Aladdin (Guy Ritchie, 2019)

[mfunk9786]

New clip


I find it harder and harder to believe that Guy Ritchie directed this with every new piece of footage released.

It's funny, I had the opposite reaction when I watched this - like who else but Guy Ritchie would have an adequate level of bad taste to pull this off?

[Roscoe]

New clip


I find it harder and harder to believe that Guy Ritchie directed this with every new piece of footage released.

It's funny, I had the opposite reaction when I watched this - like who else but Guy Ritchie would have an adequate level of bad taste to pull this off?

Rob Marshall, Bill Condon, Joel Schumacher, Zach Snyder -- the list of hacks is endless.

[Never Cursed]

Rob Marshall, Bill Condon, Joel Schumacher, Zach Snyder -- the list of hacks is endless.

It's funny, Marshall and Condon have already directed a live-action Disney musical adaptation each (though I guess it at least makes sense for Marshall to do so, given his background as a Broadway director). And I wouldn't call Snyder a hack so much as I'd say he has a unique style that just so happens to be terrible most of the time.

[Roscoe]

Rob Marshall, Bill Condon, Joel Schumacher, Zach Snyder -- the list of hacks is endless.

It's funny, Marshall and Condon have already directed a live-action Disney musical adaptation each (though I guess it at least makes sense for Marshall to do so, given his background as a Broadway director). And I wouldn't call Snyder a hack so much as I'd say he has a unique style that just so happens to be terrible most of the time.

Marshall's not really a Broadway director -- he's responsible for some choreography, and got a co-director credit on that successful reboot of CABARET. His sole sole-directing credit on Broadway was for a short-lived revival of LITTLE ME. He ditched the Great White Way for the movies, and cinema's loss has been Broadway's gain.

[swo17]

Which live-action Disney adaptation was the unspeakable Rob Marshall responsible for?

How much of a hack at the internet do you have to be to not know how to click on a link?

[Roscoe]

I do my best to avoid clicking on links about the likes of Rob Marshall.

[domino harvey]

Chicago is a better movie than anything Ritchie’s ever directed

[Roscoe]

Chicago is a better movie than anything Ritchie’s ever directed

Which must qualify as the direst insult ever levelled against Ritchie.

[Monterey Jack]

B-



Like most of these recent "reskinned" versions of classic Disney animated properties, Aladdin suffers from the lack of the gravity-defying buoyancy that great animation always possesses. Watching Mena Massoud and Naomi Scott singing "A Whole New World" during their magic carpet duet in director Guy Ritchie's new film, I was never swept away by the dizzyingly ebullient romance conveyed in the 1992 film. Hearing the lyrics, "Soaring, tumbling, freewheeling, through an endless diamond sky", all the drab visuals were telling me were, "Kneeling, stationary, on an endless greenscreen stage". This has been my biggest beef with Disney strip-mining their back catalogue for nostalgic profit over the last decade...these CGI-festooned F/X blowouts are neither fish nor fowl, lacking the pleasingly stylized artifice of their animated predecessors yet lacking the "real world" verisimilitude they intend to have. Had Aladdin been pitched more at the level of a Raiders Of The Lost Ark, perhaps even ditching the songs and playing out as a straight action/adventure movie, it would have possessed its own scrappy identity, and Ritchie -- who rose from his own humble "street rat" origins as the crafter of scruffy British crime dramas punctuated with ribald comedy -- could have been the ideal filmmaker to realize that. But here, any sense of his personality is suffocated under a mountain of elaborate yet patently fakey whiz-bang technology, costuming, and lackadaisical choreography that recalls a garish Macy's Thanksgiving's Day Parade float. And while Will Smith's ingratiating motormouth charisma is put to good use as the Genie, he simply cannot come close to hitting the Al Hirschfeldian stylization of Robin Williams' manic, pop culture-addled and yet surprisingly emotive performance in the original. Every aspect of this new version, like 2017's Beauty & The Beast, come across as weighted-down, leaden, flat-footed, and not even Scott's glowingly lovely presence as a very easy-on-the-eyes Jasmine (given, of course, her own freshly-minted "girl power" anthem) can do much to enliven the proceedings. It's all easy enough to sit through, but it's cinematic karaoke, throwaway fun in the moment but lacking the soul and heart of the original recording. If I had my wish, it would be for Disney to just STOP IT with these damn remakes and start making some original projects again, before the kids of 2045 are forced to sit through the RE-reskinned product their grandparents grew up on.

[Finch]

Walter Chaw on the problematic casting of Will Smith as the genie

According to various sources, this is headed to over $100m at the box office over the Memorial Day weekend. It's a depressing state of affairs.

[cdnchris]

This film was fucking garbage. I really don't know what else to say about it.

[tenia]

I read that Smith's genie actually is the best thing in the movie so I guess that sets the expectations.

[Lost Highway]

The art direction looks so retina-searing-hideous, I will never go anywhere near this thing.

[Orlac]

Smith is great, the romantic leads are misused but talented...but Jafar really is f*cking terrible. John Steiner's take in the Cannon Sinbad film is Oscar callibre by comparison.

[Monterey Jack]

Yeah, could they have picked a LESS threatening or charismatic actor for the role of Jafar? Dude actually looked YOUNGER than Aladdin!

[Gregory]

B-

Grade inflation

[Orlac]

Yeah, could they have picked a LESS threatening or charismatic actor for the role of Jafar? Dude actually looked YOUNGER than Aladdin!

No giant snake either. Did they run out of money or something?

[movielocke]

I liked beauty and the beast but this was fucking atrocious, especially the editing.

[Monterey Jack]

B-

Grade inflation

In retrospect, I was too kind to it. Aside from Naomi Scott looking absolutely gorgeous, it's a total flatline.

[domino harvey]

The actor who played the title role has not managed to land a single audition since the film was released

Also, this movie made a billion dollars??? No wonder studios aren’t hiring me to run them

[nitin]

Are either of those two facts all that surprising?

[tenia]

Mediocre is the new good for most blockbusters. The Lion King was far from getting a good reception and it made what, 1 billion and a half worldwide ?

[R0lf]

Maybe he’d have landed an audition if he took his fucking shirt off.

[knives]

Please don't be gross. We wouldn't tolerate that being said about a woman and shouldn't a man.

[nitin]

Pretty sure that’s joke based on the material in the article.