This year Walt Disney Studios is celebrating their 100th year Anniversary in many ways. One of those includes the launch of a new Disney film.
This movie was created to tie every single Disney movie together into one common theme. Disney movies’ most common theme is to wish upon a star. The newest movie focuses on this theme while also paying homage to past Disney movies.
Disney’s newest movie “Wish,” starring Ariana DeBose and Chris Pane, is about a seventeen-year-old girl named Asha. She lives in the Kingdom of Rosas with her mom and grandfather. A few times each year, the Kingdom of Rosas has a wish-granting ceremony in which King Magnifico choses one of the citizen’s wishes to grant.
The movie starts with the opening of an old fashioned and mystical book. The book tells the backstory of King Magnifico. The audience finds out that Magnifico lost everything when he was a child, so when he was gifted with the ability to grant wishes, he sought to create a kingdom where he would be able to protect his people and their wishes.
After this, viewers are introduced to the main character, Ash; her mother, Sakina; and her grandfather, Sabino. She is about to go to her job: introducing people to the kingdom of Rosas.
When the song “Welcome to Rosas” plays, the audience gets presented to the kingdom and gets to know a little bit more about the wish-granting ceremony.
After the song “Welcome to Rosas,” viewers meet Asha’s friends: Simon, Dahlia, Gabo, Dario, Bazeema, Hal and Safi. While they are all making cookies, Dahlia tells Asha that she will be late for an interview to be King Maginico’s new apprentice.
During the interview, Asha is shown the wishes. The wishes are in a blue, glass sphere and float around King Magnifico’s office.
Later in the story, Asha and her family have a fight about how Asha thinks she should tell the citizens of Rosas about what King Magnifico is doing with the wishes. Her family yells at her for thinking this, so she decides to run away.
At this point, the song “This Wish” starts playing. During the song, Asha talks about how she wants to tell the citizens of Rosas about what she has learned about King Magnifico. She decides that she wants to make a wish for the Kingdom of Rosas to have the ability to make their own wishes.
After Asha makes this wish, a bright beam of light travels through the Kingdom of Rosas and alerts King Magnifico that someone has made an illegal wish on a star.
King Magnifico decides to go to the citizens of Rosas for help to track down the person who made an illegal wish on a star. Dahlia, Asha’s friend, decides to start questioning Magnifico’s role as king and why he has not granted more wishes. Other citizens follow her lead and begin questioning Magnifico’s leadership.
The movie “Wish” was widely considered to be disappointing as a Disney film.
Linganore student Lily Falcione explained that, “[The songs] had a great chorus, but [only] a decent beginning and end. I thought that the plot was a basic Disney plot [but] did not have enough excitement to be Disney’s 100th-anniversary celebration movie.”
Windsor Knolls 8th grader Isabella Milito thought “the movie kind of felt like a Broadway musical, which I didn’t really like. My cousin and I almost fell asleep so many times during the movie; but overall, it was a pretty good movie.”
Many Disney influencers on TikTok and YouTube reported that the movie was decent at best. Many of them thought that many of the characters were underdeveloped or felt like a character they had seen before. Some Influences even believed the movie’s storyline felt rushed.
“We’ve got Asha. She’s alright, but here’s my issue. Sometimes she’s clumsy, sometimes she’s a leader. The characteristics don’t align! It’s giving Elsa meets Anna, which is basically Rapunzel. So she just feels like a character we’ve seen before. Great singing voice though!” — mrthomasenglish
One influencer by the name of mrthomasenglish explained “We’ve got Asha. She’s alright, but here’s my issue. Sometimes she’s clumsy, sometimes she’s a leader. The characteristics don’t align! It’s giving Elsa meets Anna, which is basically Rapunzel. So she just feels like a character we’ve seen before. Great singing voice though!”
In conclusion, “Wish” was not as groundbreaking as Disney might have hoped, but it was an acceptable movie on its own. The movie is an enjoyable watch, but younger ages might enjoy the movie more than others.
