Aladdin

Like many, my brain’s first bitter taste of the live-action Aladdin remake was a trailer showing what to expect of Will Smith’s turn as Genie. It did not go over well, seemingly the case with everyone that saw the spot. Now, granted, after being burned by pretty much all of the preceding “live-action” remakes (let’s be real, The Jungle Book most mostly VFX, and the upcoming Lion King looks to have even less in the way of real objects), my expectations for this one were low enough, especially after director Guy Ritchie laid the biggest egg of his career with King Arthur: Legend of the Sword a few years ago. The film had a climb ahead of it, suffice it to say. Did it rise to the occasion? Well, it more rolled down the hill with a blasé look on its face. Cool beans.

The plot is pretty much identical to that of the animated original (yeah, I know, based on centuries-old stories in one way or another, just go with it for the sake of ease of conversation, ‘kay?), with a lowly “street rat” being drawn into the world of palace politics, magic, and love after happening upon a lamp containing a genie. The plot is not what I have a problem with. It’s fine now as it was back in ’92. It’s pretty much everything else that fails here.

This product of the Disney Remake Machine (tee-em) suffers not so much from the issues of, say, Beauty and the Beast, which tried to do too much with its lackluster characters, instead following in the footsteps of Cinderella by draining the story of all of its magic and wonder and replacing it with a staid, boring piece of barely-fluffy nothing. The cast is barely trying with the material they’re given, to the point that Jafar, one of the more flamboyant and fun Disney villains, is relegated to minor histrionics lacking any charm whatsoever. The kids in the wraparound bits are incredibly out-of-place and saccharine-leaning, and there’s precious little chemistry amongst the cast as a whole. The musical numbers, held over from the original with a bit of expansion (‘cause, yeah, we really needed more of this stuff, guys, thanks a bunch, love it, great idea), have no energy and are staged so dully that I thought it was a deliberate stylistic choice pointing fun at musicals (it’s not, it’s just incompetent). Mena Massoud isn’t the best singer in the world, but he does sound like his animated counterpart, so that’s something; meanwhile, no one else does very well with their vocal parts, particularly Will Smith, who shows why he became famous as a rapper and not a singer (and they gave him multiple songs!). The direction, camera work, and editing are so unremarkable that I was beginning to wonder why they even bothered attaching Ritchie’s name to the proceedings, and it all falls rather short of the fairly dynamic style of the animated film.

Then there’s the visuals. Disney continues to show that they can shit out horrid-looking visual effects regardless of the size of the budget behind them, and I’m almost impressed at how well they’ve aped the look of their early-to-mid-‘90s live-action fluff (I’m thinking Angels in the Outfield and the first attempt at a Disney-made live-action Jungle Book). Somehow the digital effects look even more dated and out-of-place than those used in the animated version, and bits that shouldn’t have been digital, like the animal sidekicks (dammit, even Friends had a real monkey, you fucking hacks!), suffer all the more from their obvious fakeness. The color scheme is mostly drab and flat, often leaning toward Greg and Tim Hildebrandt-style teals and oranges in darker scenes and eschewing the outlandish glitz that could easily stem from having a goddamn genie pulling stuff out of thin air. Genie himself is atrocious to look at, showing just why things that work on celluloid don’t easily transition into the land of the living and breathing. The makeup department is phoning things in, the costumes water down the designs they’re patterned off of, and the cinematography is hardly worth talking about.

At the end of the day, this feels like the soulless cash-grab it clearly is. Disney does not care about putting out cool, charming, magical tales of wonder anymore, they just want your money, all of it, and they’re gonna prey upon your sunny memories of good movies gone by to suck the funds from your very pores. This thing is an awful mess with hardly a redeeming quality about it (I’m trying hard to find something positive here, and nothing’s coming to mind). You want some fun, well-made Aladdin goodness? Stick to the animated version or even the comedic musical Twisted: there’s at least something to gain from those. This film only leads to yawns and continuing doubts over whether or not Guy Ritchie should hang up his spurs (leaning toward a yup on that one, kids). Yeesh.