By Nicholas Vermaaten, Contributor

[Disney Studios; 2023]

Rating: 3/10

I have never been much of a fan of the Disney corporation, due to its obsession with nostalgia pandering over artistic merit and innovation. When the company announced they would be creating Wish as a celebration of their 100th anniversary, I expected yet another project that is more nostalgic than innovative. Unsurprisingly, I was completely right, as Wish is a film that both lacks polish and originality.

Wish follows Asha (Ariana DeBose) in her quest to grant her father’s wish to become an artistic inspiration to others. In her quest, Asha comes into conflict with her country’s monarch, King Magnifico (Chris Pine) to not only liberate her father’s wish (as represented in the film as a ball of energy) but also the wishes of her entire country. The narrative unfolds in ways that are both predictable and incredibly unengaging. 

Read more: Movie Review: Poor Things 

There has been some praise (even by people who dislike this movie) of Pine’s performance as a “classic Disney villain”, but I find this to be untrue. He does not have the grandiose maleficence that characters such as Gaston or Ursula displayed in their respective films. His attempts to match their energy fall flat due to his roguish performance, and also the film’s lackluster material. 

Even his villain song falls flat, feeling more like a pop song than an intimidating ballad. My distaste for Wish’s music extends to the rest of the soundtrack as well, which unanimously features uninteresting rhyme schemes and incredibly basic wordplay.

The jokes here are horrible. Each comedic one-liner is worse than the last, a majority of which are either shallow references to the Disney films of old, or moments that feel like a 40-year-old executive trying to connect with the youth of today.

Much has been said about the visual style of Wish, as it attempts to harken back to the two-dimensional animation of Disney’s 20th-century films. Unlike Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (a film with an incredibly similar art style), which employs techniques such as animation smears and strong contrasting colors to heighten its visuals, Wish refuses to commit to its 2.5 dimensional art style. This means that in action, the film looks like a worse version of Dreamworks’ art style.
Wish is not worth anyone’s time or money. It’s yet another example of Disney wasting a hundred million dollars on a soulless cinematic project.