A mess

Rating: 5/10 (14 August 2019)

The stars are for Will Smith, the colours, the Prince Ali song and maybe the nostalgia. But the movie is a total mess, lacking almost all the magic from the original. When they sang A whole new world it did not move me a bit - and that song is my favourite from Aladdin.
The movie has two main problems: Aladdin and Jafar. The boy cast as Aladdin can't sing and act to save his life. He speaks all the movie with American accent and tries to much to impersonate de Aladdin from the cartoon, but fails every single time. He is not a dashing rouge, a daring street rat, he is just bland and has zero chemistry with the girl playing Jasmine.
And Jafar is horrible miscast. So the antagonist of this story is just a wannabe villain. In the cartoon Jafar was menacing, here he is just an angry teenager, just as 'threatening' as Kylo Ren is in the new Star Wars trilogy. You cannot have a decent Aladdin movie if your male lead is weak and your villain is one-dimensional.
Jasmine is good enough, at least she can sing. Why they had to change her and her dreams? What was wrong with wishing to see the world and fall in love? I liked her way better in the animated version.
The new songs are just out of place; the Speechless songs did not fit at all, seemed just forced in and taken from a different movie. And what is with the whole Bollywood vibes and dances?
Will Smith was the best part of this movie, but not even he could have saved this mess.