“When you Wish upon a star… makes no difference who you are…” 🎶 This movie came out on Boxing Day in Australia, and I’m finally getting to watch Wish. I remember seeing the teaser trailer for Wish and thinking, “finally, yes” at how elegant and magical this movie appeared to be; a welcome return for a Disney animation after a lackluster last one, Strange World. And I also just want to take this opportunity to say congratulations to Disney, for 100 years of creation – thank-you for bringing so much joyous entertainment and related treasures into my life ♥
In a Mediterranean land, where King Magnifico has figured out how to grant wishes, people flock to settle in the city of Rosas and give their wish to the King when they turn 18, where the King will grant one wish a year at a huge ceremony. Asha is a young villager auditioning to become the King’s assistant, but after she discovers a dark secret about the King’s system, she embarks on a venture to return the wishes back to their initial givers. Defiant, Asha’s spirit unleashes her own magic unto her from the stars, leading the King to become paranoid, and for Asha to embrace becoming a justice warrior.
The worst thing about Wish, to make me furrow my brow, is the premise – and that’s a pretty important aspect. The magician only grants one wish a year, so the odds aren’t in the townspeople’s favour. Any mug can figure out that wishes like climbing a mountain or writing a good song are obtainable with a bit of grunt or gristle, so why would anyone hand them over, when the chances of the King getting it done for you are slim? Only fools would be handing over their wish. Or maybe not – if the wish was something like becoming a famous actor, where the chances are already low and require a lot of luck, then maybe a person would hand over their wish to forget, and so their baking job, or any other regular 9-to-5, wouldn’t seem so disappointing by comparison; and in that sense, the King is truly relieving his people of a burden. Then, some of the wishes are truly horrible. Can you imagine what craziness you would’ve wished for when you were 18? One wish actually shows a woman wanting to fly a rocket to the moon, and King Magnifico is right not to grant that wish, since the person, without a space suit, would surely perish! 😄 And who’s hurting, since the people who pass over their wish simply have no idea what they wished for anyway – the way Asha’s grandfather pines for his wish, it’s like his main wish, is now just for a wish, which literally could be anything. Anyway, all this is to say that this is the first time I can remember ever listening to a Disney hero sing their destiny song and hope they don’t do it 😮 Stop. Rethink it, Asha 😅 Our heroine wrongly decides that Magnifico strictly guiding what wishes get granted is “not fair”, when it’s actually, just, never been a good deal. She tells the star she just wants the villager’s wishes to ‘have a chance’, and they already do. And she concludes that it isn’t stealing, to creep into the King’s wish room, because the wishes don’t belong to the King anyway… but you tell me; if I come over to your house and gift you a panettone, is the cake now yours, or is it still mine somehow? No, Asha takes a giant illogical leap to get this ball rolling, and therefore the movie does too.
I was very worried pretty soon after this movie began actually, because it starts with a fairly generic scene-setting song, with two bouts of spoken exposition either side of it, and if I’m starting to get bored at the lack of action, I can only wonder for the kiddies. But the songs are pretty good, on the whole, and I really enjoyed the number that has all the forest animals jumping in, and pointing out gladly how we are the potential for our own miracles – and it’s at this point, that the movie starts to get a little bounce to it, and the second half holds a rollicking pacing. I like that this movie brings about an animate version of a wish, that might float across Disney’s castle at the beginning of their logo, and even provides a great idea for a Halloween costume, whereby just a red woolen jumper, a bit of red string coming out of it and held aloft by wire, and a yellow light on the end of it, would reinvoke this buoyant character from Wish – and you can use that 😉 The animation style is unique – not as nostalgic as hand-drawn animation, or as vibrant as CGI, but it’s a cross between the two, and I bet the book manufacturers are going to find it easy to basically print a frame to fill a page again. The movie is also fully embracing Disney’s 100th year celebration, and I spent an entire scene figuring out how Asha’s friends matched each of the seven dwarfs, and who was who, noticing that their costume colours matched as well… before some future dialogue makes it obvious. The more glaring references, like literally seeing a guy named Peter dressed as Peter Pan, where not for me, but there’s a whole host of action-animation references that go as quick as they come, and I was here for that – I also noticed Asha’s cloak when she gets her first faulty wand is the same as the Fairy Godmother from Cinderella, and I prefer those moments where Wish brings no more attention to it than that – you either get it, or you don’t! Ultimately, I was happy just to have Disney’s traditional evil green back again 😍 Considering Asha is intended to become a fairy godmother herself by movie’s end, and Magnifico gets trapped in a mirror-mirror-on-the-wall, these are just further homages to classic Disney characters, right? I don’t think Wish aligns as a prequel in any way; for it’s not like this Queen Amaya is suddenly going to be jealous of young maidens who are hotter than she is, is she? 🤔
After I openly have not gelled with recent executions of giant concepts Disney movies have brought to the table – Zootopia, Encanto, and especially Strange World – I should also type that I am grateful that they try, and teaching worldly lessons through animation is part of what has made Disney such a qualitative juggernaut in the first place. A few of us have been longing for simpler stories to return though, where villains can just be evil again, but dare I say, this is a movie right here that really might’ve been better off with the sympathetic villain treatment 😬 A bit more nuance to the premise, and the King himself, is what this needed. For one, I don’t get where the King’s vanity comes from – he’s a man who has strived for great knowledge and magic, and has been fulfilled, so I don’t imagine him to be self-centered. Bothered, yes; strained at having to maintain all his worshipper’s wishes, even those that are wonky. Perhaps when the sky lights up, he perceives a potential threat because he knows how the dark magic in his book can ruin a utopia. He realises that popping dreams entrusted to him can fuel his power, but it’s a dishonest corrosive road where once you pop you can’t stop, and as Queen Amaya discovers, there’s no coming back from it. His folly would then be in trying to maintain all the townspeople’s dreams, for not acknowledging the potential help through a second good sorcerer, Asha; and for not entrusting his followers to make their own wishes come true. It’s a sympathetic mistake to make, as discovering a deep knowledge of the world, you’d want to be the one to make sure it was used safely. But with enough chatter coming at you from all angles, you’d have to realise that it’s too much power and responsibility for one to wield alone, and maybe the human race is better off without seeing magic as something to rely on.
Therefore, in some very real ways, Wish is a missed opportunity. But it is appropriately magical, and follows a familiar format to what we have come to expect of the best of Disney. At times, it’s still also specifically predictable – like, I knew the Queen was eventually going to be a useful ally, and that the ending would be reminiscent of Sleeping Beauty in some acknowledgeable way; I scored a bingo on both those premonitions. But Wish is still original enough, even if it’s imitating Disney’s history purposefully, although they can’t do that forever. It was lovely watching all the little golden Disney characters pass down the screen through the final credits, and be nostalgic for a series of movies, toys, and books, that have been alongside me since the very beginning of my life, and all our lives, really. Disney might be a brand that’s sick at the moment, and I only hope they can revitalise, to, once again, become something we are extremely excited to see, and lovingly entertain for our children’s withstanding happiness. All in all, I think Wish is a step in a positive direction, even if it’s a look-back to what has worked before.
3.5
P.S. The internet is telling me that King Magnifico grants a wish per MONTH, not year, as I stated above. So, it seems his offer is not as much a bad deal as I led myself to believe 😑 I think most of my other points about the premise and its nuance still stand though.
P.P.S. I also discovered after the fact that the voice of Asha is Ariana DeBose, and that’s an inspired choice. In the same vein as Idina Menzel for Elsa in Frozen, getting prominent actresses with phenomenal voices to play Disney heroines is a huge win to me; great casting.
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