First Take: Wish - Disney’s 100th ends not with a bang, but with 100+ easter eggs

SYNOPSIS: A young girl named Asha wishes on a star and gets a more direct answer than she bargained for when a trouble-making star comes down from the sky to join her.

Well. there it is. Disney’s big 100th birthday celebrations have been wrapped with the film that they claim has been a century in the making, tying together all the iconic franchises within a new IP. But sadly, Wish feels like it is a victim of their soon to be phased out ‘quantity over quality’ mantra to get content on Disney+.

They’ve brought out the big guns to make this one, as Chris Buck of Frozen fame co-directs with Fawn Veerasunthorn (stepping up to the big directors chair having worked in art and story for Disney Animation’s last few releases), and they turn in a relatively fine 1 hour 35 minute film that gets the job done. Sure, it is predictable at times, as any of these films would be, but Buck, along with veteran co-writers Jennifer Lee and Allison Moore also pack the runtime with so many easter eggs, to a point that they are more memorable than the entire plotline. Admitttedly the score from Dave Metzger just about does the job (building to a post credits moment that wraps up the film nicely), plus crucially, they have a contender for Original Song at the Oscars as a result. But while the animation is stunning, if the reports are true, the studios were pushed to their absolute limit to get this film over the line with this new style, a style which crucially, feels like Spider-Verse’s frame rate tinkering has trickled to the house of mouse.

As for this cast, Ariana DeBose carries this film, mostly - and with Chris Pine, Alan Tudyk, Angelique Cabral, Victor Garbra, Evan Peters, Ramy Youssef and more rounding out this ensemble, this has the makings of what should’ve been a much better, more faithful film for the 62nd movie from Disney Animation. Plus, as is customary for the UK market these days - Rochelle Humes of This Morning (and formerly The Saturdays) takes on a minor role in the usual localisation of the film, which again, serves no purpose but to get ticket sales in. Sadly it didn’t work - Napoleon of all things destroyed it at the box office on opening week, and even this week, it’s not doing the numbers we all expected.

THE VERDICT

Wish could’ve played better had it come out a month earlier for the October family film boom, and sure, while the easter eggs on their own are worth it, as a standalone film it just feels like a Disney+ commission that had hasty rewrites to make it fit for the 100th. To put it simply - this feels like a budget Disney film from Wish.com.

RATING: 3/5