Movie Thoughts: Wish Dragon (2021)

• Released: 11 June 2021
• Directed by: Chris Appelhans
• Running time: 1 h 38 min
• Rating 3.5/5

Synopsis

A boy tries desperately to re-connect with his childhood friend, who is now living the rich life, while also having a magical genie-like Wish Dragon that wants to get into heaven following him around.

My Thoughts

I wasn't particularly excited for this one, but I did mean to check it out for sure. There's just so little advertising surrounding it that I'm glad that I follow some cartoon reviewers on Twitter, otherwise I mightn't have known this had come out already. 

This story is a pretty basic, but it has some neat twists and turns. It's a bit of an Aladdin-inspired story, with the boy trying to get to the girl of high stature and the genie-like dragon. However, they never stuck too closely to said folk tale and took plenty of liberties. For example, the whole "lie about being someone of prestige when you're not"-thing is taken care of pretty quickly. Li Na figures out that Din is who he is and isn't mad about him lying. 

The Wish Dragon Long is also not like the Genie from Disney's Aladdin, if that's what you're expecting. He's much more cynical in his ways. I honestly found him to be a slight bit irritating at first, and I think he changed his mind on friendship a little bit too soon, but I didn't particularly dislike his character, either. He does redeem himself and it's good to see him make the right decisions after his past. 

I did really like how the bond between our main characters Din and Li Na wasn't romantic. There's hints at the very end that it may become that way later on, but in the movie in and of itself it's purely platonic, which is pretty rare for a movie with a male and female lead of the same age. 

The visuals look very neat, though not as stylized as something like, say, The Mitchells vs the Machines. I liked them fine, though! Not every movie has to be pushing the envelope when it comes to visuals. 

While it didn't quite blow me away, I honestly didn't expect it to. It's just a neat and cute movie I think most people will enjoy!