'Wish' Review: Disney's Centennial Celebratory Flick is the Studio at Their Most Soulless to Date
PG: Thematic elements and mild action
Runtime: 1 Hour and 35 Minutes
Production Companies: Walt Disney Animation Studios
Distributor: Disney
Directors: Chris Buck, Fawn Veerasunthorn
Writers: Jennifer Lee, Allison Moore
Cast: Ariana DeBose, Chris Pine, Alan Tudyk, Angelique Cabral, Victor Garber, Natasha Rothwell, Jennifer Kumiyama, Harvey Guillén, Evan Peters, Ramy Youssef, Jon Rudnitsky
Release Date: November 22, 2023
Only in Theaters
A few days before my Wish press screening, I saw Beauty and the Beast on 35mm. The defining feature of the Disney Renaissance era was my late dad's favorite movie. I haven't seen it since he left us last year, so the screening was emotional. Sobbing aside, the film's tight storytelling, Alan Menken and Howard Ashman's iconic tunes, and the gorgeous hand-drawn 2D artistry on every frame dazzled me with the same admiration I had as a kid when Pops put on the VHS for me. Proceeding from Disney animation's unequivocally apex feature to Wish was a dizzying whiplash of devastation, for it's by far the worst musical output the studio has released since Pocahontas–– whose inception derived from AI-lover Jeffery "Quibi" Katzenberg's hard-on to get another Best Picture nomination like Beauty and The Beast did.
In the Kingdom of Rosas, run by sorcerer King Magnifico (Chris Pine), who harnesses the power to grant his citizen's deepest wishes monthly if they give their dreams to him, 17-year-old Asha (Ariana DeBose) discovers during an apprentice interview that he's been making false promises to his citizens. Magnifico deliberately chooses which wishes to grant to maintain a status quo. Refusing to grant her 100-year-old grandfather Sabino's (Victor Garber) wish, Asha makes a powerful wish on a star for the betterment of her people. Her wish is so powerful that a Kirby-esque star named Star falls from the sky. With the help of her talking goat Valentino (Alan Tudyk), Asha and Star try to confront Magnifico and restore the dreams he took from the citizens.
Not since Lilo & Stitch has Disney Animation integrated watercolor backgrounds in any of their features. Wish marks the first time the studio experimented with classic 2D techniques in their 3D landscape, and it's effective. The same goes for several beautiful hand-drawn 2D effects exemplifying Magnifico's magic. There are several moments where the combination of animation techniques is visually stunning, but those moments are few and far between.
Wish's "creative team," consisting of co-director Chris Buck and co-writer Jennifer Lee, best known for the Frozen features, dump countless Disney tropes of yore––an evil monarch, a quirky adolescent female protagonist, a dead relative in their background, Alan Tudyk voiced animal sidekick––and feed it to an AI system that spat out a first draft disguised as a final product. Arriving undercooked, resembling less of a movie and more of a product, the studio proudly says, "We made this with love. Bon Appetite." With each bite of the raw meal, you can't help but yearn for the days when Disney's original features had more significance than adhering to a formula.
Jennifer Lee and co-writer Allison Moore's screenplay lacks identity from story to character. Beginning with the lead, Asha carries the typical adorkable traits of her previous protagonists, such as Anna and Rapunzel. Albeit very likable, there's little conflict or otherworldly force to push her development. The story's autopilot functionality robs her of holding agency. I can't help but feel bad for Ariana DeBose, who does her best to "do the thing," pouring her soul into her vocal performance, where she shines in charisma and singing.
Those same issues also lie in Chris Pine's King Magnifico. Touted as the first classic non-twist Disney villain in years, the writers fail to realize that villains are supposed to be intimidating and have a trait. Magnifico is just Hans from Frozen without the twist reveal. The film tries to humanize Magnifico as a dutiful man who becomes corrupt on a dime after Asha questions his authority. He hardly stimulates any intimidation, for the worst he does is crush someone's dream, which results in giving someone immediate depression. His watered-down villain song, "This is the Thanks I Get?!" lessens his intimidation with its overly poppy beat and weak lyricism.
The script spends far too much time incorporating unbearable Gen-Z dialogue riddled with overly modernized lingo, trying to be hip with the times rather than rich in its legacy as the movies it wants to honor. Since the film is located in a remote place lost in time, the updated slang comes across as pandering, and the movie is abundant on that front.
The slang issue also lies in the lyrics of Julia Michaels and Benjamin Rice's forgettable songs. If you're going to commission a songwriter for a musical project, a singer-songwriter with no musical theater background isn't going to burn your starlight. For example, in "This is the Thanks I get?!" There's a lyric Magnifico sings that goes, "I let you live here, and I don't even charge you rent," which made me roll my eyes. Hey, remember when Hunchback of Notre Dame's terrifying "Hellfire" number was able to exist with the film retaining a G rating. Initially, I questioned if I was just getting old, if kids these days loved Julia Michaels. But then I realized these songs are just abysmal. Is this how Gen X'ers felt when Phil Collins made the music for Tarzan?
All the numbers also fall flat from a directional stand point as Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn fail to include any signature extravagance outside camera movements,at least to compensate for the bizarre animation style.
Yeah, let's address the elephant in the room: the animation. Wish might mark new territory for the studio in combining 3D and 2D art techniques, but it visually falls flat. It's sweating bullets wanting to hop aboard the Spider-Verse train in style while being too afraid to commit through its nauseating motion-smoothing. It affects the energy during the musical numbers and slapstick beats. It's all so drab in motion that it strikes this awkward middle ground that would have benefited from it being entirely 2D, which, for some reason, the studio is still scared of committing to. You don't have Lasseter anymore, guys. You're free to return to your roots in spirit.
In a way, Wish does return to its roots. And by that, I mean lathers its vacant story with Easter eggs and references to other Disney characters in such soulless fashion. All of Asha's best friends are personified, diversified, and tokenized caricatures of the Seven Dwarves. The credits include celestial illustrations of most Disney Animation projects chronologically, based on their promo art. It's another lazy display of nostalgia that's more merry in providing references to rich Disney tales than an original story with its weight or identity. Even if I were to forgive its shortcomings, the pretentious attitude it prides itself on makes it even uglier than its design. By the end, I turned to my friend and said, "Wow, a rather fine first draft of a Disney movie. Can't wait for it to be done."
If Beauty and the Beast wasn't enough, I rewatched Nimona at an awards screening the day following Wish. You know, the movie Disney killed and shuttered Blue Sky Studios over? Like Beauty and the Beast, Nimona is a profound work of art that went through hell and back to get made. It made a futuristic fantasy world akin to ours and told a transformative tale of tolerance through a revolutionary trans allegory. To see that movie finally materialize in contrast to the most formulaic, soulless Disney musical in 30 years, cements Wish as one of the worst films of 2023. Hopefully, a reckoning at the mouse house follows because if this is what you got after a century of iconic storytelling, there desperately needs to be a shakeup in leadership.
So I make this wish, to have a better film for us than THIS.
