My Dad Earl said:

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For those of you that have seen it, by any chance, does real-life Jasmine get a scene like this?

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No.

The bad guy doesn't ever wish for her to fall in love with him, and doesn't use his sorcerer powers in any sort of sensual way. Jasmine is portrayed as being strong and wanting to be sultan, they did not want her looking like a slave or someone who was merely a piece of meat, even in the context of being under the control of a sorcerer.

The new song (Speechless) is great.

Naomi Scott has a hell of a voice.

Tracking bumped to $95M for the 4-day weekend with $100M+ still on the table.

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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Tracking bumped to $95M for the 4-day weekend with $100M+ still on the table.

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Up to $107M.

Word of mouth is very strong.

Just saw it. I had no desire to go initially but the kids got free tickets with a subway kids meal. I thought it was well done and liked it much better than Dumbo

I liked it. A LOT. I thought I would like it but it surprised me at how much I did like it. With the live action Beauty and the Beast I was like ugh they're about to show this scene from the cartoon and it seemed to drag and with Aladdin I was like oh cool I hope they show this scene from the cartoon lol. It was great fun with great music and I know he's no Robin Williams but Will Smith did great as the genie which I was worried about. Go see it if you like the original or if you just want to see a fun movie!

Wow, surprised the word of mouth is apparently so good. I saw it this morning and thought it was exactly what I expected a 60% RT score movie that's a remake of a film with an iconic comedic performance would be: extremely bland

Agree that Jafar wasn't nearly evil enough. Will Smith did about a good a job as he could have under the circumstances I guess.

They did A Whole New World justice. Everything else was like cosplayers acting out their favorite movie.

Projections still inching up. $112M now.

Just got out of watching with the fam, easily the best live action remake they've done. Aladdin was my fav of the 90s. This one was really really good.

A random thought just came to me, I'm curious if they weren't doing some sort of an omage to Bollywood with some of the special effects.

bbattbq01 said:

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All this talk about jafar and genie, isn't all that really matters is that jasmine is hot? They seem to have nailed that.

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Also can confirm now that I've seen it that they indeed nailed this part.

(Image posting fail)

Much better than Dumbo and even I enjoyed that a little. The movie as a whole was much better than expected given the previews. I was not sold on Will Smith but he was awesome. Liked the subplot with the handmaiden who also made for a fun person to bounce off of Jasmine with. The music was surprisingly strong and liked the rendition of a whole new world. Speechless was a strong new song as well. I was very happy and was surprised when the 2 hours were up.

Saxsoon said:

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Much better than Dumbo and even I enjoyed that a little. The movie as a whole was much better than expected given the previews. I was not sold on Will Smith but he was awesome. Liked the subplot with the handmaiden who also made for a fun person to bounce off of Jasmine with. The music was surprisingly strong and liked the rendition of a whole new world. Speechless was a strong new song as well. I was very happy and was surprised when the 2 hours were up.

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Agree with all of this. Really enjoyed it and was glad my kids loved it. The new generation will be hooked.

Only low point of the movie was Will singing at the beginning. Not terrible, just not strong. But glad it was all up from there.

Will smith killed it

Great re-make

The CGI was much less bothersome to me than I expected as well.

The scene where he first meets Jasmine as Prince Ali was one of the most squirm inducing scenes I have ever seen in a theater (that was intentional, it was him ****ing it up with Jasmine and tripping over his words)

Also, one could look at this as a prequel to Hitch with Will Smith's character being an immortal being through time helping dudes get some. Several scenes would not have looked out of place except for the wardrobe.

Wife and I went, theater full of kindergarten aged kids during Friday matinee.

I was worried going in. Will Smith had big shoes to fill and he was adequate, he did not distract me from the story even though Robin will always be genie.

The costumes were very good, especially Jasmines dresses.

I agree about the Bollywood feel with some of the sequences. The Prince Ali entrance and the his dance sequence definitely had some sped up parts that looked really good, as well as the "Hitch" dance outro. I really enjoyed Hitch making Prince Ali dance like a puppet, that actor could definitely hold his own on a dance floor.

It is something I would definitely have on in the background at the house.

I thought it was great. Will Smith did the role justice, especially because he didn't try to rip off or emulate Robin Williams but played it with typical Will Smith flair and it was the kind of role where Will Smith being himself doesn't take you out of the movie.

Jafar wasn't anything to write home about but it's very hard to translate some of these over the top cartoon villains into real life so I see what they were going for by understating his performance.

The songs were awesome. My favourite was the new Prince Ali rendition, but A Whole New World and Friend Like Me were also strong and great.

My girlfriend hated some of the costumes. We're South Asian and so Bollywood is a big thing for us (mostly her) and she commented that a few of Jasmine's costumes were awful, but since they were going for a overtly exaggerated Arabia-Persia-India mashup I thought it was fine in that context. Otherwise I think this might have been her second favourite movie of the year, after Endgame. My biggest quibble (and it should show you how much I otherwise enjoyed the movie that I only have this to complain about) is they blatantly and purposefully mispronounce "sultan" a lot. It's sool-taan, not sult-in. My SO told me it sounded like "saltine" to her and I couldn't unhear it after that.

Saxsoon said:

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The CGI was much less bothersome to me than I expected as well.

The scene where he first meets Jasmine as Prince Ali was one of the most squirm inducing scenes I have ever seen in a theater (that was intentional, it was him ****ing it up with Jasmine and tripping over his words)

Also, one could look at this as a prequel to Hitch with Will Smith's character being an immortal being through time helping dudes get some. Several scenes would not have looked out of place except for the wardrobe.

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Seconding this. The "jam" scene was one of the most cringe-inducingly (intentionally) hilarious scenes I've seen recently. My audience ate it up.

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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In 10,000 years, I have never been this embarrassed.

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two things that made this line great for me.

1) I was initially disappointed that will smith didn't come out of the lamp with the "10,000 years, will give you such a crick in the neck" line

2) after talking the above with my wife we both agreed that line must have been a Robin williams addition and the remake didn't want to take that away. This line kind of gave a nod back to RW in a way.

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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Projections still inching up. $112M now.

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Looks like $114M will be the final numbers. (Or very close.)

Glad it outpaced all projections.

TexasAggie_02 said:

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Will this be the second movie that Will Smith has dressed like this?

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Just saw it today, he in fact did the harem girl part.

Overall, I liked the movie. The opening scene of Aladdin fleeing and signing was kind clunky, it just didn't translate well from animation to live action. and I wasn't a fan of "friend like me," it just didn't have the right feel to me. I did like the film overall though. My daughter loved it.

I enjoyed it. Fell short in many spots but overall one of the better live action remakes.

Prince Ali was the only number that really hit to me.

Justin2010 said:

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I enjoyed the movie, but as I was leaving really was trying to put my finger on why I felt like it was just a little underwhelming.

I listened to a couple of the songs from the cartoon and decided I really didn't feel like the songs in the live action movie were *big* enough. They didn't have the huge choruses that the cartoon did. Even though it was live action, it didn't feel like they really channeled the Broadway factor as much as they did in the cartoon.

I also wish they would have really let Will Smith go a little crazier. I did feel like he was the genie and made it his own, but felt like they missed an opportunity to really redefine it.

Normally adding in the princess ambitions to be sultan would have kind of annoyed me, but I actually felt like they did it in a way that was very true to the story. I didn't feel like it was forced at all.

The main actor did a good job playing Aladdin. I had pretty low expectations for him, but he did a solid job.

Abu and Iago felt pretty flat to me. Lacking personality. Which may go with the territory of being in a live action movie.

A whole new world was really nicely done.

Overall: Not bad by any means. But absolutely not as good as the original.

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Just saw it an I think ya nailed it in your post! Excellent job!

$12M Tuesday. Good sign of strong legs for this one.

Apparently it's the biggest post-Memorial Day Tuesday of all time.

My wife and I went this morning. She had never seen the original and I have. We both really enjoyed it and I thought Will Smith did a fantastic job in the role of Genie.

Would recommend

Finally saw this yesterday.

Overall, this was a fine movie. I thought Jafar was pretty good, threatening but not in an over-the-top way. The bird was funny if a bit under-utilized. The monkey looked like the same monkey from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Aladdin was well done by whoever that actor was, as was Jasmine, who as an added bonus was smoking hot.

Will Smith as the Genie was not as good as Robin Williams, but I didn't expect him to be. He took the role and did his own take, and I was genuinely amused with many of his antics.

It has been a long time since I watched the original, but I seem to recall the magic carpet ride taking them farther than in this movie.

The "Whole New World" song bounced around in my head all day after seeing it.

But I think this is a one-and-done kind of movie that I will be unlikely to have much desire to ever see again.

djmeen95 said:

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Justin2010 said:

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I enjoyed the movie, but as I was leaving really was trying to put my finger on why I felt like it was just a little underwhelming.

I listened to a couple of the songs from the cartoon and decided I really didn't feel like the songs in the live action movie were *big* enough. They didn't have the huge choruses that the cartoon did. Even though it was live action, it didn't feel like they really channeled the Broadway factor as much as they did in the cartoon.

I also wish they would have really let Will Smith go a little crazier. I did feel like he was the genie and made it his own, but felt like they missed an opportunity to really redefine it.

Normally adding in the princess ambitions to be sultan would have kind of annoyed me, but I actually felt like they did it in a way that was very true to the story. I didn't feel like it was forced at all.

The main actor did a good job playing Aladdin. I had pretty low expectations for him, but he did a solid job.

Abu and Iago felt pretty flat to me. Lacking personality. Which may go with the territory of being in a live action movie.

A whole new world was really nicely done.

Overall: Not bad by any means. But absolutely not as good as the original.

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Just saw it an I think ya nailed it in your post! Excellent job!

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Yep. Pretty much how I felt. Worth seeing (maybe not at the theater) but not as good as the original.

Amusingly, as we were walking out there was a family (they looked somewhat middle eastern, but dressed and talked american) where the mom was going on about how horribly racist the movie was and that Disney is just as racist as it has always been.