NPR

'Aladdin': A CGI World, Neither Whole Nor New

Though some elements generate fresh sparks, the remake "mostly has the beat-for-beat quality of the live-action Beauty and the Beast, the current standard-bearer for pointlessness."
Shining? Sure. Shimmering? Yep. Splendid? Um ....: Aladdin (Mena Massoud) and Jasmine (Naomi Scott) in the latest live-action adaptation of the 1992 animated Disney film.

As Disney plunders its archives for live-action remakes of animated classics, the question of "Why?" continues to be less evident on the screen than it is on the company ledger. The one quiet exception was , which succeeded because it had no fidelity to the second-rate slapstick and songcraft of the original, and could re-imagine the premise from the ground up. When the catalog titles get as massive as , however,

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