Lots of style, but unfortunately no substance

Rating: 5/10 (26 May 2019)

With all of Disney's storytelling experience, you'd think that they would be masters of film, but sadly Aladdin (2019) demonstrates that they have a lot left to learn. On the positive side of things, the musical performance scenes are both fun and exciting to watch with good performances from the cast. There's also an excellent storyline change from the 1992 animated version that has Jasmine in a stronger role as a woman as well as a head of state. Unfortunately the negative aspects of this production far outweigh the positive. The most glaring of these is the absolutely flat acting of Aladdin (Mena Massoud). He was jarringly painful to watch when speaking - especially in scenes with Jasmine (Naomi Scott) because there was just no chemistry between the two of them. Switching over to a more nuanced criticism, the script itself was highly disappointing. Disney had an immense opportunity to more deeply explore the Arabian folklore at the center of this story which would have more prominently pitted Aladdin's street smarts against Jafar's cunning. Instead, the writers (John August & Guy Ritchie) chose to downplay and trivialize this conflict which results in a very shallow, uninteresting story that must rely on its visual effects to get by when it could have been so much more.