Disney is celebrating 100 years since Walt founded the company in 1923 and Wish is supposed to be a cumulative celebration honoring all the magical animation produced over that century. Unfortunately, this shooting star falls flat and doesn’t succeed in even pandering to their fanbase who already have all of Disney’s animated classics memorized.
Wish
Directed by Chris Buck, Fawn Veerasunthorn
Starring Ariana DeBose, Chris Pine, Alan Tudyk
Runtime: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Synopsis
Look, I don’t know if I could spoil this movie if I tried because the way the plot plays out during the runtime is super messy … so, I’m just going to pull from Disney’s official site for Wish to establish the base storyline, with a little emphasis from me:
“Asha [DeBose], a sharp-witted idealist, makes a wish so powerful that it is answered by a cosmic force—a little ball of boundless energy called Star. Together, Asha and Star confront a most formidable foe—the ruler of Rosas, King Magnifico[Pine]—to save her community and prove that when the will of one courageous human connects with the magic of the stars, wondrous things can happen.”
Disney Darling
Before I dig into this, let me establish my extremely niche credentials that aid my expertise for this particular film analysis: I was a Cast Member (or CM) at Disney California Adventure (or DCA) – the theme park directly adjacent to Disneyland – for over 5 years, parting ways right as pandemic lockdown struck. What led to me becoming a CM was my deep love for all things Disney; I grew-up rewatching Disney animated classics on VHS until some even broke from wear-and-tear. From my personal experiences, as well as discussions I’ve had with fellow CMs, I agree with a sentiment I’ve heard more than once that CMs tend to be the most extreme of the Disney fans – because that’s literally the only way to justify draining oneself of energy everyday to make magic while being treated subhuman by Park Guests and Disney suits, alike.
I left Disney to pursue studying sociology and have since worked on multiple degrees, including an A.A. in Sociology with an Emphasis in Social and Behavioral Sciences, a B.A. in Sociology: Inequalities and Diversity, and soon a M.A. in Sociology. Critiquing Disney is definitely a constant part of my bittersweet relationship with the production company and my overall nerdy hyper-focuses.
Basically, I am literally part of the target audience of “Dis-nerds” who Disney was trying to cater to in this 95 minute homage to the last 100 years of their animated classics.
Drowning in Pixie Dust
Wish is bursting with homages to Disney’s beloved animated classics. At first, it was fun trying to catch all the Easter eggs (including literal “Hidden Mickeys” for those of us diehard Dis-nerds who see mouse ears everywhere) but then it started feeling like a distraction from the incongruent plot. I’ll get more into my qualms but first, let me set the stage:
I remember when Disney was dedicated to modifying the credit castle openings to personalize in the style of each film. Of any recent animated film to do this for, THIS would be the movie; however the only difference was just a generic Disney100 which was barely distinguishable from the most recent 3D animated version that’s been used for the last few years.
Sorcerer’s Apprentice Takes a Stand
Asha (DeBose) is a 17-year-old multiracial resident in the kingdom of Rosas who hopes to become the sorcerer’s apprentice to King Magnifico (Pine). Queen Amaya (Cabral) is Magnifico’s wife, who has been with him a long time, even helping him establish the kingdom of Rosas. Each resident who is 18-years-or-older gives their wish to Magnifico for safe keeping and the process also causes them to blissfully forget the contents of their wishes, as detailed in the musical number “Welcome To Rosas.”
Having lost her father at age 12, Asha lives with her paternal saba/grandfather Sabino (Garber), her mother Sakina (Rothwell), and a 3-week-old kid goat Valentino (Tudyk). It is the week of Sabino‘s 100th birthday and he has been waiting years for his wish to be granted. During Asha‘s interview for sorcerer’s apprentice, as depicted in the duet “At All Costs”, she discovers that Sabino‘s wish is to create something that inspires future generations.
The last thing Magnifico wants is a revolution, especially since the sorcerer king is revealed to be a controlling, narcissistic, power-obsessed white man-splainer who colonized an island in the Mediterranean Sea to create and rule the supposed idealistic kingdom of Rosas. He does NOT react well to Asha requesting Sabino‘s wish be granted! Supposedly due to the nebulous nature of the wording, it is one of many wishes deemed too dangerous. Magnifico even goes so far as to proclaim that neither Sabino‘s nor Sakina‘s wishes will ever be granted. Devastated that she cost her loved one’s their wishes, Asha vents out her wish for things to be different through singing “This Wish” as an anthem to night sky.
This heart song proves to be powerful magic that summons a wishing Star! Star eagerly wants to help Asha while also having a little fun due to being able to anthropomorphize animals through its stardust. This leads into “I’m A Star” – which is the song most closely resembling those classic Disney musical numbers – with a full blown choir of woodland animals gaining the ability to sing. The song is also pivotal to a later realization that Asha has in how to defeat Magnifico (which I’ll expound on when we get to the final act reprise of “This Wish”).
However, Magnifico is absolutely threatened by sensing mysterious magic has summoned a powerful falling Star. He goes into full self-important wicked wizard, evil king mode in “This Is The Thanks I Get?1” by dabbling in dark magic while crushing those aforementioned ‘dangerous’ wishes from innocent residents of Rosas to strengthen his magic.
Asha needs all the helps she can get and recruits her crew of friends to raise a revolution through the call-to-action anthem “Knowing What I Know Now” – where all of them are surprised when even Queen Amaya dramatically joins! Amaya empathetically upholds her responsibility to the people of Rosas, using the power from her position as queen to help protect the population once she realizes Magnifico has embraced dark magic.
As mentioned, the final act contains “This Wish (Reprise),” where Asha persists in resisting against Magnifico. As Asha interweaves the realization from “I’m A Star” that we’re all made of stardust, therefore the power lies with the people, all her allies join in and strengthen the resistance.
I really don’t cry at movies but having the community come together in harmony for this reprise did get me a little choked up.
Heavy Reliance on Audience’s Faith and Trust
What is it with Disney releasing half written movies lately? *cough TheMarvels cough* The further into Wish‘s runtime we get, the more confusion occurs. Due to the plot heavily relying on the audience to just roll with anything and everything, I left the theater with so many questions.
Musical Numbers From Wish.com
When the first musical number “Welcome to Rosas” kicked off, I was wracking my brain to recall if Lin-Manuel Miranda had been tapped to song write for yet another Disney film after Moana (2016) and Encanto (2021). I quickly realized this was NOT Miranda himself but rather “in the style of” – with this feeling like a rip-off of Encanto‘s “The Family Madrigal” tour of the town.
Meme by me, using photos from Encanto © 2021 & Wish © 2023 Credit: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.
I prefer watching Open Captions showings for the onscreen subtitles and by the time the second musical number “At All Costs” launched, I was already gaslighting myself with thoughts such as: Are these songs out of place or is being able to read the lyrics changing my perception? I mean, “At All Costs” is gorgeous – both DeBose and Pine sing the hell out of it. But it sounds like a power ballad duet meant for the Top 40 or something.
Asha‘s anthem “This Wish” is my personal favorite musical number and has currently become my song-on-repeat for getting through finals. However, even with the ability to read the lyrics upon first experience, I was still caught off guard when this song ends by summoning Star. Yes, she is singing, “So I make this wish,” but she also says, “I look up at the stars” plural. It’s only when Asha‘s explaining Star‘s presence to others that the audience learns she was looking at one specific wishing star for the entirety of this accidental incantation.
I can’t even listen to Magnifico‘s mirror-mirror song “This Is The Thanks I Get?!” without thinking of all the narcissistic men I’ve had to deal with in my life. We’re robbed of a juicy villain song and forced to endure a whiney ode to man-splaining. Pine is absolutely wasted on this number.
Come Get Your Men
One of the biggest headscratchers to me is that it feels like there was supposed to be a prelude to explain the existence of the 3 pivotal adult male characters: Magnifico, Sabino, and Asha’s father (why doesn’t her father even have a name?!).
At least two times, Magnifico and Amaya gesture at a burned tapestry and say they are using the kingdom of Rosas to prevent what happened to Magnifico’s village from ever occurring again – but the audience is never told what the situation was! Did Magnifico wish to be a sorcerer with explosive powers and then burn his village to the ground??? And the fact that Amaya has been a key supporting figure to Magnifico since before they established the kingdom but then immediately allies with Asha made me wonder if Magnifico was already domestically abusive and it just took literal dark magic for Amaya to realize her marriage was toxic.
Sabino is turning 100 but it does not seem like Magnifico and Amaya are immortal and they can’t be more than 50 years old, so the kingdom of Rosas is maybe 30 years old … which leads me to ask, what drew Sabino to this island in the first place and why does he stay after his son ultimately dies of drawn out illness that Rosas‘ so-called benevolent ruler probably could have cured with magic? And on that note, Magnifico tells Asha he remembers her father, which made me wonder if her father worked closely with Magnifico and the sorcerer is the cause of the man’s illness??
Inexplicably Placed in the Real World
Now, one of the few things this movie is specifically clear about is that the kingdom of Rosas was founded on an island in the real world Mediterranean Sea. But magic is also just taken as a given in this setting. The population of the kingdom is made up of visually diverse individuals which does point to the fact that the Mediterranean Sea is surrounded – on all sides – by Southern Europe, North Africa, and West Asia. However, the cultural diversities are not really expanded on. Asha uses the word saba for her grandpa Sabino which I had to Google to find out is Hebrew (voice actor Victor Garber is of Russian-Jewish descent, so that’s a cool nod) because it’s not given any context. We also don’t know Amaya’s background, but she does pepper in Spanish phrases and endearments while speaking English. Both of these instances of infusing words from other languages only makes this real word setting be even more underserved by the plot.
A Kingdom Stripped of Its Cultural Richness
I admit after the movie, my hyperfocus went down a rabbit hole looking up countries bordering the Mediterranean, curious to see what locales the residents could be from and the languages they would be speaking – since there’s proof of at least English, Spanish, and Hebrew among the dialects. The most commonly spoken language *should* be Arabic but other than a friend of Asha‘s named Safi (voiced by Ramy Youssef who, in real life, actually is fluent in Arabic), I don’t think there is any other Arabic representation … which sorta reeks of Western exceptionalism. It’s visually pleasing to see an ethnically diverse population in a pre-modern setting just going about their lives in Rosas, but ignoring the intricacies of those real-world cultures severely undermines any historical narratives. In my (sociological) opinion, using a real-world setting while not embracing the rich cultural backgrounds is verging on white-washed tokenism. And apparently the magic Magnifico founded Rosas on really isn’t doing all that much for the residents since the main domestic workers in the castle are predominantly underaged people of color – not a good look.
Asha and the Seven Domestic Servants
Speaking of the child labor crew, for some reason the writers felt compelled to give Asha SEVEN friends in this 95 minute runtime.
Asha‘s best friend Dahlia (Kumiyama) is based on Doc (though to me, her look also feels like it has Snow White inspiration), is the de facto leader of the crew, and also the royal baker – even though she is younger than 18-years-old. Gabo (Guillén) is based on Grumpy, so super grouchy and skeptical but also very loyal. Safi (Youssef), who’s based on Sneezy, is constantly plagued by allergies which he powers through to care for his chickens. Hal (Vargas) is supposedly Happy, but we actually don’t see Hal much. Another crew member we purposefully don’t see much of is Bazeema (Saba), since she’s based on Bashful and is always quietly moving about – usually startling the crew when suddenly making her presence known. Dario (Rudnitsky) is the hapless comic relief channeling Dopey. Simon (Peters) is the only one of the crew that has turned 18-years-old, which means Simon gave his wish and his memories of the wish to Magnifico and apparently his personality was forever altered to listless vacancy – AKA Sleepy – ever since, much to his friends’ dismay.
The audience never gets to see what Simon‘s personality was like before, though. The crew is constantly complaining about Simon now dragging the whole vibe down and yet they are shocked when Simon turns them in to Magnifico after hearing the announcement that anyone with information on wild magic would get their wish granted. Simon becomes the white knight he wished to be but is under the influence of Magnifico’s dark magic – used as a tool to keep the crew distracted. I saw something like this coming due to the ratio of the collective crew conversations focusing on Simon acting so different. Once it was revealed, I wanted to scream at the screen, “He only felt pressure to get his wish granted because all of you were constantly talking right in front of him about how you hated his personality now!”
All-Star Dream Cast
The film’s biggest strength is the award-winning cast, with the true star-power really lying in the collection of amazing talent. As I explored each featured voice actor, I was pleasantly surprised at the intersectionality represented from the casting. I am going to try to honor the identities of each individual based on their own personal narratives which spanned ethnicities, members of various LGBTQ+ identities and orientations, and actors who openly list being persons with disabilities (PWD) on their resumes. However, even with Disney securing an inclusive cast – which was also represented in the voice actors appearances being resembled in the animation of each character – it felt like the writers were not up to the task of integrating the identity of each individual into the plot (even though echoes exist of threads removed in the writing process).
Major Players
With a soaring vocal performance as Asha, Ariana DeBose is the first Afro-Latine and queer actor of color to win an Academy Award®-winner (for 2021’s West Side Story) and truly anchors Wish.
Alan Tudyk is an Annie Award winner (for Voice Acting in 2012’s Wreck-It Ralph) and uses his G.O.A.T.ed vocals to bring Asha’s animal companion Valentino to life, practically chewing the scenery – especially once he gains the ability to speak after eating stardust.
Angelique Cabral is of Native American, Mexican, and French ancestry. Her portrayal as Queen Amaya has heart but unfortunately she doesn’t get as much screen time as I would have liked.
Chris Pine has racked up numerous critic and fan-choice award nominations since his big screen breakthrough in 2009’s Star Trek. He has already shown off impressive vocal range as a self-absorbed Prince Charming in Into the Woods (2014); in 2023 alone, he spanned from embracing his bardic charms for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, while also embodying a whole other type of charming ruler in Don’t Worry Darling. In Wish, Pine continues turning in unflinchingly portrayals of toxic patriarchy as this sorcerer king Magnifico who’s drawn to darkness.
Grandpa Sabino is portrayed by Victor Garber, a multi-time Emmy, Tony and SAG award nominee – winning a SAG for Outstanding Cast in 2012’s Argo.
Asha’s mother Sakina is played by Natasha Rothwell who has creds as a writer and supervising producer (winning the 2020 Black Reel Award for Outstanding Comedy Series) on Issa Rae’s Insecure in addition to playing the scene-stealing Kelli.
Diverse Supporting Cast
Simon has probably the most universally well-known voice actor in Evan Peters, who has been in many major franchises, including X-Men (films 2014-2019), American Horror Stories (2011-2021), Pose (2018), WandaVision (2021). Peters won the Satellite Award and Emmy Award for Supporting Actor in 2021’s Mare of Easttown, and most recently was the title character in the controversial Dahmer-Monster (2022).
Gabo is voiced by Harvey Guillén, the multi-lingual son of Mexican immigrants and openly queer. Hearing his voice perked me up because I adore him in everything he’s been in, especially What We Do in the Shadows (2019-present), and know he can sing like nobody’s business after his reoccurring appearance on the musical comedy Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist in 2021.
Dahlia is depicted as utilizing a crutch and is voiced by Jennifer Kumiyama who, according to her personal website, is a multi-racial woman of color “born with Arthrogryposis and uses a wheelchair daily … in 2002 – Jennifer was cast in Disney’s ‘Aladdin; a Musical Spectacular’ at Disney California Adventure Theme Park, where she is the first performer in a wheelchair to ever be on any Disney stage in the world.” I actually saw her perform multiple times in the Aladdin show, before DCA closed it in January 2016, and she was great!
Safi is voiced by Ramy Youssef, who was born in Queens, NY to Egyptian parents and has used his self-titled TV series Ramy (which he won the 2020 Golden Globe Winner for as Best Actor) to tell a fictionalized version of his experiences navigating the USA as a first-generation, millennial Muslim.
Hal‘s voice actor, NiKo Vargas, notes on their personal website that they are a “disabled Afro-Latine nonbinary vocalist, voice actor, musician, producer, writer, and audio engineer.” They seem like a super cool person and I wish they had more of a chance to be featured in Wish.
For Bazeema‘s voice, Della Saba, I had trouble finding anything on her other than being the voice of Young Judy Hopps in Zootopia (2016) and Aquamarine in Steven Universe (2017).
Dario is voiced by Jon Rudnitsky, who is of Jewish descent and was on Saturday Night Live for the 41st season.
Subjects of Rosas
The Flying Woman who has her wish to be able to fly crushed by Magnifico is voiced by Heather Matarazzo, who has been openly lesbian since turning 21 in 2004 and is probably most famous for playing Lilly Moscovitz in The Princess Diaries franchise.
Keone Young voices the Mountain Climber who’s wish to climb a mountain and plant a flag at the top, as well as a few citizens of Rosas. Young was born and raised in Hawai’i by a Japanese mother and Chinese father. Mentored by Japanese-American actor Mako (beloved original voice actor of Uncle Iroh in Avatar: The Last Airbender), Young is both a live-action and voice actor in several major franchises, including – TV: Alias, Deadwood, American Dragon: Jake Long, Avatar: The Last Airbender & The Legend of Korra; Film: Men in Black 3; Video Game: Joe Haybusa from Ninja Gaiden.
Nicole Lynn Evans voices several citizens, including the Mountain Climber’s Wife who is present when her husband’s wish is crushed and he experiences immense grief. According to Evans’ personal website resume, she is a PWD: Wheelchair user and was selected as a Top 20 actor from historically underrepresented communities by the Casting Society of America. IMDb notes: “Born with Osteogenesis Imperfecta, a rare bone condition, Nicole stands strong at 3 feet 8 inches tall.
Featured singers in the Choir for the “I’m a Star” number include Yvette Nicole Brown, who is most famous for her role as Shirley in the TV series Community, & James Monroe Iglehart, who originated the role of the Genie on Broadway’s Aladdin for which he won both a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor and a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in 2014.
Wish Did Their Cast Dirty
Everyone does their best with the material they’ve been given and truly shine when it comes to performing the musical/choral vocal arrangements. It was just a major let down that this ensemble cast were essentially turned into “diversity hires” by the writers not fulfilling their end of providing nuanced integration. There is definitely a place for just letting those attributes be normal and natural in media, to stop tokenizing what society currently paints as individuals’ “differences.” But society as a whole has not done the work to get to that place, especially in continuing to use entertainment to set status quos for standards of desirability. Unfortunately, Wish does just enough hinting at the aspects of how intersectional identities impacts individuals experience in social situations without much, if any, follow through.
Colorism Creeps In
Asha is multiracial but is able to approximate whiteness to some degree due to her light skin. This feels like colorism is at work, so that the audience will sympathize with Asha when she stands up to the white man she was originally seeking to apprentice with. There are only two dark-skinned Black women, neither of which get any character development. One is Hal, who is the stand in for the dwarf Happy but got NO actual anchor to this characteristic because she is the least utilized of the 7 friends; giving her next to no dialogue yet insisting she is specifically the happy, optimistic one also feels like a covert way of trying to oppose the “loud angry black woman” stereotype but with no substance or support. The other Black woman is Asha’s mother Sakina, who’s wish Asha is pivotally trying to rescue but is never revealed to the audience, which kind of feels like the writers didn’t know what wish to give her. I guess at least the film let Asha’s Black parent stay alive, instead of suffering the tragic-yet-undefined-death the unnamed white father had before the start of the film …
Conclusion
I truly wish I enjoyed Wish more but it felt very haphazard, as if even the writers themselves weren’t sure what they wanted to achieve with this film. The fact that the songs feel so separate from the movie only reinforces that I will never have to watch Wish again.
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