The 62nd film in the animated Disney Canon had a big role to play as it would be released during the 100th anniversary of the Walt Disney Studios! Do I think Disney’s Wish lived up to this hype? If not, do I at least think it’s a good enough film on its own?
Read on to find out!
Directed by Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn, Wish takes place in the fictional kingdom of Rosas that is both influenced by the Mediterranean region as well as incredibly culturally ambiguous. The kingdom was founded and is ruled by King Magnifico and Queen Amaya, voiced by Chris Pine and Angelique Cabral, respectively.
King Magnifico is a sorcerer and one of his skills involves the ability to grant people’s wishes. So his royal subjects would come to him and “give” him their wishes in hopes that he will grant them. “Giving” a wish involves it appearing like a bubble outside their body and entails them forgetting what they wished for in the first place. Every month, King Magnifico chooses one of these wishes to grant and keeps the rest locked away in his castle.
One day when it happens to be the 100th birthday of Sabino, voiced by Victor Garber, he’s hoping to finally get his wish granted. His granddaughter, Asha, voiced by Ariana DeBose, also wants more than anything for his wish to be granted. So while interviewing for the position of apprentice to the King, she mentions this.
It’s then when she realizes that King Magnifico isn’t all that magnanimous and only chooses to grant wishes that will keep him in power. Asha decides then and there to break into the King’s castle, “steal” all the ungranted wishes, and return them to the royal subjects.
I’m so sorry to say that Wish is such an utter disappointment! Firstly, the story is way too complicated! The first ten to fifteen minutes are extremely exposition-heavy and it still took me longer to actually understand how this wish-granting system works! It was also very unnatural and forced.
The rest of the plot is incredibly thin (I feel like we never got to know Asha’s family even though they play a part in the film) and also confusing. Like technically, if the royal subjects willingly give their wishes to the King, I feel the wishes remain the King’s property. I don’t know much about the law, but does getting gypped into giving something up willfully give you the right to get it back? Lawyers, let me know in the comments.
Rosas itself is also a confusing place. It’s supposedly inspired by the cultures and languages of the Mediterranean (including Spanish and Arabic), but seems to just mix and match them. Like instead of showcasing a diverse kingdom, it seems to put all the diversity of the kingdom into a blender and then distribute the result randomly amongst the royal subjects so that it seems fake!
Being a Muslim, I was happy to see some Muslim women in Hijab as well as the Arabic names that remind me of people I know in real life, but still the whole Rosas culture is too messed up!
I also hated the animation style! I know they try to make it look hand-drawn as a tribute to the Disney Studios, but this weird CG/hand-drawn mishmash just looked unfinished and unappealing to me.
And don’t get me started on the songs! When the Oscars shortlists were announced, I was shocked to find out that Disney didn’t even submit any of Wish‘s songs! Now that I’ve heard the songs, I totally get it!
Written by Julia Michaels and Benjamin Rice, the songs are way too pop-oriented and distract from Disney’s familiar Broadway-esque lyrics. These songs sound like songs you would here on the radio with lyrics that are incredibly vague resulting in anyone interpreting them however they want.
The worst offender was I’m a Star! It’s about how we’re all stars and hence, all connected, I think? It was very complicated and I still don’t fully get the lyrics and the message. The best song was the villain song, This Is the Thanks I Get?!, but again the bar is very low.
Is there anything I liked about this film? Well, the nods to many of the Disney Canon films of the past were nice to see. Chris Pine was a surprisingly good voice actor in this, much better than his Jack Frost in DreamWorks Animation’s Rise of the Guardians. And I think Sabino is the first hundred-year-old human Disney character, hence probably the oldest human Disney character in the Canon. I’m not fully sure of that, so let me know in the comments if I’m wrong!
But in the end, Wish is a very disappointing movie! Not just as a film celebrating the Walt Disney Studio’s 100th anniversary, but as a film in general! This shockingly became my least favorite film in the Disney Canon! Oh how I wish (see what I did there?) this film had never been made!
The Animation Commendation 
The Atlanteans in Atlantis are thousands of years old (or at least the princess is), thus I think they have 100 year old man beat very easily.
I have not seen a WDAS film since Frozen 2, but I am interested in seeing this to experience the spectacular badness I keep hearing about. I may have to wait a while until I find it at the library since they order physical copies based on digital sales I think, and it is failing awfully there. On its first week it came in a measly 6th place (3rd should have been the worst case scenario), and in week 2 it got 8th place.
True, but are the Atlanteans “human beings”? I feel an argument could be that they’re not. But I can see it the other way too.
I would say Encanto is the best recent WDAS film and the only one I’d recommend.
In any case, Mama Odie in The Princess and the Frog was 197, so Sabino is most definitely not the oldest Disney human.
But my, he was active for the only Disney human to attain such a long life without the aid of magical powers. And couldn’t they have gotten an older Disney veteran to do the voice? Instead of 74-year old Victor Garber?
Ooh an older Disney veteran would have been nice! Dick Van Dyke maybe?
Or get back the actor who played Bambi (or Thumper or Flower). Now there’s an idea.
Ooh, there’s an idea indeed!
I already basically said how I feel about this. It’s not a great or even particularly good movie, but it’s not terrible. It works for me much like Mary Poppins Returns, as a tribute to the Disney canon and something that is great rather than something that is great in its own right. It’s misguided and doesn’t come close to capturing the emotions or the timeless story of what it’s paying tribute to, but as a Disney mad libs game and a reminder of how great the classic Disney formula was for so many timeless stories, it is genuinely hard for me not to enjoy it. (Though Mary Poppins Returns at least managed to incorporate a lot more from the books. And, yeah, it was a better movie than this.)
I mean, for me, it was just nice to finally see a Disney villain again! And to see something actually celebrating/playfully mocking the formula, rather than just mindlessly repeating it! And to….. hear songs! That sound like a tribute to the classical Disney formulas! I mean, I am sure Encanto’s songs are better, but the reggaeton music they are made in the style of takes a lot of influence from rap, so….. yeah, not for me!
And it does have the charm, darkness, and heart that the other Disney movies had! If only because it arbitrarily pasted them over every frame and scene, telling us that it does, rather than actually putting painstaking craftsmanship into developing those elements the way the “real” Disney movies did.
So yeah, I can’t defend it from any of these criticisms, but I watched all the Disney cartoons still in existence from 1923 (and 1922; fun fact, the history of Disney animation stems back earlier than the company itself) in preparation for this, and trying to appeal to modern tastes and being painfully hip to the point of anachronism is far from something new for Disney. Just look at 1922’s Puss in Boots and you’ll see that it is more “classic” than Disney Studios!
The only thing that I really can’t forgive is them not giving Magnifico a classic Disney villain death! (The Magic Mirror callback is funny, but so needlessly cruel as to remind you of Little Mermaid II, and Moroni Olsen must be spinning in his grave.) Well, that, and not paying tribute to The Rescuers and Meet the Robinsons! (Which is especially inexplicable given the formers’ focus on cartoon mice and the latter’s message that set in motion the Disney Revival.) But let’s be honest, we all know why The Black Cauldron wasn’t included!
Also…. I can’t believe no one has noticed this, but musically, in terms of melody, Is This the Thanks I Get? sounds almost exactly like a slowed-down, laid back version of Sympathy for the Devil.
I’m glad this movie worked for you in the various points that you’ve made. I wish I liked this movie more, boy how I wish I did.
I actually never heard of Sympathy for the Devil before, lol.