95 min | PG | November 22, 2023 | Walt Disney Pictures
A young woman in the kingdom of Rosas discovers that the benevolent king who safeguards everyone’s wishes has no intention of granting most of them. She wishes on a star, and the star shows up. Disney throws itself a hundredth-birthday party and forgets to invite a story.
Wish takes place in the Mediterranean kingdom of Rosas, where King Magnifico collects the wishes of his subjects and grants a chosen few. Asha is a young woman who interviews to become his apprentice and learns what the king actually does with the wishes he hoards. She makes a wish on a star, and the star descends as a silent ball of light and mischief. The film exists to celebrate a century of Walt Disney Animation, and it spends most of its energy nodding at the movies that came before it. The story underneath the references is thin. Asha wants the people of Rosas to own their own dreams, and the film treats that idea as a destination instead of a journey.
Ariana DeBose voices Asha with warmth and a clear singing voice that carries the film’s better moments. She commits fully even when the script hands her stock optimism in place of character. Chris Pine plays King Magnifico as a vain showman who curdles into a villain, and Pine finds real menace once the role lets him stop pretending. He gives the most alive performance in the film. Alan Tudyk voices Valentino, a goat who gains the power of speech, and the part trades on bathroom jokes that land below the actor’s ability. Victor Garber lends Asha’s grandfather Sabino a gentle gravity, and Angelique Cabral plays Queen Amaya as the conscience Magnifico ignores.
Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn direct from a script by Jennifer Lee and Allison Moore. They reach for a hybrid look that lays watercolor storybook textures over three-dimensional models, and the two styles fight each other in every frame. The backgrounds glow like illustrated pages while the characters move with the plastic smoothness of standard computer animation. The result reads as neither painting nor sculpture. The songs stop the plot cold and announce the themes out loud rather than dramatizing them. The villain number is the one sequence where the music and the staging agree on what they want to be.
Wish is an anniversary card that mistakes its own history for a plot. Every wink at a past Disney film reminds you of a better movie you could be watching instead. Asha is a likable heroine in search of a story worthy of her, and Magnifico is a sharp villain stranded in a tale too gentle to use him. The pieces of a real fairy tale sit on the table, and the film never assembles them. It points at wonder without earning it.