Wish – Review
95 Minutes, Rated PG
Written by Jennifer Lee and Allison Moore
Directed by Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn
**NOTE: You can read Mark’s review below, then listen or watch as he and Ryan discuss both Wish and Netflix’ Leo, releasing the same day. Remember, though, you can listen to all our discussions of this and every other movie directly over on ACAST. Stay tuned.**
AAynopsis:
Wish will follow a young girl named Asha who wishes on a star and gets a more direct answer than she bargained for when a trouble-making star comes down from the sky to join her.
The movie that was a hundred years in the making, Disney calls it.
They’re not wrong; Wish took a hundred years because it can charitably be called a celebration of those 100 years of animated magic.
It could also be uncharitably be called a 90-minute crib of the last 100 years of animated classics.
I would call it both.
As you watch the film unroll in front of you, you see and hear bits of classic films such as Snow White, Pinocchio, and others, as Asha tries to free the kingdom from the clutches of King Magnifico.
Magnifico is first presented as a benevolent king, dedicated to protecting his people, but like most dictators, that protection comes with a price: your wish. The wish we all have that burns in our hearts and would drive us forward to see it come to fruition, no matter what form it takes. Magnifico takes your wish to protect you from the pain of failing to achieve it.
“A dream is a wish your heart makes,” as they say, and Maginifico hoards those dreams/wishes like a miser.
Until Asha learns of the cruel injustice that is the reality of her idyllic home, and she is convinced that people can be trusted with their own wishes.
I sense a parallel here…
The music and songs were hit or miss. Some worked well and some seemed out of place or out of meaning for their place. More than a few felt like Lin-Manuel Miranda’s work, but he wasn’t involved with this project at all that I saw.
He probably needed a break after The Little Mermaid…
PIne is great as Magnifico, his normally soothing voice carrying an edge of cruelty before honing that edge to razor-sharpness as he struggles to save the kingdom he’s built, regardless of the cost to himself or others… mostly to others.
DeBose’s Asha feels like a modern Disney Princess as opposed to a classic one, and her vocals are stellar by any definition. There’s an energy in her performance that is infectious and drags the audience along with her.
Tudyk plays a goat. He went to Julliard.
In the end, the biggest thing about Wish, for me, is that it evokes a lot of the good that was classic Disney animation: the visual quality is good, the overall tone is good; it also evokes a lot of the bad that is modern Disney.
What do I mean by that? Let’s just say that this infamous picture of modern Disney now has an animated equivalent:
[It has also been pointed out to me that the only two white males in the movie are the evil king and a portrayed-as-slow teen who… well, no spoiler, but he makes a bad choice. I guess I blocked that out.]
Overall, Wish is an expansive walk down memory lane for Disney animation aficionados, with countless Easter Eggs that would take even the most ardent fan multiple upon multiple viewings to catch and/or catalog. It ‘s not a bad 90 minute animated diversion, which is good, because part of Disney’s overall problem of late has been it’s tendency to drag movies out to unnecessary lengths.
Get in. Tell your story. Get out.
Wish opens exclusively in theaters on November 22 and features the voices of Ariana DeBose, Chris Pine, and Alan Tudyk.
And remember, if the BEST thing you can say about a movie is that it’s “visually stunning,” then they’ve done something wrong.
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