Krista Ashleigh Woodall

The main complaint I’ve seen about the film was that the film was too much about female empowerment. I disagree. For one , there’s no such thing as too much female empowerment in my opinion. And secondly I feel like the movie was still very much about Aladdin . I feel like the movie successfully embellished the original story without deviating from it. The embellishments made the movie more realistic and believable. For example Dahlia was a great character. While as she wasn’t in the original animated film , she wasn’t a useless character. She provided Jasmine with someone to voice her feelings to- where as If in a live action film if Jasmine only had her tiger to talk to she might seem a little crazy. And Dahlia was more than just a character for Jasmine to talk to- she was fleshed out and loveable . I feel like in Toy Story 4 that the new characters like Giggle and Duke Kaboom were unnecessary but the addition of Dahlia and Hakim to Aladdin worked. Mena Massuad was the perfect Aladdin. I thought he was really attractive but more than that he was completely believable. He was likeable, charismatic, charming and relatable. I really believed he was this underdog street guy and it made me want to root for him. Plus he’s smile could melt . I thought Naomi Scott was a dazzling Jasmine. In addition to being beautiful she was very convincing as being head strong , Independent, proud , stubborn etc. All qualities the original animated Jasmine possessed. The live action version was more fleshed out though and given more dynamic to her motives and personality. Will Smith wasn’t bad as Genie. He wasn’t as comedic as Robin Williams but doing his own take on Genie rather than trying to imitate Robin Williams was a smart move. He was still believable and loveable. I’m a big fan of flash mobs , big choreographed dance numbers , and elaborate choreography so I love LOVED , “Never Had a friend Like me “, “Prince Ali “ And the big choreographed Bollywood dance numbers. I wasn’t a huge fan of “ Speechless” which brings me to my negative comments. Jasmines power ballad , Speechless, was indeed an empowering song with great lyrics but it felt really out of place in the film. When she sings some of it early on in the movie , it’s no problem, it gives us insight that she doesn’t want to be powerless. But then when the song is reprised into a full power ballad near the end (hashtag no spoilers) it seemed unnecessary. It was randomly inserted into the crux of the action and slowed down the pace - plus the things happening during the song were confusing and didn’t make sense within the film’s universe at first . Just her speaking up would have sufficed because we already knew at that point how she felt about it. Another song to explain it was not necessary- and the pop sound of the song does not fit her character. All of the songs had a poppy twang that sounded a little autotuned but I still found all the other songs highly enjoyable. Unfortunately, I feel like Jafar’s performance was underwhelming . Nothing about him made him interesting or itimidating as a villain to me . I feel he was the only one in the movie who was not perfectly cast. And finally the costumes were breathtaking and the movie was visually dazzling . If you want a carbon copy of the animated movie but done with real actors then this film is not for you. But if you want a live action INTERPRETATION that still feels loyal to the original then I highly recommend.