Wish
Year: 2023
Rating: PG
Length: 95 minutes / 1.58 hours
For a monumental achievement of 100 years of animation, Disney unfortunately let that landmark hold too much weight when they came up with Wish (2023). What should have been an original idea that could have been of Frozen (2013) or Tangled (2010) quality ended up being bogged down with nostalgia for older eras of the animation studio. Yes, most Disney fans will probably pick out the references to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Pinocchio (1940)—with the title being a clear call-out of “When You Wish Upon a Star.” However, this is not enough to make it worth watching.
The premise of Wish is so basic as to be almost completely forgettable. That it’s basically a metaphor for trickle-down economics is probably lost on most, and ironic coming from Disney as well. Other choices, like having the goat talk (even if voiced by long-time collaborator Alan Tudyk) did not make these characters endearing at all. And for a musical, or at least a movie with songs in it, I think maybe the villain’s song “This Is the Thanks I Get?!” is the only one that I could honestly remember anything about.
The most disappointing thing about Wish is that Disney could have really sat down with its legacy and determined it wasn’t about the stories they were telling but instead the technology they were advancing. Most classic Disney films were based on Grimm’s fairy tales, but the leaps in animation technology they made with Snow White and Sleeping Beauty (1959) along with the advent of surround sound in Fantasia (1940) are the reasons Disney was considered the best. Not capitalizing on that legacy by making a movie with some innovative tech was just a missed milestone.
A disappointing cap to an amazing 100-year legacy, I give Wish 2.0 stars out of 5.
