Charming...But Not Quite Magical: A Review of Aladdin

directed by Guy Ritchie
written by John August and Guy Ritchie

It becomes much easier to watch these live-action remakes of classic Disney animated films when one accepts they exist for no other purpose than to make money. It also becomes easier to set aside the agonizing question of why these things even need to exist (one I asked myself quite a bit while watching the nigh-unwatchable Dumbo a few months ago) when, as in the case of Aladdin, the movie itself is actually pretty decent.

Aladdin, loosely based on the fairy tale, is the story of a clever street thief (Mena Massoud) who scrapes by for a living in the fictional Pan-Arabic/Asian country of Agrabah, which is ruled over by an aging Sultan (Navid Negahban) who longs to see his only daughter Jasmine (Naomi Scott) married off before he dies. Little does the Sultan know that his grand vizier Jafar (Marwan Kenzari) plots to overthrow him using an enchanted lamp buried deep in the deserts of Agrabah. The Sultan is likewise unaware that Jasmine, who hopes to one day succeed her father as Sultan (even though there's never been a female Sultan in the history of the country), often sneaks out of the palace and into the city to see what life is like outside. During one such excursion she has a chance encounter with Aladdin and his monkey, Abu. Jasmine, with whom Aladdin is now smitten, passes herself off as her own handmaid, Dalia (Nasim Pedrad), but when suitors come calling to the palace, she has to hurry back, only be upset when Aladdin is unable to return a bracelet Abu stole from her. Aladdin sneaks into the palace to give the necklace back, but his stealth and skill gets the attention of Jafar, who promptly recruits him to find the lamp. Aladdin succeeds, but when Jafar double-crosses him, he is trapped deep in the underground cave with the Abu, the lamp, and, of all things a flying magic carpet with quite a personality. When Aladdin rubs the lamp at the carpet's urging, a blue genie (Will Smith) with even more personality emerges, with the promise that he can grant Aladdin three wishes. Wanting to woo Jasmine, Aladdin wishes to be transformed into a prince, and the Genie obliges. High jinks ensue.

There's actually very little to spoil here, especially considering how the original, animated version of this film has been doing the rounds on both home video and cable television for the better part of three decades, but for the select few coming in cold, suffice it to say that the movie pretty much pays off most of its setups throughout the film. For those who've seen the cartoon, there's very little here that's new, and what is new is a bit of a mixed bag, if I'm honest. It's basically a question of what works versus what doesn't.

I'd like to get this out of the way straightaway: the actors playing both Jafar and the Sultan are awful. I recognize that Ritchie went for a more weaselly approach to Jafar rather than the oily Euronasty he was in the original, and with a better actor it could have worked, but Kenzari just comes across as a tad too weaselly and not nearly as threatening as he should be, even in a scene in which he literally has Aladdin by the throat. Also, unlike Jonathan Freeman's voice performance in the 1992 original, Kenzari is basically devoid of any humor, and while one might be tempted to apportion some of the blame to the screenwriter, I can't help but feel that Kenzari wouldn't have been able to carry any of the jokes anyway. This marks the second time Disney fumbled the ball with the big bad guy; I rather disliked Luke Evans' take on Gaston in the 2017 Beauty and the Beast remake as well. One thing Beauty and the Beast had going for it, though, was a nicely understated performance by veteran actor Kevin Kline as Belle's father. Here in Aladdin, Navid Negahban takes his small but pivotal role as the Sultan and messes it up as he mumbles most of his lines and doesn't come across as the slightest bit regal. It's a bit of a puzzler, as I've seen Negahban's work elsewhere and I know he can act, but he's definitely off his game here.

Now for the good news: the leads, from Massoud as Aladdin to Scott as Jasmine to Smith as the Genie, all hit the mark. Massoud just about perfectly captures the youthful energy of his animated predecessor, especially in the action-packed roof-jumping sequences, as well as his insecurity, a key facet for someone who would rely on magic wishes to get ahead. He can also carry a tune quite decently, and was able to pull off the recreation of two of the 1992 film's most well known songs, "One Jump" and the legendary "A Whole New World." One can almost understandably overlook his contribution to that signature duet, though, because his co-star, Naomi Scott, really dishes out a powerful performance that is emblematic of just what she brings to this role. Jasmine, who already had a bit of spunk in the animated film, gets a serious upgrade here in terms of her character's strength, motivation and even the power of her singing voice as she seriously belts not only "A Whole New World," but an all new song, "Speechless," written by the original Aladdin composer Alan Menken and new recruits, lyricists Benj Paul and Justin Pasek. Scott is definitely the breakout star here. Incidentally, Nasim Pedrad is a welcome addition to the cast as Jasmine's handmaiden Dalia. Pedrad has excellent comic timing and it's also nice that Jasmine has an actual human for a friend and confidant, unlike her animated counterpart, who only had a tiger.

Of course, Will Smith has always been, and remains the main talking point here. He turns in a performance that completely justifies the highly-controversial decision to cast him, and as unthinkable as this may have seemed all those months ago, makes the role all his own. The important thing to emphasize is that he is not Robin Williams, nor does he, at any point, attempt to emulate the late comic genius' career-defining turn. He brings his own energy to the role, and while it may not be the manic, inimitable wackiness that Williams infused his Genie with, it serves this particular film well. Massoud and Scott do okay work, but this film would be lost without Smith.

Apart from empowering Jasmine and making some tweaks to make the film a little more culturally-attuned including the much ballyhooed casting of mostly ethnically appropriate actors and the tweaking of some song lyrics (e.g. "Sunday Salaam" is replaced with the more appropriate "Friday Salaam" in the "Prince Ali" number) and other little touches here and there, the film is pretty much the remake of the 1992 animated film that Disney were selling it to be. Thanks to the wizards at Industrial Light and Magic, snappy visual effects help the filmmakers realize the more fantastical aspects of the cartoon, like the Cave of Wonders, the flying carpet, Aladdin's furry friend Abu, and, of course, the Genie. Computer-generated imagery is also heavily used to transform sound stages in England into the fictional Agrabah, though most of the desert scenes were actually filmed in the Wadi Rum desert in Jordan. All in all, this is a movie with solid production value, and it helps that, unlike the downright embarrassing "singing" in the 2017 Beauty and the Beast, there doesn't appear to be any auto-tuning here.

Still, like Beauty and the Beast, the film neither aspires to nor achieves any real excellence on its own merit, content to faithfully recreate what came before it, and while it's clearly achieving its goal of making a ton of money, I still can't quite see the artistic merit of this business of just regurgitating old animated films, though I'll admit I'm willing to keep an open mind for The Lion King, which comes out in a couple of months.


7/10

Mortal Sins: A Review of John Wick 3: Parabellum (Mild Spoilers)

directed by Chad Stahelski
written by Derek Kolstad, Chris Collins, Marc Abrams and Shay Hatten

Five years (in real time) after retired assassin John Wick (Keanu Reeves) came out of retirement to put some serious hurt on a bratty Russian mobster for killing his puppy and stealing his car, and two years (again, in real time) after he blew the brains out of a bratty Italian mobster for having John kill his sister, only to double-cross him, John Wick is on the run for his life. Having killed Santino D'Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio), a newly-instated member of the High Table, on the Continental, where killing is forbidden, John has basically marked himself for death, though Winston (Ian McShane), the manager of the Continental and an old friend, gives John a head start.

This movie, John Wick 3: Parabellum, starts moments after the last one ended, with Wick on the run and the minutes counting down until just about every assassin in the world descends on him. The High Table sends an Adjudicator (Asia Kate Dillon) to ensure Wick's demise, and to punish those who aided him, including Winston for giving him a head start, and the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne) for giving him the gun and the bullets with which he killed Santino. Meanwhile, Wick pulls in just about every favor he can, including those owed him by Belarusian mobsters headed by the Director (Anjelica Huston), and a retired fellow killer named Sophia (Halle Berry), all to seek an audience with the one person who stands above the High Table, all for the sole purpose of staying alive so that he can continue to remember his dead wife. It'll be easier said than done, though as the Adjudicator then taps Zero (Mark Dacascos), a sushi-chef/killer par excellence flanked by an elite team of assassins.

Well, the good news is that anyone looking for nearly two hours of non-stop murder and mayhem is almost certain to be sated. Stahelski and company know only too well what made the first two movies box-office hits and have piled on the death-dealing quite generously here. One hardly walks into this movie expecting some deep reflection on the human condition; I know I didn't.

My problem with this movie, however, is actually something I started to feel watching the second film (which I still liked, all things considered) and it's that in giving us a smorgasbord of martial arts and gun battles, Stahelski and his crew have become repetitive. I have no pretensions or delusions about what this movie is about, but when a good chunk of running time consists of gun battles that follow a distinctly redundant depiction of judo flips and head shots, the initial thrill at the action gives rise, dare I say it, to boredom, arguably the one mortal sin for any action movie.

The movie still feels hard-hitting when Wick and his numerous opponents are getting down and dirty; Wick's first fight is with a seven-foot (!) assassin who tries to murder him in a public library, and Wick is forced to defend himself using, of all things, a library book, and it is followed in short order by another hand-to-hand fight in an antique store that involves knives and even an axe, and then by a chase scene in which Wick hides in a stable and has horses kick his would-be killers in the head. Later in the film, during a series of "boss battles" between Wick and Zero and his various disciples, the action soars.

Whenever Wick has a gun in his hand, though, it's basically video game mode, with Wick doing the same thing, over and over again, on two different continents. He's later joined by Halle Berry and two ferocious attack dogs when he visits Morocco, but really, apart from the dimly-lit exotic locale, the new setting doesn't really offer anything to differentiate the non-stop head shots made there from those made anywhere else in the film.

Also, unlike its predecessors, this film leans uncharacteristically on computer-generated imagery, and I'm not talking about the slick, seamless kind you see in billion-dollar blockbusters but the really bad, dime-store kind that made movies in the 00s really hard to watch. The first time John Wick has a horse kick a would-be killer it's okay, but the second time it's a sequence right out of Paul Blart: Mall Cop. I kid you not.

Perhaps the worst part of the film is that anyone who comes into the film hoping that this would wrap things up, as I did, will be sorely disappointed. If they insist on doing this again, I really, really hope they at least try to inject some variety in their gun battles.

6/10

Dear Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences...Please Give Alan Silvestri an Oscar for Avengers: Endgame

Originally, I thought it'd be enough to just post one of Alan Silvestri's music clips from Avengers: Endgame available on MarvelVEVO's youtube account, complete with the blurb I've just made the title of this post. In hindsight, that hardly captures the fact that this man is an industry legend, and his body of work is far, far more than just what he's done for the world's favorite team of superheroes.

I then thought to make this a piece of the musical journey of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but in truth there have already been a number of video essays on the topic, alternately attacking and defending the MCU's music themes, which would make my written essay feel a little redundant. Also, the fact that Marvel now bears the distinction of having come up with the first, and so far, only superhero theme to have won an Oscar has pretty much put paid to the contention that no memorable music comes out of a Marvel movie.

So I then thought back to Alan Silvestri, composer of some of the most iconic movie music of my generation, and realized that to date, despite being in the business for four decades and composing some truly outstanding scores, he has yet to win an Academy Award and has only ever been nominated twice. He's kind of like the Roger Deakins of film composers, and even cinematographer Deakins finally broke his Oscar duck two years ago with Blade Runner 2049.

So for my final post before I finally move on from singing the praises of Avengers: Endgame, I've decided to make an impassioned plea to the people who hand out the Oscars to finally give Alan Silvestri his due and give him an Academy Award for Avengers: Endgame. I know it's the online equivalent of basically shouting at the sky and asking it to rain, but given that the music of Endgame was one of the most outstanding aspects of the film, one which was already outstanding in many other ways, I really have to sing one last paean about this movie or more specifically, its composer.

Obviously if the Academy, by some outside chance, chooses to recognize Silvestri’s work it can only be for Avengers: Endgame and not anything he’s done before it, but it’s my fervent hope that they recognize that this man is a cinematic treasure, and that the soaring work he has done for Anthony and Joe Russo’s magnum opus is emblematic of a generations-spanning career spent crafting some of the most memorable movie music of all time. By itself, the Back to the Future theme completely stands out as work that has stood the test of time, but when one throws in Forrest Gump, Predator, A Night at the Museum, Captain America: The First Avenger and even the very first Avengers movie there is no denying the impression this man has made on the pop culture landscape. That Steven Spielberg chose Silvestri as a stand-in for the legendary John Williams when he directed last year's Ready Player One should speak volumes of Silvestri's talent and stature in the industry.

More than that, though, the music for Avengers: Endgame is far more than just a trotting out of the now-iconic theme of the franchise a la Hedwig’s theme from the Harry Potter films, James Bond’s theme or even the Skywalker theme from Star Wars. Here, Silvestri calls upon his four decades of experience in crafting emotional cinematic journeys in helping bring the original team of Avengers, or at least most of them, to the end of theirs. The musical accompaniment to the various scenes really helps establish that, unlike most of the previous films that were tailor-made to set up the next installment of the franchise, this film marks the end of the road for some of the characters. There’s gravitas that wasn’t quite there before, especially considering that, relative to all of the films that have come before this, Endgame actually has the least action proportionate to its mammoth running time, or perhaps even the least action of all. This is a film that spends a surprisingly long amount of time dealing with the grief brought about by loss, and a surprisingly little amount of time on the slug-fests that everyone has come to expect from movies like this, and as a result, Silvestri had to step up quite a bit; he couldn't let the action do most of the storytelling, as it did in the first Avengers film and even Infinity War. I'd argue that his score for Endgame, with highs and lows, soaring orchestral moments and even quiet jazz moments, was instrumental (pardon the pun) to keeping audiences accustomed to seeing their heroes in near-constant motion engaged, even through the moments in the three-hour movie (and there were plenty of them) in which they were just sitting around talking. In itself, that was a feat I think should at least capture the Academy's attention.

Of course, the Academy is hardly likely to award a more "conventional" Marvel movie with recognition like this so soon after it showered Black Panther with a brace of awards, including one for music, but one can always hope.

FIVE REGRETS I HAVE ABOUT THE MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE THANKS TO AVENGERS: ENDGAME (I’D SAY SPOILER WARNING, BUT IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN AVENGERS: ENDGAME AT THIS POINT IT’S NO LONGER MY PROBLEM)

Given that pretty much anyone who would really care to watch Avengers: Endgame has already done so at this point, there’s been a lot of weighing in. Some loved it, some didn’t, and almost everyone is in agreement that whatever else this movie may be, it provides a definitive ENDING to the grand story arc that Marvel Studios has been building up over the last eleven years, since Jon Favreau’s Iron Man first hit theaters way back in 2008. I’ve already spent two blog posts and innumerable social media posts and comments gushing over this movie, so there’s no doubt as to where I stand, but as strange as this may sound, having seen the film three times now, there are a few things about it that make me feel a little differently about a number of films in the 21-film category that led up to the momentous conclusion in Endgame. Some people have argued, and I’d say correctly, that Endgame has retroactively improved a couple of not-so-well-liked Marvel Cinematic Universe movies like Thor: The Dark World and Avengers: Age of Ultron by either revisiting them in a new light or paying off the things they teased. For my part, though, and I’ll understand if this opinion isn’t necessarily popular, the sheer craftsmanship on display in Endgame has actually exposed a number of creative missteps in the MCU that might not necessarily have been noticeable up until this point. So, in ascending order, here they are…

5. CAPTAIN MARVEL’S SEQUENCES SHOW HOW UNDERDEVELOPED SHE IS AS A CHARACTER - Even fans of the latest MCU hero Captain Marvel (and $1.1 billion at the global box office tells us there are quite a few of them) will readily concede that Carol Danvers served little purpose in Avengers: Endgame other than as a deus ex machina, both at the beginning of the film when she saves a stranded Tony Stark and Nebula from dying in space and at the end when she destroys Thanos’ ship in the big battle and trades a few blows with him. To my mind, these were genuinely cool moments, and the film packages them as such, but unfortunately, beyond being glad that Tony was saved and that Thanos’ ship, which at the time was raining gunfire on everyone, was destroyed these moments really did not resonate with me because despite having been introduced to Carol Danvers a month before Endgame, I was not really given a glimpse into what makes her tick as a character. In my review of the film Captain Marvel I said this was down more to bad writing than any flaw in Brie Larson’s acting, but the net result is really still the same. Endgame smartly avoided using Captain Marvel or anyone other than the original six Avengers (apart from Ant-man) too much in the film, because at the end of the day this was their story, but even Captain Marvel’s extremely brief appearances could have had much more weight if only her character had been better realized in her solo film.

4. TONY STARK NEVER GOT TO INTERACT WITH BLACK PANTHER ONSCREEN, LIKE, EVER – This one, for me, is a real head-scratcher for a number of reasons. T’Challa, aka the Black Panther fought at Tony’s side in Captain America: Civil War. Tony and T’Challa have quite a bit in common, being rich, highly-intelligent men in high-tech suits of armor. And yet, for all of that, in the three movies in which their characters appear together, whatever pleasantries Robert Downey, Jr. and Chadwick Boseman may have exchanged in real life, their onscreen characters have never interacted in any scene that made it to the theatrical cut of these movies. T’Challa has had plenty of interaction with other Avengers like War Machine, Black Widow, Bucky (whom he wanted to kill for most of Civil War), Hawkeye, Captain America and even Bruce Banner, but for some reason, neither writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, nor anyone else from Marvel’s brain trust, ever had Tony exchange so much as a word with T’Challa. Bruce Banner’s oh-so-brief exchange with Shuri, which was basically just a put-down, gave viewers a tantalizing glimpse of the sort of back-and-forth that Tony could have had with the Wakandans had he spoken to them onscreen at any point. In the final analysis it doesn’t make Endgame any less of a movie, but given that we’ll never see Tony Stark in a Marvel movie again, or at least, not as played by Robert Downey, Jr., this feels like a heck of a wasted opportunity. It also would have been a great way of passing the torch, considering that Black Panther is arguably going to be the MCU’s flagship character with Cap and Iron Man out of the picture.

3. STEVE REALLY SHOULDN’T HAVE KISSED SHARON CARTER – When Captain America shared a brief, somewhat chaste kiss with Peggy Carter near the climax of Captain America: The First Avenger, it made perfect sense because the entire movie had basically been building up to it. When Captain America kissed Black Widow in Captain America: The Winter Soldier in order to get a HYDRA agent who was looking for them at the time to avert his eyes, the moment seemed the tiniest bit gratuitous, but it also worked within the context of the narrative and we got the MCU’s one and only Cap boner joke in the process. By the time Cap kissed Agent 13 in Captain America: Civil War, she had already outed herself as Peggy Carter’s niece and, if I’m honest, the kiss served no greater purpose in the narrative; they hadn’t really established that Steve had strong feelings for Sharon, and I say this as someone who knows they end up together in the comics. It was almost as if Marvel had put it there to make sure that all three Cap movies showed him kissing a woman (or two, which happened in the first one), if only to assert to all the Reddit users who were shipping Cap and Bucky that Cap was straight. Every time my kids see that moment while watching Civil War on DVD or Cable TV they wince, and now that we know, courtesy of Endgame, that Cap ends up with Peggy, which was really the natural trajectory of his character, the Sharon kiss is all the more cringe-inducing. It’s a pity, really because Captain America’s character arc that runs through all three of his solo movies and the Avengers films is, to my mind, probably the best-realized of all the individual Avengers’ stories, even more than Tony’s story arc which has arguably had more creative missteps along the way (e.g. Iron Man 2 and Iron Man 3). As a result, this one kiss, which feels totally superfluous, is a narrative hiccup that really could and should have been avoided.

2. LOKI’S DEATH IN INFINITY WAR SUCKED – As early as last year, when it actually happened, I thought little of the decision to kill Loki off extremely early in the story of Avengers: Infinity War, but I held out hope that he’d get some kind of big moment in Endgame. It was, alas, not to be, and even though Loki appears in not just one but TWO of the past timelines that the Avengers revisit he literally only has one new line of dialogue, in which he mimics Captain America. It’s as if Tom Hiddleston basically just did a walk-on for both Infinity War and Endgame, the latter of which served no other purpose than to tease his upcoming show on Disney’s streaming service. There is something all kinds of absurd about this as Loki is one the most beloved characters in all of the MCU, and while I was not opposed to having him die, I absolutely detested how they did it. When I think of how much screen time an irritating character like Ebony Maw got in not only Infinity War but in Endgame as well it honestly annoys me that the Russos, Markus and McFeely, who did an otherwise astonishing job mapping out this sprawling narrative, couldn’t even find one stinking moment for Loki to really shine.

1. IRON MAN HAS LIVED AND DIED WITHOUT A MEMORABLE THEME (AND NO, I DO NOT CONSIDER EITHER THE BLACK SABBATH SONG OR THE AC/DC NOISE THAT TONY LIKES TO BLARE ON HIS SPEAKERS AS HIS THEME) – Avengers: Endgame is a movie about the MCU’s history, first and foremost, and one of the reasons that Captain America’s story arc is the most resonant of the entire movie is that the Russo brothers cannily plumb the character’s history by having composer Alan Silvestri (who quite frankly deserves an Oscar for his work here) revisit key pieces of music he wrote for Captain America: the First Avenger nearly a decade ago. When Cap spots Peggy in S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters during his 1970 time-jump, the music swells and plays the mournful notes that played in the First Avenger the moment Cap plunged into the ice back in 1945, separating himself from Peggy forever. When Cap lifts Mjolnir and uses it to fight Thanos, his theme plays rapidly and deftly complements the glorious fight that unfolds onscreen. When old Steve hands his shield to Falcon, the Cap theme plays in all its glory and the emotional weight of the moment is captured perfectly. Now, contrast that with Iron Man, who has a lot of quiet, emotional moments in the film that would have precluded blaring some generic, annoying rock song. Silvestri does not neglect Tony Stark; he composes a theme for him that plays in the very beginning of the film, while he is stranded in space, and later again during his funeral. It’s beautiful, emotionally-charged music, but doesn’t have anywhere near the impact of the musical callbacks to Cap’s wartime sacrifice, because there is simply no history to it. All three Iron Man movies had different composers each of whose themes was more generic than the last. In the last few years, Marvel has clearly paid more attention to the importance of having good music underscoring their movies, as evidenced by the hiring of the likes of Oscar-winner Michael Giacchino to do Doctor Strange and Spider-Man: Homecoming and the re-hiring of Alan Silvestri to do Endgame and Infinity War, after the embarrassing hodgepodge of music that Brian Tyler and Danny Elfman composed for Avengers: Age of Ultron. In fact, thanks to Black Panther, Marvel now has the distinction of having the first superhero music score to actually win an Oscar, something not even the fabled John Williams’ Superman theme can claim. All that said, however, they most definitely dropped the ball in terms of giving their flagship character a distinctive musical identity.

To be perfectly clear, none of this changes how I feel about Endgame, both as a standalone film and the culmination of a decade-long narrative journey. It remains, for me, sublime, all of its flaws notwithstanding. Conversely, I do not suggest that the MCU, apart from what I've enumerated here, is otherwise perfect as a piece of narrative. There are many, many other flaws speckled throughout the 11-year, 22 film cinematic juggernaut that would be too numerous to name, but for me, these are the ones that Endgame made somewhat prominent.

As Marvel prepares for their next big push, I do hope they take stock of what they could have done better, so that when the eventual culminating event of this new generation comes along in a decade or so, we can look back on everything that’s come before and just completely enjoy the ride.