Aladdin

Aladdin was entertaining and yet, inoffensively bland. There was nothing shining, shimmering splendid about the film except, surprisingly, for Will Smith's Genie, and Alan Menken's timeless score/music. Smith - as terrifying as it was to see him all in blue - both honoured Robin William's indomitable Genie and absolutely made it his own. He was a constant highlight.

Sadly, the rest of the film failed to deliver a fantastic point of view or showed us a a dazzling place that we never knew. The overall production value looked cheap, with CGI and production designs that would not looked out of place on network TV (too much budget spent on Smith's Genie?). Seriously, at times, it felt like I was watching a slightly glossier version of the late (and under-appreciated) Galavant.

Actually Galavant might actually have been more fun in total.

Guy Ritchie was an odd choice to direct this live-action musical. He excelled in the action sequences but failed to effectively capture the dramatic and emotional beats. The first act was a slow drag of exposition and it did not help that Ritchie's two leads, Mena Massoud and Naomi Scott, had barely any chemistry together which just made that first half-hour or so very tedious.

Massoud was bland and lacked the charisma and wide-eyed charm which was so abundant in the animated Aladdin. The Aladdin here just did not feel like he deserves to get the girl.

Scott fared better with a meatier role now updated for the millennium and was also blessed with the better voice. However, her new solo felt shoehorned in as a blatant attempt to be relevant. Although, that being said, this film still grossly failed the Bechdel Test.

The film picked up considerably when Genie appeared. Phew! Smith was brilliant, and this was perhaps his best role in years! He did the impossible with his iteration of Genie: the spectre of Robin Williams was not to be seen; Williams influence his undeniable but Smith's Genie was all his own.

It was great to see a Disney and Hollywood film with a representative cast where the only white dude was Billy Magnussen (who seems to be the go-to actor when casting for a handsome white himbo). However, the diversity ended right there. It would have been more appropriate to have a non-white director at the helm (and co-writing in this case) especially if there were going to be even more cultural misappropriation with the Bollywood-esque sequences and overall aesthetics.

Imagine what this film would have looked like if Gurinder Chadha (of Bend It Like Beckham and the upcoming Blinded by the Light) or Mira Nair (Monsoon Wedding and Queen of Katwe) were directing it instead of Ritchie.

Nonetheless, Menken's music was superb. The timeless tunes with Tim Rice and Howard Ashman remained timeless, although Massoud's vocals did his tunes no justice (and honestly neither did Zayn Malik and Zhavia Ward's over-wrought version of A Whole New World over the end-credits). And the new tunes, written with Pasek & Paul (of La La Land fame) fitted well into the musical framework.

In the end, Aladdin never really transported you to Agrabah. It was a 128-minutes entertainment that just makes you feel a bit nervous about Lion King and even more terrified for The Little Mermaid.