I grew up watching Disney movies, like most other kids in my generation. I would even go as far as to say that Disney movies helped me turn me into the person I am today by giving me powerful role models, like Tiana and Mulan, and sparking my love for stories. I try to take my brother to see new Disney movies whenever they come out because of my love for them, so when he asked if we could go see “Wish” I booked the earliest tickets I could find.
The movie follows Asha, an optimistic 17 year old girl who believes in the magic of wishes. She lives in the Kingdom of Rosas, an island ruled by King Magnifico, a sorcerer who takes people’s wishes when they turn 18, causing them to forget it. This creates the main conflict of the movie with Asha wanting to return the wishes to the people and King Magnifico trying to stop her.
Despite my brother’s enthusiasm, I was apprehensive going into the movie because of the online chatter surrounding it. The online discourse really exploded when the villain’s song “This is the Thanks I Get?!” was released a few weeks before the movie’s official release on November 22nd. The song had an overwhelming negative review with people calling it shallow and boring compared to Disney’s past villain songs.
With this being my first big introduction to the movie, I was cautiously optimistic when going to see an early release of it on November 18th. However, I’m unfortunately inclined to say a lot of the hate surrounding the movie was warranted. None of the characters really felt unique and the only characters to really change throughout the course of the movie were Asha, King Magnifico and the queen. Even then, Asha felt like a static character with the biggest changes to her character being how much she actually knows about what’s going on in the kingdom.
The movie’s progression was also incredibly predictable, even for a kids movie. The best way I can describe “Wish” is as a textbook Disney movie and not in a good way. It felt like the movie’s only goal was to hit every plot point that we’ve come to expect from Disney movies before immediately moving on to the next thing. This was painfully obvious in the final confrontation with King Magnifico. His inevitable defeat felt unsatisfying because not much really changed without our protagonist throughout the movie. It felt like Asha didn’t change in any significant way so she didn’t really earn her victory.
“Wish” was far from the worst movie I’ve seen, but I definitely wouldn’t call it a very good movie either. I think any young kid would enjoy it with its easy-to-follow plot and a song every few minutes, but for us older Disney fans, I don’t think it’s worth the watch. The way “Wish” was marketed, it looked like it was supposed to be a love letter to all of Disney’s animated kids’ movies, but it ended up falling short.
