Aladdin

Dir: Guy Ritchie

2019

*

1992’s Aladdin is a modern classic that represented the end of a short spell of classics that included The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. The Lion King was good but I see the other films collectively as something of a golden trio. Disney really have run out of ideas. I can see why they’d make a live action version of Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, both films worked but they always have, they’re not Disney property, at least the original stories aren’t, and so many film makers have told the tale before. Dumbo was Disney’s first real property to get the remake treatment and I thought it was awful. It was over-thought, over-worked and had all the wrong people attached to it. So when it was announced that they were going to remake Aladdin, replacing Robin Williams’ iconic Genie with Will Smith and having Guy Ritchie as director, I thought they’d lost their minds. They have lost their minds. At this point Disney could release a snuff video killing Bambi and it would make money, so the ‘It made loads of money’ argument doesn’t really stick with me. It is perhaps the most soulless film I have ever seen. All the heart, tenderness, joy and creativity of the first film has been surgically removed with blunt instruments, leaving only an empty carcass of melted plastic, pre-chewed bubblegum and counterfeit dreams. Remaking such a film had to be far more than just finding a couple who strike a resemblance to Aladdin and Princess Jasmine. While Mena Massoud and Naomi Scott are fine, their cartoon counterparts had more life to them. This comes down to the writing, if there was any. Maybe too much time was spent on getting Will Smith’s Genie right but the truth is there isn’t enough time in the whole world to achieve such a thing, it was perfected back in 1992. Make a new version, create a different Genie, just don’t try and revamp Williams’ classic version. I like Will Smith but this film feels so half-hearted, so lethargic, it is hard to understand how it was released. There are elements of it that are clearly taken from the stage show but I would wager anything that if the dancers, singers and actors performed as they did in this film at the stage show rehearsals, not one of them would have got the part in the final production. I actually didn’t hate Will Smith’s Genie but it didn’t come close to Robin Williams’ performance. I liked the carpet too but there wasn’t enough of him. I pretty much hated everything else. The direction was all over the place, looking like a bad studio movie from the 1950s one minute and an amateur dramatics show the next. It also looked like a dreadful 1980s children's television show in some scenes. All the work that must have gone into animating Abu and he still didn’t look as real as the 1992 two-dimensional version. I didn’t think much of the set or the costumes. Marwan Kenzari was a truly disappointing Jafar and about as scary as a bunny rabbit. He had absolutely no presence whatsoever and has to be one of the worst bad guys of all time. Navid Negahban wasn’t much good as The Sultan either, as he looked more like he was sleepwalking than acting. The cartoon version was so lovable, I’m not sure what happened during the development stage. Was there a development stage for any of the characters that weren’t the Genie, Aladdin or Princess Jasmine? I was sad to see Gilbert Gottfried didn’t return to voice Iago, I thought the character was in good hands with Alan Tudyk but no. Iago had very little to do with the film and even less to say. Everything good about the original was gone and none of it was replaced with anything of worth. The new versions of the songs didn’t sound right either, especially the slowed down ones. It was right that Princess Jasmine was given a more powerful role in the new version but the new song she had was so desperate sounding, so ill-fitting, the film suddenly felt like a desperate episode of Pop-Idol, X-Factor or one of the other various awful talent singing show. I think what I hated the most was just how 2019 the whole thing was. We have all these amazing special effects now that almost anything is possible. Unfortunately, we’ve run out of new ideas. At least Disney have anyway. I was really hoping that Vinnie Jones was going turn up at some point and start slamming someone’s head in a car door but alas, it wasn’t to be.