Disney disappoints again. What starts out as vaguely interesting quickly descends into a feckless morass of lazy writing, dispassionate production design, and pedestrian directing. At multiple points the show clearly can't decide who its audience is- or if it even cares. Is it camp YA fare that should be on Freeform or The CW? Is it high fantasy? Is it a comedy? A drama? In the end it doesn't do any of these things well. (When a couple of characters show up in a medieval forest wearing denim jackets you know that the people making the show really had no idea what they were trying to do.) The story choices & dialogue were so awful that I don't think that it's fair to pass judgement on the cast's acting. They all seem capable enough, but it's hard to tell if they were giving cringe-worthy performances because that's what they had to work with, or if they just stink. For what it's worth, I tend to think that it's the former. There are a few nice moments and a couple of interesting set pieces. For instance, the montage in Episode 7 & parts of the final battle in Episode 8 look great. I even respect the choice to incorporate modern music where they did; it's a big swing that mostly works, IMO. Unfortunately, the overall lack of respect for both the IP and the audience that is evident throughout just caused those glimpses of quality to make me angry. Why couldn't they have put that much effort into the whole thing?
Review by Mike ShawVIP EP 2BlockedParent2023-01-12T05:58:46Z— updated 2023-03-13T03:45:41Z
Disney disappoints again. What starts out as vaguely interesting quickly descends into a feckless morass of lazy writing, dispassionate production design, and pedestrian directing. At multiple points the show clearly can't decide who its audience is- or if it even cares. Is it camp YA fare that should be on Freeform or The CW? Is it high fantasy? Is it a comedy? A drama? In the end it doesn't do any of these things well. (When a couple of characters show up in a medieval forest wearing denim jackets you know that the people making the show really had no idea what they were trying to do.) The story choices & dialogue were so awful that I don't think that it's fair to pass judgement on the cast's acting. They all seem capable enough, but it's hard to tell if they were giving cringe-worthy performances because that's what they had to work with, or if they just stink. For what it's worth, I tend to think that it's the former. There are a few nice moments and a couple of interesting set pieces. For instance, the montage in Episode 7 & parts of the final battle in Episode 8 look great. I even respect the choice to incorporate modern music where they did; it's a big swing that mostly works, IMO. Unfortunately, the overall lack of respect for both the IP and the audience that is evident throughout just caused those glimpses of quality to make me angry. Why couldn't they have put that much effort into the whole thing?