Aladdin (2019)

(PG) ★★★½

Director: Guy Ritchie.

Cast: Mena Massoud, Naomi Scott, Will Smith, Marwan Kenzari, Navid Negahban, Nasim Pedrad, Numan Acar, Billy Magnussen.

"And then I said, 'no, I really want to work with M. Night Shyamalan'."

It sometimes seems like Disney has a magic lamp of its own. If it does, it probably acquired it shortly before 1988 when it co-produced Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and helped usher in the Disney Renaissance. Over the next six years, the House of Mouse would release four of its biggest and most beloved movies of all time (The Little Mermaid, Beauty & The Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King), effectively saving a company that had been on the ropes critically and commercially, having narrowly survived a hostile takeover in 1984.

Such doldrums are hard to envisage now. Everything Disney touches turns to gold - it owns Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and now many of 20th Century Fox's properties (including The Simpsons), and is on an absurd winning streak. Even when it rolls the dice on live-action remakes of its own classics, it still comes out in front.

The updates of Cinderella, The Jungle Book, and Beauty & The Beast were excellent, with only this year's Dumbo teetering close to disappointing. The secret to the successes (magic lamps aside) has been the filmmakers's ability to stay faithful to the cartoon origins while giving them a contemporary tone and a lush, lavish look. Dumbo struggled with its slender source material, and was somewhat hit-and-miss with its invented additions to the storyline, but Cinderella and Beauty & The Beast somehow walked the line between nostalgia and modernity.

This fidelity to the animated predecessors is a double-edged scimitar for Aladdin. There is a spectre that hovers over the film - the ghost of the greatest Disney voice performance of all time - and this is just one of the factors that results in things taking a while to settle into their own groove. When it finally takes wing though, this version of Aladdin soars like a magic carpet.

As per the 1992 take, this is the story of a "street rat" named Aladdin (Massoud) who bumps into an incognito Princess Jasmine (Scott) in the starts of the Arabian city of Agrabah. When Aladdin attempts to see her again in the palace, he is captured by the evil vizier Jafar (Kenzari), who uses him to secure a magical lamp hidden in a treacherous cave.

But first, let's deal with that looming spectre. When Smith first appears as the Genie it initially feels like a bad riff on the bravura comedic turn from Robin Williams, complete with some slightly off CG and a cavalcade of silly voices. But once the overacting disappears and the blue djinn becomes more, well, Will Smith-like, it starts to work.

In the end he does a fine job filling William's pointed slippers (let's be fair, it's probably the toughest gig since Heath Ledger signed on as The Joker). Smith has the mix of bravura and heart the role requires, and honestly it's his best turn since Hancock. Once the Genie settles down after he's first let out of the lamp, Smith does a decent job of making the character his own, which is a big ask.

Similarly the film's introduction to the characters of Aladdin and Jasmine, as well as their meet cute, feel awkward. The pacing and tone are off, and it's hard to tell whether Massoud and Scott are right for the roles or whether they have chemistry. The first scenes (after an awkward "now here's a little story" prologue) attempt to capture the Looney Tunes-esque energy of the original, with director Ritchie employing some strange slowed-down and sped-up techniques in a misguided attempt to burst out of the blocks at a similar pace to the '92 version.

But eventually it all clicks into place, right around the time the Genie and Aladdin start bonding in the desert and get down to the nitty gritty of what three wishes entails. From there, the film is increasingly energetic and charismatic, but with its own sense of energy and charisma, rather than an imitation of the cartoon's. The relationships work, the casting feels right, and Ritchie seemingly gets a grip on the material well, particularly the Prince Ali entrance and a thrilling magic carpet pursuit late in the piece.

The remake tweaks a couple of things to great effect. Jasmine's character is bolstered nicely, even if her new song Speechless is an American Idol-meets-Eurovision histrionic ballad that sits awkwardly. She gets goals of her own beyond "must get married", building beautifully on the smarts and strut of the '92 Jasmine. Similarly, the characters of the Sultan and the Genie are made to be more three-dimensional (pun intended).

Scott is good in the role and the film eventually nails the chemistry between her and Massoud, who also does a nice job as the plucky "scoundrel". The pick of the call sheet though is Kenzari (who looks like an Arabic Bret McKenzie) as Jafar. He doesn't chew the scenery (which must have been tempting) but instead he delivers a great turn that has a nice balance of sinister and believable.

Once the film finds its rhythm, the only real let-down is the A Whole New World sequence, which doesn't wow like anticipated. But its final act works wonderfully and the whole thing looks sumptuous, with Ritchie acquitting himself reasonably well, even if it feels fairly restrained by his standards.

If we're going to start ranking the Disney live-action remakes (which I'm probably going to do soon, let's be honest), Aladdin doesn't soar to the same heights as the updates of The Jungle Book or Cinderella, but it certainly sticks its landing after a rough take off.