A decade ago, at a time when both Disney and Pixar’s animation output was not exactly unsuccessful but entirely unmemorable, Frozen became a sticky $1.2bn game-changer, a box office hit that turned into an all-consuming phenomenon. It won Oscars, produced earworms that burrowed (a little too) deep, spawned a $1.45bn sequel, led to a hit Broadway musical and showed Disney how to dust off the contemporarily critiqued princess narrative rather than throw it away completely.
Opening in the same Thanksgiving slot 10 years later, with a script co-written by Frozen’s Jennifer Lee, Wish is a bullishly positioned successor, another self-aware, formula-tweaking Disney Princess narrative with as many radio-friendly power ballads as there are Christmas-timed merchandising opportunities. But Wish feels less like Disney’s new Frozen and more like an off-brand rip-off, aesthetically inferior, hampered by a mostly uninspired and underpowered plot and, most deadeningly, lacking in magic. As grotesque as Disney might still be as one of the most effectively illustrative go-tos for the horrors of mass-market capitalism, it’s impossible not to feel that swell of wonder when the studio logo kicks in. While that feeling might have been more absent in recent films that follow, a lifetime of examples have taught us to naively hope for more of it and despite Wish serving us all of the old-fashioned trimmings, from storybook opener to soaring finale, there remains an absence.
