Alright! Today I'm reviewing the 67th Walt Disney Animation Studios film and their grand celebration of 100 years of Disney: Wish, which tells the story of Asha, a bubbly 17-year-old who applies to intern under the benevolent King Magnifico, who grants his subjects' wishes once a month. But not all is as it seems in this paradisical kingdom, for it is all founded on a throne of lies that Asha will soon expose...
One of the most stiking aspects of Wish is the animation. Originally intended to be a classically hand-drawn feature, Disney has to cancel this idea because... well, they didn't want to. But!! To maintain the style of their timeless classics, Wish attempts to evoke the feeling of a hand-drawn film, featuring watercolor backgrounds and retaining some of the scratchier xerox-feeling movement lines. The combined effect has been praised by some as a return to form and criticized by others for looking like a low-budget Spider-Verse; personally, I couldn't get over the fact that it looked like a theatrical Sofia the First.
The other thing I couldn't get over was the movie's story. It's a natural fact that all fairy tales need some sort of leap of logic - why did the fairies gift Aurora with beauty and a good singing voice? Why did they lock Anna up with Elsa? How is Pocahontas jumping down a giant waterfall in the James River? It's normal to have logical fallacies. But Wish takes it a step further, perhaps unnecessarily so. The revelation that not all the wishes will be granted is actually very well-explained by King Magnifico (and mathematically obvious, since he only does one wish per month), and the fact that he runs an otherwise utopic kingdom with free rent and food is, like... in many ways, Asha wasn't in the right to try and overthrow King Magnifico, especially considering that he is an wholly altruistic character until he is (sigh) possessed by the lust for power he gets after reading a forbidden book of dark magic.
I also wasn't a huge fan of the Asha character. She's likable and sweet enough, plus she talks to talking animals, so that's always a win, but she just added to an uneasy feeling that, ever since Anna, every Disney movie is mandated to feature "bubbly but socially awkward" as the lead (Moana, Mirabel, Ethan Clade, etc). At this point, I believe it's started working towards the movie's detriment - Asha did not need to be this quirky, especially when the charm ran out in the first five seconds. I thought Ariana DeBose did a lovely job, however - she's a terrific actress and is genuinely a fantastic pick for the next Disney Princess. It's just a shame that it's more Asha-level than Mulan.
The music is also more of the same you've come to expect - there's your standard "I want" song with sweeping vocals, the standard "welcome to [x] city" that's vaguely reminiscent of Encanto, a team-up song with a strong backup chorus - what we've come to expect since the Lin Manuel-Mirande/Greatest Showman double whammy in the 2010s. It's a soundtrack chock full of anachronistic rhythms and lyrics, wholly derivative and unlikely to cause a lasting impression... that is, except for the duet "At All Costs," which reminds us that even mediocre Disney movies still have a "Why Should I Worry."
Now, a word about "At All Costs" might be prudent. Right off the bat, I noticed that the lyrics don't exactly match the context of the scene: King Magnifico and Asha are looking at the wishes and singing things like "If happiness was a tangible thing/It would be you/If you'd have told me the feeling you'd bring/I'd think it untrue," and later "Keep you safe here in my arms/I, I will protect you at all costs." It feels like a love duet that existed in some earlier draft of the film that was too pretty to cut, so it was hastily repurposed to be singing about, um, the wishes. Right.
Which is a shame! The last time Disney did a full-blown romance was Tangled in 2010, 13 years ago!! And the last movies to include romantic elements were Frozen and Frozen II (And even then, they cut Anna and Kristoff's duet from Frozen II). The last time we had a romantic drought like this was the 16-year-long gap between Robin Hood and The Little Mermaid. Further research reveals that the anthropomorphized wish star seen in the movie was originally a Peter Pan-like figure and Asha's love interest.
This means that, at some point in development, Wish was a hand-drawn romance with a love duet that rivaled "I See the Light" and "Once Upon A Dream." And then they... threw it all away for the final product, a Sofia the First-looking shlop of derivative plot points and fan service that, instead of being a celebration of 100 years of Disney, celebrates what Disney is in 2023.
That's another big part of Wish - the movie's also full of references to classic Disney movies. Aurora's dress is seen, there's a couple on a boat in a lake, Peter Pan shows up, a talking goat founds Zootopia, etc. None of them are particularly clever, and I'm not sure why it's such a big deal when Disney has always referenced their prior works. It wasn't exactly a selling point to have Pinocchio in Aladdin or Scar in Hercules, but I guess it's not the '90s anymore.
Overall, I give Wish a 5/10. "For what could have been a Disney classic, Wish is really rather subpar."
Comments
Post a Comment