L'Accademia del Bene e del Male

Some of these reviews apparently expected this to be a mix of The Godfather and Avengers: Infinity War. Look, it's fine. If you're walking into this looking for some Oscar-worthy performances, you should just turn around. It's a YA interpretation on film. That's it.

There's some cute stuff. Some fun stuff. Some cringe stuff. Which pretty much is everything YA anyway. The biggest fault is the run time. Two and a half hours is a lot to commit to this. But to its credit, it doesn't really drag.

I do agree with one reviewer that it may have been better off as a show than a lengthy movie. But let's just take this for what it is - a studio filler movie for some actors and producers to honor their contracts. Once you get that in your mind, it's easy to enjoy this movie.

I'd give this a 6.5 if it was an option, but it's not, and I'm not going to round up.

Fun to watch with my older kids, never really boring. Some cheesy moments but nothing in comparison to how cheesy and unbearable Descendants is so if you have to pick one go with THIS one. Fantastic art direction and costuming also really brings the whole vibe of the story together. And having some famous older actors we love was a very nice touch too and they seem to be having fun in their roles in this. The only issue I had is that this is a fairy tale theme not in the real world yet one of the main characters says "Oh my God" about 24 times in a 3 min span like as typical teenager when she's freaking out over her friend being hurt near the end. I don't know if this was a misstep, clearly the actress was adlibbing and that is what she would have said in real life, but it's kind of hilarious because you're definitely taken out of the storybook fairy tale land here. Not a complaint, it's just really funny when they're literally in medieval fairy gowns and she's like "oh my god, like oh my god, like, oh my god.." had me and my kids cracking up. But yeah, we loved it honestly.

Like always, I went in without watching any trailers or any knowledge about the source material.

In the beginning, the movie starts with the same vibe as other generic fantasy movies out there. As you progress into the story, you feel that the movie is a try-hard Harry Potter like. You're not wrong. It is. It's Harry Potter if there were only 2 houses, Gryffindor and Slytherin. Gryffindor (Good) has all the good qualities and quite obviously Slytherin (Evil) is all bad things possible.

For 70% of the movie, things remain pretty black and white. This is really infuriating for me because I hate such movies. Hunger Games, Divergent, depict an unnatural society where humans are so easily divided based on some function or trait. Harry Potter does the same as well. This movie repeats it too. Except here, and this is after 70% of the movie, the movie shows a tiny bit of uniqueness in the form of Agatha. I love that her character is exactly like the voice of the people watching this movie. The voice of reason. She goes around pointing almost all the same things I pointed that it's Not. As. Easy. As. That. Yes, I know other movies do that too but in those movies the protagonist is supported by a mentor character who shows them "the truth". Here, it's all Agatha. It's just her common sense. There's no Dumbledore here who comes and tells her the grand plan. In a way, Agatha feels like us. If we got into a school like that, we would act exactly like that! Like seriously, you're giving me an F for not smiling good?? I love her character.

That's the thing that I like the most about this movie. The rest of movie after this is also interesting because it tries to break from the pattern. In the form of Agatha of course. I felt the self-writing book was also a very nice plot and some very interesting story lines can emerge from that alone.

The movie should target the right audience for this to get good results. It isn't a movie for most adults. Maybe the next part would be better?

I never read the books so I can't tell how accurate the adaption is. This Netflix production is definitely not the best but also not the worst fantasy movie. It's like a typical Nickelodeon/Disney channel production (with better effects and costumes) in my feeling and I think it will find it's audience.

I was entertained by it and I guess it's fine for watching one time. It has a nice cast and costumes. The CGI could have been better but is fine compared to other movies on Disney channel level.

The story and the characters are pretty mediocre and for my taste, they are relying too hard on clichés. On the other hand I think that some people will love it especially for this. It definitely falls into the category guilty pleasure.

So if you don't expect much and like cheesy fantasy movies for children/teenager, this movie could be something for you.

If you are not the target audience or don't like these kind of movies, stay away from it. You can't compare it to movies like Harry Potter, Panem and Maze Runner. But to be fair, I don't think that the movie ever intended to be compared with them.

I enjoyed watching this movie and it was good overall. The scenery was beautiful,despite some lacking CGI like in the case of the wolf heads. I read this series of books about 6-7 years ago so I don't exactly remember the plot/essence of those, so I can't comment on the accuracy of this adaptation. The acting, especially on the part of sophie anne caruso, was pretty poorly done. To be fair, the writing did not do her character any justice either but the acting made the character overall bad. I thought sofia wylie did an excellent job, as well as charlize theron, kerry washington, and Michelle yeoh. The character of tedros was also poorly written and acted, and honestly the relationship betweeen tedros and sophie was not written or developed well in the movie. Overall this movie was just average, not terrible or anything, but I will not be rewatching ever. If the story is interesting to you, I would recommend reading the book series, as the author has quite a few other books in this series written.