Review: Aladdin (2019)

Aladdin, directed by Guy Ritchie, tells the tale of a street rat named Aladdin (Mena Massoud) who runs across the beautiful Princess Jasmine (Naomi Scott) and falls in love. Things change though when the EVIL vizier Jafar (Marwan Kenzari) captures Aladdin and forces him to retrieve a mystical lamp from a mystical cave, where rubbing it unleashes the mystical Genie of the Lamp (Will Smith). With his friends at his side, it’s up to Aladdin to foil Jafar’s plans and capture the heart of Princess Jasmine.

This is the latest Disney remake to grace our screens after Tim Burton’s Dumbo came out literally two months ago, and looking at the films coming out this year it’s certainly not the last. The original animated Aladdin was a film I really enjoyed as a kid, and re-watching it today it’s still a really fun movie to show your kids despite it not holding up quite as well as I remembered it.

Like many people I had my reservations with the idea of someone remaking Aladdin, and those reservations soured some more once I saw the trailers for it. Much like most of the live action Disney remakes, this new rendition of Aladdin has no point in existing; it’s nothing more than a soulless cash-grab that, outside of a few changes, is practically identical with the original film, only this time it’s done much worse.

I guess it’s easier to start off listing the aspects of the film I liked. For one, the production design and costumes were all top notch. Of course it’s something that I expected Disney to get right but hey gotta give them credit where credit’s due. The music by Alan Menken is still the same memorable and iconic score we all remember, only now it feels grander and more diverse. Believe it or not the songs themselves still sound great despite some rewrites and them sounding more modern (with the exception of the one new song for this remake, but we’ll get more into that in a bit). And that’s about it; everything else about this film is pretty much as bad as you’d imagine it be.

So where to begin? Let’s start with the story. It’s still the same story from 1992; hardly any of it is different. There are some slight changes to the original made here, such as the Genie having a romantic subplot and Jafar having a backstory now, but overall if you’ve seen the animated version you’ve already seen this version. The same story beats are all there, only this time for some reason everything is done worse thanks to some pretty bad lines of dialogue and Guy Ritchie’s chaotic style.

On that note, the direction for this film kinda sucks. Guy Ritchie does not feel like the right director to tackle this kind of film. This film has a lot of edits in it and most of them are pretty noticeable. The first act of this film is rushed to an insane degree; it feels as if there were several scenes that were cut out in the beginning that should’ve been left in. the characters are there, but we’re given no time to let them grow on us, making it hard for us to get attached to them as a result.

The musical numbers in this film are also pretty bland. Despite Ritchie being an energetic director there was an astounding lack of energy in the film’s musical sequences; in fact, it almost feels like as it Ritchie has never seen a single musical in his life. Outside of “Friend Like Me”, all the musical numbers had little to no choreography in them. “Arabian Nights” is nothing more than a slow moving opening shot of Agrabah, “One Jump” is a camera following some actors around, “Prince Ali” is the equivalent of watching a Disney parade, even “A Whole New World” manages to be bland as the “World” Aladdin and Jasmine are seeing is nothing more than the city and outside of it.

Of course there’s also a new song written exclusively for this movie from Ben Pasek and Justin Paul, the Oscar winning duo who wrote the songs for La La Land and The Greatest Showman, and honestly it’s the worst song in the film, both as a song and in the film. For one, it sounds like every other generic pop song; you can play this song anywhere else and people won’t realize it’s from Aladdin. It’s the only song in the soundtrack that sticks out like a sore thumb.

Now I’m not saying that Naomi Scott was bad at singing (she was just fine), it’s just that lyrically you can’t tell that it’s from the movie Aladdin. The song sequence in the film isn’t much better either; once again, it’s just a camera following a person around while she sings. It’s not just bad choreography, it’s not even choreography to begin with.

Will Smith is passable at best as the Genie; he does give the character a lot of personality and charm much like Robin Williams did and to be fair it’s hard doing this character justice when the character was solely created for Williams to begin with, but when it comes to the film’s more serious moments Smith kinda struggles to give a genuine emotion other than charming. He’s essentially playing the same character he played as in Hitch, only this time he’s big, blue, and at times kinda uncanny to look at.

The rest of the cast was pretty embarrassing to watch. Mena Massoud’s performance had all the charm and complexity of pita bread (not as tasteless as plain white bread, but it’s still bread), Naomi Scott was just fine, Massoud and Scott had hardly any chemistry between them, Navid Negahban as the Sultan seemed as if he got only three hours of sleep when making this film, and then there’s Marwan Kenzari as Jafar.

Good lord where to begin with Jafar in this movie. For starters, Kenzari’s performance was laughable. He’s suppose to be incredibly intimidating in the role but I can never take any of his lines seriously when half the time he sounds like he’s phoning in every emotion. As I also mentioned before, Jafar has a backstory now, and not only does the film shoves this piece of information at us through forced exposition, it also hardly changes anything about the movie.

Jafar was never suppose to be this complex villain to begin with. His motivations are simple: he wants the lamp so he can take over Agrabah. Not every villain needs some complex backstory to be memorable, is it too much to ask for a villain that’s simple and fun? This Jafar doesn’t even do anything interesting once he gets his magical powers. He taps his staff a lot and then people either disappear, get sick all of a sudden, or freeze in time. The Jafar in the original film breathed fire, trapped people in giant hourglasses, and turned into a giant snake!

Why can’t we see fun and crazy stuff like that? The film clearly has the budget for that (it’s DISNEY for crying out loud), and yet they go for the least imaginative route possible, and that’s my biggest issue with this film, and also with these live action Disney remakes in general. There’s no imagination in this film at all. The original film was nothing ground-breaking, but I still enjoyed it if anything for its sheer high energy and creativity. It made the most of its ninety minute run-time with bright colors, fast pace songs, and its simple but charming premise. This remake misses the entire point of why the original resonated with so much people for all these years and instead churns out yet another factory made carbon copy of something that’s often imitated but never duplicated.

Overall this was a sad, soulless, and shockingly dull remake of a fun, colorful, and imaginative film. I’ve ranted on this film a lot but believe it or not it’s not the worst Disney remake I’ve seen so far, and this is a film I can actually see people liking. If you just want to watch something casual and light-hearted and you’re also a sucker for nostalgia then you’ll probably like this movie fine. Despite the musical sequences being dull and uninspired, it’s STILL the songs from the original film, and the songs by themselves are still good to listen to (“Speechless” is awful though).

If you’re someone that loved the original Aladdin though and are looking for a fresh new take on the timeless story that you love, you won’t find it here. If anything, this film will make you appreciate the original even more. It’s often the case with these live action Disney remakes, but if that means the new Lion King remake will make me love the original even more then I guess there’s something for me to look forward to.

Final Verdict: 1/10