Having been forced to do some dastardly things in the past, Smith’s Genie is notably disillusioned, especially when it comes to the ambitions of power-hungry men. But other than its candy-colored delights, Aladdin counts among its chief pleasures the fleshing out of its characters.
The old-fashionedly theatrical music-including an emotional climax preceded by the phrase “no sir-ee”-did take a few minutes to gel in my brain with new (human!) faces, parkour stunts in the bazaar, and the neon-rainbow swirls of the costumes and sets. And two new characters-a daffy handmaiden played by Nasim Pedrad and a dopey suitor played by Billy Magnussen-play to those veteran comic actors’ impish strengths.
The predictable feminist spin on Princess Jasmine (Naomi Scott, the cast’s standout belter) gives the worn-out “A Whole New World” an unexpected resonance. Even with Massoud’s dazzling dance moves, the remake still can’t catch up to the frantic pace of the cartoon, but its 128-minute runtime zips by most of the time. It’s chockablock with makeovers, chases, crashes, dances, parades, acrobatics, beatboxing, and an all-powerful blue being Ant-Man-ing himself into different sizes, all of which make up for the merely adequate performances and lackluster singing by Smith and newcomer Mena Massoud (Aladdin). But when it gets to be its own thing, it’s a spirited romp that-setting aside the uncanny, off-putting look of Smith’s Genie-has no shortage of charms. Ritchie’s film still feels shackled by its dutiful allegiance to the source material. (The brothel that Aladdin whisks through in “One Jump Ahead,” for example, has been converted into a girls’ school.) The Orientalist mishmash that Agrabah has become-a mix of South Asian, Middle Eastern, and North African cultural elements, with a heavy sprinkling of Bollywood-certainly won’t please everyone, but Disney has certainly shorn the cartoon of its overt racism (“it’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home,” went the movie’s opening number). Most of the characters are endowed with greater depth and more complicated motivations, while some of the original’s more hyper-sexualized aspects have been thankfully tamped down. Ritchie and John August’s script patches many of the original film’s glaring plot holes, including the question of where exactly lies the kingdom of Ababwa, from which Aladdin’s alter-ego, Prince Ali, hails. Perhaps I’m biased as a ’90s kid who was in the sweet spot for the Disney Renaissance, but Ritchie seems to have targeted older millennials like myself who want to indulge their nostalgia but whose sensibilities have since evolved.
The new Aladdin aims for maximum spectacle, with everything else a secondary priority. But it’s fair to say that the new version, directed by Guy Ritchie and starring a cerulean Will Smith in a digital muscle suit, had many clenching their jaws in dread. The prospect of remaking the Disney-fied Middle Eastern folk tale into a CG extravaganza may not have provoked the visceral repulsion that, say, Tim Burton’s Dumbo did. Then there’s Aladdin’s afterlife as a staple in ethnic studies and race theory classes, where the film is regularly held up as an example of the normalization of Arab stereotyping and Islamophobia in American pop culture. (At least it doesn’t take place under the sea?) Likewise, no other Disney film is so heavily dependent on-and essentially synonymous with-a single vocal performance ( the late Robin Williams as Genie). With its exoticized Arabian setting, countless action sequences, pinball-manic supernatural creatures, and no less than four animal (or furniture) sidekicks, the 1992 cartoon was among those in its Disney Renaissance cohort to take the greatest advantage of its hand-drawn medium. Of all the Disney animated classics to be chosen for the live-action treatment, Aladdin is among the head-scratchiest. What’s Fact and What’s Fiction in Being the RicardosĪaron Sorkin’s I Love Lucy Biopic Is Preposterous, Witty, and … Feminist?
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