Very safe, but decent enough

Rating: 5/10 (20 August 2019)

Initially put off by an early teaser trailer with Will Smith as the blue genie (his face didn't quite track with his muscular body, which is CGI), after the movie's release I heard that Will Smith is in human form half of the time, too, and it was fine. An additional trailer was later released showing Will Smith in his human form, too.
Now, many reviewing the film say actually Will Smith was the best rather than the worst part of the movie, and he carried the film. For me, however, Will Smith's performance as the genie was typical of the actor, a return to early career performances like in "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air," "Wild Wild West," "Men in Black," "Hitch," "Wild Wild West," and so forth. Will Smith is a charismatic and likable actor, and I like this side of his persona, but his role in "Aladdin" was nothing groundbreaking for him. So in this sense I wouldn't say Will Smith as the genie was the best or worst part of the film.
I did however appreciate the remix of the genie to suit a more hip hop style, with the baggy pants and the break dancing and so forth. But even though the filmmakers did change genie's role to suit Will Smith, it still seemed as though they tried to get Will Smith to match Robin Williams's frenetic energy at times, and it was to me a partial remix instead of a full remix, and there was an inconsistency in that. Will Smith is a calmer, down to earth genie, who doesn't quite have the range to hit the mania Robin Williams might.
In many ways the movie "Aladdin" is like the almost debacle of Will Smith as the genie, and his there-but-not-quite-there redemption. How do you please a fan base of "Aladdin" (1992) movie fans, while offering something new, while not being able to be offensive to children or to Arabs, while not being able to be truthful to Arab culture as a powerful patriarchy, while also supporting Disney's female empowerment agenda?
With these constraints, what Disney came up with is something neither here nor there, while often skirting the bounds of the powerfully wrong and then sometimes the amazing but also ridiculous (the odd placement of Jasmine's "Speechless" song and her arc afterwards), but then also hinting at some of the truer realities of Islamic culture (while "women should be seen not heard" is not something only particular to Islam/Arab culture, it is part of their doctrine much of the time) which is pretty ballsy of Disney you have to admit.
The experience of watching "Aladdin" is sometimes bizarre because it's like watching part of Arab culture but then like a constant backpedaling so that we know we're watching fictional Arabland "Agrabah" rather than any real place, so it's impossible to give criticism because Arab culture is alluded to but never referenced.
However, despite the mish-mash of ideas, and the generic not-Arab allusions, the powerful story of magic, and love, and control that is the story of Aladdin and the genie still comes across. More than the other Disney remakes I've watched so far ("Cinderella," "Beauty and the Beast"), "Aladdin" has real dramatic tension still in a way that wasn't completely flattened out. Here, Aladdin could potentially have turned into someone like Jafar. In other films, Disney heroes don't have quite this chance to become someone real and disappointing. And you get why. If you really had a genie, who would let him go?
Disney had a challenge, and at least this time they pulled through. I say Disney had a challenge rather than Guy Ritchie, the director, had a challenge because "Aladdin" is compromised and patched together in a way I don't think a guy who has made intelligent hustler or heist films like "RocknRolla" or "Snatch" or "Revolver" or even "Sherlock Holmes" would've wanted.
This isn't the first time Disney cast the right director then (likely) contradicted their vision enough to make something unrecognizable of them. Kenneth Branagh, who directed "Cinderella," had successfully adapted many Shakespeare films to the screen, like "Much Ado About Nothing" and "Henry V," often writing the screenplay himself and acting, too. You telling me the guy who managed to make "Much Ado About Nothing" fun and watchable, even using Shakespeare's original poetic language, couldn't make a bare bones story like Cinderella? Please. For me, Disney really has to be getting in the way because the directors so far have all made much better films prior to their Disney remake movies (Bill Condon directed "Beauty and the Beast" and "Chicago;" Jon Favreau directed both "The Lion King" and "Iron Man").
But anyway, with "Aladdin" you have a movie that is average, and not excellent, but is not as flat as other Disney remakes so I'm giving it a better score. 7/10