In the buildup to the release of Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin in the summer of 2019, the various trailers and TV spots had a lot of people utterly convinced that Will Smith’s Genie was going to single-handedly ruin the entire movie.
Even the biggest star on the planet couldn’t hope to replicate the one-of-a-kind magic Robin Williams brought to the role in the classic original, which arguably ranks as the single greatest voice performance in the history of animated cinema, nor were matters helped by the fact the unfinished CGI made Smith’s big blue wish-giver look like the stuff of which nightmares are made.
In a hugely ironic twist that nobody could have seen coming, though, a great deal of the tepid responses to Aladdin single out the former Fresh Prince as the undisputed highlight of an otherwise-mediocre Disney blockbuster. That being said, the fact the film’s 57 percent Rotten Tomatoes score is blown out of the water by a 94 percent user rating highlights that audiences were much more enamored with the fantasy blockbuster than critics.
Stretching its 90-minute predecessor out to 128 minutes was definitely the wrong call, with Ritchie’s contributions behind the camera giving off more King Arthur: Legend of the Sword vibes than Sherlock Holmes. Straightforward to a fault, the assembly line approach that affects the weakest of the live-action remakes was out in full force, even if Aladdin did ultimately managed to squeak past the billion-dollar threshold by just $51 million.
It’s enjoying a long life on-demand, too, with FlixPatrol naming Aladdin as a Top 10 hit on iTunes in multiple countries dotted across two continents, so there’s evidently an audience still there for that sequel we keep hearing is on the way.
