The 1992 animated Disney version of Aladdin drew people in with its colorful visuals, likeable characters, amazingly memorable songs, and its quick humor that arguably created a modernized style of conveying comedy that inspired several kids’ films in the future. With Disney’s obsession with rebooting their original classics through a live-action lens, of course Aladdin was one of the next ones up on the chopping block, and this came to fruition in 2019 where it appeared to win people over again, even though it really didn’t deserve to. Set in the streets of Agrabah, a street urchin named Aladdin (played by Mena Massoud) tries to get by through stealing on the streets and during his run, comes across the princess of Agrabah, Jasmine (played by Naomi Scott) who wishes to succeed her father (played by Navid Negahban) as Sultan, but he constantly rejects her. Before they meet again, Aladdin is kidnapped by the Sultan’s vizier, Jafar (played by Marwan Kenzari) who hopes to overpower the Sultan and take command over the kingdom. He instructs Aladdin to go into a cursed cave in order to retrieve a magic lamp, which within holds a magical Genie (played by Will Smith) which will grant him the power to overthrow the Sultan and take the throne. After managing to keep the lamp and know having three wishes that can be granted, Aladdin wishes to become a prince in order to woe the princess and get a better life, all the while Jafar continues to plot in the shadows. There’s so much about this film that just feels awkward and ill-fitting, to the point that most of the trailers looked like a fake movie, and a good majority of the content from the directing, writing, acting, effects and especially humor are done in a way that just feels alien to how the original Aladdin was portrayed. It was successful from a box office standpoint (grossing over a billion against its $183 million budget), and it does contain some pleasing ingredients like its cast, the colorful imagery and even most of the song numbers, but it can’t escape what it is and what it is, is a pointless retread of an already perfectly solid film.

As a remake, the story is kept mostly the same from the original film, with only dots of new ideas and scenes sprinkled in throughout that don’t bring much to the picture as a whole. There’s a new awkward feeling of pacing now as certain scenes are switched around for seemingly no purpose outside of just having a different outline, and it leaves moments not feeling as strong or as memorable as they were previously because it just feels out of place. The screenplay for this film written by director Guy Ritchie and John August, doesn’t create enough of its own identity to feel dissimilar from its original animated counterpart, but it is just different enough that these altercation come off as distracting and weaker by comparison. What’s added isn’t even really bad necessarily, it’s just that it seems to impact next to nothing in the story as it continues, so it feels like it existed solely to include something different and not for any purposeful reason. The animated film definitely had its own faults, but it had a clear narrative and pacing that benefited its characters and humor and had this wonderfully feeling of freshness and liveliness that came from its active animation, characters, and personality. Here, everything feels slow, unengaging, weirdly awkward in several moments, and is distinctly kind of bland in its delivery, which is bizarre given the choice of director. Guy Ritchie is definitely a mixed bag in terms of quality, with a good chunk of his filmography being acquired and stylish at best, and confused and annoying at worst, and while he’s not terrible in this movie, but it just mostly seems like he’s the wrong choice for this story. Nothing about his style of direction matches the kind of tale that Aladdin is and even most of his quirks don’t impact the film in any way (outside of when something awkwardly fails on a comedic level). The scenes aren’t very well paced, the actors don’t always feel like they have much guidance, and most of the cinematography isn’t that imaginative when showing off its decent production value, so while there are a lot of things that hold this film back from a scripting level, he doesn’t lead the movie very well. The original Aladdin lacked weight, but made up for it in spectacle and memorability, while here it feels much more paint-by-numbers and whatever style and visual eye is included, is often smothered by a poor scripting or dull directing decision.

The characters largely feel the same with only minor tweaks to motivation and direction to make things feel a little different. To this film’s credit, a majority of the characters in the original weren’t the most complex of characters, so there is room to improve things, but it just didn’t work as well as it could. Aladdin is mostly the same, except a lot of the character’s charm and personality is gone thanks to the poorness of the writing and directing and sadly even the acting. Mena Massoud is a good choice for Aladdin; he looks and sounds so close to the original that it’s a little scary, and his impressive dance moves during some of the musical numbers proves he is legitimately talented, but it doesn’t excuse his often-flat delivery, lack of expression and pretty off-key singing, he definitely needed a few retakes in order to properly nail the role. On the flip side of this, Jasmine is given a much bigger role than the previous, now actively wanting to achieve the title of Sultan rather than just achieving independence, and this section actually isn’t too bad. The original Jasmine is likeable enough, but there’s more interesting things that could’ve been done with her, and actively wanting a position that commands power and intelligence feels like a good idea for the character to follow. She is still sadly not written very well, and this new direction still isn’t made very interesting despite all the pieces being there, but a lot of the character’s good will mainly come from Naomi Scott, who actually does a pretty good job at bringing a new energy and passion to the character that feels fresh and different from the original.  Will Smith feels left out to the wolves in this movie. Being given the impossible notion of going against the late Robin Williams’ infamous performance as the Genie, the movie is gracious enough to not have him try and perfectly recapture the original portrayal, allowing him to bring his own spark and life to the character, and that part is actually effective. Whenever he’s allowed to be cool, chill and bring a ”Will Smith” level of charm, he actually does that stuff pretty good, but whenever he is forced to enact a bit that feels way too similar to something Robin Williams would do, it is awful and ruins a lot of his scenes. Its honestly whenever he’s in his Genie form with some truly awful special effects where the character is at his worst, as whenever he’s just himself, it works fine even if the writing is still never funny. Jafar in this movie is honestly a little embarrassing, with a role that feels very unmemorable and an actor that is sadly not very good at being threatening, interesting or anywhere near as memorable or imposing as the original Jafar. That version was drawn and voiced in a way that made him drip evil in the best possible way, whereas this one feels stilted, uncomfortable in every scene he’s in, and just comes across as whinier and more pathetic. Some of the side actors like Navid Negahban and Nasim Pedrad are passable enough, but they don’t really leave much of an impression as characters.

The movie does have a nice production that its colorful, distinct, different to the original while still feeling authentic, and culturally appropriate. While some of the effects provided by Industrial Light & Magic aren’t the most flattering (that Genie does just look like an uncanny blueberry Shrek), the film is  still very vibrant, the costume design by Michael Wilkinson are memorable and pleasing to look at, the production design by Gemma Jackson looks akin to the animated version but with their own spin, and the art direction of the entire film pops against Agrabah’s dusty brown atmosphere and its often colder color palette. The music numbers are also done pretty well with Alan Menken returning, and the instrumentals for the songs may even be better than the ones in the original which is an amazing feat considering how amazing the original music is. The original’s softer instrumentation made the music more magical and swifter, while the grandiose and booming presence of the new instrumentation brings a whole new feel to these songs, in a good way. They add onto the incredible melodies and produce some great sounding music. With that said, most of the music number are presented in a way that doesn’t match the impressive scale. Not being animated removes some of the expression and energy from the numbers, and while the movie does definitely click on whenever a song starts, there is something lacking in some of them, outside of Friend Like Me (which is overall a very solid number and has a lot of great energy). One Jump Ahead is annoyingly slow and not overly impressive with the stunt work, Prince Ali is blandly shot and uncomfortably slow-paced for a number that should bombastic, grand and brimming with life, a new song created for Jasmine sounds nice enough, but quickly becomes redundant after its completed, and even A Whole New World may be sung well enough, but its bland visuals and complete lack of chemistry between its leads turns what was once one of the best Disney love songs, and makes it feel like a generic screensaver presentation. The lack of humor in this film is arguably its worst attribute, as Aladdin was known for its comedy. The film very rarely gets an intentional laugh outside of awkward chuckles, and its easily the biggest downgrade from one version to the other.

Aladdin was a movie that didn’t need to be remade in the first place, and while this film doesn’t erase that notion, it isn’t the worst offender of this trend. It doesn’t even come close to matching the original or even put in enough effort to differentiate itself from said original. The story is muddled, the directing is confused, some of the actors aren’t at their best, its humor is awful, and it lacks the strong passion it needed to replicate such a passionate film. But with that said, the visuals are appealing, most of the song numbers are pretty good, and most of the stuff revolving around Jasmine, while still flawed, is better than most of the retreads (if anything, they should’ve just made the movie about her). A kid can watch it fine and might enjoy it, but the original can do that and so much more. It’s a very polarizing movie that will either appeal to fans nostalgia, or disappoint those who wanted more, it really just comes down to preference. It isn’t anything great and is largely pointless, but it doesn’t drop to the levels that the other Disney remakes have reached at the very least. An Arabian Night that is more bewildering than barbaric, the magic is a little weak in this wish.

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