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Latching onto millennial parlance while paying homage to the most dominant force in any genre in cinema history, Disney’s Wish was the film chosen to represent the company in its centennial jubilee. It isn’t a bad pick, per se, and one that, at the very least, isn’t some sterile socio-political statement that belongs nowhere near family entertainment.
However, nostalgic and deliberately anodyne, Wish constantly feels more like a vague optimistic message than it does an actual movie. With nods from Snow White to Peter Pan to The Little Mermaid, and seemingly every successful and somewhat successful entry in the Disney canon, the studio’s formidable legacy is well represented in the latest project.
via YouTubeTo drive home the point, the title is pulled from the song “When You Wish Upon a Star,” which debuted in 1940’s Pinocchio and has become the de facto anthem for the company over the years. Aggressively pursuing a similar sentiment, Wish is set in the land of Rosas, ruled by King Magnifico (Chris Pine), a sorcerer who developed a way to harness and grant people’s greatest wishes. He stores them all like a spuriously benevolent bank, but at the cost of the people no longer knowing what they are. Once a month, he holds a ceremony where he grants one person’s wish.
One day, while applying to be the king’s apprentice, our protagonist Asha (Ariana DeBose) discovers that Magnifico has become too powerful in his attempt to dictate which wishes get granted and which ones don’t. This is an intoxicating entrance to the story but also doesn’t get explored nearly enough.
As much as the film wants to remind us of 100 years of Disney magic, evoking notions of the classics we grew up on, it has one thing those movies never had: a wildly abstract premise. The high concept in Wish is intriguing, to say the least, but presented in a confusing way and given a rudimentary plot. It plunges us into this highly-specific world so quickly our heads are spinning and then can’t figure out how to evolve the story in a way that feels equally as interesting. Even Asha never feels like more than a visual and personality amalgamation of Frozen’s Anna and Tangled’s Rapunzel. Luckily, your children will be mesmerized by the starry visuals and comedic relief in the form of a talking goat (Alan Tudyk).
Idealistic with their animation style, the artists behind the scenes try to have their cake and eat it too, blending hand-drawn aesthetic with digital cleanliness. It works only some of the time. Settings are either intentionally (and refreshingly) bland and generic, or they’re glossy and distinct. Human faces look just like what we’ve been trained to accept in modern animation, but details like hair and clothing feel like they’re from another era entirely.
Fortunately, Disney opts for an actual villain this time around — their first since Big Hero 6 in 2014 — and one with a more ambiguous plight like Ursula, Maleficent, and the Evil Queen. But while we don’t need sound motives for Magnifico’s actions, it would be nice to know his deliberation process when granting wishes. This would have made for a richer, more poetic tale compared to the one drawn up by writers Jennifer Lee (Frozen) and Allison Moore and directors Chris Buck (Tarzan, Frozen) and Fawn Veerasunthorn (Raya and the Last Dragon) — all of whom are credited with coming up with the story.
Wishes and dreams have value even if they don’t come true, but Wish is more concerned with the direct ethical issues attached to somebody hoarding other people’s dreams than it is in tackling the very dynamic and complex nature of having dreams themselves. “Wishes” as a concept is too ambiguous, if not delicate, that it needs something to ground it and make its intrinsic value more digestible. It’s obvious Disney put the cart before the horse with this one.
If there’s one takeaway aside from the classic film references, it’s the music. Featuring original songs written by Julia Michaels and Benjamin Rice, Wish has the best collection of tunes since Moana in 2016 and perhaps the most unique music in Disney history, with proclivities towards ambient R&B over typical modern-day musical fare. Each tune is a toe-tapper but the standouts are the main motif, “This Wish,” and the ethereal “At All Costs,” a reverb-filled torch song accompanied by very little visual movement but setting the reflective tone for the rest of the film.
The implications and gravitas established by the music are more thought-provoking than the movie itself, which is a shame because there’s so much left in the well. Ultimately too heavy of a concept without much nuance to the plot itself, Wish still succeeds as a curio in Disney’s filmography for its overwhelming homages and literal scavenger hunt of Easter eggs. Fans of old-school Disney will find this fun at the very least. Considering the studio’s lackluster entries in recent years, I’d say the 100-year commemoration for the Mouse House could’ve been much worse.