In celebration of their centenary this year, Walt Disney's latest musical animated effort, Wish, is coming full circle. A new adventure exploring major themes that form the crux of the studio's one-hundred-year legacy, and with more than a handful of nods to their substantial vault of releases, Wish is directed by Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn, and features voice performances from Ariana DeBose and Chris Pine.
In the kingdom of Rosas, the community make wishes that will be presided over and seemingly protected by its ruler, King Magnifico, in the hope that one day they will be granted and their dream will come true. But when 17-year-old Asha clashes with the King and discovers his deception, she finds herself fighting a darkness in Rosas that could spell the end.
Sadly rather in keeping with the lacklustre year the Mouse House has had this year, Wish is the latest in a long line of underwhelming efforts from the once indomitable studio. An animation sadly lacking the magic and creativity on which the wider Disney brand has previously thrived on, Wish wishes to play like a triumphant victory lap, but instead stumbles as an underwhelming tour of moments you recognise from previous Disney hits, but are executed far better elsewhere.
With a soundtrack as inert as it is entirely forgettable, it is not just the story and themes lacking in identity. Without a catchy chord or memorable lyric in the seven original songs penned by Julia Michaels for the soundtrack, that one of the sub-genre fails so drastically, in an area the films are often uniformly impressive in, is one of the biggest disappointments here. Ariana DeBose undoubtedly performs these tracks with a committed gusto, but there's no salvaging these tepid pieces that take away time from much-needed narrative development and character work.
Additionally, while there are some lovely visuals rendered at times, the clash between the hand-animated backgrounds and the computer-generated characters becomes frequently jarring, distracting from the reel's opening minutes to its closing ones.
Jennifer Lee and Allison Moore's screenplay appears content in remaining very safely within the same thematic remit Disney has been criticised for staying in. While more recent efforts like Strange World and Encanto have peered outside the box and in turn offered excitingly diverse depictions of the world, Wish returns so very squarely to basics with such lacklustre results. A backwards step, it instead relies on its back catalogue of references to pad out a thinly written and weakly-defined tale which feels strikingly cheap and tacky. We get it, they represent the Seven Dwarves, but the characterisation beyond that is very sparse and even our villains' intentions and backstories seem untapped and treated as unimportant.
Wish plays like a bad tribute act, eager to evoke the magic and charm of the films it wishes to memorialise but hitting more than a few bum, and dreadfully cynical, notes along the way. A greatest hits collection this is not, in spite of its desperation to be one -- every nod to successful features over the years aims to fuel a nostalgia the film is clearly hoping to coast by on, but feels woefully earned. While it's not fair to go as far as saying one less-than-mediocre film has done irreparable damage to a legacy one hundred years in the making, it does sadly amplify complaints of the Mouse House's has faced over the recent years over a struggle in originality and creativity. Wish is far from the home run Disney intended for its centenary celebration, sadly closing out a less-than-stellar year the studio will want to forget.