About the film (courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures):
A thrilling and vibrant live-action adaptation of Disney’s animated classic, Aladdin (1992) is the exciting tale of the charming street rat Aladdin, the courageous and self-determined Princess Jasmine and the Genie who may be the key to their future.
Whenever most people think about Disney’s Aladdin, it’s Genie, voiced by the late Robin Williams, that comes to mind. His personality was almost magical in the way that it gushed out of his animated character. There’s no denying that it was Robin Williams’ incredible talents that propelled the Disney classic to the upper echelon of all animated films ever made. With that large of a shadow looming, right or wrong, Will Smith is the person under the most pressure to perform in this live-action adaptation seeing that he’s got the largest shoes to fill.
I am pleased to report that Will Smith fits nicely into the lamp previously occupied by a legend. While no one can ever reproduce the genius and energy that Williams brought to the role of Genie, Smith remixes things up a bit but stays true to the character. As a matter of fact, that’s the true appeal to Aladdin. Parts of the overall work were tinkered with but it is mostly exactly as you remember the animated version to be. Will Smith is an obvious reflection of how this live-action version is very similar and slightly different at the same time.
Casting a more “region appropriate” talent base gives Aladdin the one thing that other releases (Exodus: Gods and Kings (2014), for example) have ignored in recent years, cultural legitimacy. With Mena Massoud playing the titular role, you’d think that Disney would have targeted someone with a bit more of a padded resume. The same could be said for his co-star, Naomi Scott, who plays Jasmine. First off, if either of these actors lacked the skills necessary to wow audiences, they wouldn’t have made it through. The pair have great chemistry and it really sells their onscreen romance (word is that they’re also a real life couple off camera). Your main characters, and your fond memories of the original classic, are in good hands thus far.
Where the casting slightly lacks is in the next tier of supporting actors. Marwan Kenzari (Jafar) and Navid Negahban (Sultan) are okay but their performances are just alright. With Jafar not being as despicable as he could have been, his arc falls short of what it could have been. A couple of pleasant performances are put in by Nasim Pedrad and Billy Magnussen. And of course you can’t forget the CGI trio of Abu the monkey, Iago the parrot and Rajah the tiger. They were all well-placed and ready to provide laughs.
Director Guy Ritchie is another wild card here. Snatch (2000) and Sherlock Holmes (2009) were two of his better efforts while Revolver (2005) and the most recent, King Arthur: Legend Of The Sword (2017) landed far to the other end of the spectrum. With Aladdin, Ritchie finds a nice comfortable space to live in and avoids over-stylizing this particular effort to the point of absurdity. Still though, his vision weighs down things a bit by having a runtime that exceeds the 1992 version by more than a half hour. Asking kids to sit through a 128 minutes at one time might be asking a bit much. This seems to be the prevailing theme with Disney’s live-action features lately considering the last two (Mary Poppins Returns (2018), Dumbo (2019)) ran 130 minutes and 112 minutes, respectively.
At the end of the day, Aladdin is a fun-filled family movie with great songs, lovable characters, a familiar story and pretty good CGI. On the other side of the coin, the time you’ll invest in your seats is quit lengthy its cast somewhat shallow in the talent pool area. There are more aspects to like than to dislike so just get to your local theater today so you can explore A Whole New World.
