The Disney Grooming Institute’s next cinematic offering is the $250 – $300 million Wish (promotion plus production), and so far, the critics are not impressed.
With 48 reviews filed, Disney’s next tentpole sits at a dispiriting 63 percent fresh at Rotten Tomatoes.
To avoid accusations of sexism (because you know how much those bother me), I’m only going to quote the lady reviewers…
Wish is a disappointment. What could have been a beautiful celebration of Disney’s past ends up being one big poorly designed Easter egg hunt. The heart is in the right place, but the pieces never add up to something more.
Two stars out of five. So sad.
And honestly, I would like Disney, or at least this particular Disney movie, far more if it took risks and held true to what makes it unique. Wish is working with some interesting ideas, including the struggle and hard work that comes with trying to fulfill a lifelong dream. It also continues a welcome trend for Disney in terms of centering women of color, which we’ve seen in films like Raya and the Last Dragon and Encanto.
Imagine how much this movie has to suck for someone who uses phrases like “women of color” to give it a bad review. So sad.
At the heart of Wish is a topical and winning formula, so it’s a shame that it’s squandered for the sake of a lukewarm, ultimately safe conclusion. The film co-opts and parades a rebelliousness it doesn’t want to commit to: Good wins, but only within the existing structure. If our continuously unprecedented times have taught us any lessons, it’s that the present-day order will need nothing less than a total overhaul. If the last number of Wish — a powerful reprise of “This Wish” — tells us anything, it’s that Asha and her people know that, too.
So, so sad.
If this sucker bombs, and I think if we close our eyes, clap our hands, and wish for it to bomb, it just might, Disney will be closing its 100th anniversary with its worst year ever. This year makes Disney’s Dean Jones era look like 1939.
The foo-foo critics at Metacritic are even less impressed. Wish sits at an anemic 52.
I can’t imagine being a parent today — I mean, a good parent — and having to worry about a Disney movie. My parents used to drop me and my sister off at the theater all the time without worrying about Disney grooming us with gay sex and transvestites. The very idea that Disney would introduce young, innocent, impressionable kids to homosexuality and drag queens was beyond the beyond. And this was the seventies, a decade of decadence. But still, even in the era of Studio 54, the Glimmer Twins, and Pussycat Theaters, the innocence of children was never targeted by mainstream Hollywood. The idea was unthinkable.
My sister and I saw all the Disney movies. The re-releases of Pinocchio, Song of the South, Bambi, Fantasia, Bedknobs and Broomsticks... We saw all the new releases: One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing, The $1,000.000 Duck, No Deposit No Return, The Love Bug, Escape to With Mountain… Sweet, innocent entertainment. Now, you take a kid to a Disney movie, and you can feel Bob Iger’s hand crawling up your 6-year-old son’s thigh.
The naked evil that has infected our culture, all of which the hatred of Donald Trump brought out in the open, is something.
I’m thrilled The Marvels tanked. I hope Wish tanks. I hope Disney files for bankruptcy, but not before every one of its fetishist, child-grooming animators is replaced with AI.
John Nolte’s debut novel Borrowed Time (Bombardier Books) is available today. You can read an exclusive excerpt here and a review of the novel here.