User Reviews

"Under the Sea: A Descendants Story" is a fairly long title for this rather short film as it barely makes it past the 9-minute mark. The director here is Hasraf Dulull and he is usually a visual effects artist, not entirely though. But obviously, it is never really about him. You can read from the title that this film adds to the Descendants universe, a story about the popular modern offspring of all kinds of known Disney princesses, even if by now the franchise has moved far away from this general idea from the beginning and is just Disney fantasy stuff basically. With lots of make-up and over-the-top costumes sadly, at least in this short here. It was also a bit of a bizarre story. We have the protagonist and she talks to a friend she runs into at the forest and we see the friends wears a necklace from an antagonist (the one from Arielle? at least her offspring maybe) and because of the necklace, the bad girl takes over and controls the body and voice of the girl she is inside. But come on why does she destroy the glasses? She may not see well because of that act of seemingly "badassery". I don't know. They sure did all they could to keep it harmless and it feels a bit ridiculous. Also the idea of a possessed body is general really scary in my opinion, but here it was not one bit. The main character played by Dove Cameron also is hardly scared, pretty courageous girl, maybe too much? Oh yeah and there is a music number too. I really loved Genie in a Bottle, the cover Cameron made from the Christina Aguilera song, but the music in this newer short from 2018 here (and the sequence is fairly long) did not do a whole lot for me I must say. In general, this was an underwhelming movie. It is a lot on the stlye over substance side. I already mentioned make-up (what's up with that, Cameron looks so nice otherwise, sometimes less is more), costumes and effects (which were not particularly good in the water sequence), but story-wise this is far from a success and sadly, the actors are all also hitting a few wrong notes here. All in all, I am glad it was this short. Only watch if you really love the franchise. Otherwise, you will not appreciate this flawed outcome. It is difficult to look beyond the weaknesses.