Aladdin

As pointless as most of the Disney live action remakes, but by a pleasantly decent margin not among the worst (blandest) executed ones. Will Smith in particular does an impressive job being an entertaining take on the Genie without being too similar to the incomparable Robin Williams. The frame

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story is also a nice touch, as is the subplot about the princess' charming handmaid. But as is always going to be the case with such a film, there is both too little new here to warrant the remake, and too little of the old for those scenes where the individual viewer subjectively would have loved to see it in live action (for me and my wife, this movie's biggest transgression in the latter regard was not giving us the Cave of Wonders rising from the dunes). Some of the new stuff does also feel rather forced and ham-fisted, in particular Jasmine's flight-of-fancy girl-power song felt jarring and poorly placed (though this song aside I'm otherwise happy for her beefed up plotline). I liked this film a touch better than I'd expected going to the theatre, but even so I'd be quite hard-pressed to think of a situation in which I'd want to watch this (perfectly fine) retelling rather than the (utterly amazing) original. Ironically, I think Disney milking more money out of this by making a (hopefully good) prequel or sequel which to a much larger degree could be an original story would be the one way to retroactively make this film feel more worthwhile. So fingers crossed those (when they inevitably come) are good enough to warrant this film's existence as a launching point. As it stands, though, the film remains unfortunately pointless.

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