“Wish” was released as a celebration of Disney’s 100th anniversary and it is definitely somewhat disappointing for many reasons.
“Wish” follows Asha (Ariana Debose), a girl in the kingdom of Rosas who makes a wish that is so powerful it creates a star that can grant an unlimited number of wishes. When the king learns about this Asha along with the Star and her close friends must defeat the king and save everyone’s greatest wishes.
It is by no means a bad movie, but feels incredibly safe for a movie that is supposed to celebrate the centennial of a history defining company. It does nothing new with its story and in many ways feels like an on rails journey through Disney’s “look what we’ve done in the past” catalog. Of course as a celebratory movie it will have homages to past Disney works, but a lot of the time it feels like they outweigh the actual movie and steal away any substance it could have.
The animation style is also kind of strange. It takes a while to get used to because they tried to make it look like a story book to strike a balance between the 3D animation that has been solely used since 2012’s “Wreck-It Ralph” and the classic 2D animation. Even with this context behind the artstyle it still looks like unfinished 3D animation in some spots, but for the most part it looks pretty good throughout and the characters still feel fluid and alive.
The songs by themselves are very good and have great visuals, but they all kind of feel like radio music instead of something that would be in a musical. It also sometimes felt like the scenes with songs were shot differently than the rest of the movie making them feel even more disconnected. It kind of felt like they were trying to emulate the music from “Encanto” without Lin Manuel Miranda.
Magnifico (Chris Pine), the King of Rosas, feels underdeveloped during the movie. There are definitely inklings of being a great disney villain, but his reasons for being evil are never fleshed out enough to feel like real reasons. It also felt like there were evident missed opportunities, like with a burnt tapestry that is integral to Magnifico’s backstory that is never explored past the one sentence Magnifico says about it.
Disney also made a very strange decision regarding the ending that is not necessarily bad, but very comical. It won’t be said in this review for spoiler reasons, but it will be very clear when you watch it. Whether you like the choice or not will really depend on what you are looking for with the movie.
Even with all of these misgivings “Wish” is still very enjoyable to watch with a fun atmosphere that is common to most Disney movies. Yet, overall “Wish” is another disappointingly underdeveloped project much like 2022’s “Strange World”. Still an enjoyable movie, but definitely not in the higher echelon of Disney features.
Directed by Fawn Veerasunthorn, Chris Buck
Starring: Ariana DeBose, Chris Pine, Alan Tudyk, Angelique Cabral, Victor Garber, Natasha Rothwell, Harvey Guillién, Evan Peters, Ramy Youssef, Jon Rudnitsky, Della Saba
Rated PG
Runtime: 95 minutes
My Rating: ★★★½