Aladdin

Wee nip­pers love to re-watch films over and over again, often on a dai­ly basis. In the digital/​DVD era, you don’t even have to wait for the tape to rewind. Har­ried par­ents can trade on this insid­er knowl­edge as a route to sim­ple paci­fi­ca­tion. It’s like cre­at­ing a 90-minute win­dow to take care or some chores, or slot in a sneaky G&T. Yet each rewatch appears to elic­it the same sense of won­der as the last, as if con­firm­ing what this knee-high view­er already knows – play­ing direct­ly in to their sense of antic­i­pa­tion – is some­how more plea­sur­able than each new scene being a voy­age into the unknown.

That set-up has been lev­elled up to the cor­po­rate tier, as Disney’s new prof­itable tranche of ​“live action” remakes of their own clas­sic ani­ma­tion hold­ings, are being rolled out in cin­e­mas as a way remind us that we once saw some­thing we liked. We get to be chil­dren once more, glean­ing untold com­fort from watch­ing films that are jer­ry-rigged to trig­ger fond mem­o­ries of con­sum­ing mass media in bygone days – it’s cin­e­ma as man­u­fac­tured déjà vu.

Orig­i­nal geezer Guy Ritchie has tak­en up the task of re-ren­der­ing Ron Clements and John Musker’s 1992 hand-tooled fam­i­ly behe­moth, Aladdin (1992), into a glossy, auto­tuned and whol­ly unnec­es­sary offer­ing for the new mil­len­ni­um. The orig­i­nal screen­play has been giv­en a light pol­ish with the help of peren­ni­al inside man John August, a few adjec­tives have been switched around, a cou­ple of anti­quat­ed cul­tur­al ref­er­ences have been expunged, but by-and-large, this is an exer­cise in try­ing to make sure this thing is as close to the tem­plate as is human­ly pos­si­ble. As an artis­tic enter­prise it’s tough to see where the val­ue is, but as a slick fran­chise expan­sion aimed at an audi­ence who want noth­ing more than the toil of choice removed from their busy lives, it’s a red hot slice of pure win.

There is no crime in leach­ing off of resid­ual nos­tal­gia for a beloved com­mer­cial prop­er­ty – it would actu­al­ly be pret­ty fun­ny if it was, as the pris­ons in Hol­ly­wood would be full of guys with pony­tails, Filo­fax­es and wear­ing shark­skin suits. Yet the ques­tions I kept ask­ing myself while watch­ing this film were less focused on what the point was, and more on what the remake of the remake might look like, or whether the win­dow between remakes would nar­row from 27 years to maybe 15 or even ten? And what could be done to jus­ti­fy the ordeal of pro­duc­tion? Will tech­nol­o­gy have advanced so marked­ly that Aladdin (2033) would look as dif­fer­ent (visu­al­ly, at least) to Aladdin (2019) as Aladdin (2019) looks to Aladdin (1992)? And who would play the genie?!

On the pos­i­tive side, Aladdin is a weird mas­ter­class in cast­ing. The Dis­ney team have gone to great lengths to dis­cov­er two leads (Mena Mas­soud as Aladdin, Nao­mi Scott as Princess Jas­mine) who are phys­i­cal­ly iden­ti­cal to their hand-ani­mat­ed coun­ter­parts. Mas­soud has the same lantern jaw, bounc­ing fringe and diminu­tive frame as car­toon Aladdin, while Scott looks like she could’ve been the design mod­el for the orig­i­nal Jas­mine. Beyond the uncan­ny resem­blance, they both deliv­er spir­it­ed the­atri­cal-style per­for­mances, the for­mer in par­tic­u­lar bring­ing with him a nice line in break­danc­ing, toothy grins and, of course, parkour.

Read­ing about the glob­al audi­tions, the chem­istry tests, the pro­tract­ed quest to find ample all-rounders whose eth­nic­i­ty would dove­tail with both char­ac­ter and mate­r­i­al, sug­gests that this vital pre-pro­duc­tion process was like­ly the most cre­ative aspect of the enter­prise at large. The film itself feels like lit­tle more than a fait accom­pli, with every scene and emo­tion­al beat mere­ly a restaged or replayed ver­sion of the 1992 film.

Will Smith is giv­en a lit­tle more wig­gle room in his role as the Genie, chan­nelling Robin William’s nar­cot­ic pizazz, but cut­ting it through with his own com­ic stylings. The film actu­al­ly serves to remind us that Smith is an extreme­ly gift­ed comedic per­former and a lengthy peri­od in the career wilder­ness may have been the result of him opt­ing for parts in dra­mat­i­cal­ly skewed bilge such as Col­lat­er­al Beau­ty. Even with heavy CG assis­tance, his snap­py tim­ing and boom­ing deliv­ery are what make his Genie 2.0 suc­cess­ful, even if he is very much stand­ing on the shoul­ders of giants.

It’s seems point­less to analyse the film and the sto­ry beyond these super­fi­cial aspects, because you know them already, even if you haven’t seen the ani­mat­ed ver­sion. Sil­ly plot holes abound (Why is Aladdin the ​“dia­mond in the rough”? Why does the evil Jafar want to be Sul­tan when he could be so much more? Why doesn’t Jas­mine just rub the lamp and stop all the may­hem?), all stuff that feels for­giv­able in an earnest ani­ma­tion but extreme­ly clunky in ​“live action”, but none of it real­ly matters.

As a view­er, it’s not so much a case of gin­ger­ly peer­ing around each new nar­ra­tive cor­ner, but spy­ing the plot points on the hori­zon and watch­ing and wait­ing as they lum­ber towards the frame. In fact, if you imag­ined what a CG-ani­mat­ed ver­sion of Aladdin looked, felt like and sound­ed like, odds on you’ll be absolute­ly right. For bet­ter and for worse, Guy Ritchie has made the film that is already in your head, offer­ing you a chance to place your imag­i­na­tion on ice. Finger’s crossed this isn’t the cre­ative mantra for forth­com­ing addi­tions to the extend­ing ​“live action” Dis­ney multiverse.