Weird, I don't really relate. I watched N by NW about ten (or was it twenty? Uggh) years ago and was completely indifferent to it / bored by it. I dunno. I felt like it was more a product for its times. I had a much more favorable response to Rope, Psycho, Strangers on a Train, and Vertigo (for example) as far as Hitchcock goes, or maybe The Third Man or Sunset Boulevard for other films from that time period.
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So
Wish was finally released on Disney+. Pretty underwhelming film. The main conceit was kind of interesting, but the execution wasn't so hot.
It very much felt like a film written by formula or committee, without understanding what makes a film actually come to life and pop -- kind of like making soup, where someone is just throwing everything into the pot without a real sense of how the ingredients go together and that you can't dump EVERYTHING into the pot or it becomes a bland mess. "Let's appeal to this group, or throw in this character, or pull in this story element," and so forth.
DeBose and the animators are trying too hard to be an ADHD Disney princess in the first ten minutes of the film; like, stop going through the motions, actually make her feel like she's non-hyper?
It's interesting to compare it to a film like Tangled (it was kind of cribbing off that film in look and feel), with music like Encanto, without realizing what made either film work. I didn't like Encanto on one level because I felt like there was no actual climax (the "villain" simply changes her mind at a convenient spot in the plot, without real justification), but the Encanto music actually fit the style of the story they were trying to tell. With Wish, at least half the time the music style broke whatever emotional arc the story was building rather than supporting it. (Only the climax of the film really "meshed" between story and music style -- kind of "Greatest Showman" vibe.) There was not a coherent emotional vision here for the overall film.
About the best thing with Wish was the basic theme, but that's completely unrelated to implementation: Maybe you want to trust someone else with your dreams, especially if they look and feel good and trustworthy, but if you relinquish ownership of dreams out of fear or frustration or expecting something for nothing, you both lose the impetus that engages you in life + you are giving other people power who might be corrupted by it. Taking ownership of your desires is what gives you drive and impetus and meaning in the world.
There was a line in the opening fairy tale screen where it talks about the King and his "loyal Queen" -- which is an odd way to refer to a woman, and thank god that actually was something the story plays against, because a wife is not a pet. So the word choice had meaning, but boy it was an odd choice up front.
The opening and closing sequences are too much like every other Disney film. There's a lot of moments that you feel you have already seen in a Disney film. And here we get into the rub of it -- and it's the same complaint some of us have voiced about Star Wars. Everything is self-referential. Instead of building something new, Wish often just substitutes things from other Disney films as if it that is meaningful in itself. Just like the problem with Star Wars, where is it pulling from unexpected sources or other genres or outside influence to bring a new spice to the soup -- putting things together in new and original ways? The best Disney films have done this, the worst as just rehashes of older Disney properties. I get the idea of "homage," but boy I guess this is a problem when it's Disney -- it takes a lot of hubris and cluelessness to manufacture films as a homage to oneself, because then it just feels like either self-praise or lack of fresh ideas. Star Wars has cannibalized itself repeatedly; and now Wish has done the same of all other Disney films.
The weirdest moment in the film also felt like the most original: The doors to the chicken coop open and inside there's a whole room full of chickens dancing/breakdancing and singing, brought to life by the power of Star. It's crazy, it's unexpected, it's full of energy, and it felt like one of the few original ideas in the film. I wish the rest of the film had been that unpredictable.
edit: LOL
movieweb.com
