The Fresh Prince of Aba Boua...

Rating: 8/10 (30 May 2019)

Maybe the story of Aladdin and the Magic Lamp occupies such a warm spot in my heart than any version is likely to hit a sensitive chord at some place or another.
I grew up with the rather unknown French animated film of 1969, a stable in my connection with the story that made me enjoy the 1992 Disney version even more, and I guess that's the way it works and maybe the reason why this "remaking" trend is a sure bet for Disney studios: they work on a Madeleine Proust level. I was with my daughter and I saw many parents in the theater who were my age and were obviously the same age than their children when they saw "Aladdin", so for them, as well as for myself, it's a sort of renaissance (a word that used to mean something else) and for kids, it's a fun movie they'll enjoy regardless of their knowledge of the original. Yeah, we can call it a win-win effect.
Guy Ritchie shows enough respect to the original film as if the consensus existed that nothing will replace Robin Williams' performance but it treats the material with enough special effects and costumes (obviously an Oscar contender in that category) to make for spectacular entertainment, though the singing moments proved that there's a limit to the level of extravaganza you can reach... not with special effects but with live-action looking CGI images. No matter how cute Abu is, you can't make an animal look as expressive as its cartoon version, the example of Iago is even more baffling, this parrot isn't Iago and is an insult to Iago. So that's the real problem with these remakes, the mix of computer-aided animation and live-action can create spectacular results but sometimes, it feels limited.
The "Prince Ali" and "A Friend Like Me"... in fact, even the "Whole New World" singing sequences, anticipated from the minute the Genie popped up, weren't disappointing but fell flat because they could never go as over-the-top as the laws of hand-drawn animation permitted... because you just can't handle real-life characters like animated props. Mena Massoud, the actor who plays Aladdin is terrific as far his looks and his smile go (and his acting is decent) but once he starts to act like an animated character, the sight is just puzzling to say the least. This is why I actually preferred Marwan Kenzari as Jafar because he maintained a sense of self-respect even within his aura of vileness, which made him credible and oddly sexy. Even the sultan was good and wasn't treated like the buffoon of the 1992 film.
But I guess it all comes down to one performance: Will Smith, you couldn't replace Robin Williams but Smith proves that he's an actor Hollywood should rely on when they need a funny street-smart acolyte with a soul, that's important. There were times where he even managed to be more compelling than the original because his zaniness wasn't overplayed and because he had the features of a human being. Will Smith made the live-action more effective than the original at some parts, too few unfortunately because (and that's something I could see coming), the remake had to give a more substantial role to Jasmin, who was a strong-willed character to begin with. Indeed, the twists on the Genie were so well-thought and effective that we didn't need to have a rewriting on Jasmin.
The 'revisions' on Jasmin didn't affect her character anyway and Naomi Scott did justice to the first animated character I had a crush on, but it was like her pose was constantly defined under the tagline "I'm an independent girl and no one can't fool me" making her servant Dalia (Nasim Pedrad) more attractive through her imperfections. So I wish the film wouldn't get so overboard with Jasmin, there's a moment where she's literally pulling a 'Let it Go' and it's like the writing was so sensitive about not offending the status of Jasmin as a strong princess, especially in the one story where the princess' status is a plot point rather than a set-up, that any conspiracy theorist would believe that the sole purpose of these remakes is to serve some feminist agenda.
But you know what, I don't care if it's true or not, I won't pollute the review with such thoughts, I just watched yesterday a documentary about the hellish life in ISIS-occupied territories so it would be indecent to comment on the way 'women's right of speech' can be promoted in movies, no matter how unsubtly. Maybe there's "good propaganda" after all. And I'd rather have Arabs or Muslims be associated to the colorful though stereotypical images conveyed by these '1001 Nights' fantasy movies than any Middle-East black-clad reality, maybe there's also "good stereotyping" after all. And it's worth mentioning that Disney did the right choices by casting ethnic actors for the part, even though they were not names, Will Smith is big enough a name to carry the film, he's the Genie of the casting after all.
"Aladdin" surprised me in the way it didn't make me complain about political correctness and could make an entertainment spectacle out of a captivating story, one that delivers a powerful message to children and adults, more sophisticated than the usual "be yourself", it's "whatever you get by not being yourself, you'll lose inevitably"... with an underlying truth about the vain obsession of not being true to ourselves.
I called Ritchie a sell-out because, unlike Tarantino, he's not exactly making the kind of movies he was known for, but these considerations don't really matter as, the film didn't try to be something other than "another of these lousy remakes", but within that limited range of creativity, it succeeded admirably and it was fun to watch, it hit a nostalgic chord and it had the right cast.
At least, these three wishes were fulfilled.