Aladdin review!

Alright! Today I'm back in my New York Groove today with a review of the 2019 Aladdin, which I was intrigued by, but not enough to see it in theaters.
That didn't matter though, it made a billion dollars and cemented that everything you love will be remade (Including the Princess Bride).



I thought it would be a flop. Aladdin without Robin Williams? Sounds like Return of Jafar, a truly awful film. But, it turned out okay. Like, a little bit better than okay. Like, my second favorite Disney remake (Behind the Jungle Book).


But compared to the original? A lot worse. But it does one thing better than the original.

Jasmine. Jasmine is no longer "Marrying for love, ooh, my problems are so first-world it actually hurts" type of princess. She now wants to be Sultan. She isn't whiny. She has political knowledge. And she has a solo song (Which was misplaced but still pretty awesome).

But there are a couple of things the film does worse, most notable Jafar and Iago.

Iago, voiced for the first time in forever not by Gilbert Gottfried, is now voiced by Alan Tudyk. He is not a funny parrot now. He's just a parrot that says things others have said... like a real parrot.
Jafar, however, wasn't truly awful.
He just wasn't intimidating.

He seemed to nice, his laugh was awful (In the sense it was more funny than scary), his beard was not twisted, he wasn't the tall and thin politcal figure, and he didn't sing his Prince Ali reprise that's awesome.
It's the only time a villain takes the protagonist's song and throws it back in their faces. But they left all that out.
And we are left with this Jafar, a rather stock villain, who may or may not be a magician (It's left vague until his second wish).



There is one thing everyone is asking, and you've probably heard before. Will Smith was not a bad Genie. Certainly not as bad as the teaser trailer had us to believe. Nowhere near that level.
He was actually really funny, and wacky, and what you'd want out of a live action Genie.

His CGI was actually very impressive.

For Aladdin, it's basically the same character, but this time he (Presumably) has nipples. And he doesn't sing as well.

And there's another 30 minutes of runtime, somehow.

For the musical numbers, it's not like Lion King where they're all downgrades. It's more like Beauty and the Beast where they're the same. The only one that's a lot worse is One Jump Ahead, which is nowhere near as fun as the original. Guy Ritchie does his thing where he slows down and speeds up the film, but that was just really weird to watch when it was synced with real time human words. It just didn't look right.

All the other musical numbers were really good, though. I really liked Jasmine's new song, "Speechless," but it was extremely out of place in the film. Like, it never happened. It was still cool.

Oh, and of course, the controversy. Billy Magnussen was cast in this film, a white man, and ultimately, he wasn't even important. Like, he had two minutes of screen time. What was the point of him if he's not going to be important?
However, his inclusion was necessary to the box office success of the film. I'm sure people would not have seen this film if it didn't have a white man. I'm kidding.

Overall, it's definitely one of my favorite Disney remakes.

Overall opinion: 6.5/10, "Aladdin is different enough than the original to stand on its own, but when compared to the original film, it's unnecessary, long, and less impressive. But it is still a good movie"