Wish

Voices of: Ariana DeBose, Chris Pine, Alan Tudyk, Angelique Cabral, Victor Garber, Natasha Rothwell, Jennifer Kumiyama, Harvey Guillen, Evan Peters, Ramy Youssef
Directed by: Chris Buck, Fawn Veerasunthorn
Rating: PG
Genre: Animation, Adventure, Comedy
2023

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A girl (Ariana DeBose) begins to suspect their King (Chris Pine) of hoarding wishes, as she makes her own, illegal wish on a star.

Review:

Tim: Wish is an abject failure for Disney. There's simply no other way to describe a film that is so creatively bankrupt that it makes mistake after mistake. It's easily the worst Disney movie in perhaps a decade. A film that was advertised as a celebration of Disney's centennial ends up as a recent low point for the company. While watching this film, I felt stunned at how lackluster nearly every aspect of the film is. This is nothing but a major disaster for the studio.

Where to begin? The story itself might be solid. The idea of a King who grants wishes but may have ulterior motives is an intriguing one- it certainly feels like it should be in Disney's wheelhouse. The basic premise actually works, it's simply that the execution is completely and totally lacking. Asha is a solid Disney heroine. She's a bit too bland, not unique enough, but generally is fine as our protagonist. I don't know if people will remember her as they remember the better Disney heroines, but I didn't have any major issues with her as a character. I certainly appreciate Disney's commitment to diversity. Ariana DeBose does a generally good job voicing this character. I thought her performance worked and she brings a good amount of emotion to the character. Magnifico is a solid antagonist as well. He's not as memorable as many Disney villains, but Chris Pine does a nice job of bringing at least some level of nuance to the character. Asha vs. Magnifico mostly works.

The problems come in with nearly everything else. Valentino is one of the worst supporting characters in a movie I've seen in so long. The idea is solid- the film probably needed a talking animal sidekick, I suppose. I thought Alan Tudyk's choices for voice were pretty terrible. The character says nothing of real substance and most of his jokes fall flat. I'm watching this movie and thinking, "This is so bizarre. I hate this stupid talking goat." I cannot believe the character was written as is, voiced by Tudyk the way it is, and people just signed off on it all. It's so bad. Even worse are the unmemorable supporting friends of Asha. I couldn't tell you much about any of them. They aren't given enough substance to be memorable. It honestly felt like they were included to create a more diverse set of characters. They are afterthoughts. Their stories are underdeveloped. No one truly cares about them, they just exist on the margins of the story and take up way too much screen time. I couldn't name a single one, even as I watching the movie. They aren't interesting, add nothing to the story, and just waste our time. Again, this all starts with the script and odd, clearly poor choices. I love Disney's commitment to more diversity in their films, but the answer isn't to include a bunch of one-dimensional characters who serve no real purpose. That's checking a box, it's not giving diverse characters a chance to shine in high-quality art. It was incredibly frustrating. The little wishing star was fine. It doesn't do anything truly great, but it's significantly more memorable than the awful Valentino. I'm not even getting to all the other supporting characters- the grandpa, the mom, Magnifico's wife- there's too many characters and they aren't well developed. I have no interest in further exploring them.

The music as a whole feels mostly lackluster. I didn't especially care for the songs here. The one exception is "This Wish", an especially effective song sung really well by Ariana DeBose. That's definitely one of the best aspects of the entire film. It feels like it belongs to the movie this should have been. "This is the Thanks I Get?!" is decent- Chris Pine does a solid job performing that one. Otherwise, the songs are just okay.

I also have to say that I completely hated the animation. I know Disney tried a hand drawn/computer animated mix but it looked terrible. I seriously think this is one of the worst looking animated movies I've seen in so long. It might just be the style, but it looks incredibly cheap. It looks like Disney phoned in the visuals. They look unfinished, like the animators were cutting as many corners as they could. That may not be the truth, but that's the impression the visuals give.

My last big complaint is that the movie feels like it's focused solely on the past. The myriad, pointless Easter eggs to previous Disney classics doesn't work at all. It feels like the film focused way too much attention on making subtle references and not enough time telling an actual story that stands on its own merit. This film reminds you of better Disney movies you could be watching while struggling through this one. It's so frustrating, this forced nostalgia in a film that no one will even be nostalgic about. It's a big reason why this movie feels like a creative failure.

Now, I'm saying all this from an adult perspective. I watched the film with my kids- 9 and 5 years old. And, they thought it was fine. They were entertained. They haven't really mentioned it since, so the staying power isn't quite there. But, for younger viewers, sure, this movie is totally fine. It'll keep kids focused for a while. For general audiences, though, this movie showed nothing that created any sense of urgency to see it. The movie was a enormous box office failure, losing Disney $130M+ dollars. Audiences will pay to see some bad movies, but you can't fool them forever. My hope (my wish, if you will) is that Disney looks long and hard at its decision-making process after this. Strange World had massive problems and Wish is even worse than that. Encanto was great- so this is only a 2-film losing streak at this point. But, this is not how you celebrate 100 years. This is not how you look to the future and give audiences something to be excited about.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 5.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Strange World, Cinderella, The Princess and the Frog