Aladdin

Image credit: Wikipedia

I understand why Disney has decided to jump on the train and remake their animated classics into live-action movies: it’s a mixture of giving older audiences nostalgia rides and a way of getting a whole new generation of viewers. Having said that, I sometime find myself asking who these movies are for because, as in the tonight’s case, they just don’t seem to be for anyone.

Tonight, I went and saw Aladdin.

Told as a bedtime story/flashback the film is a vibrant re-imagining of the classic story of a common thief who falls in love with a princess in disguise, finds a magic lamp and then goes a journey of self-discovery, turning himself into a prince and than having to keep up the charade whilst also trying to avoid the villain: the Sultan’s wicked and power-hungry royal vizier who is also after the lamp.

I grew up loving the original animated classic. Right from the start I did not have high expectations of this movie because, a) it’s been done, and b) I had Robin Williams as Genie. Well I wasn’t disappointed, but I wasn’t proved wrong either. Before I go into all the things that I found wrong with this movie, I will say that it was not as awful as I was expecting. The power of the story and the music, which thankfully they did not change too much, was enough to give me them warm, Disney feels, and I appreciate that. But that’s more or less where the good times stopped.

I’d say that the film’s central problem is the writing. While the story of Aladdin and the Lamp has been around since before the birth of written literature, and therefore, speaks for itself, screenwriters John August and Guy Richie somehow managed to take all those memorable characters from the original movie and make them boring!

Let’s talk about Princess Jasmine first, who gained a lifelike feminine physique at the price of losing her entire character. Remember how animated Jasmine had all that anger and sass and moxy? Well, there’s none of that here. Annoyingly, her whole shtick of being the loud and opinionated female gets squashed to a simpering complaint and that distinctive feature of her character gets given to the men (by having them openly voice outdated masculine modes of thinking and generally, being dicks).

Then we have Jafar. While I actually rather liked that his character had more of a back story and breadth of character than just being the power-hungry evil man, his character was rewritten to be serious and dramatic, the wickedness coming from his motives and a love of war. He was nowhere near as charismatic as his animated counterpart and you know what, not that entertaining for the youngsters that need to be shown everything rather than told. Aside from his climactic third act, there’s nothing particularly wicked or scary about the villain and that takes three of the main characters (Aladdin was never particularly interesting in the first place) out of the running for entertainment value.

No Robin Williams, but I applaud Will Smith for attempting to step into those shoes and, you know what, he was actually the most entertaining person on screen. I applaud his renditions of three classic tracks in Disney's musical history and he made Genie a different and entertaining character in his own right. Good on you Will.

Image credit: Movie Quotes and More

The real stars of the show are the people in the art department, set designers, makeup artists, and costume designers. On a visual level, Aladdin is definitely a smart choice for a live-action remake and the film itself is incredibly vibrant, colourful, and beautiful. It just would have been nice if the sweet inside the wrapper was as tantalising.

While it certainly was not the worst movie in the world, Aladdin just didn’t do it for me and I still wonder what audiences it works for. My guess is children who were born within the last ten years and sit at around 6-11 years old. It’s a little too adult for the younglings and anyone born in the ‘90s and raised with the original runs the risk of being disappointed.

Director Guy Richie, 2019

Cast: Mena Massoud, Naomi Scott, Marwan Kenzari, Navid Negahban, Billy Magnussen, Nasim Pedrad, and Will Smith