REVIEW: WISH

 

Walt Disney was famous for his philosophy of making films not just for children, but for the child in all of us. It's a nice tagline, for sure, but for long-time lovers of the Disney mythos, this isn't just a marketing tool. It is the dividing line between that commercial-fare that oversaturates animation as an artform and the legendary storytelling that Disney has come to define itself by. And it is the measurement against which all Disney enthusiasts weigh each new offering from the sorcerer's workshop. 

Yet Disney's newest offering, which presents itself as a tribute to the studio's 100 year legacy, plays more like a film made for children. The film is not without magic or wisdom, I would be remiss to not acknowledge that I did tear up no less than three times, but for Walt Disney Animation's centennial capstone, viewers would be better directed to something like their short, Once Upon a Studio, which traffics in similar Disney-specific shorthand yet achieves much greater emotional depth in a fraction of the runtime.

In Disney's centennial film, the act of wishing itself is the center of the plot. The kingdom of Rosas calls dreamers from all around the world to offer their deepest wish, personified as a glowing blue orb, to King Magnifico, who promises to not only keep them safe, but to actually grant the wishes of those he deems worthy with the use of his sorcery. For Asha, working as his apprentice is its own kind of dream come true, but when she learns that the king deliberately grants only the wishes that serve his ends, she invokes the stars themselves to help her liberate the kingdom from Magnifico's wickedness. When one such Star falls from the heavens, Asha enlists its help to return the trapped wishes to the kingdom and stop Magnifico once and for all. (For context, yes, we are meant to believe that this is the same Star that Snow White, Tiana, and many others will one day wish upon, but the film doesn't close out with a montage from the Disney library. Though students of the Disney canon may still be compelled to stay through the end credits just the same.)

The problem at the root of the film is that it builds its foundation on contrivance. And I don't mean the flimsiness of the magic system or the worldbuilding (though I was left with some questions about that as well), but the contrivances of the characters. When a fairy-tale asks me to suspend my disbelief, it's usually because I am called to accept that a noble thief might rescue a Genie from a Cave of Wonders or that a mermaid princess might dream of walking on land. Such premises are fantastical, yes, but they stem naturally from truths about the human heart. 

Wish is the first fairy-tale that asks me to just believe that a king would ever demand that all his citizens give him their deepest desires, and these people, knowing that they won't even remember what they wished for, would not raise any eyebrows. We are meant to believe that there are thousands of people in this kingdom and, by his own admission, the king only grants about a dozen a year, and yet they are all taken aback by the revelation that this king is in fact hoarding their wishes. (And I suppose there is an earnest question buried somewhere in there about just how complicit people can be in unjust power structures, or how they sycophantically follow charismatic but corrupt leaders, but the film doesn't reach for such profundity, even through the magic of metaphor.) Too much of the plot hinges on character motivations that don't feel honest to the realities of human behavior.

Make no mistake, Wish is still earnest and will still touch the viewer that lets themselves be vulnerable. But it reaches for the mouthfeel of a Disney classic without letting the ingredients cook. The animation, for example, is fluid, clean, and sparkling. Likewise, the musical numbers are dazzling to behold and might make for great background music in a Disneyland parade, and kudos to Ariana Debose for featuring in nearly every number in the soundtrack. 

Just so, few of the greats from the Disney songbook rely so heavily on repetition (and when they do, the lyrics they're echoing are more imaginative than "that's a lie, lie, lie, lie"). In the best musicals, in and out of Disney, song is the space where the characters share the things they don't know how to express through spoken word. But the songs in Wish never transport the viewer, emotionally or otherwise. They just repeat what we already know in case you weren't paying attention.

For the studied Disney fan, the lingering fear tends to be the potential loss of a certain sincerity in their animated output. (To its credit, while the film does make some internal shoutouts to other Disney films like Zootopia and Peter Pan, the film actually refrains from the metatextual commentary or intentional lamp shading that's intruded on the Disney lineup for too long.) The film never treads far from that ripe emotionality that animation lends itself to so naturally. But one thing we can take from the lesson of Wish is a reminder that the best of Disney has never floated on sentimentality alone, and it is okay to ask for more.

        --The Professor