Aladdin review – live-action remake really takes flight
Guy Ritchie’s adaptation is lively, colourful and genuinely funny – making only judicious tweaks to the original, it’s thankfully not a whole new world
The scimitars are out for Disney’s live-action Aladdin, what with the enduring fondness for the original (not least Robin Williams’ Genie) and the botched unveiling of Will Smith as his successor in an early trailer that presented him as a creepy, half-naked blue guy from the uncanny valley. Director and co-writer Guy Ritchie is hardly a seal of quality these days, either, following flops The Man from UNCLE and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. But sheathe your weapons because this new Aladdin is actually great fun. It is far from perfect, but where many recent fantasias have crumpled under the weight of their special effects (Tim Burton’s Dumbo, for one), this one really takes flight. It is lively, colourful and genuinely funny, and doesn’t break what didn’t need fixing about the original. As one character remarks of Aladdin’s early attempts at romance: it’s “clumsy but in a charming sort of way”.
Any Hollywood movie set in a fantasy Arab kingdom is going to have its issues, but Disney has sought to avoid the ethnic stereotyping that marred its 1992 animation. For starters, the cast are brown-skinned actors (all the voice actors in the original were white). Egyptian-Canadian Mena Massoud brings the requisite roguish charm to Aladdin himself, the street rat with a heart of gold, Princess Jasmine is played by Naomi Scott, a British actor of Indian descent, and Dutch-Tunisian Marwan Kenzari is the villain Jafar. There’s also a European prince, played by Billy Magnussen, who’s treated more like a recurring gag.