With Wish, has Disney lost its magic touch?

The animated film Wish was supposed to be Disney's holiday blockbuster and a celebration of the company's 100th anniversary, but a lukewarm opening weekend and harsh reviews suggest it won't be the next Frozen-level phenomenon.

With Disney hosting its annual town hall meeting for investors this week, film critics Bilge Ebiri and Kristy Puchko join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to consider why Wish missed the mark, and how Disney can correct course.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

LISTEN | Today's episode on YouTube:

Elamin: Kristy, let's start talking about Wish. Disney hoped that it would be a Frozen-level blockbuster, but the reviews and the box office are telling a different story. What went wrong with Wish?

Kristy: Wish feels like Disney was like, "OK, we have to have a noble princess who's pretty and cool and looks enough like our other dolls that she'll sell, but not so much like them that people don't feel she's essential, and she has to have a talking animal. And there have to be songs." It feels like a checklist. It doesn't feel like someone was like, "I have a good story."

The lyrics are painfully embarrassing. There is a lyric so bad that when I heard it I thought I heard it wrong. And then I saw later on Twitter somebody was like, "Did anybody else hear a forest animal sing, 'When it comes to the universe we're all shareholders?'" That's a real lyric in a movie called Wish.

Bilge: It's a Disney Freudian slip, right?

WATCH | I'm A Star from Wish:

Elamin: Well, I was going to say what I love about the reviews for Wish is that no one seems to be holding back how they really feel about this movie even out of the slightest bit of politeness. Bilge, the headline for your review for Vulture does not mince words. I know you didn't write the headline, but the headline is "Disney's Wish Fails on Every Level." Please, man, tell us what you really think, you know?

Bilge: So what's funny is I did write that particular headline. A lot of the comments I got on that review were — there were a lot of people who agreed with it — but then there were also a lot of people who were like, "Why are you being so mean? You must hate Disney." And actually … I generally like Disney movies. I was a big fan of Encanto. I love Frozen, which is a film that Chris Buck, one of the directors of Wish did; Jennifer Lee was also involved. And so these are all people who have made movies I love.

I'm a big fan of classic Disney. I've spent the last several years digging into the history of Disney productions, so when they come out with a stinker — or what I think is a stinker; there are people who like Wish, and it's totally fine to enjoy the movie…. But when something like that comes, for some people maybe it's like built-in rage against Disney. But for me, it was kind of like, "Oh my God, how could you give us this? How could this be so bland?"

Kristy: It's 100 years! It's supposed to be your big movie, and this is what you gave us? The origin story of the wish from When You Wish Upon a Star? That was a dumb idea from that first press announcement, and I was like. "Win me over. Give me something." And truly, you have Chris Pine playing the villain. You have Ariana DeBose, who has such a beautiful voice.

Elamin: One of the best voices of her generation, right? And this is what you use her for.

Kristy: To her credit, she does a beautiful job with songs that are not good. But Chris Pine's villain song is such a let-down. I miss a good villain song.

Elamin: Be Prepared? All time great.

Kristy: I love Jafar's song because it's just petty. He's already won. He's just dragging Aladdin through the dirt.

Elamin: It's a victory lap, 100 per cent.

WATCH | This Is The Thanks I Get?! from Wish:

Kristy: That's what I want. But all you see is Chris Pine being like, "Nobody likes me. Nobody appreciates me." I want more.… With animation, there's the idea that the sky's the limit and we can do whatever. I think that's a cool thing, but I think it also gets abused. A big thing we're seeing this year is Disney invested too hard in their hardcore fandom that's going to buy whatever they sell, and so the actual crafting of story has fallen to the wayside. I love Alan Tudyk. Power to him. But that goat he plays really feels like they just showed him the movie and let him freestyle, and then animated stuff in.

Elamin: He's in a different movie, for sure.

Kristy: I love him and I think he's very funny, but he makes a lot of one-liner jokes that no one responds to at all. I feel like they were like, "Oh, Alan, just try some stuff."... It's funny, but it's not grounded in anything.

Elamin: Kristy, do you see Wish as an isolated failure, or is it symptomatic of a greater existential crisis that's happening at Disney?

Kristy: Look at this year. They have had failure after failure after failure. I think some of it is that they're not necessarily framing these movies as event movies in the way I wish they would. Because I think Haunted Mansion is a way funner movie than it got credit for.

Elamin: Haunted Mansion also suffered because of the strike.

Kristy: And also they put it out in the summer…. Don't we understand that's a Halloween movie? It's a very strange vibe. But what you're seeing with The Marvels and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is you already have to be so invested in these stories and in these franchises; the buy-in is astronomical. The people I've seen who really like Wish are Disney adults who are picking up all these Easter eggs. Some of them aren't even Easter eggs. It's just like, "And here's Peter Pan," whatever.

Elamin: Yeah, and her friends are literally named after the Seven Dwarves.

Kristy: It's not subtle. Disney has become inaccessible to us because for The Marvels, which is a movie I enjoyed but I do think is a mess, you not only have to have seen Captain Marvel but also several Avengers movies, and also two different Disney+ shows, just to understand the background before that story begins. That's too much of a buy-in. Audiences are changing. Gen Z is not into going to theatres like the audiences before. We've seen with Barbie, people will come to theatres if you make it an event. Women will come to theatres if you make it an event. Certainly the strike hurt that, but it doesn't make an excuse for the movies in the first half of the year that still weren't doing well

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Panel produced by Stuart Berman.