Aladdin (2019) [Blu-ray]
Adventure | Family | Fantasy | Musical | Romance

Tagline: The magic comes to life

A street rat frees a genie from a lamp, granting all of his wishes and transforming himself into a charming prince in order to marry a beautiful princess. But soon, an evil sorcerer becomes hell-bent on securing the lamp for his own sinister purposes.

Storyline: A kind-hearted street urchin Aladdin vies for the love of the beautiful princess Jasmine, the princess of Agrabah. When he finds a magic lamp, he uses a genie's magic power to make himself a prince in order to marry her. He is also on a mission to stop the powerful Jafar who plots to steal the magic lamp that could make his deepest wishes come true. Written by Santhosh

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, September 1, 2019 It's no surprise that Disney is on the top of the moviemaking world right now. The box office-busting numbers are staggering, and it's not just because the company has absorbed so many popular properties. It's also because of the sheer volume of films the studio is releasing, which includes live action adaptations of favorite internal animated films of yore releasing at a furious, fever pace. These adaptations stretch back further than 2015, but that year's Cinderella certainly seemed to kick the high profile remakes into high gear. Since then it's been a steady parade of films of varying qualities, including The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast, Dumbo, and now Aladdin, the remake of the treasured 1992 animated film of the same name that ranks highly on many Disney fans' lists of favorites. Director Guy Ritchie's (Sherlock Holmes) vision for the live action isn't far off the mark, even if it's not particularly imaginative, offering what looks and feels like a fairly straight, if not slightly expanded, take on the treasured tale, favoring lavish production design over a more expansive or expressive narrative focus.

Aladdin (Mena Massoud) and his pet monkey Abu are common thieves who sell their stolen goods for far less than they are worth, happy to earn a few bites to eat in exchange for the merchandise. One day, Aladdin bumps into a beautiful woman named Jasmine (Naomi Scott) who melts his heart. He does his best to resist the urge to steal some of her precious jewels -- it's obvious she comes from the nearby palace, not the streets -- but he winds up with one of her bracelets, anyway. The relationship grows sour, doubly so when Aladdin learns she's the princess of Agrabah. When the evil Jafar (Marwan Kenzari) identifies Aladdin as the foretold "diamond in the rough" who can safely enter a living cave and retrieve an all-powerful lamp, he is kidnaped and forced to do so. He barely escapes with the lamp and his life and quickly discovers inside of the prize a genie (Will Smith) who promises to grant him three wishes. Aladdin wishes for nothing more than to be a prince who can rightly marry the princess, but his sudden transformation is interrupted by a ruthless Jafar who will stop at nothing to secure the lamp.

Aladdin as a live action film works well at best and well enough at worst. It's certainly lacking the charms of the original picture as it attempts to balance an approachable, breezy, and light front of fun and music against the ferociously dark beats that surround the characters' plight and fight against the ruthless Jafar. Yet even in Jafar the filmmakers seem bent on walking that fine line between approachability and heinous villainy. Kenzari never seems to be able to take the character as far as he thematically needs to go. There's a clear wrestling with the rating and the story's needs, a balance the animated film could walk with more confidence. Here, there's an effort to mask a somewhat tame and not at all risky portrayal under a deluge of sight and sound that allows Kenzari to ham it up rather than go full-on wicked.

Fortunately, the film's magical tones largely mask the somewhat neutered villain. It's a spectacle of seamless digital sophistication that plays up the effects as necessary -- which is often -- but they're so integral to the movie and done so well that there's a near seamless blend of live action, artificial, and hybrids in between. Audiences will feel like Aladdin and Jasmine are soaring on a carpet and that Will Smith has been transformed into a hulking blue genie. Smith, with the biggest shoes to fill and the most important part to play, proves to be inspired casting, finding the perfect balance between loquaciousness and a larger-than-life presence. Smith stretches the partially CGI character well beyond any of the humans, working a balance between his adherence to genie duties, his longing to escape his captivity, his burgeoning friendship with Aladdin, and the realities of the transforming world around him. It's solid work and one of Smith's best performances in years.

Aladdin makes for a fun little diversion and a nice compliment to the original animated film. It's well cast and its visuals are everything one would expect of a live action Aladdin translation. It's not the finest of Disney's live action re-imaginings, but it's certainly far from the worst. Disney's Blu-ray delivers high end video and audio presentations. Supplements are a little thin but adequate. Recommended.

[CSW] -2.8- This reviewer said it better than I could:
It is important when analyzing a remake to not compare it too heavily to the original it was based, but this one made it difficult to follow that rule. I think the issues lied primarily with the pacing and casting. Disney infamously struggled to find the perfect people to fill these roles, and it makes sense. How many Middle Easterners (with Western origins) can there be to choose from in the musical theatre industry, after all? Luckily, Disney found some that could hold their own in singing and dancing. Too bad they could not find any who could act. Jafar's casting was particularly puzzling. Oddly enough, despite the controversy, I think the saving grace of this film was Will Smith as the Genie. Noted, it was not entirely his personal doing, as Robin Williams set such a high precedent in the 90s version, creating arguably one of the best animated characters of all time. If the writers followed the same formula at all, it was bound to work. In this case they did, and it tipped a troubled remake ever so slightly into the positive column, bringing much needed levity to a poorly adapted action-fantasy.

[V4.5-A4.5] MPEG-4 AVC - D-Box enhanced this movie.


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