“What would Walt do?” It was a phrase that gripped Walt Disney Animation Studios in the wake of the passing of Walt Disney in 1967. The response to this figure’s demise was to just make new animated features mimicking the greatest hits of past Disney classics. Though the era of The Fox and the Hound and Robin Hood is in the distant past, Wish, the latest Walt Disney Animation Studios feature, harkens back to that query. As an animated feature debuting in a year when Disney is celebrating its 100th anniversary of existence, Wish wants to be to animated Disney movies what Margot Robbie's Stereotypical Barbie was to Barbie's. "You close your eyes, think of an animated Disney movie, it's me!" Meanwhile, its animation style, which uses CG to emulate tentpoles of hand-drawn artistry, also clearly indicates that the phrase “What would the Spider-Verse movies do?” loomed large over the production. Oh, and Wish comes courtesy of the key creative team members behind the Frozen movies (including director Chris Buck and writer Jennifer Lee), so also throw in the phrase “What would Elsa do?” into the cinematic stew.
The creative influences of Wish are apparent. Less clear once the credits begin to roll are the qualities that would make this feature so idiosyncratic that future Disney titles would want to imitate it.
Hailing from directors Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn, Wish concerns Asha (Ariana DeBose), a 17-year-old girl living in the Kingdom of Rosas. This is a seemingly idyllic paradise ruled over by the magical King Magnifico (Chris Pine), who has the power to grant wishes. Everything seems perfect in this domain until Asha discovers the wicked secrets behind Magnifico's rule. Distraught over the darkness that's been lurking in plain sight all along, Asha, in a moment of desperation, makes a wish upon a night star that gives her...an actual shooting star by the name of Star. This charmingly designed critter from the cosmos has some magical abilities of its own, including making Asha's pet goat Valentino talk with the smooth voice of Alan Tudyk. Star could be the key to taking down Magnificio...but can an ordinary girl really challenge a master of dark magic?
Between this and Frozen II, screenwriter Jennifer Lee seems to be way too fascinated with overcomplicated lore that feels clumsily improvised. Awkward key plot beats related to King Magnifico’s corrupt rule (namely that you forget about your wish after he “takes” it) are hurriedly introduced in lyrics or throwaway pieces of dialogue that are easy to miss. The mechanics of the wishes themselves seem to fluctuate in a way that doesn't feel like organic extensions of a whimsical fairy tale but rather a byproduct of sloppy writing. It’s also hard to grasp a discernibly real-world parallel to all the fantasy tomfoolery that Lee and company want audiences to be deeply invested in. This isn’t just supposed to be a classical fairy tale, like Sleeping Beauty, where everything's meant to be heightened and removed from our world. Wish wants to elicit tears from viewers and have its fantasy world remind moviegoers of their own. That’s hard to do when this entire realm feels so vaguely defined and aloof from the discernible reality. Compare that problem to the stories of Moana and Encanto, which effortlessly interwove recognizable real emotions and experiences into unabashedly fantastical stories. This balance between the preposterous and emotionally tangible can work…Lee’s script for Wish just gets too lost in lore, explanations, and obvious metaphors to get that balance right.
The plot beats that do work in Wish are effective enough to make one wish this whole movie was better. If only the screenplay trimmed down the avalanche of comic sidekick characters (why does Asha have seven additional wacky human friends plus two “critter” companions?) in favor of fleshing out its better narrative impulses. That tug of war between impressive details and derivative elements also carries over to the animation of Wish. The backgrounds here are glorious creations, downright perfect recreations of the kind of painterly sights Eyvind Earle and the like made their bread and butter in the mid-20th century. Establishing shots in Wish devoid of any characters actually look like they could’ve been lifted from a hand-drawn movie from the 50s, it’s an astonishing merging of animations past and present.
Unfortunately, those backgrounds and other lovely visual qualities (like the welcome emphasis on bright colors that make even nighttime scenes easily visible) are paired up with humans and animals who look no different than standard CG Disney humans from the last 15 years. This time, though, those humans have extra rubbery-looking skin (a byproduct of the unique lighting schemes of Wish) while the often stilted facial expressions seem extra lifeless compared to the old-school backgrounds. Imagine the emotions that could be conveyed if these figures were rendered in good old fashioned hand-drawn animation. The dissonance between environments from Sleeping Beauty and characters lifted from crowd shots of Big Hero 6 never coalesces into something interesting and instead just remains eternally annoying. It’s very odd Wish showed so much ambition in its backdrops, yet opted for human designs that look so familiar. If you want to truly follow in the footsteps of modern CG animation achievements like The Mitchells vs The Machines, Nimona, and the Spider-Verse movies, you have to embrace distinctive visual impulses in every department, not just with backgrounds!
A similar mixed bag is the music of Wish. Given that this is the "ultimate" Walt Disney Animation Studios movie, it shouldn't be a surprise that Wish is also a musical, with an array of tunes written by Julia Michaels and Benjamin Rice. The best of these tracks are the ones that lean into being the kind of songs you could only do in a musical like Magnifico's deliciously wicked "This Is The Thanks I Get?!" or the rousing battle tune "Knowing What I Know Now." Weaker on the soundtrack are tracks like "This Wish" and "At All Costs" that are more in line with songs you'd find in a Pasek & Paul musical in that they just sound like generic pop ditties. The former track is especially disappointing since DeBose is fully committed in her vocals in this take on the "I Want" song, but the forgettable lyrics let her down. Also underwhelming is the score by Dave Metzger, a veteran of Disney's music department (he worked as an arranger and orchestrator for countless scores in the studio's past). His compositions aren't bad, but they're often lifeless and fail to demonstrate much of a personality, particularly in the instruments they employ.
More consistently successful than the visuals and music in Wish are the vocal performances. The actors assembled here do perfectly cromulent work with the writing they've been handed, with DaBose especially working overtime to inject more personality and life into Asha compared to how this figure is written in the script. A committed novice cast, undeniably cute elements (that Star character is clearly made to spawn stuffed animals, but I wanted to give him a hug all the same), and utterly stunning backgrounds can't erase the nagging feeling, though, that Wish leaves a lot of potential on the table. In trying to create a "celebration" of Disney's past, Wish just feels like a hodgepodge of the studio's greatest hits. It lacks the wit and heart that helped give an extra sense of personality to previous Mouse House homages like Enchanted or Tangled. "What would Walt do?" was clearly a question weighing heavily on the minds of Buck, Veerasunthorn, and company when it came to making this animated musical. However, just as that query drove Walt Disney Animation Studios into the ground in the 70s and 80s, so too does such adherence to the past weigh down Wish.
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