(The Disneycember logo is shown, before showing trailer clips and images from Wish)
Doug (vo): If you were to show me the first 15 minutes of Wish, I'd probably say, "This looks fine. Okay, it's a little clumsy here and there, but I think the idea is good, the characters seem okay, and the art style is appealing enough". But remember that scene in Shrek when he says ogres are like onions, the more layers you peel away, the more good you see? This is, like, the reverse of that. The more layers you peel away, the more bad it gets. This film is not getting the best reception from critics, and at first, I thought they were overreacting. I really was like, "Oh, I mean, I know some of these tropes, but I mean, like, they're fine, they don't bother me". But it's, like, every minute, the mistakes kept adding up more and more to a point where I started checking my phone to see what time it is in a film that isn't particularly long. As I mentioned before, the setup isn't a bad one.
Story[]
Doug (vo): A sorcerer named Magnifico, played by Chris Pine, has found a way to take control of everybody's wishes, so he becomes the ruler and decides to hold on to everybody's wishes, with the catch being they forget what it is once it's taken away from them. But once a month, he picks a lucky person to grant that wish. This is where Asha comes in, played by Ariana DeBose. She absolutely loves her grandfather, who's turning 100 and never got his wish granted. Hoping to be his apprentice, she approaches the sorcerer and asks for the wish to be granted. And pretty much on the turn of a dime, suddenly, the sorcerer is instant bad guy, like, out of nowhere. She decides to make a wish for herself on a star, and the star actually comes on down and apparently is alive, and has a personality, and kind of looks like a Mario character… But, whatever, it's cute, I guess. When Magnifico finds out his power might be threatened, he decides to turn the kingdom against Asha and be...comically vain while doing it?
Review[]
Doug (vo): Yeah, as you can tell, there's a lot of things off about this. Okay, real quick, I will say the positives. First of all, like I said, I love this idea. I feel like whenever Disney is doing commentary, it's always kind of the same thing. Like, it's about an oppressed people, it can be about gay people or immigrants, it's very easy to figure out what they're talking about, so you can't really read too much more into it. There's not many interpretations of it, which is fine, but they just keep doing so many of them. I like that this commentary actually has a little bit more variety to it. Yes, technically, there's oppressed people in this, but they don't really act oppressed. Okay, I'll get to that in a minute.
(As various footage of the movie is shown, we are shown a few clips and stills that focus on Valentino the goat and the song sequences)
Doug (vo): I feel like there's possibilities for this idea, and I hate the fact that after the first 15 minutes, they don't explore it. Instead, they do things like make the goat talk with Alan Tudyk, who's usually very funny, but they don't give him anything funny to say in this. They have people sing songs that just kind of come out of nowhere. Like, a lot of these scenes just need, like, a few more seconds to breathe, and they just don't let that happen. But I will say, I have heard people say that the film is alright. Like, it wasn't one of their favorites, but you know, it was an okay way to waste an hour-and-a-half. And here's the thing, if you're just looking for the standard Disney formula, people sing songs and look pretty and some people say funny lines and there's an evil villain and who's kind of goofy and all that stuff you're just kind of used to and you don't need anything more, I think you'll like this film okay. For me, personally, I like all those tropes, but I do need more. I need to be challenged, I want Disney and this formula to evolve. And almost everything about this feels like it's devolving, like it's a step backwards. They have this weird thing where there's a lot of callbacks to other Disney films, and you think, okay. You think like Wreck-it Ralph 2 did that okay or Once Upon a Studio, House of Mouse. I mean, come on, Disney's usually pretty good at kind of working in humor and clever callbacks with their own characters.
(Stills and clips focusing on Asha's friends are shown)
Doug (vo): But, okay, here's an example. Asha has seven friends that are clearly supposed to be the Seven Dwarfs. One is very dopey-ish, one even says "This is why I'm always so grumpy", one is always kind of sleepy. You get the idea, but that's not their names or anything, so you're kind of waiting for, "What's this leading to? What's going to be the twist? What's going to be the surprise? Why do this at all?" And the big reveal is...there is no reveal. They say Asha is kind of like a fairy godmother, so they give her something that kind of looks like a magic wand, and she wears a robe that kind of looks like the one from Cinderella, and that's it, that's the payoff. There's one guy whose wish is to fly, and his name is Peter and he wears a Peter Pan hat. That's it, that's the payoff. I kept expecting maybe we're going to cut to, like, another world or, like, this is a place that's high up in the clouds where all wishes go and down below, there's all like the real fairy tale characters, or maybe they exist in different worlds. I don't know, just something, not...nothing! T-this is nothing!
(An image of many Disney characters is shown, as well as images from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and a brief image of a dog)
Doug (vo): And then they have the balls at the end credits to actually show all these Disney characters like Maleficent and Pinocchio, like, "Yeah, that's just who you saw"! Wh-ju-what?! This is like doing a Spider-Verse movie where all the spider people are dogs. Gwen's a dog, Peter's a dog, everyone's a dog, and there's no explanation or reason for it. But then, in the end credits, it shows Spider-Gwen and Peter Parker and everybody in their original forms like, "Yeah, you're welcome". Like, what the hell is wrong with you?!
(More clips from Wish resume showing)
Doug (vo): Not only is the idea unfocused, but the pacing is atrocious. Like I said, people will just start singing or make a joke or suddenly turn evil because that's just kind of what happens in a Disney movie at this certain point. And I think a lot of that comes from there's not really much of a motivation for anybody.
(Footage focusing on Asha is shown)
Doug (vo): Asha, for example. At first, she has a decent motivation, she just wants her grandfather's wish to come true. But without going into spoilers, that's kind of resolved halfway through. So I kept asking, "Why do I care about what she's searching for?" Well, apparently, she's looking to save the people now, the oppressed people, but they sure don't act like they're in that much trouble. I was kind of thinking to myself, maybe if everybody was, like, kind of half-awake or didn't have much passion because their wishes were taken away, something, something that's worth fighting for. But everyone seems fine and happy and energetic and bouncing around and singing and doing all sorts of zany comedy, so I pretty much had zero investment in what they were fighting for. Yeah, they can say their dreams are gone, but they forget about it and they don't really seem that affected. I guess when the sorcerer starts crushing the dreams, they start to feel sad. Okay, I guess that's something, but why couldn't you play up before that they were almost zombie-like or maybe they were a little too relaxed in their world? You know, kind of like what they did in WALL-E? Like, you clearly saw the world they adapted to was doing them harm. Here, I wasn't seeing it as much. Like, yes, I clearly disagree with the bad guy, but nobody acted like they had real urgency to what they were doing.
(Footage focusing on the film's 2-D/3-D animation style is shown)
Doug (vo): I hate to say it, but the art style didn't win me over either. I usually love watercolors in Disney films, and, yeah, the backgrounds look nice here, but here's the problem. In something like Lilo and Stitch, it makes sense because it's hand drawn, there's cel animation. The characters in the foreground are going to be very solid and bright and colorful, they're really going to stand out. Here, because it's all CG, the characters still kind of have that faded watercolor look, even though it's 3D, and they don't really stand out, they almost get lost in the background and it all kind of blends together. And because of that, the film's not very appealing to look at either.
(More footage focusing on the song sequences is shown)
Doug (vo): Even the songs, which, you know, have okay melodies and everything, don't really have the best lyrics. It's clear they're trying to do, like, the Lin-Manuel Miranda thing, where they give every single note a lyric, which is not a bad idea. I mean, it's been very successful, but they clearly don't know how to do it. Every word being said does not sound natural, it does not sound like something people would say, let alone sing. They just don't sound like common phrases, they sound like words being said to force a rhyme, and even the rhymes aren't always that great. And like I said, they don't even match the tone, or tones, I should say, because it goes back and forth so much. I mean, again, they're trying to set up this villain as being very sympathetic, but then, he just goes so cartoony and over-the-top. It's kind of like setting up Rameses from Prince of Egypt, but giving him the poodle song from Oliver and Company. Like, they just don't go.
(Various footage resumes showing)
Doug (vo): I get the feeling, and I have no proof of this, but there was talk a long time ago that Disney wanted to do a big film for their 100-year anniversary. It was going to have at least one character from every animated movie in there. Now, that eventually became Once Upon a Studio, and, yeah, I'll get to that when I get to that. But I think this was originally supposed to be that movie, and they just kept going back and forth and retooling it and working with it and changing it, and it just became something completely different to a point where whatever idea they had clearly got lost.
Final thought[]
Doug (vo): And it's a shame, because I do think there's some good ideas in here, they just needed time to be explored and not chopped up. So, yeah, I really wish I could add something different to this, like, be the one person that says, "Actually, it's really not that bad, you guys." But, yeah, the more you let it play on, the worse it does get. But as I said before, if you are looking for something that's just very, very basic, still has a little bit of that Disney feel and quality and design and everything, I think you might like it okay. But for me, I love Disney so much that I do want to see it keep evolving and growing and turning into something else while still holding on to what made it special. And I feel like this movie is trying. I'm not going to pretend and say, like, they didn't put any effort into it, it's clear they did. I think it was just misguided. It was misguided on every level, and it really is a shame. I guess just like a wish, you can have a good intention, but the result is definitely unfulfilling.
(The scene showing Asha looking up at the night sky while singing the film's main song, "This Wish", is shown)