‘Wish,’ ‘Leo,’ and ‘Trolls Band Together’: Three new animated musicals

Disney’s centennial homage to itself, despite some successful elements, is plagued by thin characterizations and even thinner songs. Plus, new Netflix and DreamWorks Animation musicals

(Note: This newsletter will be off tomorrow for the holiday and back on Friday. Happy Thanksgiving!)

Wish certainly sounded like a good idea, I’m sure, whenever it was first conceived. An animated fantasy whose release is geared towards the 100th anniversary of Walt Disney Animation Studios, the film contains numerous tributes and easter eggs referencing the company’s long and illustrious history. The idea, I guess, is to get Disney obsessives in the door to spot every reference, and hopefully bring their kids along too.

This sort of thing can work. Die Another Day, the James Bond movie that arrived on the 40th anniversary of the first one, was full of subtle homages to Bond movies of the past, most notably with Halle Berry donning Ursula Andress' old bikini from Dr. No. 

But that’s not really what Wish is doing. The new film has essentially assembled its entire plot from bits and pieces of old Disney movies. Sure, there are vocal and visual references, but that’s on top of whole sections of the plot being lifted from the likes of Fantasia, Aladdin, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. 

This causes everything to be held at a remove, and it’s clear that serving a century of Disney IP is more important to this film than storytelling is.

From moment to moment, a lot of the film is very enjoyable, with one key exception that I’ll get to. There are truly magical moments, the important emotional beats hit, and there are times when it is very affecting. It was a great idea to present the majority of the film as hand-drawn animation. But Wish is never quite as successful as the many films it’s lifting from.

Asha (voiced by Ariana DeBose) is the protagonist, a teenager in a magical land called Rosas. The kingdom was created by King Magnifico (voiced by Chris Pine), a king/sorcerer who has the power to grant wishes. However, it’s a power he hordes, collecting the wishes of everyone in the kingdom and granting them only sporadically. (The idea of everyone in the world having their wishes granted at once was also dealt with in Wonder Woman 1984, which Chris Pine also starred in, although Wish seems less concerned with the logistical or moral dimensions.) 

Asha’s grandfather (Victor Garber), who is turning 100 years old in a not-so-subtle metaphor for Disney itself, wants his wish granted, and the rejection of that causes Asha to turn on the king and, yes, wish upon a star, with the star granting that wish, appearing in the kingdom, and doing all sorts of magic. 

That happens to be the exact premise of  Iza Trapani’s “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” a classic children’s book that I used to love reading to my kids. The stuff with the star, while some of the strongest material in the film, is trying to ape that legend, Aladdin and Fantasia, but for some reason the star is a non-speaking character. (There are, however, plenty of talking animal sidekicks.)

There’s one other glaring thing wrong with Wish: The songs just plain aren’t good at all. They’re pop-oriented tunes, written mostly by Julia Michaels and Benjamin Rice, and with a couple of exceptions they’re not catchy or memorable, and the lyrics are surprisingly weak. The music, especially with the participation of a world-class vocal talent like DeBose, is a huge letdown.

Considering Disney’s fine tradition of songs in its animated movies, I’m not sure why they couldn’t do better. Alan Menken is still alive, and composing! So are Robert and Kristen  Andersen Lopez, and Lin Manuel Miranda, and even Pasek and Paul.

Speaking of the Lopezes, the most famous film featuring their songs, Frozen, marks its tenth anniversary next week. Yes, it was a megahit, but it also served as a better homage to the glorious animated Disney musicals of the past, while also successfully modernizing the formula- complete with a suite of instant classic songs. Disney will have to be content with that defining classic arriving on its 90th anniversary, instead of its hundredth. 

Leo 

Also this week, Netflix has its own animated musical offering. It’s not nearly as ambitious and comes from a company — Happy Madison — without nearly the history of providing warm fuzzies for the whole family. 

But Leo is a winner nonetheless, featuring the voice of Adam Sandler as a cynical, aging lizard who succeeds at overcoming his cynicism. 

Sandler voices the titular lizard, an elementary school classroom pet, who undergoes an existential crisis when he learns that, at age 74, he’s just a year away from the age he can expect to die. He emerges from the crisis, however, when he befriends the kids and learns he has something to live for. 

Coming from three directors — one of whom is legendary comedy writer Robert Smigel — and a team of writers that includes Sandler and Smigel, Leo is a piece of clear cornball hokum that I enjoyed immensely. 

Trolls Band Together 

To say I’m a skeptic of the Trolls franchise, which began in 2016, is an understatement. They’re movies based on a toy line. I find it very hard to tell the troll characters apart, let alone care about their plights across multiple movies. It was clearly inspired by the success of The LEGO Movie, which was much more creatively successful. 

The 2020 second film, Trolls World Tour, was for some reason based on the battles between “poptimism” and “rockism,” an esoteric feud between groups of music critics that had its heyday over a decade before that. And they couldn’t even bite the bullet and call it “Trolls 2.” 

The new movie, called Trolls Band Together and directed once again by Walt Dohrn, is a bit more tolerable. It’s a tribute to boy bands – Justin Timberlake, after all, voices the hero in all the Trolls movies — and was seemingly made to set up a backdoor reunion of NSync. Also, its plot seems lifted from the “Be Sharps” episode of The Simpsons. 

It turns out Branch (Timberlake) had a previously unmentioned career as a boy band member, playing the “baby” of the band BroZone, back when he was a literal baby. Under convoluted circumstances, he must reunite with his long-estrange bandmates, who are also his brothers. 

Is it still an extended toy commercial? Yes. Is it at all a ploy to get NSync back together? Sure. But it’s all fun, with enjoyable tunes new and old, and some very impressive animation as well.