Film Review — Wish
Disney’s centenary animated feature is bland, soulless, and utterly mediocre
First, a pre-emptive defence against anyone with the temerity to suggest that I’m not the target audience for Wish: Disney animated features at their best are for everyone. Many have wound up on my all-time favourites list. Here’s a personal top ten. I cite that as Exhibit A as to why it gives me no pleasure to write this review.
With a preface like that, you might expect me to slate Wish, but the problem isn’t that it is bad; at least, not on a technical level. The sort-of throwback to 2D animation (but not quite) is proficiently supervised by directors Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn. The vocal performances, including Ariana DeBose and Chris Pine, are perfectly competent. And I suppose there’s a very, very slight pleasure to be gleaned in spotting the visual homages to other Disney animated classics throughout (this year is a celebration of the company’s 100th anniversary, after all).
On the other hand, Wish is the personification of mediocrity. The dictionary definition of bland, ordinary, unremarkable, average, and run-of-the-mill. A corporate, machine-tooled product with anything resembling humour, humanity, excitement, and emotion so thoroughly wrung out of it that I wouldn’t be surprised if the film had been put together by…
