'Aladdin' A Review

Aladdin is a family musical fantasy movie, a live-action adaptation of the 1992 Disney animated film. The story opens on a man telling his children the story of the Aladdin and the Lamp and serves as a narrator throughout. Aladdin(Mena Massoud) a thief in Agrabah chances on the Sultan's daughter Jasmine(Naomi Scott) in disguise as her own handmaiden and Aladdin helps her escape some trouble at the market. The two connect and sparks begin to kindle. When he infiltrates the palace to return a piece of jewelry the two flirt some more but Aladdin is captured on the way out by corrupt Grand Vizier Jafar(Marwan Kenzari) and forced into the Cave of Wonders to retrieve a lamp. He retrieves the lamp but the cave collapses, he rubs the lap and out pops Genie(Will Smith) who frees them from the cave-in and attempts to help Aladdin woe Jasmine posing as a prince.

Massoud and Scott are both decent but some charm is lost in translation, they both attempt to tow the line between emotional broadness and presentionalism and as a result they both land somewhere in the middle. They both clearly put forth considerable effort but the script, the direction, and the seeming fealty to the cartoon serve to make mediocrity almost inevitable. Kenzari is also serviceable but the character ultimately doesn't have much clarity, there is no fun mustache twirling but nor is there enough depth to turn the villain into a real character. Smith's performance suffers from the same confusion, much of it feels like a Robin Williams impression which is simply odd, when Smith allows his perspective and style to come through it works. Although a refreshingly and wonderfully diverse cast there are no real stand outs because the movie is caught inbetween with too much service being given to a 25 year old film and not enough to originality and personality.

Visually the movie is impressive, elaborate sets and sparkling CGI draw the eye but a lot of the spectacle is rendered meaningless by the meandering swampy narrative. It is nice to hear the Aladdin soundtrack again but the choice to autotune virtually every performance is bizarre, distracting, and renders any emotional impact close to nil.

Much like many of these virtually shot-for-shot live action remakes the prevailing feeling is simply to revisit the original cartoon.

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