Guy Ritchie is synonymous with slick, swaggering bromance. Put in charge of this full-on musical — a live-action remake of the 1992 Disney classic — he’d surely put the lad in Aladdin? But no — even though he co-wrote the script.
In the original the focus was on a genie (voiced by Robin Williams) who makes the wishes of a street urchin come true. The genie and Aladdin, basically, were a double-act.
What we get here is a quadruple act. Aladdin (Mena Massoud) loves Princess Jasmine (Naomi Scott), while a new character — Jasmine’s lady-in-waiting Dalia (Saturday Night Live veteran Nasim Pedrad) — has the hots for the genie (Will Smith, right).
Smith hasn’t been this entertaining for years. Williams helped make camp the new normal, and Smith rides that wave, even throwing a little RuPaul into the mix. Somehow, though, we also buy him as Dalia’s suitor. The genie has a huge, blue CGI body. But it’s Smith’s uncannily elastic performance that sticks in your head.
Aladdin - In pictures
Meanwhile, Massoud is full of gumption, Pedrad is droll and Scott delivers her lines like a famished girl tucking into a three-course meal.
Her costumes, by the way, show how keen Disney is to revamp, or rather devamp, their princesses (the cartoon Jasmine wore garb that was highly midriff-centric).
Other neat things include the choreography and whizzed-up action sequences that make the characters resemble flapper girls and the Keystone Cops. What doesn’t work is the villain. Jafar (Marwan Kenzari) has become a brooding loon who’s neither intriguing nor scary.
This Aladdin isn’t better than the original. It is a fun spin-off, though, a jazzed-up film about the emptiness of wealth that will fill Disney’s already heaving caves with even more gold.
Every upcoming Disney remake in the works
