Wish
Disney high fiving itself is about as good as you'd expect
Disney celebrated itself for its 100th birthday. The festivities were somewhat lackluster.
Wish tells the story of a young girl (Asha, voiced by Ariana DeBose) in generic, fantasy, medieval ages who wishes to be an apprentice to the Sorcerer king (Magnifico, voiced by none other than Chris Pine). As the protagonist, her motives are of course pure and selfless as she hopes to get the king’s ear to grant wishes to her grandfather, because the premise of this society is that the king grants wishes occasional wishes in return for everyone else forgetting their own wishes, thus creating deceitful but practical obedience. Anyway, Asha gets rejected by the king, she wishes upon a star, we see that the fallen star has more inherent magic then Magnifico’s (who turns to dark magic to even the odds), and the race is off to see who can harness Star first and outsmart the other to achieve their own ends.
The whole thing felt silly and generic, with a mere new coat of paint as an attempt to hide it.
I’ll start with the positives. There were some good, catchy songs which provided earworms to me and my family in the weeks after seeing the movie. “This Wish” was essentially the anthem for the movie and featured impressive vocals by DeBose, and rightfully earned its reprise in the film’s climax. My personal favorite, the villain song “This is the Thanks I Get?!” has a great tempo and doesn’t just give the villain background, but actually shows the descent into villainy. “I’m a Star” and “Knowing What I Know Now” are also family favorites and were certainly enjoyable parts of the film.
The animation in Wish is a bit off-putting, but instead of bashing this aspect of the film, I’ll note the boldness of it. As it was meant to celebrate the history of Disney animation, which for decades was done through hand-drawn frames, the studio made the Wish in the style of traditional animation, but it was computer animated. Meaning everything was CGI, but with an overlay that gave Wish a sense of being from the olden times. It was sort of different, and was genuinely the only “new” thing that was in the movie. The unfortunate result is the vague watercolor look feels off, and even if it is new, there isn’t anything awe inspiring about it. Which, again, is a shame because it’s the only part of the movie that is different, and now Disney is probably less inclined to try new forms of animation given its lackluster reviews.
One of the glaring problems with Wish was the total lack of a coherent plot that overshadowed the otherwise enjoyable songs. The premise begins with the benevolent Magnifico holding onto wishes as collateral then granting a select few, which besides an obvious hint to his dark side, just felt like a weird introduction to take for granted. When he then actually turned to the dark side, it wasn’t even a plot twist because I saw the trailer. The end of the third act sees Magnifico lose to the power of friendship (and song) and then was overloaded with easter eggs to other Disney films. The rest of the movie felt like a lot of vague hand-wavy magic stuff was happening without any serious character development or meaningful themes… except for one.
Wish seemingly concludes that wishes shouldn’t be magically granted because then no one will ever work to make their wish a reality. I like that message. It preaches hard work, the value of creativity, and self-reliance.
Two major problems: 1) it basically does away with the whimsical and fantasy themes of almost one hundred years of what Disney movies were about. Instead of throwing that in the garbage, a better lesson would be adapting it for modern times. It also means the movie isn’t titled well, though Hard Work may have been a hard sell for an animated family film. 2) The movie itself doesn’t preach that message through its actions. The plot starts because Asha makes a wish, and because the wish is selfless it is more powerful and get answered by a star than others, but it is because of a wish that we can have the success of the heroes and downfall of the villain. And again, the heroes win because of wishing willpower, not genuine effort. The mixed messages aren’t problematic if you spend your hour and a half mindlessly singing along, but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
Lastly, the most annoying part of this movie was the constant “in-your-face” shoving of Disney history. Some things I can let go, like giving a background to how the magic mirror was made. Others, like the pushing of 7 characters that are supposed to somehow remind me of the seven dwarves, and nods to Peter Pan and the fairy godmother, its lazy fan service, doesn’t make sense, is uninteresting, or multiple of the above. Ryan George explained this issue pretty well, so I’d recommend watching his rant about it.
In the end, trying to toot your own horn is generally not a worthwhile endeavor. Wish wasn’t all bad, but I wish Disney stops trying to pat itself on the back so much.
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