(courtesy IMP Awards)
Being the surprising optimistic people that we are, we like to think that good intentions will always result in flawlessly happy outcomes.
Entire religions and value sets, rom-coms and indeed pop culture kingdoms such as that of Disney, which turned 100 in 2023, are built on the sunnily idealistic notion that a good heart will always create good and immutably beneficial things and that what was conceived in a spirit of love and protection will always remain so.
But as Wish, Disney’s latest animated feature film and one designed to celebrate the occasion by referencing the entire notion of good always begetting good that underpins the company’s approach to all its storytelling – and when it doesn’t, well, then the outcome is always dark and unnuanced evil – asks whether the idea of goodness always giving birth to goodness is always the case.
It’s a daring idea since Disney likes to think that good is good, evil is evil and never the twain shall meet; there are exceptions of course but by and large the Mouse House lives and thrives on the notion that good will always trounce bad and that the two states will do so in undiluted ways.
But in Wish, which is a far darker and more daring a movie than the trailer might apply, something created with the purest of intent, at least as pure people can manage anyway, doesn’t stay that way and the ramifications for the kingdom at the centre of the story, are catastrophically dire; that is, until a hero steps forward and with the aid of those around her, stands against the great narcissistic evil at their heart.
That’s all while singing some inspiringly upbeat or thoughtfully introspective songs, a and yes, dark though it may be at times, Wish is still filled to the entertaining brim with music and silly humour and a charmingly medieval outlook on life.
And how can that not be when the hero of the hour, Asha (Ariana DeBose), a bright and enthusiastic 17-year-old citizen of the Mediterranean kingdom of Rosas – while it’s deep in unremittingly Southern Europe, the kingdom looks very Scandinavian meets English medieval, the appealing ye olde times look that Disney loves to embrace – is intent on making Good Things Happen.
Sure she’s nervous about how she’ll make this happen, confiding in a seven-strong gang of friends including disabled, energetic royal baker Dahlia (Jennifer Kumiyama) and cynical but goodhearted Dabo (Harvey Guillén) and pet goat Valentino (Alan Tidy), who somewhere along the line gains the amusing gift of speech, that she doesn’t know if she’s up to being the king’s apprentice.
It’s a prestigious role with King Magnifico (Chris Pine), who has built Rosas along with his staunchly good and wide-eyed lovely wife Amaya (Angelique Cabral), the lynchpin of a society built on the idea that a person’s wishes can come true and transform their lives.
The king stands at the heart of this system which sounds animals singing and dancing lovely while they clean a heroine’s life lovely until you realise that Magnifico is a vain and narcissistic man who, birthed from searing trauma, is less well intentioned that he first appears.
In fact, and here’s where Disney has a great deal of instructive fun playing with the formula, he’s harbouring some fairly dark secrets and where Asha discovers the true extent of them at an interview that does not go well, and which does not lead to the granting of her grandfather Sabino (Victor Garber) fondest wish – the kicker here is that Ince you hand your wish to Magnifico, who is a powerful sorcerer, you forget what it is, impoverishing the wisher and enriching the king – she has no choice but to stand against the man who, once seen as a saviour, turns out to an autocratic nightmare devoted to his own care and no others’.
This is where Wish really comes alive.
While the songs by David Metzger, Julia Michaels and Benjamin Rice are stirring delights, and Valentino is a wisecracking piece of comedy relief and the Star at the centre of the whole story is cute and screaming mass merchandising appeal, what really gives the film narrative momentum and emotional oomph beyond the usual Disney faux weightiness is that fact that it dares to think that something good can twist itself into something quite terribly evil.
Disney has played with this idea before but generally speaking it likes to keep its good characters good and allow its bad characters to strut their melodramatically camp and dark stuff, and that is, usually, that.
But in Wish, while Asha remains the powerfully true and wondrously good hero at the heart of the tale, Magnifico, steeped in the indelible grief of lingering trauma and given over to control for the sake of control and no other, despite the kind words that initially leave his lips, becomes twisted and broken and very, VERY DARK.
Perhaps darker than we usually see in Disney’s films.
Sure, Pixar for all its sunny goodness, happily gives forth villains who truly deserve the appellation, but Disney? Not so much.
But in Wish, the evil is truly evil, and the good just be truly good, and so Asha is, with purity of heart and incorruptible goodness of intent, winning the day.
In amongst all of the reasonably straight down the line narrative intent and thematic imagery – Disney may have taken some chances with the film but it is still, at heart, a Disney movie in almost all its ways – the 100 years of animation are paid tribute in ways subtle and not subtle.
References abound in rather clumsy ways to Snow White, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty and a hose of other films, and while it’s fun, it all feels a little artificially shaved in to obviously tick the significant anniversary box.
But for the greater part, Wish is a delight, a film that dares to set up stakes of epic proportions, that knows that trauma gives rise to both healing and destruction depending on the way in which a person responds to it, and which, garlanded with customary music, comedy and song, leads us on well-worn but appealing entertaining and emotionally fulfilling journey from darkness to light and through to the idea that good will always win out over evil if you simply believe hard enough.