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“Harry Potter” meets “Descendants” with a dash of “Romeo and Juliet” in “The School for Good and Evil.” And yes, it is as overstuffed as that sounds.

This massive, magical adventure is also way too long at 2 ½ hours, but rarely in that running time do we see any glimmers of the kind of singular filmmaking wizardry that usually makes Paul Feig ’s movies so engaging. He’s once again telling a story of female friendship, with all its highs and lows and particular complications, as he has with “ Bridesmaids ,” “ The Heat ,” and “ A Simple Favor .” And, of course, the clothes are dazzling; the famously sartorial director would never skimp in that department.

But all of these potentially effective elements—as well as a stellar cast that includes Charlize Theron , Kerry Washington , and Michelle Yeoh —get swallowed up by the overwhelming reliance on CGI-infused action sequences. They’re both empty and endless, and too often leave you wondering what’s going on and why we should bother.

Based on the best-selling children’s book series by Soman Chainani , “The School for Good and Evil” focuses on two extremely different teenage best friends looking out for each other in a harsh, fairy-tale land. The petite Sophie ( Sophia Anne Caruso ) is a blonde Cinderella figure with dreams of becoming a princess; she escapes the doldrums of daily life with a mean stepmother by talking to woodland creatures and designing flouncy gowns. The much taller, wild-haired Agatha ( Sofia Wylie ) lives with her mom in a cottage in the forest, where they concoct potions together; she has a hairless cat named Reaper and dresses in all black, so she must be a witch. These simple, early moments when the girls enjoy their warm, humorous bond—with the help of richly honeyed narration from Cate Blanchett —are the film’s strongest. The dialogue in the script from co-writers David Magee and Feig is snarky in a way that’s both anachronistic and au courant, but Caruso and Wylie make their friendship feel true.

But one day, a giant bird picks them up and swoops them away to The School for Good and Evil: side-by-side castles connected by a bridge where the next generation of magical young people learns to hone their skills. As we see in the film’s prelude, a pair of brothers established this balance long ago; neither side can win completely, and this enchanted institution ensures that. Naturally, Sophie assumes she’ll end up on the sunny side of the divide, while Agatha will go to the structure shrouded in fog. But when the bird drops Sophie on the evil side and Agatha on the good side, they figure it must have been a mistake and struggle to switch places. In no time, though, their true natures reveal themselves—the ones they’d buried beneath the hair and clothes they’d chosen and the labels society had pinned on them.

This is a potentially interesting idea, and a great opportunity for kids to learn about the insidious power of prejudice. And the production design on both sides is enjoyably over-the-top in its contrasting extremes: the School for Good essentially looks like a wedding cake you could live inside, while the School for Evil is like a goth version of Hogwarts. Costume designer Renee Ehrlich Kalfus —who also designed the clothes in Feig’s sharp and sexy “A Simple Favor”—makes the dresses these young women wear not just distinct in vivid and inspired ways, but they evolve accordingly as Agatha and Sophie tap into their authentic selves.

Again, lots of intriguing pieces here, and we haven’t even mentioned Washington as the perpetually perky head of the good school, with Theron vamping as the evil school’s leader. There’s just so much going on in this movie in terms of plot and visual effects that supporting players like Yeoh and Laurence Fishburne get frustratingly little to do. The film also squanders the talents of Rob Delaney and Patti LuPone early on in blink-and-you’ll-miss-them roles. The script consistently gets bogged down in world-building exposition and flashbacks—the mythology of how this place works is dense and not terribly compelling—and there are so many students on both sides of the bridge that there’s little opportunity for characterization. Chainani wrote a series of these books, where he had much more time and space to expand. Here, fellow students are whittled down to a single trait, and—as in the Disney “Descendants” movies—most are the offspring of famous cultural figures, like Prince Charming, King Arthur, and the Sheriff of Nottingham. A forbidden romance between Sophie and the hunky Tedros ( Jamie Flatters ) is just one more subplot in a film full of them. And a dizzying array of twists awaits as the movie hurtles toward its conclusion.

Somewhere beneath all the noise and mayhem—the hurled fireballs, swirls of blood and duels with glowing swords choreographed to Billie Eilish and Britney Spears tunes—“The School for Good and Evil” aims to upend familiar tropes and unearth some useful truths. The popular clique at the good school is packed with mean girls; the weirdoes and misfits at the bad school are actually loyal and kind. Being ambitious isn’t necessarily a negative thing, while going along to get along might not be the right path, either. But with a series of endings that drags out the film’s already significant length, it takes a while for anyone to achieve any sort of happily ever after.

On Netflix today.

Christy Lemire

Christy Lemire is a longtime film critic who has written for RogerEbert.com since 2013. Before that, she was the film critic for The Associated Press for nearly 15 years and co-hosted the public television series "Ebert Presents At the Movies" opposite Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, with Roger Ebert serving as managing editor. Read her answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire here .

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The School for Good and Evil (2022)

Rated PG-13 for violence and action, and some frightening images.

146 minutes

Sophia Anne Caruso as Sophie

Sofia Wylie as Agatha

Laurence Fishburne as The Schoolmaster

Michelle Yeoh as Professor Anemone

Jamie Flatters as Tedros

Kit Young as Rafal

Rachel Bloom as Honora

Peter Serafinowicz as Yuba

Kerry Washington as Professor Dovey

Charlize Theron as Lady Lesso

Earl Cave as Hort

Patti Lupone as Mrs. Deauville

Cate Blanchett as Narrator (voice)

Ali Khan as Chaddick

Writer (based on the book by)

• Soman Chainani
• David Magee

Cinematographer

• John Schwartzman
• Mischa Chaleyer-Kynaston
• Theodore Shapiro

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• Entertainment /

Netflix’s whimsical The School for Good and Evil is worth the price of admission

Netflix’s glittering adaptation of soman chainani’s ya deconstruction of fairy tales is yet another reminder that hollywood loves a magical school.

By Charles Pulliam-Moore , a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years.

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So long as there are literate young people trudging their way to school every morning, there’s always going to be an appetite for stories asking “what if the educational system, but magical?” That’s exactly the question author Soman Chainani’s The School for Good and Evil and Netflix’s new adaptation of the novel pose . Like all of the books in Chainani’s fairy tale-inspired YA series, Netflix’s The School for Good and Evil both pulls deep from and pokes fun at the magical storybook canon with a tale about the many different forms love can take.

Netflix’s The School for Good and Evil from director Paul Feig tells the story of Agatha (Sofia Wylie) and Sophie (Sophia Anne Caruso), two best friends who, despite being slightly different flavors of misfit, cling to each other fiercely as they live out their days in the small, sleepy town of Gavaldon. Most of Gavaldon’s townsfolk are content to endlessly toil away at their jobs, never thinking too much about how no one ever seems to wander beyond the thick woods surrounding the picturesque village they call home. But for Sophie and Agatha, avid readers who frequent the local book store run by Mrs. Deauville (Patti LuPone), there’s an undeniable appeal to the idea of one day journeying into and beyond the woods if only to see for themselves what’s out there.

Though Agatha and Sophie’s shared love of books is yet another thing that their peers look down on them for, it’s also what puts them on the path toward adventure when one of them makes a heartfelt wish not knowing that the School for Good and Evil is always listening.

Netflix’s The School for Good and Evil doesn’t deviate all that largely from the source material, but co-writers Feig and David Magee’s script does feature a handful updates that make the story pop a little bit differently. Most everyone in the Gavaldon of Chainani’s book is generally aware of the existence of magic and how two children from the town seem to disappear under mysterious circumstances every four years. But Agatha and Sophie have no idea what they’re getting into in Netflix’s film when they end up in the Endless Woods one evening and are accosted by an otherworldly monster that carries them off into the night sky.

Many of The School for Good and Evil ’s core ideas and plot points will ring more than familiar to anyone who’s picked up a novel about kids enrolling in a magic school, which is likely why Netflix’s movie takes care to gloss over a number of the book’s narrative beats that might make it feel too similar to other YA fantasy franchises . Rather than hammering home what all the School for Good and Evil is from the jump, the film instead tries to impress it upon you with one of its many surprisingly majestic, VFX-heavy sequences that gives you a bird’s-eye view of the institution on the first day of student orientation.

It’s as Agatha, Sophie, and all their new classmates are falling out of the sky into either the School for Good or the School for Evil that The School for Good and Evil starts to feel like it’s genuinely having fun before its story takes an inevitable dark turn. But it’s when the film’s curiously stacked cast of pitch hitters all start to show up in a series of resplendent gowns and suits that you can really see how intent Netflix is on The School for Good and Evil appealing to a broad audience.

Wylie and Caruso are both compelling and magnetic presences on screen as they become fast friends (and enemies) with the children of legendary fairytale heroes and villains. But it’s the slightly unhinged camp of Kerry Washington’s Professor Dovey, Charlize Theron’s Lady Lesso, and Michelle Yeoh’s Professor Anemone that end up stealing the show and selling The School for Good and Evil as a kind of meta-fairy tale about how stifling fairytales tend to be.

While the movie does still largely focus on Sophie’s dismay at being assigned to the School for Evil and Agatha’s trouble fitting in with her uber-feminine roommates in the School for Good, it also takes the time to dig into how much of their education’s being influenced by their teachers’ rivalries. Again, the concept of a magical school’s magical teachers having magical beef with one another isn’t exactly new, and the big mystery involving the School for Good and Evil’s headmaster (Laurence Fishburne) is far too easy to piece together. But there is something very special about the way The School for Good and Evil uses Dovey and Agatha — two of its most prominent Black characters — to expand upon some of the more interesting ideas from Chainani’s book about how we define “goodness” and what kind of people we associate it with.

The School for Good and Evil ’s twists probably won’t throw you for all that much of a loop, and its selection of dramatic covers tend to take away more than they add to its legitimately solid action sequences. But even though the movie was clearly made with fans of the books in mind, and it runs just a little too long to be a casual watch, it’s exactly the kind of well-produced, feature-length original project you want to see from Netflix that definitely leaves open the possibility for more installments down the line.

The School for Good and Evil also stars Kit Young, Peter Serafinowicz, Cate Blanchett, Rob Delaney, and Rachel Bloom. The film hits Netflix on October 19th.

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‘The School for Good and Evil’ Review: Ever Afters and Never Afters

Two best friends have princess dreams and witchy nightmares in this adaptation of Soman Chainani’s book series.

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By Maya Phillips

Light versus dark. Hero versus villain. Good versus evil. Sound familiar? It should — it’s perhaps the most basic motif, where nearly all stories begin, from religions to myths, fairy tales to blockbusters.

So what Netflix’s “The School for Good and Evil” attempts — to draw from and pervert cookie-cutter hero and villain stories in a novel way — is a task so monumental that it can’t measure up. The film, adapted from the young adult book series by Soman Chainani and directed by Paul Feig, is a mess of contradictions: a muddle of clichés and inconsistencies with just enough charm and cleverness to keep you watching.

Two best friends, Sophie (Sophia Anne Caruso) and Agatha (Sofia Wylie), are the adolescent outcasts of a quaint Arthurian-style town named Gavaldon: Sophie dreams of a glamorous life as a princess and Agatha seems to channel Sabrina the teenage witch. When Sophie makes a desperate wish to escape her provincial surroundings, she and Agatha are transported to a school for storybook heroes and villains. The problem is that they’re sorted into opposite houses: Despite her fantasies of ball gowns and princes, Sophie is cast in the gloomy halls of the evildoers, and Agatha, with her witchy name and affinity for black clothes, is stuck in the cotton-candy-pink halls of the princesses.

Sophie aims to prove that she’s really meant to be a princess, but in the process is seduced by a greater evil; and Agatha, seeing the maniacal plots afoot, tries to save Sophie and return them home.

In many ways “The School for Good and Evil” is cringe-worthy: cheesy special effects; blatant telegraphing of plot points; crude world-building and scant character development; cloyingly oversaturated, superficially glossy cinematography and precious direction; ridiculous action (fireballs kicked like soccer balls, weaponized hot chocolate), set to a soundtrack of teenage-girl angst (Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo).

However, Wylie’s performance as Agatha is sharp and modern, and performances by other big names (Charlize Theron, Michelle Yeoh, Laurence Fishburne and a less impressive Kerry Washington) give weight to the flimsier moments in the script. And the film has immaculate style, from its ornate hair and makeup to its elaborate costumes, even its fights: The choreography during a sprawling battle sequence deftly weaves the chaotic hodgepodge of visuals into a technically impressive feat.

There’s the sense that underneath its swordplay the film is reaching toward a deeper exploration of questions like, is there such a thing as fate? Do we each have a fundamentally fixed self? How have our terms of right and wrong, good and bad, changed? To that end the film often gets meta in the cheekiest ways, whether it’s Agatha snapping to the voice-over narration (by Cate Blanchett), “You know we hear you narrating, weirdo,” to Sophie dismissing a character with the quip, “The protagonists are speaking.” But the film doesn’t have the space to expand all of its ideas and gracefully unfold its plot, which is full of so many narrative twists and reversals that “The School for Good and Evil” equates to a whole TV season untidily packed into a feature film.

That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t let this story, as flawed as it is, take me back to this Hogwarts-esque school of powerful sorcery and brave feats; if only the film could fully execute at least half of its ambitions, then that would be a story with impressive power.

The School for Good and Evil Rated PG-13 for mean-girl jeers and chocolate attacks. Running time: 2 hours 27 minutes. Watch on Netflix.

Maya Phillips is a critic at large. She is the author of the poetry collection “Erou” and “NERD: Adventures in Fandom From This Universe to the Multiverse,” forthcoming from Atria Books. More about Maya Phillips

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The School for Good and Evil Reviews

In the end, The School for Good and Evil speaks to a modern audience’s desire for complexity, even in beloved fairy tales.

Full Review | Feb 16, 2023

Two and a half hours of tedium...but Theron and Washington vamp this monstrosity up and almost never let on that they know this project didn’t really work out.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Jan 11, 2023

The movie lacks a severe amount of world-building, character development, and follow-through.

Full Review | Nov 15, 2022

An overlong and over-packed uneasy mash-up of Harry Potter's Wizarding World and The Descendants which starts off threatening to be nigh on unwatchable, never finds its groove enough to be magical, and in the end just emerges as a mess.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 14, 2022

At its best, The School For Good and Evil is a decently fun young adult fantasy flick, thanks to its intriguing script and the performances that really give it life.

Full Review | Original Score: 6.5/10 | Nov 8, 2022

A clear case of style over substance, something you’re never supposed to encourage or admire. But what the Hell...Likely to be the most beautiful thing to hit the stream all year, [a] visually sumptuous comedy-fantasy.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 30, 2022

I was much happier when the school closed.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/10 | Oct 29, 2022

The School for Good and Evil is ambitious in its themes and makes you question the fairytales and archetypes we’ve come to know. [...] Wylie brings a self-awareness that always has you on her side, while Caruso delivers an edgy bite that really works.

Full Review | Oct 29, 2022

This movie’s problems with the muddled storyline and the choppy pacing could have been resolved had this been an episodic series rather than a 2.5-hour movie.

Full Review | Oct 27, 2022

Capitalizing not just on proven source material (the book series) but also on tried-and-tested school-set, teen-starring fantasy formulas, nothing about this film feels particularly original.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 26, 2022

The movie really is star-studded, but it has almost no momentum.

Full Review | Oct 24, 2022

You’re left bored, tired, and wondering how you could have spent your precious few hours on this Earth watching this absolute dreck.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 24, 2022

Simultaneously sluggish and rushed, crammed with characters that make barely an impression, extraneous episodes that just weigh the narrative down and a welter of special-effects action more tedious than awesome.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Oct 24, 2022

Somewhat overlong and skewing a bit juvenile (and probably would've been better as a series) it is as a fairly fun fairy-tale fused romp with a bevy of top tier talent and some decent newcomers. Particular kudos to Wylie's charming performance.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.3/5 | Oct 22, 2022

It’s too nakedly derivative and too crudely assembled (Feig is hardly a visual stylist). Yet the central conceit is consistently compelling...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 21, 2022

It’s got the grandeur and the looks of a compelling costume drama but when it comes to engaging with the audience, Feig’s magic falls woefully short.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Oct 21, 2022

The actors' efforts are squashed by the plot twists and the imposition of large-scale embellishments on such a simple concept. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Oct 21, 2022

The film doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it's a lot of fun and has plenty of heart thanks to its leading performances and solid character development.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 21, 2022

A sweeping symphonic score doesn’t a fantasy epic make. Nor does a CGI-fuelled climactic battle, some made-up mumbo-jumbo words, or beams of energy that shoot out of fingers.

Netflix's latest venture into the teen fantasy market is an agonizing two-and-a-half-hour experience drawn out by lackluster VFX and familiar narrative elements.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/10 | Oct 21, 2022

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

The School for Good and Evil

Best friends Sophie and Agatha find themselves on opposing sides of an epic battle when they're swept away into an enchanted school where aspiring heroes and villains are trained to protect ... Read all Best friends Sophie and Agatha find themselves on opposing sides of an epic battle when they're swept away into an enchanted school where aspiring heroes and villains are trained to protect the balance between Good and Evil. Best friends Sophie and Agatha find themselves on opposing sides of an epic battle when they're swept away into an enchanted school where aspiring heroes and villains are trained to protect the balance between Good and Evil.

• David Magee
• Soman Chainani
• Sophia Anne Caruso
• Cate Blanchett
• 368 User reviews
• 73 Critic reviews
• 30 Metascore

• The Storian

• See all cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Did you know

• Trivia Soman Chainani, the author of the book series on which the film is based, makes a cameo as one of the teachers from The School for Evil.
• Goofs Yuba, the school woods survival expert, warns his students about "a field of pretty pansies", which besides having dangerous teeth are clearly peonies - that react viciously when the tall gnome inadvertently repeats this insult.
• Soundtracks Prelude No. 1 in C Major, BWV 846: Well-Tempered Klavier Written by Johann Sebastian Bach , Arranged by Joseph Micallef Performed by Erica Goodman Courtesy of Digital Funding LLC

User reviews 368

• Oct 19, 2022
• How long is The School for Good and Evil? Powered by Alexa
• Who will play Agatha in the movie?
• October 19, 2022 (United States)
• United States
• Official Netflix
• Soman Chainani's Official Site
• Mount Stewart, County Down, Northern Ireland, UK (on location)
• Feigco Entertainment
• Jane Startz Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 27 minutes
• Dolby Atmos
• Dolby Digital

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The School for Good and Evil Review

Soman chainani’s book verse gets a glow-up movie adaptation..

The School for Good and Evil premieres globally Oct. 19 on Netflix.

In 2013, author Soman Chainani released the first book in his revisionist fairy tale fantasy series, The School for Good and Evil. Sharing elements of both J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series and the musical book by Winnie Holzman for Wicked , The School for Good and Evil explores the black-and-white notions of good and evil under the roof of a magical school that teaches the next generation of both. In director/writer Paul Feig’s very capable hands, the movie adaptation manages to succeed as a broad-scale mythology Bacchanalia and an intimate tale about the enduring power of deep friendship through unimaginable challenges. Glorious to look at and more surprising than expected in its storytelling, The School for Good and Evil is a romp that should have more chapters.

Chainani’s first book and the movie both serve as the origin story of two teen best friends from the fictional, rural village of Gavaldon. Fair-haired Sophie (Sophia Anne Caruso) is the Cinderella-esque dreamer who loves designing clothes and desperately wishes for something greater outside of her simple life. Agatha (Sofia Wylie) is her hot mess best friend who doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her and is relatively content just spending time with Sophie and lurking outside the attention of their nasty neighbors who hate them both. But that all changes when Sophie gets wind of The School for Good and Evil, a venerable and secret institute which trains the next generation of fairy tale heroes and villains, and sometimes recruits worthy outsiders to join their ranks. Desperate to be one of those worthy “readers,” Sophie makes a wish to be recruited and her wish is granted. Scooped up by a frightening skeletal bird known as a stymph, Agatha gets dragged along too when she tries to save Sophie from its clutches. Soon, the two are deposited in their assigned schools: Sophie in the “Nevers” side which caters to evil and Agatha in the “Evers” side which cultivates the most worthy students towards earning their heroic stories.

Upset at being separated and sorted into the “wrong” schools, Sophie and Agatha have to navigate the toxic personalities of the students around them, their unsympathetic respective school mistresses – Lady Lesso (Charlize Theron) of the Nevers and Prof. Clarissa Dovey (Kerry Washington) of the Evers – and the whims of their flighty Schoolmaster (Laurence Fishburne). From there, the friends connect on the downlow to figure out their predicament. Sophie wants in with the Evers, but Agatha just wants to go home. However, she’s willing to facilitate the path to Sophie’s dream, helping her win true love’s kiss from the campus shining star, and son of King Arthur, Prince Tedros (Jamie Flatters).

From there, Feig and his production team introduce us, and the girls, to the expansive grounds of the school where we meet plenty of bizarre creatures like very bitey posey flowers, pumpkin-faced scarecrows that become Reapers at night, tattoos that turn into fiery dragons, and creepy cherubs with functional arrows who act as school guards. There’s plenty to soak up in every scene so the visual effects are plentiful but on average, very well done. In early establishing scenes, there’s maybe too much visual pilfering from the overall look and silhouette of Hogwarts from the Harry Potter films but as the binary looks of the two houses assert themselves aesthetically, it lessens. There’s also no shortage of big sequences and scenarios thrown at us, from magic trials to two balls in each house so The School for Good and Evil never gets boring. Feig packs the two-hour and 27-minute runtime well so it flies by without feeling overstuffed with just bells and whistles.

What's the best Charlize Theron movie?

In fact, the strongest moments throughout the movie are the smaller ones between Agatha and Sophie, as well as Evers misfit Gregor (Ally Cubb) and the initially haughty but empathetic Tedros. As Agatha observes the not-very-nice behavior of her fellow Evers and their unrelenting vanity, she prods at Gregor, Prof. Dovey, and Tedros to challenge the shallow status quo. Through Aggie’s compassionate eyes the norms are challenged and as Sophie slips into temptation to do bad to achieve her dreams, she’s the unfailing conscience of the piece. Wylie is incredibly good at making that come through without being drippy or maudlin. There’s no doubt why characters (and we) seem smitten with her as she’s got sharp comedic timing when she’s poking at authority yet is entirely sincere when Aggie is battling for Sophie’s very soul. Caruso is also very good in the more arch role and really embraces chewing the evil scenery as she slips into the Nevers side.

They both get excellent support from veterans like Theron, who's basically doing a toned-down riff on her Ravenna from The Huntsman movies, and a super chipper Washington who knows how to balance cloying with sincere. Cate Blanchett is also given a purposeful narrator role that is vital to the story and plays into the fairy tale tweaks that work well overall.

The School for Good and Evil is a very satisfying playground for Feig to show off his considerable skills for light-on-its-feet storytelling, aesthetically posh and pleasing visuals, emotion-based storytelling, and arguably his most successful turn with visual effects. There’s great balance to the whole piece, but the real heart is firmly focused on the friendship between Sophie and Agatha which is what really pushes this through as a memorable and fun watch.

The School for Good and Evil goes full blockbuster scale in telling the stories of small-town besties – and potential witches – Agatha (Sofia Wylie) and Sophie (Sophia Anne Caruso). It’s their friendship and care for one another that roots the sometimes over-the-top world into succeeding as a story that still feels intimate and true when all kinds of crazy is swirling around them. In particular, Wylie is the beating heart of the movie who sells both the unfiltered candor of Agatha’s disdain for the shallow motivations of the “Ever” students and her heart-on-her-sleeve support for her tempted friend, Sophie. Director Paul Feig also does an impressive job world-building a story that manages to differentiate itself aesthetically and tonally from other high-end, magic-centric movies and TV series.

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Netflix’s School for Good and Evil loves fairy tales — and rips them apart

Paul Feig adapts Soman Chainani’s bestseller about a magic-school friendship that defies the tropes

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The magic school concept was a tried - and-true trope long before the Harry Potter books revived the idea for a new generation of readers. Populating one of those schools with fairy-tale characters is also a popular trope, most recently seen in Disney’s Descendants movies . But while Netflix’s new movie The School for Good and Evil does indulge all those beloved ideas in ways that might seem familiar, Director Paul Feig ( Bridesmaids ) treats the conventions with love and care, turning the movie into a compelling fantasy adventure.

Based on the first installment of Soman Chainani’s popular book series, Feig’s School for Good and Evil embraces the full fantasy of fairy tales while also interrogating the morality system behind them. Feig, who co-wrote the script with David Magee ( Mary Poppins Returns , the upcoming live-action Little Mermaid ), creates a dazzling world with loads of cool details, decadent visuals, and most importantly, two compelling characters and their complicated yet deep friendship. Designed to fit, then subvert and smash, archetypes, the two leads of The School for Good and Evil and their strong friendship turn the movie from fantastical fun to memorable delight.

[ Ed. note: This review contains some setup spoilers for The School for Good and Evil. ]

Fashionable Sophie (Sophia Anne Caruso) and sulky Agatha (Sofia Wylie) are both outcasts in their small village. Everyone calls Agatha a witch, because she’s sullen, she wears ragged, dark clothing, and her mother makes herbal remedies on the side. Meanwhile, Sophie comes from a poor family, but does her best to appear more glamorous and important than her station allows.

They’ve bonded over their shared misery, even though on the outside, disheveled Agatha and style-conscious Sophie couldn’t be more different. Sophie dreams of a life beyond their tiny hometown, but Agatha just wants to keep her mother and Sophie safe. Then they’re both whisked away by a giant skeletal eagle to the mysterious School for Good and Evil — an academy that trains prospective fairy-tale figures that go on to star in the popular stories humans look to for moral guidance.

But much to their dismay, Sophie is tossed into the evil program, while Agatha ends up among the spoiled, glittery princesses of the good one. Sophie insists that she belongs in the good school, while Agatha doesn’t want princess lessons; she just wants to go back home to her mother. After talking to the school’s headmaster (Laurence Fishburne), they learn that if Sophie can get a True Love’s Kiss, they’ll be able to prove she’s good, and she can switch programs. At first, Agatha is a little hesitant for them to both stay at the school — especially after seeing a creepy figure made of blood whispering about Sophie’s destiny — but she agrees because this is her friend’s one chance to make something of herself.

In The School for Good and Evil , Feig plays up exactly what is so compelling about the magical-school setting. For starters, the movie is visually delightful and over-the-top in a way that’s strongly suited to the fairy-tale world. Led by cutthroat Lady Lesso (Charlize Theron, in a sharp, fitted black suit), the evil school is shrouded in darkness. The evil students, called Nevers, all wear black, ragged clothing and dark makeup. The good program, meanwhile, is ruled over by bubbly Professor Dovey (Kerry Washington). The furniture on the good track is all glitzy gold, and the girls’ school uniform appears to be exaggerated ball gowns, while the boys wear princely tunics.

Beyond the fun visuals, though, it’s compelling to see what sorts of familiar folklore characters end up in the school (the children of the Sheriff of Nottingham and King Arthur, for instance) and what sorts of things they learn. The movie is 147 minutes long, but every moment is so packed with fascinating detail and interesting characters that it rarely slogs. Each minute is another expansion of the world, revealing more about how the school works. For instance, while the good-program princesses take lessons in smiling (which Agatha miserably fails), the bad school has an “uglification” class — because of course ugly is “evil,” in fairy-tale logic.

The overly simplistic line between good and evil stereotypes in this story is entirely intentional. These superficial moral delineations are heightened to the extreme so the heroes can poke holes in them. Fairy tales do tend to boil down to black-and-white thinking, and the main characters — who live in a more nuanced world, but are expected to take on fantasy roles — recognize that there’s something off about that.

Admittedly, some of that nuance is lost when characters become “ugly” as they become more evil. And the theme of characters defying their predetermined destinies is something movies like the Descendants trilogy and Shrek have put into the zeitgeist. But because the lead characters are so multifaceted and their relationship is so compelling, those tropes don’t weigh down the movie.

Not all the characters and relationships are created equal. One of the movie’s least interesting parts comes in the form of King Arthur’s son Tedros (Jamie Flatters), who Sophie believes might provide her True Love’s Kiss. He has some flirtatious tension with both of the girls, but unfortunately he’s a little bland, a simplistic dreamboat who won’t stop talking to Agatha even though she’s made it clear she’s not interested in him.

He does get a tiny bit of character growth and depth, but any interesting notes about him are dull compared to literally every other character: twerpy Prince Gregor (Ally Cubb), who dreams of opening a grocery store; chaotic witch Hester (Freya Theodora Parks), who harnesses a fiery bird demon from a tattoo on her back; elegant Professor Anemone (Michelle Yeoh), who’s stuck teaching beauty when she wants to teach magical history; and most of all, the leads.

Sophie and Agatha are both wonderful characters. Agatha is prickly, rude, and defiant, but she’s also one of the few students in the good school who actually cares about other people. Sophie, meanwhile, is so determined to make something of herself and prove she matters to the world that her ambition clouds her judgment. Wylie and Caruso bring mature, layered performances to these characters, balancing out their flaws and strengths. Watching both of them evolve into the “good” and “evil” labels they resisted is satisfying, and watching their relationship grow and change is even more compelling. It’s rare for a high-fantasy story centered on the bond between two girls to get a big-budget movie — and it’s rarer to see such a movie done with such gorgeous visuals and engrossing characters.

The School for Good and Evil is a fairy tale for people who love fairy tales, but who also want to see them dissected and weighed thoughtfully. It’s a fairy tale where the witchy outcast girl can be a hero, and the girl who wants to be a princess falls in love with her inner dark side. It’s a fairy tale for those who know that one of the most powerful and most underrated forms of true love is the friendship between two teenage girls. For anyone who scribbled indulgent stories about princesses and witches in the margins of their middle school notes and reread fairy-tale retellings over and over again, every minute is a joy.

The School for Good and Evil is out on Netflix now.

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‘The School for Good and Evil’ Review: Netflix’s Star-Studded ‘Harry Potter’ Ripoff Flunks Most of Its Courses

David ehrlich.

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Fairy tales are typically simple and evocative pieces of folklore that tend to communicate lucid moral lessons through the power of story. Paul Feig ’s star-studded “The School for Good and Evil” — which is pretty much just “Harry Potter” recast with princesses, fairies, and a random assortment of literary characters from the public domain — might be the most aggressively convoluted YA movie I’ve ever seen. In the world of “Miss Peregrine” and “Mortal Instruments,” this thing is practically “The Big Sleep.”

Where that noir classic teased timeless electricity from confusion as Bogie and Bacall smoldered across mid-century Los Angeles in luminous black-and-white, this Netflix boondoggle conjures an 148-minute migraine out of blood magic as a pair of teenage besties wince their way through an epic YA novel’s worth of flat lighting, arcane plot twists, and cheesy set pieces soundtracked to the likes of Olivia Rodrigo (it’s “Brutal” indeed). Fans of Soman Chainani’s popular fantasy series might feel as if a giant bone bird swooped out of the sky and carried them to streaming heaven, but not even Charlize Theron ’s Mad Hatter cosplay or Michelle Yeoh ’s cameo as a professor of smiling will be enough to enchant a wider audience to such a painfully overworked saga of friendship.

In truth, the premise behind “The School for Good and Evil” isn’t particularly hard to explain, but the movie is so committed to the “we’re not in Kansas anymore” perspective of its dual protagonists — and the flimsy meta-construct of its source material — that it takes forever to establish the story’s clearest hook: Somewhere in the folds of once upon a time exists a magical academy where students train to become heroes and villains worthy of inspiring the sort of fairy tales that people might cherish for centuries to come.

Naturally, those stories are written in (and by?) a sentient book voiced by Lydia Tár herself, Cate Blanchett. Instead of muggles, the non-magical normies are deemed “Readers.” And instead of being determined by lineage alone, invitations to the School for Good and Evil appear to be at the sole discretion of Laurence Fishburne , who sorts his students into good “Evers” and evil “Nevers” before they even arrive on campus.

That seems simple enough, but Feig’s hopelessly overstuffed adaptation of Chainani’s franchise-starter — a very long book, it turns out! — struggles for a way to spell it out. Following a prologue so overwrought that it may cause many casual viewers to abandon ship before the opening credits, “The School for Good and Evil” introduces us to its young heroines.

Played by a plucky Sophia Anne Caruso (fresh off her role in the stage version of “Beetlejuice” and still radiating that Broadway shine), Sophie is a pint-sized blonde who dreams of being a princess, and matches the snow-white model that Western society has reserved for the job since long before the days of Walt Disney. Alas, Sophie’s mean stepmother treats her with disdain, while her widowed father (Rob Delaney, in what must have been a larger role at some point) is reduced to a single line of ADR. Across town, the mixed-race Agatha (a warm and effortlessly regal Sofia Wylie) is bullied for being a witch, which even in this idyllically diverse fairy tale world still feels like code for something else.

As the steadiest and most reserved character in a movie that threads parallel “chosen one” plots into a story that’s otherwise as subtle and coherent as a later season of “Riverdale,” it’s no surprise that Agatha gets lost in the shuffle. She doesn’t get much of a spotlight in the ultra-rushed opening scenes either, as her friendship with Sophie is only faintly sketched before the girls are whisked away to the School for Good and Evil and sorted into the “wrong” places — Agatha in the Good school, and Sophie in the Evil one.

That would seem like an easy clerical error to solve, but nothing is straightforward at a school that for some reason is responsible for maintaining the moral balance of the entire universe. At the good school, Agatha learns how to be a beautiful princess from an enjoyably demented Kerry Washington, whose upbeat but frantic performance suggests how a host might function at the Disneyland equivalent of Westworld. She meets a dweeby Prince Charming — his last name is “Charming,” and his dad is a king — and flirts with King Arthur’s hunky son, Tedros (Jamie Flatters), who helps further the idea that people are more than meets the eye.

Mostly, Agatha stands around and looks understandably befuddled by all of the nonsense around her. She appears to share my confusion about what all of these plastic setpieces are supposed to be for or building towards, as Feig and David Magee’s clumpy and uncharacteristically laugh-free script just layers incident upon incident without any overarching sense of mystery or purpose. “The School for Good and Evil” isn’t serious enough about its world — or its relationship to ours — to have any fun with the details.

The film’s only consistent narrative arc concerns Sophie’s herky jerky transition from princess-in-training to bonafide witch, as the aspiring Cinderella is gradually seduced by the dark side. “The School for Good and Evil” is often too crammed and chaotic for any of its messages to bleed through — both of its heroines have so many barely written friends — but there’s an unusual sting to the scene in which Theron’s sadistic Lady Lesso chops off Sophie’s hair because the girl’s beauty is supposedly obscuring her inner evil. Surrendering to the role she’s been assigned unleashes a darkness that Sophie didn’t know that she possessed, and that darkness flourishes without Agatha around to ground her.

Of course, beauty is always in the eye of the beholder, and ugliness is a relative thing in such a hideous film world. “The School for Good and Evil” is never as much of an eyesore as the latter-day Tim Burton movies that appear to have inspired it — they share a producer in Joe Roth — but its garish colors and flagrantly foul CGI wizardry only contribute to the movie’s pervasive tackiness.

It’s a tackiness that Feig occasionally manages to overcome through splendor or violence; Reneé Kalfus’ eccentric costumes pop off the screen (Theron’s look suggests the unholy love child between Carrot Top and Miss Trunchbull), while several of the special effects are redeemed by clever animatronics or sheer imagination. Examples of the latter include a sequence that riffs on “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” to gnarly new ends, its cartoon violence typical of a movie that often goes for the jugular where “Harry Potter” might have settled for happily ever after.

If only “The School for Good and Evil” told a story that meaningfully established the relationship between students and Readers, maybe it would offer Viewers something that more of them might enjoy watching.

“The School for Good and Evil” is now streaming on Netflix.

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‘the school for good and evil’ review: charlize theron and kerry washington get all dressed up for nothing in paul feig’s ya fantasy misfire.

Sophia Anne Caruso and Sofia Wylie play new students at a prep school for fairy tale heroes and villains whose faculty includes Michelle Yeoh and Laurence Fishburne.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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The prologue instantly drops us into a suffocatingly artificial CG world where twin brothers Rafal and Rhian (both played by Kit Young), who created the school to maintain the balance between good and evil, engage in video game-style swordplay in a place ominously called “The Duel Arena” that’s never mentioned again. But after eons of peaceful co-existence, Rafal is suddenly bored with the status quo. “I prefer chaos,” he tells by-the-book Rhian, who warns him that conjuring “blood magic” will consume him.

“Evil doesn’t cooperate. Evil doesn’t share,” Rafal tells his brother. “When I’m done, evil won’t lose.”

Cut to many years later in a faraway place where a new tale unfolds, periodically narrated by Cate Blanchett with her crispest storybook authority.

When they learn of the existence of the School for Good and Evil (from Patti LuPone, no less), Sophie plants her application letter in the bark folds of the tree. Before long, she’s being carried off by a giant skeletal bird called a stymph, with Aggie latching on for the ride.

But the bird drops them in what both girls are convinced is the wrong school. Petite blonde Sophie, who dreams of becoming Cinderella, lands in Goth Central among the “Nevers,” presided over by archly malevolent dean Lady Lesso ( Charlize Theron ). (We know she’s mean by the way she snaps her riding crop, like Joan Crawford in Queen Bee .)

Feisty Agatha, who would have been right at home with the aspiring witches and warlocks, finds herself surrounded by tittering princesses in pastel ballgowns among the “Evers,” receiving instruction from sugary Professor Dovey ( Kerry Washington ). Beauty classes are conducted by Professor Anemone ( Michelle Yeoh ), the resident Tyra, who fails girls for poor smiling technique.

If all that were distilled into a clean narrative thread, it might have been somewhat captivating. But there’s so much clutter in David Magee and Feig’s screenplay that we keep veering off on dreary detours like a survival class in a forest of dark enchantments run by an elf (Peter Serafinowicz) who’s like a bad stand-up act.

Mostly, the plot revolves around the inevitable test of Sophie and Aggie’s friendship, which is further corrupted by the return of Rafal in a whirling spiral of blood. His sinister promises of absolute rule seduce Sophie over to the dark side. Cue the obligatory glam makeover, maniacal cackling and slo-mo power strut once she assembles her bad-girl crew. Then it’s all-out war during the Annual Evers Ball, with the Nevers hurling firebombs and other standard CG mayhem in a clash that’s too busy and messy to follow.

It’s also just never very interesting. Of course, Aggie will find a way to save Sophie and the school from Rafal’s reign of terror because the schematic nature of the convoluted story means the wannabe bad girl is inherently good. And good conquers evil. Yawn.

Nor are the actors much fun. Theron, Washington and Fishburne all look splendid in designer Renée Ehrlich Kalfus’ sumptuous costumes, but their starchy mid-Atlantic accents inhibit their performances. At least until they forget about them. Yeoh is just embarrassingly under-utilized. Caruso (who played the Winona Ryder role in Broadway’s Beetlejuice musical) is stuck with a character so inconsistent she’s annoying, while Wylie brings some welcome spirit to beleaguered Agatha.

Right down to the sprinkling of pop — Olivia Rodrigo, Billie Eilish, 2WEI’s thundering cover of Britney Spears’ “Toxic” — the movie panders to its target audience with puppyish eagerness. But it’s a charm-deprived, thrill-free endeavor that never really gets off the ground.

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