To commemorate Disney’s 100 year anniversary, the movie Wish was released in theaters November 22 2023. Upon the movie’s release it was immediately dragged for having a bad plot and songs, but is that true?
With Wish’s Disney Plus release on April 3, I have watched it to form my own opinions on the film. After watching, Wish is a film that dropped the ball despite the potential it held making it a slog to sit through.
The film follows Asha, a 17 year old girl from the kingdom of Rosas, who is determined to get King Magnifico to grant her 100 year old Grandpa’s, Saba, wish. After her Grandpa’s wish has been denied, Asha wishes upon a star to return everyone’s wishes to them. A sentient star named Star comes down to help Asha on her mission of returning the wishes and taking down King Magnifico.
One of the first things I noticed about the film was the watercolor-like texture, a very awkward looking one. The texture overlaying the animation doesn’t actually look finished, more like a draft that needed a few more tweaks. While on the visuals the animation itself is clunky and stiff at times. Background characters had heavier model reuse than other Disney movies, sometimes the model’s colors don’t even change.
The songs within the movie were also bad with bad lyrics and awkward rhyme schemes. All the songs sounded like most pop songs, which wouldn’t be a bad thing if Wish was not an animated musical. Musicals use songs to convey characters’ emotions, insecurities, dreams, and inner thoughts; all things the average pop song doesn’t convey. A movie which used pop songs instead of the type of songs used in musicals that succeeded is Shrek produced by Dreamworks.
Shrek’s use of pop songs worked because Shrek as a character isn’t open with his feelings, making the lack of emotions that typically occurs in pop songs perfect for the movie. The songs in Wish however are pop songs trying to be emotional and move the story forward, but it fails at it making the songs hollow and unnecessary in the movie. All of Wish’s song lyrics also struggle with being too vague, restating the same thing over again, or being contradictory.
In This Wish Asha wishes for something more than ‘this’, but we are never told what ‘this’ is. In the same song Asha says ‘throw caution to every warning sign’. The writers wanted to show that Asha would do whatever without caution to get what she wants, but throwing caution to warning signs means to be cautious, the opposite of what they wanted to convey.
We need to talk about this movie’s villain song and why it fails. This is the Thanks I Get? is the song sung by Magnifico at the point he truly becomes the villain. The song, like every other song in Wish, has an extremely awkward rhyme scheme and restating the same thing. Other than just being a bad song, it fails at a villain song because it isn’t as dramatic and essential as other villain songs. Poor Unfortunate Souls sets up Ursula’s cunning personality and the details of her and Ariel’s deal. Mother Knows Best sets up Mother Gothel being controlling of Rapunzel and her manipulative personality. In This is the Thanks I Get? doesn’t set up Magnifico’s personality or what is happening. Actually Magnifico’s personality does a 180 from earlier in the movie, like past twist villains such as Hans from Frozen and Callaghan from Big Hero Six, but Magnifico isn’t a twist villain. Magnifico was set up to be the main antagonist from the very beginning, so this personality switch is unnecessary.
The basic plot of the movie is that this girl named Asha wants to grant everyone’s wishes in the Kingdom, and after wishing on a star it falls down to help her cause. Not the most detailed plot, but you could do a lot with it. Too bad Wish didn’t do anything fun with it. Asha is boring and honestly unlikable, while the star is literally just in the movie to sell merch, same thing with the goat Valentino. Big stake events in the movie were boring. When stealing her grandfather’s wish from Magnifico’s study it was supposed to be a moment that was high stakes, but the movie failed to build up the tension needed for it.
The defeat of a villain is huge in Disney movies, it’s satisfying to see the villains go down, but in Wish Magnifico’s defeat is more annoying than satisfying. After hope seems lost for Asha she starts to sing a reprise of This Wish, Asha’s song inspires everyone else to start singing the song, that they somehow know the words to. The song makes the stars from within everyone start glowing and defeat Magnifico, locking him within a mirror. Compared to how villains in other Disney movies are defeated this was very underwhelming. Dr. Facilier is dragged to the shadow realm after he was unable to complete their deal and Gaston falls to his death after the Beast pushes him, Magnifico getting beat by singing is not as cool or satisfying as other villains.
Overall, Wish isn’t a good movie. Save your time and watch a different Disney film for movie night.
