Disney’s latest misses the mark for good ol’ House of Mouse magic
Wish
With voices by Ariana DeBose, Chris Pine and Alan Tudyk
Directed by Chris Buck & Fawn Veerashuthorn
Rated PG-13
In theaters Wednesday, Nov. 22
In this fairytale fable timed to Disney’s 100th anniversary celebration, a plucky teenager wishes upon a star and starts a revolution in a magical kingdom ruled by a duplicitous sorcerer. Disney has turned wishing on stars into a corporate mantra; the company’s theme song—from 1931’s Pinocchio—is, as you know, “When You Wish Upon a Star.” Wish is cute and sometimes even clever, but it feels more like a feature-length piece of Disney marketing than a standalone new cinematic chapter, with plentiful wink-wink callbacks to House of Mouse classics (Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) and greatest-hit ingredients copped from the tried-and-true Disney-flick playbook.
Ariana DeBose does a capable job as the voice of Asha, a 17-year-old girl whose brownish Mediterranean skin and cornrowed hair signal Disney’s continuing movie march toward more inclusiveness in its anything-but-white female “princess” characters. She belts out several showtunes with the same gusto she brought to Hamilton on Broadway and 2010’s West Side Story (which won her a Supporting Actress Oscar). But none of the mostly meh musical numbers in Wish seem destined for Disney greatness, much less Academy Awards (like Frozen’s “Let It Go,” The Little Mermaid’s “Under the Sea” or Aladdin’s “Whole New World”).
Chris Pine, best known for his roles as Capt. Kirk in the rebooted Star Trek movie franchise and Gal Godot’s cohort in a pair of Wonder Woman movies, appears to relish his chance to be a preening bad guy as Magnifico (below), who hoards the heartfelt “wishes” of his people in his castle like a collection of blue bubbles, effectively robbing the citizenry of their hopes and dreams.
There’s a talking goat (Alan Tudyk) and a voiceless little fallen star that looks like a cross between a Pokemon and the Pillsbury doughboy. They may become plush toys in Disney’s ever-growing arsenal of movie merchandise, but they don’t make near enough impression to become part of the sidekick hall of fame alongside Flounder, Olaf, Jiminy Cricket and Tinker Bell.
The animation combines an old-school technique (watercolors, especially in backgrounds) with modern computer wizardry, but the result sometimes looks curiously odd and out of place, neither here nor there—and comes across more as cost-cutting than innovation. It’s a peculiar choice for a company that became known as a pioneer of cartoon animation.
The movie’s message also gets lost in the muddle of a plot that mostly tells us, instead of showing us, how important wishes really are. In one of the songs, a woodland creature notes that we’re all “shareholders” in the stars, interconnected parts of—and partners in—an ongoing cosmic mystery. For a century now, Disney has made its multi-generational audience feel like partners in the mysteries of movie magic. I just wish Wish had a bit more of it.
—Neil Pond
The Media Tourist 