When I heard about this new addition to Disney’s live-action remake library....
MOVIE REVIEW
Movie: Aladdin
Reviewed by Jehangir Ali Shah
When I heard about this new addition to Disney’s live-action remake library, I have to be honest: I was pretty skeptical. I wasn’t sure whether after King Arthur: Legend of the Sword and The Man from U.N.C.L.E, Guy Ritchie would be able to offer a lively, colorful and spontaneously funny remake that pars equally with the 1992 animated classic we all know and love.
Now I am an amateur writer, but I don’t think I have to go over the plot of one of a number of iconic films from the Disney renaissance period, defining a generation. But coming on to what really matters: I think the film delivered very well in terms of what it promised. I must acknowledge the attempt by the filmmakers to allow the casting of the film to be accurate, unlike Aladdin’s 1992 animation where all of the voice actors were white. The cast in the live-action remake give incredible performances; each having the charm and the animation that the original did. It can be said that the success of many live-action remakes depends on how close they came to the original or how far away they went from the original storyline. The new Aladdin does both in just the right amounts. Princess Jasmine (played by Naomi Scott), whom many thought was under-written and unappreciated in the original is given a strong sense of character and self-dignity in the live-action remake; all of which comes bursting out in the powerhouse performance of the newest Disney feminist anthem since ‘Let It Go’ in 2013’s Frozen: Speechless, which tells us of her strong desire to be Agrabah’s first female Sultan. It came near the end of the movie and I honestly didn’t see the song coming during the part of the movie which I felt was the absolute climax.
Moving on, it was extremely refreshing to see Will Smith as the Genie, indulging in what was his traditional style of acting that we had come to associate with him after watching The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and not similar to the serious and somber characters he had come to play in recent times (After Earth). Smith’s version of the character was much less spontaneous than what Robin Williams had shown us but I feel part of that was because there’s only so much shape-shifting and jumping from one place to another you can see in a live-action movie while making sense of what’s going on. Nonetheless, Will Smiths portrayal is by no means underwhelming and I can say that he did do the character justice.
Coming down to Aladdin himself, Mena Massoud did a fanatastic job at portraying all the various dimensions of the street rat named Aladdin turned genie-containing lamp owner turned Prince Ali Ababwa turned Aladdin. I think he was a great addition to the cast, but at times, I felt like he was overshadowed by the strong Jasmine and over the top genie. All in all, I think he is a brilliant actor.
However, what I didn’t like was the fact that Jafar’s Iago and Princess Jasmine’s Raja were stripped of their wisecracking and sarcastically funny personalities that were emphasized recurrently in the original. I missed hearing Iago as a retorting bird, passing his sarcastic remarks to Jaffar and having a showoff with Abu. However, reasons for this can be attributed to the fact that the makers of the film wanted some essence of reality, or that it would only bring complications in the already altered storyline. Jafar himself didn’t seem like much of a threat in the remake; lacking the evil and vile nature that made the animated version such a memorable character. Don’t get me wrong, I think Marwan Kenzari did a fantastic job, showing us what a fantastic actor he is; it just felt like Kenzari’s Jafar didn’t have the cunningness or the desire to partake in scheming evilness on a scale that I wanted to see.
Negatives aside, I think remake has a vibrant color scheme with an exceptionally well composed and sung soundtrack, paired with spectacular visual effects and excellent acting. I think it’s generous in its offering to all those wishing to embark on a small journey of nostalgia to sing-along to songs we all know by heart and hear a few new ones that we can now learn by heart, the writers have added some new facades to the genie, equally entertaining as the one’s we’ve already seen as well as giving genie his own romantic subplot. I’m not a professionally well-known movie critic so I’m not going to rate the film on any scale but I will say it is worth a watch not as an authority on what makes a goof film but as your average teenage Pakistani movie-goer.
The remake is magical and the message that power doesn’t necessarily mean respect and materialism doesn’t equate to happiness was a great one in my opinion and one that is extremely relevant in this day and age. But the question that, nonetheless, looms in my head is: was there a necessity of making such a film? I’d love to hear from anyone else whether they think that the classic Aladdin was one we all wanted to see as a live-action remake. Because to me, it feels like this Aladdin remake just won’t have the same timelessness as the original, lacking the feature of remembrance that many of Pixar films I grew up watching had, where no matter how many times I would see them on repeat I’d watch them, or maybe I’m wrong - only time will tell.
