For a movie called Aladdin, all of the buzz leading up to the release of Disney’s remake of the classic 1992 animated movie was about the horrifying version of Genie as played by a buff, computer generated, blue Will Smith. Thankfully, Genie wasn’t all that terrifying in the final cut of the movie. Instead, the most offensive effrontery was not having the ambition to do anything more copy and paste the original Aladdin and make it just charming enough to vaguely please everyone to the tune of $1.04 billion.

Watch the Aladdin Honest Trailer below for a more scathing dig into the Disney remake.

Aladdin Honest Trailer

Thankfully, Aladdin was able to bring some amusement to the proceedings with actors showing at least some emotion and passion in their performances, unlike that expressionless animals of The Lion King. Unfortunately, the movie itself only gets by on the merit of the original Aladdin being so good that a remake is automatically going to be mildly entertaining when you stick to the original 90% of the time.

Where Aladdin primarily fails is only giving Jasmine a little more to do this time. While she gets a couple powerful musical moments to herself and doesn’t rely on Aladdin for her happiness and surmounting of oppressive obstacles in her culture, it’s not quite enough to make the movie feel all that refreshing. Maybe that’s because the movie is still called Aladdin. So perhaps we’ll just have to wait until that developing Aladdin sequel gets off the ground before we get to see something a bit more original.

At the very least, we’re happy Disney gave a diverse set of leads their own movie and didn’t white wash these characters. Perhaps that’s enough to let an average movie get by, though we hope for something a little more memorable for diverse casts in the future.

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