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Wish Dragon Movie Review

Wish Dragon is a 2021 animated fantasy film directed by Chris Appelhans and starring Jimmy Wong. It’s a forgettable Sony offering.

My main issue with this one was its unoriginality. This is basically ‘Aladdin’ all over again, but just set in Shanghai and in modern times. That’s pretty much it. Most of the movie plays off exactly like that Disney classic, but with no edge to it whatsoever. Needless to say, I found it utterly unnecessary to make this movie.

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I do realize that they wanted to make something Chinese-oriented for that market, but why not make a unique, original film instead? It was a waste of time and talent altogether. With that being said, the movie’s not bad, not by a long mile. It has its heart, it’s quite enjoyable at times and some of the humor also worked. The voice acting is excellent and the characters are solid.

However, the central relationship simply felt too similar to the Ali-Genie one. They should have differentiated these characters more in order for them to pop and get a life of their own, but this way they felt like copies. Again, they did their best in that copying of this relationship as the two are fun together and sweet, but the question of why still remains.

I did like some of the new elements in the storyline, especially the ten masters and the Spirit World, which itself was quite memorable and cool. I just wish that the rest of the movie was as interesting. The wishes were used in some interesting ways for sure and the main romance was okay, but nothing particularly special at the end of the day.

Wish Dragon is well animated. It is serviceable and far from artistic, but it’s very pleasant to look at due to its colorful palette. The dragon looks terrific with the Asian long and curved body serving very well to counteract the Disney version. The score, some of the action and dialogue also worked, but some humor felt very childish and subpar. Overall, Sony needs to get back to the quality of ‘Spider-Verse’ sooner rather than later.

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