Aladdin (2019) Misses the Mark

Rating: 4/10 (22 May 2019)

Disney's latest live action remake misses the mark, proving once again that these live action remakes aren't working. They're made for financial benefit, but the quality of the film dips from the original by adding completely unnecessary characters and plot points that were cut from the original for a reason. The acting from Will Smith and Naomi Scott was surprisingly the best part of the film. The rest of the actors were really bad, especially the actor who played Jafar. He was terrible as this character, he was not intimidating in the slightest. I can't believe that an animated cartoon character was somehow more menacing and scary than a real actor. The acting overall in this film felt like stage play acting, very over exaggerated facial expressions and body language, which works well on stage, but doesn't translate well to film. The singing was pretty bad too, you could tell the actors, other than Will Smith, couldn't sing so their voices are very heavily auto tuned and it sounds really bad. The directing was very bland, it had no style to it. It honestly looks like a soap opera you'd find on the Lifetime channel. With all these elements mixed in, as a result, nothing about this film felt authentic in any way. These live action remakes need to have more effort put into them writing wise.