Wish (film)
|
This article is dedicated to the late Burny Mattinson (1935-2023), who was an animator, director, producer, and story artist. May he rest in peace. |
| Wish (film) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Is this the thanks we get from Disney for their 100th anniversary?
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Wish is a 2023 animated film produced by Disney Animation Studios and released in cinemas on November 22, 2023. It was released during the company's 100th anniversary, supposed to broadcast the essence of Disney's style, which brought memories of our childhood. It's written by Jennifer Lee and Allison Moore and directed by Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn.
Plot
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the most magical film company ever imagined, Disney will lead you to the magic Kingdom of Rosas, in the Mediterranean Sea, where its King Magnifico (Chris Pine) can bring everyone's dream true!
It's a great day for Asha (Ariana DeBose), as she's chosen to be the King's assistant, however she has a great wish to propound: allowing her 100 years-old grandpa Sabino (Victor Garber) to have his dream fulfilled. Sadly, after a disappointing confession from Magnifico, Asha runs away with Valentino the goat (Alan Tudyk), only to make a wish and summoning after a sentient star, named Star.
Production
Wish began development in 2018, but it was not publicly disclosed until January 21, 2022, when it was reported that Walt Disney Animation Studios' chief creative officer Jennifer Lee was writing an original film at the studio.
Unwished Qualities
- Maybe the biggest problem within this movie is, despite being supposed to celebrate the 100th birthday of Disney (the company) since its debut in 1923, it does not feel like a big love letter to the studio, mostly if compared to other their masterpieces like Fantasia or Fantasia 2000, which did a really good job fitting in the Disney's essence. The problem with Wish is it feels so generic for being a real 100th celebration movie, even if you count none of the most famous characters (including Mickey Mouse himself, aside from the "Hidden Mickeys") appear physically in the movie.
- Asha is a generic dorky princess we've seen with other Disney princesses like Ariel, Mulan, Rapunzel, Anna, Moana, and Mirabel. Her motive is your generic "I want something more" cliche. In fact, during production, Asha was imagined to be more in line with Belle from Beauty and the Beast; quieter, and more introverted than the final product.
- King Magnifico, the main antagonist, isn't much of an antagonist, as despite tampering with dark magic, he willingly grants wishes to the kingdom of Rosas as much as 14 times per year and was a good ruler until he decides to tamper with dark magic. This leads many audiences to paint Magnifico as an innocent possessed by dark magic, despite him still being the antagonist and willingly using dark magic for his gain. It also doesnât help that he looks like a Jimmy Smits impersonator.
- There isn't much motivation that causes Amaya to help the protagonists aside from her husband using dark magic.
- Asha's friends, which are meant to be based on the seven dwarves from Snow White, are not interesting and have very little character development besides Dahlia and Simon.
- Asha's grandfather, who was the whole reason why the movie's plot is kickstarted to begin with, is pushed aside about halfway through.
- To be honest, there's already a better celebration animation made by Disney itself: "Once Upon a Studio", which is far better than this movie.
- The film lacks any charm that previous movies had, which were mature yet tried to respect the children's intelligence, while this movie, though not being a full sugarcoated adventure, is not so deep and sometimes can be too wacky.
- Terrible pacing that will most likely make this movie feel like it'll last 30 minutes rather than its standard 95-minute runtime. Some occurring events end up way too early.
- Executive meddling: According to The Art of Wish book, the movie was originally going to have King Magnifico, and his wife Queen Amayla were originally going to be a villain couple (which would have marked the first villain couple in Disney history) and a cat (Sound familiar?) and Asha would have Star Boy. However, according to Disney, they got rid of Star because they didn't want him to be too similar to Peter Pan.
- Weak songs, as they sound too poppy to fit the narrative and contain bland lyrics, such as "I'm a star". The worst offender of this is the so-called "villain" song of this movie, "This Is the Thanks I Get!?" by Chris Pine, despite being catchy. The most infamous line, "I let you live here for free, and I don't even charge you rent", became a meme for its repetitiveness.
- Simon is just instantly forgiven, despite willingly choosing to sell out Asha in exchange for his wish being granted. Sure, he may be brainwashed, but that didn't stop him from doing that to begin with.
- The animation is a noticeable downgrade compared to prior Disney movies released in the past, especially since it tries way too hard to replicate the watercolor look seen in classic Disney movies such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and the 1940 Pinocchio movie, but fails miserably, as it winds up looking more like an Xbox 360 game, an anime-esque JRPG, or a PlayStation game instead due to its textures.
- It didn't help that animation was originally intended to be fully traditional.
- It's also worth noting that some films like Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, the Spider-Verse films, The Mitchells vs The Machines, The Bad Guys, Nimona, The Peanuts Movie, Ultraman: Rising, certain scenes in Soul, Migration (if that counts), and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem does use the stylized animation technique yet there was enough effort to make it more convincing compared to how Wish looked.
- Sometimes some of the scenes when the characters are in the building look washed out.
- There are some unfunny moments here and there, especially Valentino's two fart jokes.
- The film is often chock full of scenes that are mostly filler and have nothing to do with the main story, as they only exist just to extend the film's length, with the biggest example being the pointless segment where Valentino conducts a musical number with Chickens that is meant to be hilarious and is used for comedic purposes. However, the scene isn't very funny and comes off as cringe-worthy and annoying for the most part.
- Unlike the previous Disney movies, the voice acting in this film is awful and unfitting. Alan Tudyk can get annoying as Valentino most of the time, Ariana DeBose, while very good, is whiny, emotionless, robotic, and unfitting as Asha, Chris Pine sounds way too young for a middle-aged king as King Magnifico, and The Teens' voice actors sounds very unfitting and sound more like 45-year-olds.
- Valentino is easily the worst part of the entire film since he is a bad comic relief character with unfunny jokes and an incredibly ill-suited British accent provided by Alan Tudyk that sounds like a mock Patrick Stewart. Aside from that, he rarely does anything in the film's story and only exists to be the animal sidekick of Asha (something that has been overdone at this point and has been phased out since Zootopia, as it was a common criticism from most modern moviegoers, and it definitely doesn't work in this movie whatsoever).
- Due to all of these problems listed above, this movie ended Disney's 100th year on a sour note, and it also comes off as a major example of how not to end your company's 100th year. This is also disheartening, especially if you grew up with Disney.
Wished Qualities
- The concept is fascinating, especially by Disney's standards, despite being averagely executed. This is also amazing to see a film that is not a live-action remake, which is fantastic.
- The promotion for this movie is great and a massive improvement over past Disney films. It is also an improvement of how Disney promoted Strange World.
- Despite the animation looking downgrade, the character designs and backgrounds are great.
- A touching post-credits scene of Sabino singing "Wishing Upon a Star" and cutting to the Disney logo.
- Most of the international dubs offer way better voice acting than the American dubs.
- Liu Yifei, the Chinese voice of Asha, can also give a great performance that is way better than Ariana DeBose's performance, and it also helps that she also portrayed Mulan in the live-action film of the same name.
- The end credits are great and really creative, as they have a lot of Disney characters from past films appearing in the end credits.
- The concept art is really interesting, and can be seen as amazing and better than the actual movie.
- Star is an adorable character. He also makes adorable and cute sounds.
- Asha is an incredibly likable and well-written character, Ariana DeBose even does a very excellent job playing her too.
- King Magnifico, despite what Unwished Qualities said, can also be a likable and intimidating antagonist since he's better than Disney's twist villains from their previous movies.
Videos
This Wish
Reviews
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 48% of 222 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.6/10. The website's consensus reads: "Wish earns some tugs at the heartstrings with the way it warmly references many of the studio's classics, but nostalgia's no substitute for genuine storytelling magic â no matter how beautifully animated it might be." It was the first Walt Disney Animation Studios film to be classified as "Rotten" on the site since Chicken Little (2005). Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 47 out of 100, based on 44 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews, becoming the lowest-rated Walt Disney Animation Studios film on the site. Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "Aâ" on an A+ to F scale, while those polled by PostTrak gave it a 71% overall positive score.
Kate Erbland of IndieWire praised the film, saying "As Disney celebrates its 100th year, Wish serves as a throwback to the past, a celebration of the present, and a gentle push into the future." Brian Truitt of USA Today gave it three stars out of four and wrote that the film "entertains and unabashedly owns being a safe paean to old-school Disney, shamelessly aiming for all your nostalgic feels. And it makes no difference who you are." John Nugent of Empire called it "An appropriate tribute to Disney, by itself. It hardly breaks any groundâit's simply there to celebrate the ground the studio was built on," but felt that "the jokes largely land a little flatly, to be appreciated by only the youngest audiences (although props must be given to the cadre of breakdancing chickens, a genuine highlight)." Sarah El-Mahmoud of CinemaBlend awarded the film 4 out of 5 stars, writing, "From gorgeous watercolor-like settings, to adorable talking animals, to earworm pop songs, Wish goes to the Disney mainstays." Kristen Lopez of TheWrap called it "a darling film with fantastic music and amazing voice performances, but the story does feel a bit like a house of cards waiting to be poked." Bill Goodykoontz of The Arizona Republic wrote that "What saves the film from being nothing but a rehash are DeBose, whose singing voice unsurprisingly shines, and Pine (who sang in Into the Woods), who makes an excellent villain, as well as some of the songs, most of which they're involved in."
Michael O'Sullivan of The Washington Post gave 2 stars out of 5 in a review: "what Wish feels like at times: not a movie made by filmmakers with an original vision, but one assembled by focus group, with an eye more on fan service than on fresh ideas. It all feels familiar, which is another word for comforting. And Wish, however recycled it may be, is at least that: warm, funny-ish and with its heart in the right place." Damon Wise of Deadline Hollywood's review was mixed, saying that "Disney used to make this kind of film all the time, but now the studio seems a bit bamboozled as to how to do it in the modern age, which might explain why it lifts quite a lot from DreamWorks' Shrekâstarting with a tongue-in-cheek fairytale-book openingâand takes its musical direction from The Greatest Showman, which means lots of tub-thumping numbers that sound like variations on a theme from a YA adaptation of Les MisĂ©rables. Like that film's bombastic "This Is Me," every song here feels like an overreaction, and the verbosity of the lyrics ("hesitations" rhymes with "reservations") jars with the simplicity of the animation and its Snow White palette." He concluded that "Thankfully, it doesn't outstay its welcome, but to cap 100 years with a few throwaway quips about Bambi, Mary Poppins and Peter Pan (plus a whole roll call of more recent characters during the end credits) seems to be a hell of a disappointing way to capitalize on such a formidable back catalog." Lovia Gyarkye of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that "Even during its more successful moments, Wish's magic falls flat. The film is weighed down by its purpose: to revel in Disney nostalgia while soaring into the future." Owen Gleiberman of Variety wrote "The strategy behind Wish seems to be: If we do an homage to enchantment, the audience will be enchanted. True magic, however, can't be recycled." Tim Grierson of Screen International wrote that the film "...is a strained animated musical which overtly references the company's most beloved films, a strategy that mostly exposes how singular the studio's productions used to be." Amy Nicholson of The New York Times wrote that "Oddlyâand rather fascinatinglyâthis is a film about a spiritual revolution. Can Asha, a humanist, convince the islanders to reject the man in the embroidered robe who preaches that he alone is a conduit for miracles?"
Many clips (mostly the villain song "This Is Thanks I Get") get heavily hit of dislikes.
Trivia
- Star resembles a Luma from the Mario franchise. Coincidentally, The Super Mario Bros. Movie came out seven months prior to Wish on April 5, 2023, which features a Lumalee who is morbid and suicidal, and is voiced by Juilet Jelenic.
- Even the childish and playful behavior is very similar to Lumas from the Super Mario Galaxy franchise.
Gallery
Videos