Simply the Best

Rating: 10/10 (12 April 2020)

I have rated some films ten stars, but not many. I put off watching this movie for quite some time because well, yet another Disney live-action adaptation. Those are pretty hit or miss.
This is a hit. Throughout the film I was looking for them to really mess it up... but they just never did. It was fun, Will Smith was as enjoyable in his part as expected, and the whole movie was a real romp.
Downsides? None really. Two things I noticed that were basically personal impressions: I wish the main characters had a touch of accent so they didn't seem like they were actors right out of Hollywood; that was a bit of a "reality breaker"-- hearing them constantly speak pure "American". Second, I wish the main song "Whole New world" had a little bit better voices overall. But as it is it sounded like their own voices, which I can't fault. If they'd have done a super-professional voice-over it might have sounded fake, so I'll settle for the natural-sounding, non-digitally-fixed voices in the film. Any day. Neither of those things were worth knocking the film down a star.
The one thing that hit a nerve was the genie claiming to be "the most powerful being in the Universe". That's not even kosher with the original legends; Djinn are presented as mega-powerful to be sure, but they're not "Almighty". Some parents might object to their children being exposed to such philosophy.
The remake was brilliant, the choreography a lot of fun, the CGI well-done (as would be expected). There was nothing in the film I disliked from a production standpoint, and a great deal that I liked a great deal. So ten stars it it. To those who low-starred it: you got issues. This film was a romp. ;D