Aladdin Captures Some of the Magic

Aladdin (2019)

Aladdin was fine. If this were the first Aladdin movie, I would say that it was excellent, but it was not first and it is impossible not to hold it to the high standard that the “source material” set. I want to start with what the movie did well. First, I like almost all of the casting. It was good to see a movie about an Arab country centuries ago use non-white actors, because accuracy is important, but so is representation. Along with the representation, I liked subtle changes to some of the songs and scenes to match the cultural setting, like changing Sunday salaam to Friday salaam in “Prince Ali”. Second, Will Smith was very good as Genie. He made the character his own, while being affable and fun. He will always be compared to Robin Williams’ Genie, which is very unfair, but Smith did everything right. I think Williams would have been a terrible live action Genie and Smith would have been an awful animated Genie, so they found their niches and succeeded where they landed. Even Smith’s singing was fine, which brings me to my third highlight; the quality of singers was much better than other Disney “live-action” movies. There was some use of auto tune, but it wasn’t as prevalent as it was in Beauty and the Beast. Fourth, Disney nailed it visually. Every setting was either beautifully curated or excellently rendered, creating an immersive dynamic for many of the scenes. With a good story and some good execution, I did have fun watching Aladdin, but that doesn’t mean that there weren’t any problems. In fact, I found it to be deeply flawed. The most glaring flaw was the casting of Jafar. Marwan Kenzari is a good actor, but he was never menacing. His voice was an octave too high and he does not have an intimidating presence. Everyone knows that the villain loses, but there was never really that threat from this Jafar. His motivations were also detrimental to the movie. In the original, he just wanted power for the sake of power, but the writers decided that wasn’t enough. For some reason, they wanted to muddy the waters with geopolitics and the threat of war. Because that is what families are going to the movies for, back room discussions about war profiteering and political machinations. Part of the reasoning for this change in the story was to add an element that Jasmine should be the next Sultan, which I found to be a valuable addition and a logical development of her character, but the execution was flawed. She is the obvious choice to lead because she cares and isn’t a self-serving jerk, not because she doesn’t want to start unnecessary wars. I actually hated the scenes in which they discussed prospects of war. They completely took me out of the movie and were just shoehorned between scenes that everyone knows from the original. Fortunately, there was enough to bring me back into it. Overall, Aladdin was a mostly faithful adaptation to one of my favorite movies from my childhood (and favorite video games. I still remember the password for the “Friend Like Me” level on the SNES game: Genie-Jafar-Aladdin-Abu). I give Aladdin 17 of the 27 years since the original came out.