Aladdin Review
PG: Some action/peril
Disney, Rideback, Lin Pictures, Marc Platt Productions
2 Hrs and 10 Minutes
Director: Guy Ritchie | Screenwriter: John August, Guy Ritchie
Cast: Mena Massoud, Will Smith, Naomi Scott, Marwan Kenzari, Navid Negahban, Nasim Pedrad, Billy Magnussen
A street rat frees a genie from a lamp, granting all of his wishes and transforming himself into a charming prince in order to marry a beautiful princess. But soon, an evil sorcerer becomes hell-bent on securing the lamp for his own sinister purposes.
Kicking off the positives of Aladdin (2019) is the lead who plays the titular role himself, Mena Massoud. Massoud exhibits the right amount of charisma that comes with the character and delivers a good performance. Not only does he look the part, but he also has the same dialect as the original voice actor, Scott Weinger. And his vocals are on par with Brad Kane, the original Aladdin singing voice. He embodies all of the character’s requirements and sells it throughout. He makes for a fantastic Aladdin and he showcases his natural talents. The same praise also applies to Naomi Scott as Jasmine. Scott delivers more of a headstrong personality to the Disney princess and she does an impressive job. Scott has come a long way since the Disney Channel movie Lemonade Mouth, so to see her come full circle 8 years later as Jasmine is the perfect display of her abilities. From her topnotch vocals to the determination she brings to the table, Scott is the scene-stealing talent who keeps the movie afloat.
As far as Disney live action remakes go, Aladdin is great from a production standpoint. The production design is good as Ritchie’s team brings the fictional country of Agrabah to life. The costume designs are serviceable, especially with how it displays the royalty of people of higher power as opposed to the commoners. I was fond of Aladdin’s initial outfit, especially since it would be uncomfortable for both the audience and the actor to have Massoud nearly shirtless and wearing baggy Harem pants.
Believe it or not, there are several liberties the script takes early on that I appreciate. Instead of introducing Jasmine as a bored princess who wants to see beyond the city walls, she’s already living a double life in Agrabah disguised as a commoner by day. The story hits a lot of the original’s narrative beats, but Ritchie/August rework them for the romance’s benefit. There is more development to Jasmine and Aladdin’s relationship, which is established early on, and those additional scenes between the two in the first act are strong. Given how great the leads are in their respective roles, and the onscreen chemistry that’s present, you genuinely root for their romance. I even liked some of the additional new characters. Iago is just a regular parrot but, don’t worry, Abu is still a kleptomaniac monkey.
Nasim Pedrad is a great addition as Jasmine’s handmaiden, Dalia, who is also her friend and the love interest for Genie, which sounds weird in concept. But because of her comedic timing and persona mixed with Smith’s charm, it comes across as endearing. Plus, Nasim Pedrad is hilarious and most of the scenes she’s in made me crack up. She’s such a natural talent and gives the character a fun personality and it made me glad to see her appear in something again. During her time on SNL, she was one of my favorite cast members and her performance here solidifies that.
Will Smith’s approach to Genie is good. When you have Will Smith in a movie, he always tends to be Will Smith. With a character like Genie, who is a big personality, Smith makes this rendition his own. There are things that the VFX team did with Genie’s movements that are amusing, allowing Smith to exude his vibrant personality on screen. Some of the visual gags (when not stepping on familiar areas already done by Robin Williams) are funny. Will Smith is charming and less reliant on William’s jokes, which were mostly comprised of impressions. He adds his Big Willie flair and succeeds on his own merit, for he drives on a vibrantly playful personality.
The areas that worked best for me are when it goes from being Aladdin to - hear me out on this - Hitch (which is arguably one of Smith’s better movies). When you have Mena Massoud and Will Smith (in his human form) together, the film shines the most. They bounce humor off each other effectively, garnering big laughs. The movie eventually turns into Disney’s “AladdHitch” and it’s entertaining.
The music, done by Pasek and Paul (now working with legend Alan Menken), is great. The songs have more percussion and grandeur in the instrumentals that, when the musical sequences occur, you can’t help but sing along.
Aside from The Man From U.N.C.L.E, I haven’t been very fond of Guy Ritchie’s latest works. Since watching the trainwreck that was King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, I was fearful for what he would do to this movie in both script and direction. FOR THE MOST PART, the direction is more reserved and pulled back from his regular shtick… I mean, style. It doesn’t contain all the poorly-edited quick cuts along with a barrage of slow motion shots. He puts effort into some of the musical sequences, especially Aladdin’s opening song, which is the best sequence in the entire movie. Yeah, one of the most forgettable songs is the best musical sequence.
Well, now seems like an appropriate time to rip into this:
We saw it with Beauty and the Beast (2017) and see it here with Aladdin (2019): you can’t beat something that was already damn near perfect. You just can’t. And one of the prominent reasons that supports this reasoning is HIM:
I was thoroughly digging this remake for the first 20 minutes or so, from the musical sequences to the additional scenes between Jasmine and Aladdin. But once Will Smith Genie is rubbed out of the lamp and you behold him in this uncanny CGI glory - which is worse to see on the big screen - this movie turns into a damn mess.
Now, let’s talk about Will Smith Genie. You’ve seen it in the trailers and hoped it’d be rendered better before its release but alas, it’s as nightmarish and poorly rendered as you’d expect. Seriously, did Disney hit up Robert Zemeckis’ Imagemovers, because it’s on a Zemeckis level of uncanny.
It’s completely overwhelming when Genie comes out of the lamp as you’re examining the disproportionate head with his body. And nearly a minute after, Smith’s “You’ve Never Had a Friend Like Me” cover comes on which means the nightmare fuel comes in MULTITUDES. The reimagining of one of the most imaginative music sequences in animation history is ruined by… well, a terrible design mixed with bad rendering. I’m hating the entire petition notion that’s going on right now where fans think they’re so entitled to all these changes they want, but… this shit needed a better design rather than just slapping Will Smith’s head on a blob body. If the Sonic the Hedgehog design debacle was successful, wouldn’t it have worked for Genie if an image was released long before the second trailer? All of the sequences between Smith and Massoud are successful when Genie is in his human form, because his appearance is palatable.
Even as the film progressed and Genie went back to his original form, I thought I was getting used to it (or developing Stockholm Syndrome) but I still ended up going:
Because of Uncanny Smith, the entire sanctity of his introductory scene is ruined as you mostly notice the apparent green screen Massoud is in. And since you know where the story goes, because IT IS BEAT FOR BEAT WITH ITS SOURCE, it becomes even more uncanny when Jafar turns himself into a genie. Every time you see anyone in Genie form, you end up holding on to your seat whispering to the screen:
One of the liberties taken in Ritchie/August’s script that I was conceptually on board with was younger Jafar. Even how he’s characterized in this reimaging is strong as they add more dimension to him. He’s more sinister and power-hungry. He has a little Killmonger to him. But the actor who portrays him, Marwan Kenzari, is legitimately bad. His delivery is often stiff and nearly every line lacks expression. It feels like he wasn’t really given any direction because I know Kenzari is a decent actor, but with a villain as memorable as Jafar, it’s baffling how little effort he put into his performance. Especially since Scott and Massoud are bringing their A-game. So, when there are scenes between him and… well, nearly anybody else, they’re never on the same wavelength, resulting in him not coming across as much of a threat. At least when Luke Evans portrayed Gaston in Beauty and the Beast, he was immediately overshadowed by the larger-than-life, egotistical personality and buff character design of his superior, despite the efforts Evans made. For me, I believed there were areas where this Jafar was able to surpass the original, and I found potential in the script department, but Kenzari’s performance undercuts all of that.
To redact my compliments on Ritchie's direction, the best I can say is that it’s competent at best, which is great for Guy Ritchie because his last movie was an unbelievable shit show. But for a property like this, it lacks all of the required energy, amazement and wonder the film desperately deserved. It felt too reliant on its realistic take that it is stripped of the imagination and wonder that comes with Aladdin.
His direction lacks the extravagance and, because of how pulled back he is, the musical sequences suffer. The “Whole New World” cover is great and Naomi Scott showcases a wonderful set of vocals but that sequence is undercut by the small scope it takes.
Crap I didn’t want to get way too into depth with this but I’ll deconstruct the original film a bit. During the original’s “A Whole New World” Aladdin shows Jasmine the whole world and the many countries of it. Granted it had no regard to time zone but we’ll go past that, you saw the romance blossoming from the carpet ride around the world. Here, the carpet ride is just around Agrabah, so the lyrics of the song doesn’t really match the context of the sequence. The song is the initial driving force that solidifies Aladdin and Jasmine’s romance. Even then, the sequence is damaged because lack of rendering of the backgrounds. The shots are often close ups of the noticable green screen which is incredibly embarrassing honestly.
I mentioned how the film provides more development to the characters, and one of the biggest changes lies with Jasmine who has an entirely new character arc. At first it is more serviceable than the original as she tries to prove to her father that she has what it takes to rule instead of finding a suitor to take over the job. While on paper its great as Jasmine maintains her headstrong passion, but it's all destroyed by an additional/new original song called “Speechless” which happens to be one of the worst songs from Disney to date.
Given the context to the film and how its integrated to the story it's jarring as they would occur whenever Jafar would deliver a misogynistic line to her resulting to the film stopping and Jasmine, I shit you not, sings about how its like not to be heard because she is a woman and how she will not become a silent women because of this. The lyrics are bland and bare bones even down to the “bird with broken wings” lines which is a such a recurrence for songs about the female spirit. It feels disingenuous as Disney, the sorcerers of capitalism, capitalizing on the women’s struggle. First time I didn’t mind it for its only a minute and Scott’s vocals are pitch perfect when it returns for a reprise it’s laughably bad. It’s treated not like a scene in a theatrical production but a scene taken straight out of Glee.
It was already heavy handed when Jafar says, “Princesses are better seen than heard from,” resulting with you rightfully rolling your eyes but when the film just stops for Jasmine to sing that song, you feel that bat swung at your face, especially during the reprise. In the midst of the forced “GIRL POWER” moment in Endgame, the poor handling of Daenerys in the undercooked final season of Game of Thrones, this added more fuel to my raging fire. I love Pasek, Paul, and Menken, but the song doesn’t feel like a concoction from them as it’s insincere and feels like Disney’s executive requirement to have a new song to ensure their spot in next year’s Oscars in the Best Original Song category and because Jasmine is the only one who doesn’t have one, they capitalize on her gender and force in a song about strength and it’s astonishingly bad and pandering. If it wasn’t for the song and some of the subtlety in the script then that arc would’ve been impactful but because of it, they give her a disservice bigger than ever before.
Mr. Guy Ritchie, sir, your VFX is uncanny. Cash grab the job, our nostalgia robbed. You ain’t never had a mess like me.
Jokes aside, Aladdin advances the original in story and has a charismatic cast who sells it, but its lack of wonder mixed with uncanny VFX, makes this remake just a shadow to its superior.
Rating: 2/5 | 48%
