Considering the last thing I posted was John Wick, I guess this would be most appropriate:

So where did I leave off. . .oh yeah:

This week: Aladdin (2019)

So I haven’t been watching the Disney Live Action Remakes.  God, if I thought of it ahead of time, I should have done a “WE’RE DOING IT LIVE!” Disney Marathon prior to watching Aladdin.

The only other Live Action Disney Remakes I saw were Cinderella and Malificent(which I’m not sure counts since they left out all the songs and got the story wrong).  Cinderella was okay, but kind of underwhelming.  I keep meaning to see the other Disney films, but for one reason or another have not brought myself to watch them.

I don’t think any of them look particularly bad, but I guess I just am meh on them.

Aladdin is a decent movie, the only problem is that you are sitting there the entire movie comparing it to the Animated movie you already know and love.  It makes a point to redo everything simply so it doesn’t do the same thing.  It is like a singer taking a song you know and changing up the pace and trying to make it their own.  It’s nice, but the entire time you are trying to keep pace with the song in your head that you already know and now your timing is off.  It doesn’t make the new version bad, just not what you are used to and you end up not caring for it.

Gonna move into spoiler territory.  Bring protection.

*SPOILERS*

So we all know the basic story, Aladdin is a street rat who runs into the Princess in disguise and then ends up helping Jafar recover the magic lamp, but curse his sudden but inevitable betrayal. Then Aladdin finds out the lamp has a Genie and he wishes to be a prince but Jafar steals the lamp and then gets tricked into the wrong wish and itty bitty living space.

So I will give some thoughts on some of the changes made while adapting the movie to live action.

Apparently the reason Aladdin is a poor street rat is mainly due to installing hide away stairs leading up to his pent house. Seriously, he pulls a lever and wooden beams slide out of the wall to form a staircase.

While all the singing in Aladdin is good, it looks weird while Aladdin is “running” away from the Guards. Sadly live action just doesn’t easily lend itself to the fluid grace that animation does.

Oh and Jasmine gets her own song. It’s a good song, but a jarring change of pace from the rest. Hell, she even pauses the movie and snaps everyone around her out of existence Thanos Style in order to have her music video moment.

She then calls bulls*** on Jafar’s first wish. Jafar wishes to be Sultan and Genie uses his ULTIMATE COSMIC POWER TO . . .switch hats? And the guards just go along with it. Until Jasmine has her Zack Time Out and then decides to point out that he ISN’T the true Sultan.

This works for about 5 seconds until Jafar makes the sorcerer wish. Which ACTUALLY works. Until Aladdin outsmarts him with the “make me a Genie” wish.

Genie also has his own love story. While Aladdin is making awkward moves on Jasmine, Genie is making equally awkward moves on her Hand Maid. We know it works out because they open the movie with them on a boat with a couple of kids.

Sadly they didn’t do an after credits “made you look!” So that alone makes the whole movie a failure.

So I got about 4 movies in my backlog, plus all the Dark Universe films to get back to.

Next “Week”: The Secret Life of Pets 2