Film Review - Wish

Disney's centenary animated feature is bland, soulless, and utterly mediocre

Credit: Disney

First, a pre-emptive defence against anyone with the temerity to suggest that I’m not the target audience for Wish: Disney animated features at their best are for everyone. Many have wound up on my all-time favourites list. Here’s a personal top ten. I cite that as Exhibit A as to why it gives me no pleasure to write this review.

With a preface like that, you might expect me to slate Wish, but the problem isn’t that it is bad; at least, not on a technical level. The sort-of throwback to 2D animation (but not quite) is proficiently supervised by directors Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn. The vocal performances, including Ariana DeBose and Chris Pine, are perfectly competent. And I suppose there’s a very, very slight pleasure to be gleaned in spotting the visual homages to other Disney animated classics throughout (this year is a celebration of the company’s 100th anniversary, after all).

On the other hand, Wish is the personification of mediocrity. The dictionary definition of bland, ordinary, unremarkable, average, and run-of-the-mill. A corporate, machine-tooled product with anything resembling humour, humanity, excitement, and emotion so thoroughly wrung out of it that I wouldn’t be surprised if the film had been put together by AI. It’s an empty shell. A film without a soul.

Plotwise, we get a cheerfully selfless but thoroughly boring protagonist Asha, who lives in the seemingly peaceful and benevolent kingdom of Rosas, ruled by King Magnifico. The King is a sorcerer who set up the kingdom along with Queen Amaya, after they fled a land with an unspecified dark past where things went decidedly pear-shaped. The citizens of Rosas give the King their wishes (which they then can’t remember), and every so often, he grants a wish, provided he doesn’t consider it dangerous.

Asha wishes to be Magnifico’s apprentice, but when she questions his judgement in terms of the wishes he grants, she earns his displeasure. After being told her mother and grandfather’s wishes will never be granted, in despair, Asha wishes on a star. To her surprise, the star itself (a tiny thing that’s meant to be cute) comes down and starts doing magical things. This annoys Magnifico even more, so he turns to dark magic to stamp out the threat he perceives from this star.

The ensuing toothless tale looks pretty, but every potentially interesting edge has been carefully sanded down. For example, what happened in the land where the King and Queen originate? This backstory sets up a big reveal that never happens. The Queen herself is a sorely underwritten character. Why does she not object to her husband’s wish-hoarding shenanigans before he turns to dark magic?

I don’t object to the moral of the story (taking ownership of one’s wishes and working hard for them, rather than simply expecting them to come about with no effort). However, it’s presented with a reheated leftover of don’t-trust-good-looking-men; a cliché that perhaps bears repeating, but worked better in Frozen (2013), and isn’t particularly effective here. Besides, I also doubt any of these messages will resonate, since the story is populated by such one-dimensional characters.

Elsewhere, try-hard comedy animals failed to raise a single laugh in the screening I attended (and there were plenty of children present, for those who still insist I’m not the target audience). Also, why is Disney so hellbent on excluding romance these days? Has a heartstring-tugging love story, either as a subplot or the main plot, really become so unfashionable? I admit I’m a sucker for these, and desperately miss them. As for the songs, this clutch of deeply unmemorable tunes left me craving the Sherman Brothers, Alan Menken, and other songwriting geniuses from Disney’s past.

In closing, I’m making a wish: I wish that the evil enchantment causing Disney to forget what makes a great film is broken. I wish that the next Disney animated film has wit, humour, adventure, romance, emotional depth, and all-ages audience resonance. In short, I wish it to have the transcendent magic that imbued Wish’s illustrious predecessors.

(Originally published on Medium.)

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