Review: "Aladdin"

The part we feared most, Will Smith as the genie, actually turns out to be not so bad.

This is Will Smith, after all, an entertainer not without his charms. His genie is goofy and funny and appropriately self-important. The blue CGI body is still a little off. And although he doesn’t make us forget Robin Williams’ manic-yet-slyly-tender voice work in the original animated “Aladdin,” Smith turns out to be an able, updated substitute.

The rest of the cast…

Mena Massoud and Naomi Scott are fine as Aladdin and Princess Jasmine, all a-twinkle and a-dimple as the comely young Arabian couple. (He’s Egyptian and she’s British/Indian, which isn’t too egregiously off by Hollywood standards.) I liked the cartoon version of the sultan as an affable dolt; Navid Negahban seems more haunted than sympathetic.

The big letdown is Jafar, a far fall for one of Disney’s most scrumptious villains.

He had that scarecrow frame and twisty little beard, hooded eyes and a marvelous baritone growl (supplied by Jonathan Freeman). Marwan Kenzari just looks like some guy they plucked out of the street bazaar and put into a vizier’s outfit. Worst of all, his Jafar has a high, almost whiny voice. Not surprisingly, he’s the one character who doesn’t get to do his song from the animated version.

When it comes to screen villains, tenors go home.

You know the story: gold-hearted street rat thief Aladdin (Massoud) falls hard for Jasmine, the princess of Agrabah, who is being courted by a string of foreign princes. After picking up a magical lamp, he summons the big blue genie (Smith) to sorcery him into ersatz royalty, makes a big entrance, and then things go south because of all the lying -- plus those nasty Jafar schemes.

Of all the cartoon movies Disney has turned into a live-action remake, “Aladdin” falls smack in the middle. It’s a bright, fast-paced spectacle that isn’t just a shot-for-shot remake of the original. Director Guy Ritchie, known for turning stodgy Sherlock Holmes into a knife-fighting action star, co-wrote the screenplay with John August.

Some of it works really well. The magic carpet ride to the song “A Whole New World” is still a dazzler, as Aladdin and Jasmine cruise the world and discover love. The entrance of the fictional “Prince Ali” has all the jazz and verve of the original. I appreciated the updating of Jasmine’s character into a strong-willed young woman who doesn’t just resent having the sultan pick her husband, but actually vies to take the sultan’s place.

Other stuff lands with a clunk. Abu the monkey is a little too CGI for his own good. I disliked having Jafar’s henchman, the parrot Iago, relegated to mere dumb beast. The snappy repertoire between the haughty Jafar and his Bronx-cheering, Gilbert Gottfried-voiced pet was the animated film’s main comic engine.

A couple of new songs just plain don’t play. In the oddest one, “Speechless,” Jasmine starts belting while the guards are leading her away, and all her enemies start dissolving into dust a la “Avengers: Infinity War,” and I wondered if she’d suddenly acquired magical powers.

Similarly, a romance contrived for genie and Jasmine’s handmaiden (Nasim Pedrad), falls rather flat. He’s a world-bending cosmic powerhouse -- why he gotta have a dame?

I can’t say as I really wanted a live-action “Aladdin,” but now that it’s here I object to its existence less than I thought I would. My kids enjoyed the heck out of it, and even the stretches that had me sighing with impatience weren’t so interminably long they had me wishing I was somewhere else.

Review: "The Promise"

“The Promise” is a film of startling authority and ravishing power. It has all the elements of classic epic: a sweeping historical backdrop with a very intimate human story at the center. It’s one of those rare fiction movies that has the weight of truth behind it.

Oscar Isaac, recalling a young Omar Sharif in looks and screen presence, plays an Armenian medical student who is caught up in the Armenian Genocide during the waning days of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. To this day its successor nation, Turkey, refuses to acknowledge the systematic murder of 1.5 million children, women and men.

Not apologize or make reparations -- just say that it happened.

If the film harbors a reservoir of rage about this at its core, then director Terry George, who co-wrote the script with Robin Swicord, takes great pains to conceal it. Instead, the focus is on the love triangle at the center, with Christian Bale playing an American journalist who also romances Charlotte Le Bon.

Rather than an angry polemic, “The Promise” takes on the tone of an elegy -- a wistful tribute to a people who were wronged but still endure, continuing a story that goes back thousands of years.

Isaac plays Mikael, an apothecary from a small town who wants to be a doctor. He can’t afford the tuition to the Imperial Medical School in Constantinople, so he agrees to an arranged marriage to the daughter (Angela Sarafyan) of the wealthiest man in the city, using the dowry of 400 gold coins to pay his fees. The betrothed pair is pragmatic about the arrangement, content to build a life together and hope that affection can grow there.

In the capital, Mikael is awed by the trappings and possibilities of one of the great cities of the world. He falls in with Emre (Marwan Kenzari), a wealthy playboy and son of a high Turkish mercantilist. He stays with his well-to-do cousin, befriending his family and their tutor, a spirited young woman named Ana (Le Bon). Like him, she is from a small Armenian town, but has spent the last few years touring the world with her boyfriend.

Her relationship with Chris Myers (Bale), a noted reporter for the Associated press, is difficult but stable. He fearlessly insults the Turkish leaders’ cozying up to the Germans, and when war breaks out he becomes the leading chronicler of the genocide for the West. Chris is hardly an objective observer, instilling his outrage into every dispatch and telegram.

The love between Mikael and Ana slowly grows, apparent to them both but something they are reluctant to pursue. He has promised himself to another, a vow that seems less and less viable as entire towns and populations are displaced or murdered outright. She feels a duty to stand by Chris, even as his work becomes all-consuming.

Shohreh Aghdashloo is a memorable presence as Mikael’s mother, who pushes him to put his romance aside and remain faithful to his family and traditions. Rade Serbedzija turns up as a leader of Armenian refugees, who is willing to run from the Turks -- but only so far.

It’s a terrific, career-defining performance by Isaac, playing a man of innate gentleness and decency trying to negotiate an age of madness and hatred. It reminded me in a lot of ways of Sharif’s character in “Doctor Zhivago.” I hope his turn will be remembered when the next awards season rolls around.

I should note that “The Promise” has been targeted by genocide deniers for their bile. Among other things, they’re plastering negative ratings on movie websites like IMDb.com. Laughably, it received more than 80,000 ratings after debuting at the Toronto Film Festival with just three screenings, with most of those being one-star scores.

I’ve always said that anyone can be a critic, but the one sacrosanct requirement is that you have to have seen the movie before you’re allowed to offer your opinion on it.

I have seen “The Promise,” and my opinion is it’s the best film so far in 2017.