Disney has been very busy dusting off its generations of IPs recently. For better or worse, the studio's animated classics are being given new leases on life, either through glamorous traditional adaptations (Cinderella) or revisionist retellings (Maleficent). It's upon the latter flick's "villains" are people, too" conceit that the Disney Channel's latest production, Descendants, is based on, showing the children of animation history's greatest bad guys trying to make their own way in the world. In the right hands, this could make for a smart satire about rejecting the paths that society declares we stay on, not judging books by their covers, and learning to embrace our uncommon qualities, all wrapped up with knowing nods to the House of Mouse. Alas, Descendants comes to us with the mindset behind the High School Musical scourge, meaning that viewers are stuck watching a toothless teeny-bopper melodrama with terrible songs, a cornball script, and Disney references delivered with as much subtlety as a dragon barging into your living room.

Once upon a time, Belle (Keegan Connor Tracy) and her beast-turned-king Adam (Dan Payne) had a revolutionary idea. Together, they united all of the fairytale kingdoms as one, ushering in a new era of peace throughout the land. But what of those responsible for spreading so much grief over the years? As it turns out, these infamous baddies reside on their own private island prison, where their kids have grown up with their hatred of all that's good. But this isle of evil is about to get a shot at revenge when Belle and Adam's son Ben (Mitchell Hope) declares that the children be granted a fair chance to rejoin society. The young prince even goes so far as to handpick the offspring of four of Disneydom's worst villains: Mal (Dove Cameron), Maleficent's daughter; Jay (Booboo Stewart), Jafar's temperamental son; Evie (Sofia Carson), the beauty-obsessed pride and joy of Snow White's Evil Queen; and Carlos (Cameron Boyce), Cruella deVil's dog-phobic boy. As they're shipped off to a fancy prep school, the teens are tasked by their fearsome folks with helping them overthrow their captors and seize control of the kingdom once and for all. But the more of a front they put on, the more these youths start to warm to the idea that they may not have to follow in their parents' footsteps if they don't want to.

While Disney's attempts to get hip with kids usually end up in facepalm-inducing hilarity, it makes sense that Descendants takes place in a high school setting. Our leads haven't graduated to committing malicious acts on a grand scale yet, so for them to carry on their mission with the cattiness and emotional manipulation we've all encountered at that age is a perfect fit. It also allows the story to play around with cliques and stereotypes, depicting the villain teens as having talents they've never gotten to show off before and their "good guy" classmates as snobs whose wardrobe and dismissive regard for all things unconventional are straight out of the '50s. This is a clever way of poking fun at the wholesome, clean-cut values Uncle Walt worked so hard to promote in his time, but if only Descendants had the ambition to keep this subversive attitude going for its entire length. The flick is geared toward a preteen demographic, yet it's so skittish about handling the most mildly complex content and so beholden to cliche, it actually comes off as condescending. There's no shortage of hand-holding to be seen here, from the life lessons conveyed to the Disney references rattled off, which consist almost totally of characters flatly spelling out which famous figures they're related to. The movie has plenty of space in which to explore the ideas it brings up -- oh so briefly -- and still be a fun family romp, but it's passed over in favor of sanding away as many challenging edges that the story might turn up. 

But the worst thing to come of Descendants and its helicopter parenting involves how the protagonists are fleeced of any satisfying arcs or dramatic heft altogether. Not that there was much suspense about where their allegiances would lie by the time the credits rolled, but it's a forgone conclusion that the film doubles down on by making neither them nor their parents especially threatening. To see iconic villains like Jafar and Maleficent turned into bumbling buffoons after frightening untold childhoods feels like a betrayal, and before you send angry letters saying "This is just for kids," bear in mind how magical and amazing the original movies they came from were while still letting them be scary bad guys. It's a shame, because the picture's four young stars all deliver spirited performances, in spite of a script that doesn't give some of them a place to go. Seeing Evie learn to value her own intelligence over looks is great, and Stewart (X-Men: Days of Future Past) is having fun playing Jay as a lunkhead who channels his anger through sports. However, nothing is done with Mal's gift for art, and Carlos is around almost solely to serve as screechy comic relief. Don't expect much more personality out of them than that, and while the songs they occasionally burst out into try to pick up some of the slack, good luck trying to get these irritating synth ballads out of your brain as soon as you hear the first notes.

Descendant blew Disney's chance to introduce its well-intentioned but stuffy past into a diverse new era. While the film will ultimately do little overall harm and offers a few words of encouragement to those feeling like social misfits, its timid stab at viewing the world of make-believe through antagonistic eyes resembles a marketing executive's brainchild more than that of people with an interesting story to tell. The pictures that inspired it will continue to thrive for decades, but Descendants will be lucky to get a "Where Are They Now?" Buzzfeed article ten years down the road.

(Released by Walt Disney Home Entertaiment and rated "G" by MPAA.)