Belated film reviews : Halloweentown High

Before I go any further, yes, I am aware we are talking about a Halloween film in May. I know.

On my Disney Channel side of the lists, at random, I ended up watching Halloweentown High, the third episode of the Halloweentown series, which started in 1998. In the first two films, Halloweentown and Halloweentown 2: Kalabar's Revenge, released in 2001, we followed our heroine, Marnie Piper, a young teenage girl, while she was discovering her magical powers and learning how to best use them, and saving her world as well as Halloweentown from the villains who were after her and her family, the powerful Cromwell clan, lead by two strong, independent, opinionated women, grandma Aggie and mum Gwen.

In Halloweentown High, Marnie has grown older. She is now in high school and, as she mentions when she first meets Cody, she is in senior year, which makes her seventeen years old. Four years have passed since her first adventures, and gone has the girl who complained that no one liked her taste in weird stuff and that her mother, originally not a fan of the magical part of the family, was ruining her life by not letting her go to a Halloween party. In true teenage fashion, Marnie had shouted that, at thirteen, she was practically an adult. In Halloweentown High, Marnie is on the cusp of adulthood, a young woman, she knows what she wants, and she isn't afraid of going after it, which I love. I adore how she has grown from being a sometimes sulky teenager to a headstrong young woman, taking after the women who surround her.

Marnie meets with the Witches' Council and pitches to them the idea that teenagers from the magical side of their world should come study in a mortal high school, hers, in an attempt to unite the magical and mortal worlds. The council is skeptical to say the least, as relations between both worlds have always been a little shaky, and, as monsters and creatures of all sorts, they have faced grave danger in the mortal world. They end up accepting when Marnie accidentally bets all the magic from the Cromwell clan, as no one ever informed her of what bets mean in the magical world.

The council, technically, has accepted Marnie's proposal, but the Cromwell family has to be extremely careful with the group of teenagers as, first, they could all be losing their magical powers over it and, second, the legend of the Knights who want nothing more than to make the portal between both worlds disappear forever, conveniently pops back up. Aggie is in charge of bringing the teenagers to Marnie's high school, which she does in a seemingly tiny orange car that magically manages to fit fifteen kids, all different creatures disguised as humans pretending to hail from Canada. On that first day of high school, Marnie also meets Cody, a new student who develops a crush on her almost instantly. (She does too, and I get her. He's cute in an early 2000s quiet nerd way.)

The premise of the film is pretty straightforward. The teenagers from Halloweentown are going to try and fit in the mortal world while disguising who they are and their powers, but obviously, things are not going to go smoothly, and the legend of the mean Knights is going to come true and threaten them, the portal between both worlds, as well as Marnie's and the Cromwell's magic.

Cast-wise, the only actor I knew who hadn't been in the previous Halloweentown films was Lucas Grabeel, famously known for his role as Ryan Evans, Sharpay's flamboyant brother in High School Musical. He has also made an appearance in the first series of High School Musical, The Musical: The Series, and had a minor part in Veronica Mars. In Halloweentown High, he plays Ethan, a theatre kid (already!), son of the head of the Witches' Council, which was apparently one of his first major roles and his first Disney Channel film. He definitely was a standout, alongside Natalie, the pink troll disguised as a geeky girl who grows closer to Dylan, Marnie's brother. Funnily enough, Natalie was portrayed by Olesya Rulin, who played Kelsi, the geeky pianist in...High School Musical.

The story does not have many plot twists nor surprises, but they are never what I look for in Disney Channel Original Movies. I just want the wholesomeness, a recurring theme in those reviews, and a smile on my face when the end credits roll out, and it is exactly what I get from the Halloweentown series, including Halloweentown High.

I absolutely loved the quirky comedy of the creatures trying to fit in the mortal world, studying the traditional, human teenagers who surrounded them, and trying to mimic their habits. I loved the idea that everyone was going to play on their strengths and find themselves an extracurricular activity, and the fast, middle of the film montage, the high school equivalent of the makeover montage. (We also got a mall scene, which was pretty damn cool.) I even love the very early 2000s special effects, the low budget and technical means. You can see it in the use of green screens, especially when Marnie and her crush, Cody, fly from her house to his on her broomstick. I don't mind one second. I love that a film like Halloweentown High is so quintessentially early noughties, from the fashion to the references, from the plot to the special effects, from the humour to Marnie's highlights.

As mentioned in my Gotta Kick It Up! review, I grew up on Disney Channel films and shows, but only the ones that made it to France. Upon my first watch, the original Halloweentown looked familiar, but I cannot be sure if I did see it at the time or not, though the timeline checks out. I know I had never seen Halloweentown High before, but, most importantly, I know that if I had seen it as a child, I would have grown OBSESSED with it. Little me had already made witches and witchcraft the centre of my personality. I grew up on Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, Charmed, and The Worst Witch, and I loved nothing more than playing at being a witch. (Which is probably why I had no friends.) When, at school, we were taken to the library to pick a book, others made fun of me for always gravitating towards witches' stories. I absolutely adored Roald Dahl's The Witches, and then, the Harry Potter series was everything 10-year-old me could have possibly wanted. Obviously, had I seen Halloweentown at their original time of release, I would have been obsessed with the universe and longed to be just like Marnie.

Trying to figure out who the villain is is pretty easy in this one. Ethan's father is weird and suspicious from his first appearance, and there is a dynamic between the two not dissimilar to the one between Draco Malfoy and his father, but less dramatic. (I swore I would never be the kind of girl who compared everything to Harry Potter, and I'm sorry.) Mr. Flannigan, the school principal who relentlessly flirts with Aggie, Marnie's grandmother, is a prime suspect too, and he turns out to be one of the aforementioned Knights. Obviously, it could not be Cody, as we had already had one of Marnie's love interests be a villain earlier in the series. But I never watch films like Halloweentown High for the suspense and riveting mysteries. I watch them for comfort, like they are a warm blanket with a funky pattern. I loved the common room being hidden behind the lockers in school, and the creatures finding the right activity and group for them. I loved the cute romance between Marnie and Cody, especially at a time when romantic relationships between teenagers their age are constantly oversexualized. These two have a crush on each other, go on a date at the mall, Marnie bats her eyelids and twirls her hair in front of him, and they exchange their first very chaste kiss two months later. It's sweet, it's innocent, and it's perfect.

Believe me, I would have been obsessed with this too, as a kid.

The ending delivers a lovely message, that, never mind what you look like, what's inside of you, where you are, or where you come from, we are all a lot more similar than we expect, and we have a lot more in common than we know. Ultimately, the parameters don't matter much because there will always be something we can connect on. It reminds us not to get too caught up in the things that scare us, here, the magic and different appearances, and focus on the rest, what unites us, and it's a very needed message, especially now.

I think, even despite the belated discovery (or potential rediscovery), the Halloweentown series is one of my favourite things Disney Channel has ever done. It has positivity by the truckloads, lovable characters, fun stories, and an absolutely amazing female lead in Marnie Piper, which is everything I could possibly want from a film.