Aladdin Movie Essay

Aladdin is a live action remake based on Aladdinthe Original cartoon in 1992. It stars Will Smith, Mena Massoud, Naomi Scott, Marwan Kenzari, Navid Negahban, Nasim Pedrad, Billy Magnussen, and Numan Acar, as well as the voices of Alan Tudyk and Frank Welker.

Production companies: Walt Disney Pictures, Rideback

I’ll start it off by saying I had very little faith in this movie. Especially considering the original was good and did not need a remake. A little rant on Disney continuing to make live action remakes of already good movies. It isn’t necessary. That aside, the issues with this movie are plentiful.

Number one – while I absolutely adore Will Smith and I grew up with his music, the opening song ‘Arabian Nights’ is NOT in his vocal range and he absolutely butchered the song. You can clearly hear him struggling to sing this song when he just can’t do it. It was a painful start leading into disappointment after disappointment.

Another issue in tune with the music theme, they added two songs that were not in the original movie. I couldn’t appreciate that because of how they edited and created the rest of the movie. Following that, none of the actors singing really gave a great performance except for the princess. Everyone else sounded as if they were singing songs they either could not sing i.e. The Genie (Will Smith), or Aladdin (Mena Massoud) who sounded like he just could not sing at all and shouldn’t have been in the role. They really needed to pick someone different for the role of The Genie. Will Smith was just not a good choice, it isn’t his style and it really came through in the movie.

Something I can appreciate is the traditional style clothing, which is beautiful, and a pleasant surprise. That was pretty much the only thing that was good about this movie.

Another issue, with The Genie, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until I realized why he looked so off. But I realized what it was. That The Genie looked TOO human almost the entire time. Whereas the original Genie had a more fluid and less human appearance, no shoulder definition, definitely no muscles of any kind. It was an annoying thing to throw in there that I believe wouldn’t have been if Will Smith wasn’t the one playing The Genie.

Plus the way that Jafar steals the lamp from Aladdin was incredibly boring and idiotic. The way it was done in the original was much better and they should have stuck to it. Overall they shouldn’t have changed the way the original movie went and perhaps the live action remake would’ve been better.

Their choice for Jafar, Aladdin, and The Genie were a huge disappointment. In addition to that, the goal from Jafar was idiotic and not believable. It was like they were attempting to humanize it far too much in a world of genies and sorcery. There was no reason to give Jafar that type of plot goal, and it made him boring.

The CGI used to make Jafar and The Genie was painful to watch, and again probably would have been much better if they had appeared less human looking than they actually were.

And the interest between The Genie and the Princess’s handmaid was incredibly weird addition to the movie. Also super unnecessary, could’ve done without it. Iago had none of the original charm, I’m not sure if they were going for a scarier vibe for the movie. But if they are, they should have gone ahead and made the movie PG-13 instead of making it PG in attempt to keep it within the realm of children. Overall it shouldn’t have been changed so much. I don’t know why directors/producers feel inclined to change so many things to ‘make it more interesting’ when the original story was so good there wasn’t anything story-wise that needed to be changed.

No child wants to see this movie, any kid worth their salt would want to watch the original because it is a cartoon. But if this is made for adults, the adults who grew up with the original Aladdin, then they incredibly failed us and I wish I could unsee this movie. Unfortunately I cannot so I write this review in hopes that I may save an original Aladdin lover from watching this 2019 mistake.