Against All Odds, Will Smith Makes The Genie His Pwn

Rating: 7/10 (12 June 2019)

I just got out of watching Aladdin (2019)
I'll get the negative out of the way first. Jasmine's new song 'Speechless' is awful, (and its sung twice) and is more of Hollywood shoving this message down our throats!! The song (about a princess suffering from make oppression) is not empowering for women at all. I have no problem with strong empowering women characters in movies, but as a whole, Hollywood (especially lately) sucks at giving us them!! If they want to empower generations of women, they need to write them so much better than they are. Give us an Arya Stark or Brieanne Of Tarth from Game Of Thrones, Princess Leia or a Sarah Connor from T2, not this!! Naomi Scott is not to blame here, her performance was fine. Likewise, Marwan Kenzari. He has taken a lot of flack and I sort of get it. I didn't hate him, he tries his best with what he is given, but he is just miscast. Mena Massoud tries a little bit too hard at times too. I thought at times he was trying to copy the animated versions too much with his facial expressions.
On to the good
Will Smith totally makes the genie his own. I was really worried he wouldn't pull it off, but he does. I loved his version of 'Friend Like Me' and I have to say, the clip they have been using of the Prince Ali song (which I did not like) on talk shows does not do it justice at all!! It looked great on the big screen. Outside of Smith and Scott's performance, the only other one to stand out for me was Nasim Pedrad as Dalia, Princess Jasmine's hand maiden. She stole a few scene's for me.
It's big on spectacle and looked great at times, even if watching parkour (even if the character doing it is singing) bores me as much as over long car chases.
Overall I'd say a 7/10