{"id":1617,"date":"2019-07-23T15:00:47","date_gmt":"2019-07-23T21:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1617"},"modified":"2019-07-21T15:24:36","modified_gmt":"2019-07-21T21:24:36","slug":"movie-aladdin-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2019\/07\/23\/movie-aladdin-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"MOVIE: Aladdin (2019)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Aladdin\"Aladdin
\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2019
\nRating: PG
\nLength: 128 minutes \/ 2.13 hours<\/p>\n

When the animated version of Aladdin<\/em> came out in 1992, I was seven years old. As a young boy, I could finally relate to the titular character since the focus of this Disney film wasn\u2019t as much on the \u201cprincess\u201d as it was on \u201cPrince Ali.\u201d Consequently, this film has remained one of my favorite Disney films over the years and is one I have mostly memorized after repeated viewings in my childhood. As such, I was partly looking forward to this live-action adaptation due to my love of the original. The other part of my anticipation was because Guy Ritchie was directing it (and I\u2019ve loved plenty of his earlier works).<\/p>\n

Having now seen this version of the rags-to-riches tale, I\u2019m in this weird \u201cuncanny valley\u201d of storytelling. Because I have the original memorized, this version of the story was close enough to be predictable but not a word-for-word re-enactment, which is what I found to be slightly jarring in my personal experience. This also extended to the songs, most of which felt a little flat (both tonally and energy-wise), with the notable exceptions being \u201cA Whole New World\u201d and the new song sung by Jasmine (Naomi Scott)\u2014which was likely an opportunity to cash in on the popularity of \u201cLet it Go.\u201d If there were no animated precursor to this film, maybe I wouldn\u2019t have had this reaction.<\/p>\n

While there were a few scenes that had the Guy Ritchie visual charm, overall it was a passable film. I did appreciate the realism in the settings and dress of the characters, as well as the additions of the handmaid (Nasim Pedrad) and Arabic text on most of the documents shown on screen. I also could accept that the minor changes to the plot were made to make the story slightly more modern, while also filling in plenty of the logical gaps that were present in the original. Even though Robin Williams\u2019 Genie was a tough act to follow, Will Smith\u2019s performance did eventually grow on me to the point where it felt natural in this version.<\/p>\n

A passable adaptation that does its best to improve on the original in spots, I give Aladdin<\/em> 4.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n

\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" \"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" \"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" \"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\"<\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aladdin Year: 2019 Rating: PG Length: 128 minutes \/ 2.13 hours When the animated version of Aladdin came out in 1992, I was seven years old. As a young boy, I could finally relate to the titular character since the focus of this Disney film wasn\u2019t as much on the \u201cprincess\u201d as it was on \u201cPrince Ali.\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,2],"tags":[1576,449,6,728,89,13,1119,8,1940],"class_list":["post-1617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4-0-stars","category-movie","tag-1576","tag-aladdin","tag-disney","tag-guy-ritchie","tag-live-action","tag-movie","tag-remake","tag-review","tag-will-smith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1617"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1622,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1617\/revisions\/1622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}