Wish (2023)

United States of America

Animation, Family, Fantasy, Adventure

Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Animation Studios

Ariana DeBose, Chris Pine, Alan Tudyk, Angelique Cabral, Victor Garber, Natasha Rothwell

Chris Buck, Fawn Veerasunthorn

Chris Buck, Allison Moore, Allison Moore, Jennifer Lee

Taglines: Be careful what you wish for.

friendship, black magic, wish, musical, computer animation, female protagonist, betrayal by friend, aftercreditsstinger, woman director, wicked king, disabled person, evil king, star, corrupt government

Asha, 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 - 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.

Reviews:

Author: Geronimo1967
With her grandpa hitting his hundredth birthday, the precocious young "Asha" hopes that the King, keeper of all of the wishes made by the islanders in their idyllic home, will agree to make his long-forgotten dream come true. Coincidentally, he is also looking for a special assistant and she is up for the job! A chance to kill two birds with one stone sees her in the royal presence and in the course of her pitch, she jumps the gun and implores the king to grant her grandfather's wish. His prevarication causes us all to begin to smell a rat - is the benevolent king really all he seems to be? She leaves disappointed and in desperation makes a wish of her own - but on a star, this time. It decides to leave the heavens and come and help her on her quest to release all the trapped wishes and free the kingdom from it's increasingly menacing monarch... It's an OK animation this, but the story is really quite thin with characters that don't much ignite the imagination - except, perhaps, the goat "Valentino" who has easily the best of what little comedy there is in the rather earnest script. The creatively entitled "The Wish" is the standard power ballad amongst the really quite unremarkable soundtrack that you just know is desperate to get to Leigh Harline's Disney theme tune "When You Wish Upon a Star" at the end. It's an amalgam of a few stories and will probably keep the youngsters entertained first time around. There's not a great deal for the grown ups, though, and I'm not sure it will be remembered for long into this animator's second century.