Nov 24, 2023

-Wish- Review Round-Up: Disney's latest film receives tepid reviews from critics

Disney's "Wishes" opens this Thanksgiving weekend, but critics feel the studio's latest musical feature has little to be thankful for.

Directed by Chris Buck ("Anna and the Snow Queen") and Fawn Veerathorn ("Raya and the Last Dragon"), the film is billed as celebrating Disney's 100th anniversary and is loosely inspired by the Disney classic "When You Wish Upon a Star." The film is inspired by. It tells the story of Asha, a young idealist who joins forces with anthropomorphic stars and a talking baby goat to defeat a tyrannical sorcerer king. It has all the elements that audiences have come to expect from a major Disney animated feature.

For the most part, early Wishes reviews are all over the place. Some critics loved the Easter eggs and homages to classic Disney films, while others felt they were stuffy and unnecessary distractions. Some critics praised the film's original music, while others said it lacked iconic songs from Wish, such as Encanto's "We Don't Talk About Bruno" and Frozen's "Let it Go."

Two things most of the available reviews agree on: the animation is great, the story is not.

The artists at Walt Disney Animation Studios have impressed nearly everyone with the quality of their work, as is generally the case. The studio is not the first to explore a more stylized approach to CG animation (in this case, inspired by 2D and watercolor), but the consensus is that they did it better than anyone else with "Wish."

As for the film's narrative, most critics agree that "Wish" feels more like a 90-minute piece of Disney propaganda than an original piece of storytelling.

Rotten Tomatoes tallies critics' scores for Disney animated theatrical releases. At the time of its release, "Wish" had a critics score of 48%, ranking it 65th out of 73 films on its list. It sits between "Atlantis: The Lost Empire" (49%) and "Return to Neverland" (45%). And this is not a case of review bombing. So far, 23 of the 33 "top critics" counted by Rotten Tomatoes have given the film a Rotten rating.

Critics' ratings for Disney's "Wish" are as follows.

Lindsay Barr's review for the Associated Press nicely summarizes what many critics found most disappointing about "Wishes":

Walt Disney Animation's "Wishes" is a nostalgic look at a classic with rich, textured, watercolor-style animation and Easter-egg-like treasure for audiences, it's wonderful to watch. But more important than the story is the concept: a strained, almost forgotten attempt to pay homage to a century of studio history. Wishing Star's origins are a fitting motive as a starting point, but Wishes, directed by Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasansone, seems to have been drawn not from someone's wistful imagination or dreams, but from a corporate board meeting trying to reverse engineer magic and glamour.

Brian Talerico was equally unimpressed in his review for Rogerebert.com:

"Disney's Wish" is the most aggressive Disney propaganda in years. Whereas films like "The Lion King" and "Encanto" stand as stories in their own right, "Wishes" seems more closely tied to the history of the Mouse House and the imagination that fans have found there than any other film Disney has ever produced. Not only are references to everything from "Peter Pan" to "Mary Poppins" to "Bambi" abundant, but the entire film is about the need to keep wishing for not only stars but Disney-branded ones in order to make ourselves happy.

Lovia Gyarkye of The Hollywood Reporter felt that "Wish" lacked a clear direction:

If "Wish" is any clue, Disney seems unwilling to commit to one direction. Directed by Chris Buck and Fawn Veerathonsohn, the film represents an awkward marriage between the old and new ways. Even in its more successful moments, the magic of "Wishes" falls flat. The film is weighed down by its goal of soaring into the future with a dash of Disney nostalgia.

Owen Gleiberman, near the end of his Variety review, states that "Wish" falls far short of Disney's high standards:

"Anna and the Snow Queen" and "Encanto," the Disney animation milestones of the past decade, both struggled with their own true natures. In "Wishes," the dialogue is too cleanly drawn to capture our imagination. The songs by Julia Michaels and Benjamin Rice are catchy but so easy to consume that we don't realize how much they mimic the Lin-Manuel Miranda school of verbal aggression wrapped in hooks. Sorry, but there is no "We Don't Talk About Bruno" or "Let It Go" here. It may sound like a high bar, but it is Disney with the quality of those songs (and those movies) that has raised that bar. Wishes' strategy is this: if you pay homage to magic, audiences will be spellbound. But true magic cannot be recycled.

Birge Ebiri, a contributor to New York Magazine and Vulture, one of the harshest critics of all, wrote of how the film failed on every level: "The film is a failure. Unfortunately, "Wishes" fails to be any of those things. It is not evocative enough of the past to function as a tribute, it is not irreverent and original, and it is not funny enough to justify its constant half-hearted invocations. This is the ultimate in lame-duck status: an uninspired, uninspiring, bland brand management mess.

Empire magazine's John Nugent agreed with many of the film's most frequent criticisms, but that didn't stop him from enjoying "Wishes":

[Spoiler alert: the inevitable happily-ever-after ending, where wishes come true, makes the old It's hard not to be swept away by the magic of Disney. It may not be the best of the venerable animation franchise, but it reminds us why they have been around so long, and Kate Erbland's Indiewire review is the most favorable we could find, praising Disney's new direction for the future She praises the film as a launchpad:

As Disney celebrates its centennial, "Wishes" is a return to the past, a celebration of the present, and a gentle nudge toward the future. (Asha's journey is classic, but skipping over her biracial background, its core immigrant story, diverse friends, and love subplot suggests something more subversive, more timely, and more interesting going on at the House of Mouse. That is what we want to see more of, and soon.