Wish Review

Wish was made to be the film to celebrate Disney’s 100^th Anniversary, with an aim to mix their classic tales and more modern animation and sensibilities.

The Kingdom of Rosas is a peaceful paradise, ruled by the benevolent King Magnifico (Chris Pine). Everyone on Rosas gives King Magnifico their wish on their 18^th birthday and once a month the king hosts a ceremony to grant a lucky person their wish. Asha (Ariana DeBose) is a 17-year-old girl who works at the castle and applies to become Magnifico’s apprentice. However, Asha discovers the dark truth about Magnifico since he doesn’t fulfil wishes and takes memories and hopes from his subjects. Asha seeks to retrieve her grandfather’s (Victor Garber) wish and gets help from an unlikely source, a shooting star.

2023 has been a rough year for Disney. The Marvel Cinematic has suffered from diminishing returns with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Secret Invasion receiving poor reviews, and The Marvels flopped hard at the box office. Other films that performed poorly at the box office were Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Haunted Mansion, their remake of The Little Mermaid had a modest box-office return and Elemental took time to make money. Disney has suffered from PR disasters due to their actions during the strikes and purging content from Disney+ as a tax write-off. Wish capped off this poor year.

Disney Animation has also been going through a rough patch. Raya and the Last Dragon and Strange World performed poorly at the box office with Strange World becoming a target in the Culture War. Whilst Encanto only gained popularity after it premiered on Disney+. Disney has been suffering from stiffer animated competition, whether it’s Illumination having financial success with Minions: The Rise of Gru and The Super Mario Bros. Movie, whilst films like Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse were visually and emotionally bold.

Disney did bring out the big guns for Wish. The creative team behind Frozen, Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee worked on Wish, and the voice cast had some big names, like Ariana DeBose who had been nominated for an Academy Award, Chris Pine, Evan Peters (Quicksilver from the X-Men movies), and What We Do in the Shadows star Harvey Guillén. The film wanted to be a celebration of Disney’s history. Asha’s grandfather was celebrating his 100^th birthday, and Asha’s friends/work colleagues were modelled on the Seven Dwarves. Wish aimed to look and feel like a Disney classic, like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. There were plenty of references to Disney classics, from Bambi, Beauty and the Beast, and even Zootopia.

The strength of Wish was the story and a sense of urgency. Wish was a heist film. Asha and her friends planned to break into Magnifico’s vault and retrieve a wish. It was the Ocean Eleven of Disney animated films. Added to the drama Asha needed to prevent the star from getting taken by Magnifico, freeing the kingdom from Magnifico’s tyranny and Magnifico becoming corrupted by his use of dark magic. A lot was going on and made such there was a level of peril, something that was lacking in Encanto.

Where Wish faltered was the animation and music, area where Disney usually excels at. The animation attempted to blend a 2D style with 3D techniques. It worked for the Spider-Verse films which were trying to replicate the Spider-Man comics. Disney was trying to make Wish look like its classic films, but this attempt 2D-3D hybrid made the film look more like a video game than a film. It brought thoughts of the Futurama and The Simpsons games where they put 2D animated characters and put them into a 3D environment. Or if you prefer a more recent example, Wish looked like Bluey: The Videogame. This animation style made Wish seem uncanny.

The music for the film was unremarkable, There were only two memorable songs, the title song “This Wish” and the villain song “This is the Thanks I Get?!” Nothing else stuck in my mind.

As a film that was meant to celebrate Disney’s 100 years of filmmaking, Wish was a disappointment. It fails to stand up with many of Disney’s classics and shows Disney is currently not the top dog in the animation sphere.