BSA 204 W15 : Aladdin Review

I watched Aladdin on the weekend, its a remake of the Disney 2D original but this time in glorious live-action!

I am surprised by how much I enjoyed it, going in I was curious about the film mainly because it is directed by Guy Ritchie, and he is a filmmaker who rarely disappoints. His films always feel very specifically him, even the worse ones like King Arthur. Recently I fell in love again with Man from U.N.C.L.E, the other films of his that I've seen I have been very fond of and think they are all very good (the Sherlock Holmes movies, Snatch and Lock, Stock).

Aladdin is another different stepping stone in his career, something he says he likes doing is changing up what he's doing from one project to the next and doing a live-action Disney remake is definitely not his usual fare. Having said that I think he needed a hit after King Arthur, which was a huge project for him and a massive box office disappointment for the studio. Ritchie knows all about how to revive a dying career, something he had to after two consecutive failures early in his career with Swept Away and Revolver.

That is probably the most disappointing thing about this movie, it doesn't feel like Ritchie, There are a few moments where it seems like his style is being used, but these more often than not feel like pale imitations.

AAAHHHH!!!!

Speaking of pale - the genie is not always the best looking, although this varied very much depending on the lighting. When it was harsh and dramatic there was no issue, but when it's flat like this it was very jarring. I found him much more enjoyable to observe when in human form - a strange thing to say. Even though some of the musical numbers involving the CGI Will Smith were very good and some of the best stuff in the film. 

The surprising thing about the movie is that I really, really enjoyed it. Like to a degree that I wasn't expecting and that I feel the movie probably doesn't deserve.

The thing with Aladdin is that its a very good story, but I don't think it was done all that well here, I had problems mainly with the writing and pacing - which sounds like its a cinematic disaster. And yet it has a lot of  things that I enjoyed, I thought the performances were good - especially for the material the actors had to work with - the best part for me was the songs, which were all amazingly well written (not always that well performed, but certainly entertaining).

Big disclosure I should make is that I haven't seen the animated original, I suspect if I had I wouldn't have enjoyed this nearly as much. I do think I will now check the original out though.

All in all I think it could have been leagues better than it was, but I genuinely enjoyed it, and the places it lacked meant my brain could keep itself occupied throughout the movie. I really enjoyed the experience, even if a lot of that was spent thinking about what I would have done differently.

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Biggest lesson I learnt watching this film was about the recommended hero's journey structure and specifically where the inciting incident falls within the frame work of the story.

I have often found fault in where we are taught to put an inciting incident, feeling its too late to be instantly entertaining. I always think movies waste their time with set-up and that the things covered in that first 20 minutes or so could just as well be done later on in the run time.

But I think my opinion on that is rapidly changing because I think it worked incredibly well here, the set up time is actually very interesting and just adds to when the inciting incident occurs. I also think it adds a lot more later on in the tale where you feel more invested in the characters.

It's a way of making the characters the foundation rather than the logline, which is something I never realised before.

I actually had a problem with this in my SuperDad treatment, where I felt the set-up was too long, but I now understand why I did that - it places character first, and that's a much more solid foundation on which to built the film.

Aladdin is very smart in that the Genie stuff correlates directly to the characters and what was set-up, the film actually takes quite a while to get to the lamp and cave and all that, but its thoroughly entertaining during that time and the addition of the supernatural elements feel more like a natural extension of what's already there.