Movie Review: Aladdin

Aladdin ** ½ / *****

Directed by: Guy Ritchie.

Written by: John August and Guy Ritchie.

Starring: Will Smith (Genie), Mena Massoud (Aladdin), Naomi Scott (Jasmine), Marwan Kenzari (Jafar), Nasim Pedrad (Dalia), Navid Negahban (Sultan), Alan Tudyk (Iago), Billy Magnussen (Prince Anders), Imran Yusuf (Omar), Amir Boutrous (Jamal), Maya Saroya (Ese), Jordan A. Nash (Barro), Minhaz Zee (Razaq the City Guard), Song-Hung Chang (Ahmed).

 

One of the previews I saw when I took the family to see Disney’s live action Aladdin remake this weekend was for Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, the second film in the series starring Angelina Jolie as Disney’s Sleeping Beauty villain. I said to my wife then that at least with those films, as flawed as the first one was, that Disney was at least trying to do something different – trying to have a new take on a classic. The biggest problem that films like Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast a few years ago, is that there doesn’t seem to be much of a reason for them to exist. They are essentially just completing remaking animated classics – that kids are still watching, still loving, in an effort to make more money from existing Intellectual Property. The songs are the same, the action beats are the same, the costumes, the characters, everything is the same. They do add to the stories – Beauty and the Beast was 45 minutes longer – this one is just about 40 minutes longer. They added a few new songs here – the biggest one being for Jasmine, which was part of a larger effort to give Jasmine more agency, and more to do, than the films from 1990s did. That’s a good thing. And yet, for the most part, I sat watching this film – which wasn’t particularly bad, but wasn’t particularly good – and wondered if we all wouldn’t have had a better time sitting at home and watching the Blu-Ray of the animated version for the 10^th time. The answer is no – and not just because I don’t like leaving the house.

 

Relative newcomer Mena Massoud has the title role, and he’s is rather bland and forgettable. He isn’t bad by any means; he just doesn’t stand out. He’s an okay singer, an okay actor, but has a minimal screen presence – you don’t really ever feel much for him. Naomi Scott is a legitimately wonderful Jasmine – that she is drop dead gorgeous is undeniable, but she has real charisma and presence, and she can really sing. She makes what is basically a fairly forgettable new song and turns into something quite good. You really want her to be the focus of the movie – as she is the best part. As for Will Smith as the Genie, well, he does what he was asked to do. He was clearly told to go big, bigger if possible than Robin Williams, which was already probably too big for the movie to contain it. He goes really big from his first scene, and that keeps getting bigger. His musical numbers are okay, I guess – he isn’t the world’s best singer, but he does it okay. Marwan Kenzari as Jafar just isn’t quite as menacing as his animated counterpart.

 

The film was directed by Guy Ritchie, but apart from a couple of moments where he goes full slow motion with it (for reasons that aren’t clear) – he seems to have muted his style. This is both good and bad – good because Ritchie has at times in his career he goes overboard with style, completely overwhelming the material, bad because it makes Aladdin seem like even more of a faceless corporate product than it otherwise would be. Watching it, you see the competence of the filmmaking on every level, but you don’t really feel like anyone involved feels anything personal connection with the material. It’s all just a job – something churned out cynically for money. While it’s true that all movies – particularly all movies made for this much money, by companies like Disney – are made for money, the best of them still feel like something someone is making because they believe in it. Here, it all just feels like a job.

 

The film is big and bloated – it goes on for 129 minutes, which as mentioned is much longer than the 90 minutes of the original, but other than a few nice moments with Jasmine and her handmaid (played by SNL’s Nasim Pedrad), there isn’t much of a reason for that added runtime. It’s a movie cynically made to separate those who grew up with Aladdin from their money – hopefully taking their children, so another generation will fall in love with the movie. It may work at that – in that kids will watch the animated film, and love it. As for this film, yeah, it will pass the time for kids – and they may well like it. I cannot imagine too many of them feeling the same way about this film as their parents feel about the original though.