Let me tell you something. Disney’s Aladdin (Ron Clements and John Musker, 1992) is one of my favourite movies of all time and has been since I was a child. Being part of the Disney Renaissance in the 1990s, Aladdin is one of the films that brought Walt Disney Studios into the spotlight for a new generation. The Genie especially was my favourite character as well as the highlight of the film – owing to the performance of Robin Williams around whom the character was designed – and I like to think the Genie has been a major influence on my personality (and my liking for the colour blue). It is a masterpiece of beautiful animation, zany humour and gorgeous music from the genius of Alan Menken, Tim Rice and Howard Ashman and vocals from the likes of Brad Kane, Lea Salonga, Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle, plus iconic voice acting from Scott Weinger, Linda Larkin, Robin Williams, Jonathan Freeman, Douglas Seale, Frank Welker and Jim Cummings. In 2001 it would be adapted into a Broadway musical, starring Adam Jacobs as the eponymous hero, the talented and charismatic James Monroe Iglehart as the Genie, and even Jonathan Freeman reprising his role as the villainous Jafar.
In 2010, Disney released its live action remake of Alice in Wonderland, as directed by Tim Burton. In 2014, they released the abysmal Maleficent (Robert Stromberg), and every year since they have released a live action remake of at least one of their old properties, cashing in on their audience’s nostalgia for their classic and timeless cartoons. Along with the mixed success of these remakes, a common criticism is that they often times miss the point of what made these classics so iconic, timeless and how their characters were supposed to act. Another common critical accusation is that The Walt Disney Company is unoriginal and bereft of the imagination, wonder, talent and overall magic that once made it so beloved. The sad thing is that with Disney owning 27% of the film industry as well as many other entertainment properties, the company can afford to be without such important creative qualities for many years to come.
Twenty-seven years after the aforementioned masterpiece was released, Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin is the latest to join the lineup of Disney’s live-action remakes of a beloved timeless classic. With the passing of Robin Williams, the first thing on many an audience’s mind was who was to play the Genie. When Will Smith was announced as the new Genie, I was fairly optimistic, as Will Smith is an incredibly charismatic personality and another familiar face from my childhood. I was curious to see how Smith’s performance and the character of the Genie would be handled. The last couple of weeks leading up to my seeing the film were the most daunting. I was reminded of Disney’s creative bankruptcy as mentioned in the previous paragraph and felt somewhat hypocritical going to support one of these remakes, and with the company becoming somewhat of a monopoly, plus talk of Disney’s products and properties becoming more and more politicised (as many have observed of the Star Wars and Marvel franchises), I have begun to think that I’m done with Disney – not a full-on boycott, but also not optimistic about their releases.
Even so, I was curious as to what would be done with this film, so here’s my take…
(Please note there will be numerous spoilers in this review, though if you’ve seen the 1992 version you basically know the plot already.)
The opening is decent enough. Will Smith, who plays the Genie in the rest of the movie, is sailing on a boat with his kids and singing “Arabian Nights”. This rendition of the song has new lyrics that lend a more mystical atmosphere to the intro.
The next scenes are of Aladdin (Mena Massoud) thieving on the streets of Agrabah, trying to pawn off some loot he stole, rescuing Princess Jasmine (Naomi Scott) from an angry merchant, and “One Jump Ahead” sequence. This beginning is kind of weak. First of all the part where he gets figs as payment for something he stole is suspiciously similar to that part in The Force Awakens (J. J. Abrams, 2015) where Rey gets “one quarter portion” in exchange for electronics she salvaged from a Star Destroyer. Then there’s the part where Jasmine gives an apple to a hungry child without paying for it; in the original Jasmine seems to not know how her country’s economy works when she neglects to pay for the apple, but in this version it’s revealed she’s been studying to become ruler of Agrabah her whole life. She would have prepared by bringing some money, or maybe she could have used her jewelry as a bribe for the merchant. Aladdin rescues her and the two of them run away from the guards while Aladdin sings “One Jump Ahead”, and it’s rather underwhelming, as there’s very little energy when compared to the original.
Aladdin takes Jasmine (who he doesn’t know is Princess Jasmine yet) to his hideaway home, cleverly revealed via a mechanism, and Aladdin deduces that Jasmine is from the palace by looking at the quality of her clothes and assumes that she is handmaiden to the princess. Now, in the original we saw Jasmine talk to her father the Sultan about how she was tired of being cooped up in the palace with so few friends, so we got an idea of why she snuck out of the palace and it makes it all the more effective when Aladdin shows her the view of the palace: she feels as if she can’t escape it. Here, her introduction gives us very little understanding of her character. Plus it’s pointless to withhold the fact that she’s the princess from the audience. We saw the original. We saw the trailers. We know that Naomi Scott is Princess Jasmine. We learn later that she snuck out of the palace to survey the quality of life of the people of Agrabah because she aspires to be a good ruler, but again, why withhold that information? If we’re not introduced to the whys and motivations of the character early on, you risk painting them as bland. Thankfully the movie fleshes her out more but it’s a weak introduction to one of our main characters.
Jafar, played by Marwan Kenzari, I will admit has been the butt of jokes passed around by myself and my circle of friends, saying that the character’s “balls haven’t dropped yet” in response to a character who was originally an older person now portrayed by a 36-year-old. However, I do like that this version gives Jafar some backstory and thereby motivation for why he wants power and what he intends to do with it, while showing Jafar to have skills he didn’t in the original to illustrate this backstory, and Kenzari does a great job of bringing this character to life. So, all joking aside, this is a good rendition of Jafar.
The representation of Iago (Alan Tudyk) could have gone one of two ways: they could have had him be a talkative intelligent bird with a much less iconic voice than that of Gilbert Gottfried or they could just have had him be a normal parrot. In this case, however, the creatives devised a third route. In this version he mimics words like a normal parrot but he also forms them into responses or statements of his own accord, denoting some level of intelligence and personality. His framing as well as Tudyk’s performance makes Iago come across as menacing, which I like very much for the villain’s pet bird.
After their first meeting, Aladdin infiltrates the palace in order to return a piece of jewelry that his monkey Abu stole from Jasmine. Jafar sees Aladdin’s athleticism from afar as Aladdin breaks into the palace and decides to use him to get into the Cave of Wonders. More on that later. The question that crossed my mind during these romantic gestures was, why is he interested in Jasmine? Why doesn’t he just steal her expensive stuff and sell it? Is his intention to achieve a more comfortable life through a relationship with this woman? After Aladdin and Jasmine reunite and engage in some chemistry, Jafar has Aladdin captured. He brings Aladdin to the desert, tells him that the girl he has been seeing is actually the Princess Jasmine and that she’s been toying with him and stringing him along, and offers him riches enough to impress her in exchange for him entering the Cave of Wonders.
I’d like to take a moment to compare this to the original. In the cartoon, Aladdin thinks that he was embarrassing himself – “I must have sounded so stupid to her!” – and is perhaps thinking that he is not good enough for her because she is a princess. When Jafar, exploits Aladdin’s mentality and offers him riches to impress Princess Jasmine, it is implied that Aladdin’s self-esteem or lack thereof in this situation is the reason for his accepting Jafar’s proposal. In the 2019 version, Jafar is the one who convinces Aladdin that Jasmine will be uninterested in him unless he is rich, offers to make him rich in order to impress her, and Aladdin accepts. In either version, Aladdin’s impression of Jasmine is relatively the same but it’s how he arrived at that conclusion that is different, and it impacts how these characters are portrayed. In the original Aladdin is portrayed as cunning and smart as well as quick and agile; Jafar has to put on a disguise to fool him. In this version, Jafar lets his identity be known, lies to Aladdin about the way Jasmine is as a person, and Aladdin believes him almost instantly. It makes this new version of Aladdin seem less intelligent because Jafar doesn’t have to go to such an effort to fool him.
Getting back to the Cave of Wonders… The first film doesn’t really explain what it is that qualifies Aladdin as “the diamond in the rough”, the only person worthy of entering this magical trove of forbidden treasures and retrieving a lamp containing an all-powerful genie, and neither does this one. All Jafar sees of him is his athleticism. We see him feeding some hungry children at the beginning but that’s not all that unique of a thing to do. What about the mothers and fathers of Agrabah who work hard to provide for their children? What about the guards who keep peace in the city? What about Princess Jasmine, who wants to push for real socio-economic reform for the sake of all the starving people of Agrabah (if only she can overcome the daunting patriarchal attitudes of a medieval society)? A character that is special simply for the sake of being special is no suitable role model for children. It teaches the audience to root for someone who can gain great opportunities despite the lack of qualifications to do so or even expect that of themselves.
So Aladdin and Abu go into the Cave of Wonders, meet the Magic Carpet, find the lamp, Jafar betrays them and Aladdin, Abu and the carpet end up stranded in the cave with the lamp. This, of course, leads to our introduction to the Genie. Now, Will Smith has some big shoes to fill in this role, but as I said, I was fairly optimistic about it. The CGI artists, on the other hand, have received a lot of flack for how the Genie looks in his blue form. Some said the Genie looked terrifying. Some said that the CGI made his physique look mismatched. I will admit there was something slightly off-putting about it – only slightly. Some of the CGI artists from the YouTube channel Corridor (formerly Corridor Digital) noted that it was Will Smith’s face put onto a CGI body and that, since both these things have to be colour corrected separately plus one having physical lighting on it while the other having computer-calculated lighting effects on it, the human brain naturally responds to any inconsistency, however minute. Personally I think the CGI is okay. Some places it works and in others it has more flaws. The Genie has good CGI moments and not-so-good CGI moments, but it’s nowhere near truly awful.
Honestly, I enjoyed Will Smith’s performance. With Robin Williams’ beloved version of the character, what with his improvised riffing paired and Eric Goldberg’s animation to match, there’s a grey area that needs to be inhabited where this new version of the Genie can capture a similar energy despite the live action while also not being completely derivative of Robin Williams’ performance, and I think Will Smith manages to do that. He portrays the Genie in a confident, charming and lively way that I believe gives the audience what they want both in terms of the Genie’s entertainment value and the kind of energy we’d like to see from this particular actor. The Genie also does his share of comedic shapeshifting, 4th Wall breaking and magic, which in keeping with the Genie’s character and humour. I was honestly laughing so excitedly in my seat while Will Smith’s Genie was going his thing onscreen. I know for some audiences they didn’t get the best first impression, and to each their own; even so, just consider this:
After Aladdin and Genie get to know each other a little bit, Aladdin makes his official first wish to become a prince. Next, they parade into Agrabah with a magically-summoned entourage in the “Prince Ali” sequence, followed by the disguised Aladdin and Genie meeting Jasmine, the Sultan (Navid Negahban) and Jafar. What’s really confusing about this scene is that Jafar is standing right there in the room and the filmmakers neglect to show how Aladdin reacts to Jafar’s presence at this moment. This would be an important reaction to show especially after Jafar tried to kill him the last time they met!
So Princess Jasmine presents herself to the supposed Prince Ali, and Aladdin takes this wondrous opportunity to present himself as a bumbling idiot. Okay, in the original, Aladdin was acting too big for his curly-toed shoes because he was trying to impress Jasmine but instead it made him look like a jerk, tying into his arc about honesty and confidence in himself. Here, it’s every other tripping-over-themselves cliché we see in modern romantic subplots. His awkwardness isn’t funny – it’s embarrassing, for him and for the audience. Later, the Sultan throws a welcome party for him, he goes to talk to Jasmine to apologise, and he does it again! And she asks him to dance! Why?
A small positive edition to this film is a romantic subplot for the Genie, who shares some chemistry with Jasmine’s handmaiden Dalia (Nasim Pedrad). It’s quite sweet. It’s a nice touch, and one that doesn’t take too much focus from the story at large.
So Aladdin goes to Jasmine’s room to try again, and Jasmine questions him about where his kingdom of Ababwa is. He points to a random point of the map, and Ababwa magically appears there. This kind of brings me to another point about the original movie, as well as this one. Aladdin makes the wish to become a prince, but the Genie doesn’t seem to give Aladdin any tangible power over any land. Now, a fan theory suggests that Aladdin (supposedly) marrying Jasmine at the end of the movie officially makes Aladdin a prince, which is how the Genie intended to grant Aladdin’s first wish all along. However, this means that Aladdin was actually lying about being a prince when he went to be a suitor for Jasmine, and in this version the Genie is playing along with the lie. The guy is able to create life from nothing, such as guards and subjects for Prince Ali. They could easily conquer a small uninhabited part of any kingdom, like the oasis or somewhere in the desert, and technically Aladdin could be prince of that area, at least temporarily, because he’d have the forces to maintain his claim over that land until he allowed its former rulers to legally reclaim it once he married Jasmine. My point is: there’s no need for a charade and Aladdin should be acutely aware of where his kingdom is.
Anyway, Aladdin takes Jasmine onto his magic carpet and they fly into the night in the probably the film’s most famous song: “A Whole New World”. And this seems like a good part to start talking about the music of the picture. While the “A Whole New World” sequence is not as energetic as its predecessor, which took our lovers all across the world above and below the clouds at varying speeds, I would argue the smooth steadiness of visual motion works in this version’s favour by increasing the intimacy of the scene.
Naomi Scott is the best singer in the movie. At first it seems as though she hasn’t been given much to work with to show off her singing pipes, having only a little bit near the beginning and her part in “A Whole New World”. Later in the film she gets her own song, “Speechless”, a song created especially for this movie, and she downright nails it! The only distracting quality of the “Speechless” sequence is the images of people around her disappearing, which vividly reminded me of Thanos’ snap from Avengers: Infinity War (Anthony and Joe Russo, 2018). It’s kind of funny in a scene that is supposed to be heartfelt.
Mena Massoud, while acting and looking the part of Aladdin rather well, is okay as a singer, but every now and again in a song his delivery goes flat where it ought not to. Will Smith as the Genie is adequate a singer, but I think we all know he’s a much stronger rapper, as evidenced in the end credits. To Smith’s credit, as well as that of the filmmakers, “Arabian Nights” and “Friend Like Me” are done quite well, with good setups, atmospheres and visuals. “Prince Ali” on the other hand is… not the best. Smith, while singing decently in other scenes, delivers this song in a flat manner that comes across as somewhat weak. The scene has very low energy too. Remember how in the original, Genie was whizzing around, putting on disguises and starting rumours about Prince Ali’s supposed feats? Of course a hand-drawn cartoon can afford to be more energetic, but surely a big-budget live action version with advanced CGI could emulate the same kind of energy with editing, makeup and a couple more costumes. Without it, the scene suffers in terms of impact and impression.
After Aladdin returns Jasmine to her room after their magic carpet ride, Jafar has Aladdin captured, having figured out that Prince Ali is Aladdin and he has the magic lamp. He also notes that Ababwa doesn’t exist, which is another reason as to why Genie should have made Aladdin a legitimate prince with power (!). Jafar throws Aladdin into the sea, and its up to Magic Carpet and Abu to save him. Side note: Abu is turned into an elephant for Prince Ali’s entrance, but for the rest of the movie he is a monkey again, curiously. They throw Aladdin the lamp so he can get Genie to save him. Um… Why doesn’t Carpet save him? It can fly. Why not drop Abu off on a rock, dive down and fly out with Aladdin, or at least grab him and drag him out of the water? Is it afraid to get wet or something?
Genie uses up one of Aladdin’s wishes to save Aladdin’s life, to which Aladdin replies, “Whatever it cost, you saved my life…Thank you.” It’s quite a touching moment. Keep that in mind – I’m not done with it yet.
Aladdin goes to expose Jafar, which includes breaking Jafar’s hypnotic staff, and the Sultan has Jafar arrested. (On a side note, I like that even the royal guard Hakim (Numan Acar), bearing somewhat of a resemblance to Razoul’s role from the original where he was little more than a thuggish brute, is treated with far more humanity in the remake.) With Jafar arrested, the Sultan gives his blessing for Jasmine and Aladdin to marry. This, of course, leads to Aladdin’s “dilemma”…
The way that scenes and characters are handled is somewhat hit-and-miss. Take for example this scene, where Aladdin considers going back on his promise to free the Genie in order to maintain his guise as Prince Ali. In the original, Aladdin is racked with guilt and regret, because he is willing to condemn his friend – a friend who saved his life but the night before – to an eternity of imprisonment and enslavement, and the Genie, reasonably feeling betrayed, is passive-aggressive and angry. In this version, neither of them acts like it’s a big deal. It’s ridiculously out of character for both of them – Aladdin becomes that bit less likeable and the Genie just floats there passively, saying it’s more important for Aladdin to be honest with himself than it is for one to be free. The emotions in the original were much more reasonable and far better earned.
Jafar, breaking out of jail, steals the lamp and gains command of the Genie. Will Smith’s sad expression, when it’s revealed that the Genie is his slave, made me feel so bad for the character. With Jafar in control of the Genie, becoming sultan and then the most powerful sorcerer, his portrayal becomes increasingly threatening.
I do wonder about one thing. Jafar wishes to become sultan of Agrabah, and Genie grants his wish. But, besides the costume change, what legitimises his rule? Why does Hakim even consider obeying him? Does the Genie create or authenticate any kind of document that legally abdicates the Sultan from the throne and names Jafar as his successor? I’m guessing “no” because Jasmine convinces Hakim to turn against Jafar mere minutes after the Genie grants Jafar’s first wish to become sultan. I’d call it a call to mutiny but given the circumstances I don’t know what it is.
I think I’ll end the plot synopsis here. Of the ending I will say this: Jafar becoming a genie is quite a frightening image, and there is a fitting end to Jasmine’s subplot considering what has been added to her character in this version. The lesson about Aladdin’s dishonesty is about the same: he lies to the woman he loves and is ultimately rewarded for it.
In closing, Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin is flawed, both as an adaptation and as a stand-alone movie, but also enjoyable. I found it to be funny with solid dramatic performances. It’s nowhere near as terrible as, say, The Return of Jafar (Tad Stones and Alan Zaslove, 1994). Robin Williams’ Genie will always hold a special place in my heart, as will Clements and Musker’s Aladdin, but, though I have my gripes, I’m happy with Will Smith’s performance as the Genie, and I’m glad Ritchie’s version exists. THAT BEING SAID… Vocal talent isn’t up to par as often as it should be, scenes that should have high energy are watered down significantly, and on several occasions there is an imbalance of what to change, how to change it, what to keep the same and how they fit together that takes the viewer out of the film. Characters and actions that are changed to be framed or portrayed in an improved manner, in execution, make them look lacking in common sense. This includes: Jasmine taking food from a cart without paying despite knowing how her economy works, the Genie caring more about Aladdin’s honesty than his own freedom despite his earnest wish to be freed from slavery, Magic Carpet throwing Aladdin the lamp when he’s bound and drowning instead of diving down and rescuing him itself, and Jasmine asking Aladdin to dance with her despite his awkwardness and treating her as an object. The problems here are not dissimilar from those of the Beauty and the Beast remake (Bill Condon, 2017). I think that there is a lack of effort to amend the story to make their alterations work and/or a lack of understanding of these characters and how they should be behaving given their wants, desires, relationships, concerns, experience, knowledge and circumstances. For all we know this could be the fault of Disney’s deadlines, what with them pumping out at least one of these live action remakes a year. Overall, there’s merit, to be sure, but there’s definitely room to improve.
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