To celebrate Disney’s centenary, the House of the Mouse have given us this classical magical adventure. It’s more or less a tribute to the very concept of Disney and also a sort of origin story for the Disney wishing star, which strikes us as an odd choice but we’ll let it slide. It’s also kind of riffing on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, if you squint a bit.
How to watch Wish in the UK
Wish is now screening in UK cinemas.
What is Wish about?
As Disney’s official synopsis tells us: “Wish follows a young girl named Asha who 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. Asha a 17-year-old driven optimist, and leader in the making. She will face one of the most formidable enemies in the universe and will have to team up with Star, a cosmic force and boundless ball of pure energy and maybe chaos.”
The cast of Wish
Ariana DeBose is Asha; Chris Pine is King Magnifico; Alan Tudyk is Valentino, a goat (bless you, Alan Tudyk); Angelique Cabral is Queen Amaya; Victor Garber is Sabino, Asha’s 100-year-old grandfather; Natasha Rothwell is Sakina, Asha’s mother; Jennifer Kumiyama is Dahlia, Asha’s best friend; with Harvey Guillén, Niko Vargas, Evan Peters, Ramy Youssef, Jon Rudnitsky, Della Saba, Keone Young, Lucas Sigler, Holland Watkins, Woody Buck, Efé, Nicole Lynn Evans, Heather Matarazzo, Nasim Pedrad, and Abraham Sigler also lending their voices to the exercise.
Wish trailer
What are the critics saying about Wish?
Unfortunately, Wish is the first Walt Disney Animation Studios movie to be rated Rotten on Rotten Tomatoes since Chicken Little back in 2005. Mired in nostalgia and weighed down by its own sense of legacy and importance, the film ironically fails to capture that old Disney magic by trying too hard to put it on a pedestal.
