsible for the actions of their parents.
And so we met Jay, son of Jafar; Evie, daughter of the Evil Queen; Carlos, son of Cruella de Vil; and Mal, the ringleader of the quartet and daughter of Maleficent - who despite being redeemed in the Angelina Jolie film is "the worst of the worst" in this.
Of course, being raised by embittered villains is not the kind of thing to make you a totally well-adjusted young person, and the foursome arrive in Auradon set on proving their bad guy bonafides (and more importantly to them, winning the approval of their parents) by finding a way to breach the barrier and allowing villainkind to run amok once more. And nothing the good guys can do is gonna stop them, right?
Unless you've never seen a film before you probably already have a very good idea of how the movie will play out from there. Descendants is not going to surprise you with its innovative plot. It executes well on its familiar beats, though, and as I have recently opined on goodreads, sound execution often trumps innovation. Probably the only part of the execution that's a little iffy here is the musical numbers, which didn't exactly rock my world. It's otherwise a solid and entertaining, albeit entirely predictable, 90-some minutes.
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