TL;DR – It is a good, sometimes great film, but it does fall into some of the same traps as other Disney classic remakes of recent years.
Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars
Post-Credit Scene – There is midish-credit dance number scene
Review –
I’m not sure if I have ever been so apprehensive walking into a film before. For
me, the original Aladdin holds a special
place in my heart and without a doubt, it is my favourite from the entirety of
the Disney Renaissance. However, this
more than any of the recent remakes have had a very rocky history with its
promotion misfires on top of the simple worries of how does an Aladdin film without Robin Williams?
Well, some of those fears were put aside in the first couple of minutes of the
films, others not so much.
So to set the scene, we open in on Aladdin (Mena Massoud) who is walking
through the streets of Agrabah with his monkey companion Apu (Frank Welker). He
is an orphan, or street urchin, or as the guards call him a street rat. He lives
by stealing from others and then surviving off the small returns. But this is
not your every day, because someone new is in the markets, someone who clearly
does not belong, Princess Jasmine (Naomi Scott) in disguise. One musical number
later and all is right in the world, however, The Sultan’s (Navid Negahban)
Grand Vizier (Marwan Kenzari) has other plans, for he is searching for the ‘diamond
in the rough’ and his macaw Iago (Alan Tudyk) might have just found it.
