Wish (2023)
Directors: Chris Buck, Fawn Veerasunthorn
Screenwriters: Jennifer Lee, Allison Moore
Starring: Ariana DeBose, Chris Pine, Alan Tudyk, Angelique Cabral, Victor Garber, Natasha Rothwell, Jennifer Kumiyama, Harvey Guillén, Evan Peters, Ramy Youssef, Jon Rudnitsky

One hundred years of Disney. How does one possibly celebrate such an occasion? The little studio that begun with animated movies about a cartoon mouse (and rabbit) almost one hundred years ago now exists as a behemoth of the entertainment industry, owning half of Hollywood as well as the famed Disneyland and Disneyworld theme parks. With so much power, so much history and so many controversies, what could the company plan for their 100th birthday party release Wish that could possibly pay homage to such a legacy?

After undergoing a five year hiatus from releasing original animated movies between 2016’s Moana and 2021’s Raya and the Last Dragon, Disney have gone back to what they do best, what they are most known for, animation. They have returned to their roots in the past few years and released animated pictures like Raya, Encanto, and Strange World, to varying degrees of success. 

Wish finds itself set in the wonderful kingdom of Rosas, which is ruled by its king Magnifico (Chris Pine). King Magnifico performs a yearly ritual in which once someone turns 18, they can pass their greatest wish onto him and he will protect it and potentially allow it to come true one day. However, once Asha (Ariana DeBose) discovers that Magnifico’s intentions may not be as pure as they seem, she realises that she must do whatever she can to stop him. Even wishing upon a star. 

As is probably obvious from the story of a young girl wishing upon a star, the film finds itself heavily inspired by the famed Disney tune “When You Wish Upon a Star”, which originally featured in Pinocchio but has since become Disney’s signature song. Much like this little reference to the past of the company, the film is also filled to the brim with references that show the journey of Disney from then to now. 

It’s a good idea in scope; a nice way to celebrate the history of the studio whilst pushing forward with the new. This is, however, the only facet of the movie that feels at all genuine.

Whilst Disney were patting themselves on the back for how great their company used to be, they forgot to put heart into any other aspects of Wish. Similar to the hand-drawn animation style that the film attempts to replicate, much of Wish is flat and one dimensional.

This disingenuity is most evident in the film’s characters. The main character Asha (voiced by DeBose in perhaps the only memorable vocal performance of the entire film) is given a bit more depth and personality, but the side characters make it clear what was most important to Disney in the making of this film. The supporting cast of Asha’s family, friends and sidekicks is upwards of ten people, all of whom are of varying races, genders and sizes, placing equality, diversity and inclusivity at the forefront of the film to showcase the company’s core values. At least, what the company would like you to think are their core values. This becomes painstakingly obvious through the number “Knowing What I Know Now”, in which the film makes a point to show the differences in the characters through their blocking.

The issue is, these characters are given so little to do and have such little depth that we simply do not care about a single one of them. Though the filmmakers would like us to believe that these are beliefs, values and causes that the studio care about, they do almost nothing to convince us of that fallacy. Instead, the little bit of character that Asha’s friends are afforded is that each of them are inspired by the dwarfs in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This once again proves that what Disney cares about the most is patting themselves on the back.

Wish essentially only exists as a form of corporate self-fellatio that is as insufferable to watch as it is to write about.

Coming in at only ninety-five minutes, the centenary celebration of Walt Disney Studios moves along at a breakneck pace, showing us that even the execs up at Disney HQ wanted this one to be over just as quickly as we did. This simultaneously illustrates just how little care was put into the story aspects of the film and how Wish is really just one big advertisement for the company that made it. Come the end of the film, a character asks how they could possibly keep the magic of the Kingdom of Rosas alive, to which another responds “easy, just keep wishing.” What Disney are really saying is “keep buying tickets.”

Just as one man’s trash is another man’s treasure, it must be said that among the garbage there are some nuggets of gold in Wish. The story has a really good idea underpinning it, and the film offers a nice opportunity to create a full-circle moment for the “wish upon a star” fable that Disney is essentially built upon. Going back to the hand-drawn aesthetic is also a nice touch, as is making the film a musical. Given more time, care and passion, Wish could have been something special. All it needed was some heart. The lack thereof in the final product tells us more about the company that made it than anything in Wish ever could. 

Wish is a hollow and lazy picture that feeds its audiences the propaganda of Disney, only this time they aren’t even hiding it with the usual magic that pervades throughout their output. Though the kids seeing this film will undoubtedly enjoy it, they deserve better. 

Score: 7/24

Sleepless in Seattle (1993)
Director: Nora Ephron
Screenwriters: Nora Ephron, David S. Ward, Jeff Arch
Starring: Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks, Bill Pullman, Ross Malinger, Rosie O’Donnell, Rob Reiner, Victor Garber, Rita Wilson

One of the most tried and true tropes of the romantic comedy is the meet cute. It’s that pivotal moment when the two leads meet for the first time, usually under humorous or unconventional circumstances, sparking the development of their romantic relationship. Maybe they fall instantly, maybe their love needs time to grow, but one thing is always true: this encounter is the beginning of everything.

But what if this beginning happened at the end? Say, five minutes before the credits roll?

Sleepless in Seattle, directed by Norah Ephron and co-written by Ephron, David S. Ward and Jeff Arch, works not in spite of being a rom-com, but because of it. Upon its initial release, it was revered as an instant classic. In the decades since, it has remained beloved by audiences and critics. The film spawned countless spoofs and homages, and its final scene atop the Empire State Building is one of the most iconic and recognizable images in pop culture. It’s the film that cemented Meg Ryan’s status as ‘America’s sweetheart,’ with several critics quick to crown Ryan and co-star Tom Hanks as the new king and queen of the rom-com. Nora Ephron earned her third Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay following Silkwood (1983) and When Harry Met Sally… (1989). Released 30 years ago, Sleepless in Seattle has endured as a top tier romantic comedy that could turn even the most steadfast cynic into a believer in love, fate, and the magic of the movies.

When architect Sam Baldwin (Tom Hanks) loses his wife Maggie (Carey Lowell) to cancer, he and his young son Jonah (Ross Malinger) relocate to Seattle for a fresh start. While Sam continues to mourn the loss of his wife, Johan calls into a radio station one night, convinced his dad needs help finding a new wife. While Sam is hesitant as first, he eventually opens up about Maggie live on-air, and thousands of women across the country listen in, including Baltimore journalist Annie Reed (Meg Ryan), who is engaged to Walter (Bill Pullman) and firmly believes that there’s no such thing as fate. But, when Annie hears Sam’s voice that night on the radio, something changes inside of her, leading her to wonder if there is such a thing as destiny.

Though the script was rewritten countless times before Nora Ephron turned in her final draft, three writers are credited with the final product, each contributing an essential piece to the story. Jeff Arch’s sentimentality is utilized best when exploring the melancholy of grief, like in the scene when Sam imagines speaking to his late wife in the living room one night. This occasional heaviness is balanced with Ephron’s trademark wit and humor, and David S. Ward credits Ephron with contributing much of the film’s dialog. Like with When Harry Met Sally…, Ephron uses Sleepless in Seattle to explore the strange world of dating, with all its rules and contradictions, this time through Sam, who is terrified to date again after being married for so long. Rob Reiner’s character’s grim assessment of the dating landscape in the 90s might come across as sexist and outdated to some modern audiences, and it is, but it’s still a fascinating look at the state of relationships between men and women during a time when feminism was facing a severe cultural backlash. It’s especially interesting when Sam tells Jonah how the erotic thriller, Fatal Attraction, “Scared the hell out of every man in America,” showcasing just how much of a cultural juggernaut the film was at the time while exposing men’s obvious anxiety over women’s supposed empowerment.

Throughout Sleepless in Seattle, there is a running commentary on how movies affect our perception of romantic love. Seeing how distraught Annie is about the possibility of never getting to meet Sam, her best friend Becky (Rosie O’Donnell) pointedly tells her, “You don’t want to be in love. You want to be in love in a movie.” An Affair to Remember, the 1957 classic starring Carey Grant and Deborah Kerr that served as the inspiration for Sleepless in Seattle, is referenced several times in the film, bringing more than one female character to tears. What’s the point of movies like that anyway, Ephron seems to ask. That kind of love – the written in the stars, can’t possibly be a coincidence kind of love – isn’t real. But if that’s the question, Sleepless in Seattle itself is the answer. It’s a film that explores the affects that cinema has on our fantasies of love without ever denying its ultimate power.

There is a coziness to Sleepless in Seattle, a quiet contemplativeness, accompanied by a soundtrack packed with Jazz hits from artists like Nat King Cole and Louis Armstrong. It’s like being wrapped in a blanket on a cold night, drinking hot cocoa and gazing up at the stars. It feels intimate and grand at the same time. Sleepless in Seattle has long been described as the perfect Valentine’s Day movie, but it also works as a Christmas movie as well. Because the majority of the film takes place in between those two holidays, there’s a magical quality to it that makes it feel warm and inviting.

Watching it now, Sleepless in Seattle feels nostalgic in a way that it probably didn’t when it was first released. It’s the kind of film that couldn’t be made now, considering how far technology has come in the last three decades. 1993 feels like such an alien world, a time before smartphones and Facebook, when someone’s very existence could still be shrouded in mystery – when you had to pay for long-distance calling, when there wasn’t instant messaging, when you couldn’t google someone’s name and 100 search results come up – although Annie’s investigation of Sam does seem an awful lot like a primitive version of looking someone up on Facebook or Google. Sleepless in Seattle transports us back to when we could feel the miles between us, when there was a very real possibility that Sam and Annie would never meet. Because of this, the stakes feel higher and the idea of them actually getting together against all odds does feel a little like fate.

Sleepless in Seattle would not be half as charming and funny if it wasn’t for its strong supporting cast. Watching the movie now is like getting a crash course in who’s who in the 1990s. There’s Rob Reiner, who appears briefly as Sam’s friend Jay, who directed When Harry Met Sally…, The Princess Bride, and the classic 80s coming of age film Stand by Me, all within a few years of each other. Contemporary viewers are sure to recognize him as Jess’s dad from ‘New Girl’. There’s Victor Garber (a few years out from his performance in Titanic) and Rita Wilson, who delivers a monologue about An Affair to Remember that deserved an Oscar nomination on its own. There are also blink and you’ll miss them cameos from Frances Conroy (‘American Horror Story’) and Gaby Hoffman, the latter of whom appears as the younger version of Demi Moore in Now and Then and more recently played Adam’s (Adam Driver) sister on the HBO show ‘GIRLS’.

But really, none of this – the supporting cast, the writing, the direction – would mean a single thing if it wasn’t for Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. They’re endlessly likable, and their chemistry is somehow apparent even though they spend the majority of the film thousands of miles away from one another. Sleepless in Seattle hinges on their relationship. We need to believe that they’re meant to be and, although they have less than 10 minutes to convince us of that, they manage it flawlessly. It’s true that Sam and Annie don’t officially meet until the end of the film, but there is a moment towards the end, when Annie travels to Seattle in search of Sam, when they briefly come face to face with one another. Love at first sight is a tricky thing to accomplish. It relies almost entirely on the actor’s ability to just look at each other, to express a depth of emotion without saying anything at all. Afterward, Sam tells his friends that, “It was like I knew her or something.”

Sleepless in Seattle dares us to believe in the magic and power of the movies, to live for just a moment in a world where everything works out. Where the stars align and fate intervenes, and the person you’ve been looking for has been looking for you too. But the movie continues to endure because of one simple, universal truth: when it comes to love, sometimes you just know. And, if you’re really lucky, a trip to the top of the Empire State Building feels a lot like coming home.

Score: 24/24

Happiest Season (2020)
Director: Clea DuVall
Screenwriter: Clea DuVall, Mary Holland
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Mackenzie Davis, Alison Brie, Aubrey Plaza, Dan Levy, Mary Holland, Victor Garber, Mary Steenburgen

Happiest Season may not be the first Christmas film to explore the lives of LGBT characters – think The Family Stone and Netflix’s Let It Snow – but it has been one of the first to be marketed towards a mainstream audience. Here, Kristen Stewart, with her Charlie’s Angels undercut, ‘San Junipero’ actor Mackenzie Davis and Ingrid Goes West star Aubrey Plaza are the perfect ingredients for the wholesome gay old time.

We meet Harper (Davis) and Abby (Stewart) on a candy cane walk. Harper loves Christmas and, because all couples must be odd couples, Abby is not as much of a fan. We learn very early on that this is of course due to a tragic but obvious backstory of both of her parents being dead. Nevertheless, Harper wants Abby to understand the joy of Christmas and so invites her to her family home for the holidays. All is well for this Christmas romantic comedy, the opening sequence being like the happily ever after to another film. There’s just one issue… Harper isn’t out.

This is where the film goes downhill.

In Happiest Season, the coming out narrative is used to excuse the behaviour of the lead character, and Harper’s behaviour can not be excused. Not only does she hide herself from her family (which is okay of course), but she lies to Abby about this and asks Abby to hide her true authentic self.

Harper spends the majority of the run time ignoring Abby and flirting with her ex boyfriend. It doesn’t help that there is zero chemistry between our two leads and that the main point of tension is Abby being treated poorly by everyone in Harper’s family – especially by Harper’s mother, played by Mary Steenburgen. Steenburgen often plays the loving, kind Christmas mother (think Elf and Step Brothers), but in Happiest Season she is the ultimate First Lady supporting her husband’s campaign for town Mayor, and has no time to entertain Harper’s ‘friend’, often making cruel orphan jibes and excluding her from the family. In addition, the children of Harper’s sister Sloane (Brie) get Abby arrested. At no point is it clear as to why Abby is even with Harper, and given the couple’s lack of backstory and on-screen chemistry, you find yourself wishing for Abby to leave her disrespectful partner, especially after being treated so poorly. This wish is only made greater by the presence of Aubrey Plaza as Harper’s high school girlfriend Riley, who forms a much more convincing bond with Abby; Plaza and Stewart displaying a real chemistry that is otherwise lacking from the film.

The central “hidden lover” narrative is not new to LGBT films, nor LGBT Christmas films, with almost precisely the same narrative being seen in Make the Yuletide Gay (2009), where a college student takes his boyfriend home for the holidays and they pretend to be roommates as the lead character isn’t out to his parents yet. The crucial difference between the two films is how Make the Yuletide Gay’s lead character Olaf (yes, that is his real name) is respectful of Nathan, whilst the same can’t always be said of Harper.

Happiest Season’s coming out narrative is therefore damaging in three key ways…

Firstly, it suggests that if you are an Abby you simply have to deal with how your partner treats you because they are in the closet.

Secondly, if you are a Harper, you will only be happy once you’re out.

Thirdly, and most damaging of all, Happiest Season places so much emphasis on the coming out to one’s parents, whereas in reality coming out is constant and continuous.

That’s not to say that Happiest Season isn’t without typical holiday movie charm. Perhaps the standout addition is Harper’s other sister Jane (Holland – who also co-wrote the screenplay). Jane is overlooked as the third sister, yet all she wants is for everyone around her to be happy. She is seemingly the only family member with a heart of gold, spending one hundred hours on her White Elephant (Secret Santa) present. Abby’s best friend and comic relief (Levy), is also a breath of fresh air – he might not be able to look after fish but he is seemingly the only person who cares about Abby. Sadly, this pair are not enough to save the film.

Despite some redeeming features, Happiest Season is not a modern Christmas classic. As a community we need less toxic representation, especially when dealing with the process of coming out, and ultimately Happiest Season is not the LGBT holiday film we were promised nor the one we deserve.

12/24

Dark Waters (2020)
Director: Todd Haynes
Screenwriter: Mario Correa, Matthew Micheal Carnahan
Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins, Bill Camp, Victor Garber, Mare Winningham, Bill Pullman

Mark Ruffalo is no stranger to the ‘They Knew’ thriller genre having previously starred in the 2015 Best Picture Oscar winner Spotlight. And, much like that earlier critical success, the actor’s latest film Dark Waters turns from your garden variety legal thriller into something much bigger and much scarier than it may at first seem, his character Robert Bilott advancing from a conspiracy theory handed to him during a family favour, to attempting to prove that DuPont is responsible for polluting a water supply.

Dark Waters makes no secrets of playing on elements of the horror side of the thriller genre. Its opening, which depicts a group of teenagers in 1975 breaking into DuPont land to swim in a lake, reads like the start of a classic horror film, encouraging you to wonder which monster may be awaiting them in the water. Upon being chased away by the EPA during their discovery of a deformed frog, we are left to contemplate how Dark Waters is about a horrific monster, only this one isn’t supernatural and is instead a very powerful real life villain.

Based on the New York Times magazine article “The Lawyer Who Became DuPont’s Worst Nightmare” by Nathaniel Rich, Dark Waters is the 2020 Oscar season’s second major film release to be based upon a magazine article (the other being A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood), and is therefore tied to some over-drawn conventions of the legal thriller genre. As such, Ruffalo’s character Bilott goes through the motions of any lawyer uncovering something vitally important on film – he is presented with information, fights his own conscience and everybody sensibly telling him to walk away, and then he finally goes after the truth, teaching us values as he learns them for himself.

Thankfully, the film does not become a victim to the ‘true life’ investigation film tropes that we saw earlier this year in Just Mercy. Director Todd Haynes has you so on edge that you hold your breath while Bilott looks through boxes and boxes of evidence. You wish for him to find just a slither of something to go on, because we have already been shown the real evidence in the form of small-town farmer Will Tennant’s (Camp’s) diseased animals and his children’s discoloured teeth.

When Bilott gathers more and more evidence, we begin to see what is really going on, and it’s much bigger than any one farm in a rural community.

In a revelation brought on by an innocent looking advertisement for a frying pan, Bilott jumps back like he has seen a ghost. DuPont is the monster of this monster movie.

Shot in yellow and grey tones, everything and everyone looks sick and toxic in Dark Waters. Bilott’s increasing paranoia and shakes gives the film the feel of an infestation horror, and the more it progresses and the more that the character uncovers, the more you realise that what you’re watching on the screen has affected you without you even knowing it. And, much like the panicked expression and literal loss of breath that accompanies Rufallo’s performance at vital moments, you are left gobsmacked as you realise there’s nothing you can do about it; that is just one example of what large corporations have done and continue to do.

Dark Waters is by no means a perfect film however. Anne Hathaway as Bilott’s wife Sarah is given very little to do, and as such an impassioned speech in which she tells Robert’s boss ‘not to talk to her like she is the wife’ (when she has spent the last 90 minutes of the film being ‘the wife’) feels forced if not entirely fake. Although a lawyer herself, she is included in the film to simply support and look after the kids, the most important of her moments being included only to push the film to its next plot point, herself acting as a plot device and little more. This characterisation notably let down both the film and Anne Hathaway, an actress usually more reliable when choosing meaningful roles.

Generally, despite issues with Hathaway’s characterisation, Dark Waters is a refreshing take on the legal thriller genre, and one of those films that demonstrates the power that any one person can have. But take note, for there is no comfort given, there is no uplifting resolution in which our hero beats the bad guy. In fact, there are so many false endings and near misses that you, like Billot, feel exhausted by the end. Even now, in 2020, the fight against DuPont is not over – a fact that will leave you gasping as you leave, just as you have the whole way through.

Dark Waters does not offer hope or comfort but demands that you keep fighting. It is a meaningful film largely presented to a very high standard that is likely to be a problem for a lot of the people who deserve for it to be a problem. A moving portrait of a society that has lost its control of big business and must act instantly to change the structures in place.

17/24