cringey.

Rating: 2/10 (14 February 2020)

I was honestly shocked when my friend told me this was a Guy Richie film. Definitely not a great film but the two new leads carried what would have otherwise been a pretty unwatchable film
Edit 2020;
As a remake, this film falls flat. As a movie on its own however, it really falls flat. The story of Aladdin, however you tell it, is supposed to be an enchanted and magical time, or as Aladdin himself would put it, a whole new world. It shouldn't be distracting you with its inconveniences, but instead immersing you in a brand new fantasy.
The film, if you've seen the original Aladdin, is pretty much the same only with a lot more ugliness. Aladdin is a street rat and thief living in the Arabian city of Agrabah. One day however, he comes across a princess named Jasmine who is dressed as a commoner. In an attempt to take advantage of Aladdin's affections for her, the royal vizier Jafar manipulates Aladdin into going into a magic cave filled with treasures and a lamp he must retrieve for Jafar and in return, Jafar will give Aladdin the happy ending he so desperately wishes for with the princess. He betrays Aladdin however, leaving him stuck in the cave with the lamp, which he soon discovers holds a magical genie, played by Will Smith. Aladdin uses the Genie to become a prince so he can woo the princess and hopefully win her over.
Now the first problem is the subplots. Not only does this film carry over subplots from the first film, but it also invents completely new and pointless ones to go along with them. For instance, the Genie has a crush with Jasmine's handmaiden. Now you might be asking yourself, "Why?" I mean, not only is it weird to see the Genie attracted to human women, but it also adds nothing to the story in any way at all!
Then we have the special effects. They look awful. The Genie, as I'm sure the people who've already watched this film have already pieced together, looks hideous. Like, REALLY hideous. He is so obviously a CGI character, and he moves just like one too. The idea of CGI is to make something that is obviously fake move and look like a real thing, not make it move and look more fake!
Then we have the song numbers. First off, the new song numbers are bland. Jasmine gets a new song called Speechless, which not only is sung during the worst possible time in the movie, but also has the most forgettable melody and lyrics. Then, the old songs are given some "updates." I put quotes around updates because they are extremely downgraded. They are surprisingly sung terribly, especially by Will Smith, but songs like Prince Ali have the most boring choreography put on film. They somehow managed to screw up Prince Ali, which should be an epic song and dance number in its sleep!
Overall, Aladdin is an awful movie. Like a really awful movie. I'm glad I'm done with it and I never have to watch it ever again. If you never watched the original Aladdin film, you might see this as terrible, but if you have seen the original, you will probably for sure see this as cringey.