Aladdin (9/10)
by Tony Medley
Runtime 128 minutes.
PG.
Bollywood comes to Hollywood. A
boffo performance by Will Smith as genie is bolstered by vivid
Technicolor, colorful costumes, and wonderful music and dancing.
While the story hasn’t changed (Aladdin
[Mena Massoud] is still a street guy who falls for a princess, Jasmine [Naomi
Scott] and the genie is out to help him by granting him the proverbial
three wishes), this is not a duplicate of your parents’ Aladdin story.
For one thing, the screenwriters created a new character, Dalia (Nasim Pedrad),
who is Jasmine’s lady in waiting. Dalia provides love interest for the
genie. So we not only have Aladdin hot for Jasmine, we also have
genie hot for Dalia (and vice-versa).
It was filmed by director Guy
Ritchie (with writing credits to John August and Ritchie) in England
and Jordan with an abundance of CGI. In fact the visual effects credits
are longer than any I’ve seen. But they did their job well because the
visual effects are award-quality.
Set in the fictional city of
Agrabah, the 200 yard-long set was planned with the musical numbers “One Jump
Ahead” and “Prince Ali” in mind. It took five days, 250 dancers, 200
costumes, and 200 extras just to to shoot the “Prince Ali” number.
Making a live action movie out
of a previous animated one is chancy, but Disney did a good job. This is
an entertaining, fun film.
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