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'Aladdin' Is an Entertaining, Yet Incredibly Pointless Remake of Disney's Animated Classic

No spoilers.

By Jonathan SimPublished 5 years ago 6 min read
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This is a review of a live-action remake of a Disney animated film.

What? No, not Dumbo. Hmm? No, it's not The Jungle Book. What? No, it isn't Cinderella, either. One more time? No, this isn't Beauty and the Beast.

Wait, why would it be The Lion King? That one doesn't come out until July. And WHAT?! Of course this isn't a review of Mulan, Lady and the Tramp, The Sword in the Stone, Pinocchio, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Little Mermaid, or Lilo & Stitch. The live-action remakes of those aren't coming out for another few years.

Today, I will be reviewing...

Aladdin is a fantasy musical romance adventure film written by Guy Ritchie and John August, directed by Ritchie. This is YET ANOTHER live-action remake of an old Disney animated film, and this is a remake of the 1992 film, Aladdin.

The film stars Mena Massoud as Aladdin, a street thug who falls in love with Princess Jasmine of Agrabah (portrayed by Naomi Scott), and he must try to win her heart with the help of a Genie, portrayed by Will Smith.

If I were to put a picture in the dictionary to show the definition of "pointless," I'd put a picture of this movie. This film is entertaining, but completely useless, and it does not do a damn thing for the original film.

Now, I'm gonna start out a bit more positive. I'm a big fan of the original Aladdin, and I watched it as a kid. I love it. And I think this movie pays tribute to that film very well. This movie respects its source material, and it does not dishonor the name of the original movie.

Will Smith gives a charismatic performance as the Genie. I mean, he did not have an easy job with this role, because he needed to fill the shoes of Robin Williams, and he does an okay job. But it was a bit disappointing, because the Genie wasn't as funny as he was in the original.

Most of that is in the writing of the film, and also the fact that there were many limits to what they could do with a blue, CGI Will Smith, whereas the animated Aladdin had no limits. Also, Smith did very few actual impressions in this movie, which was a bit disappointing because of how many impressions Williams did.

What about the other actors? Mena Massoud gives a good performance as Aladdin, although I felt he looked a bit too handsome for the role. Naomi Scott does a good job with Princess Jasmine, and most of the other actors are pretty good.

The action sequences are fun, and they do a good job of adapting the action in the animated Aladdin into live-action. The musical numbers are done very well and look beautiful, although I do have to point out some issues with them as well.

There are some shots in the musical numbers where you can very clearly tell that shots are sped up. I don't know if I was supposed to see that, but it was obvious, especially during "One Jump Ahead."

And all of them were autotuned. You can hear the autotune, and their voices just tend to sound a bit processed through a computer at times. But there's a lot of fun to be had in how every musical number looks.

Now, this movie's surprisingly fast-paced. It blows through many events from the beginning of the first Aladdin in just a few scenes, and it adds a lot of extra scenes in it. Most of the additions are for comedy, and I generally liked a lot of what they added to this movie.

But I just don't think this movie adds enough to justify its existence. Yeah, they do change the climax a bit, but overall, this movie just isn't as good as the original by any means.

I think this movie just works so much better as an animated film. Because while there are some aspects and details to the story that were improved upon in this film, some parts just made a lot more sense as an animated movie.

For example, I'm willing to buy that Jasmine has a pet tiger in the animated film. But when it's live-action, and you have a REALISTIC-looking Bengal tiger in your movie, it gets really difficult to believe that the tiger is trained enough to not maul Jasmine.

RUN JASMINE RUN!!!

Also, my main problem with this movie is the ways Jafar and Iago are portrayed. Because Jafar had a deep voice in the original, and he was this evil, middle-aged man who was obsessed with power.

Now, Marwan Kenzari is fine as an actor, but I think he was miscast in this movie. Because speaking as a heterosexual man, that guy is way too handsome to be playing a repulsive villain, and his voice was very high-pitched, making him nowhere near as threatening as animated Jafar.

Also, Iago was a huge disappointment in this movie. Despite being a villain in the original, Iago had so much comedy and personality to him and Gilbert Gottfried brought so much to the character.

But in this movie, Iago couldn't be any more boring. All he does is drive the plot forward. He's never funny, and there's just nothing about him that I cared about at all. Animated Iago was MILES more entertaining than this one.

And here's the thing: director Guy Ritchie even said himself that the reason why they couldn't give Iago as much of a personality in this movie is because it was live-action:

"It's funny what you can get away with in an animated production that can't, my feeling is, that you can't get away with in quite the same way in live action. So although you still got magic carpets and blue genies coming out of bottles, [it] still has to be rooted in some form of reality. It's hard if you have a parrot who has paragraphs of dialogue. Somehow it just sits uncomfortably in a live action production."

Now, I'd argue that you can't get away with the fun of a tiger sidekick in a live-action movie, either, but whatever, Ritchie.

Okay, honestly, this movie is just what you'd expect from a live-action Aladdin. It has all the parts that make it Aladdin, with a few differences here and there to up the entertainment factor, but the fact that I already knew everything that was gonna happen just bothered me.

Can Disney make something new already? Because I am sick of the live-action remakes at this point. No one will ever look at a live-action remake, and think it's better than the animated film they grew up with. So that means there is only one reason why they're making these movies.

At the end of the day, you can bring your kids to watch this movie if you want. It's entertaining and there are funny moments, and the story and songs are undeniably great.

But if you want your kids to stick with the best entertainment, just show them the original animated film. It's much better than this movie. Trust me.

I'm gonna give 'Aladdin' a 7/10.

Thank you so much for reading.

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About the Creator

Jonathan Sim

Film critic. Lover of Pixar, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Marvel, DC, Back to the Future, and Lord of the Rings.

For business inquiries: [email protected]

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