“It’s one of the biggest dance sequences you’ll
ever see in a movie. It’s the sequence I’m most
proud of,” Smith said. “You got to go check it
out. It’s hot.”
While there will be many, many familiar
touchstones for audiences from the songs to
the score to even some of the dialogue, there
are some ways the live-action film had to
deviate from the original.
“You cannot have a parrot talking paragraphs
in live-action, where you can actually in
animation,” Ritchie said. “The mind’s eye seems
to tolerate certain exotic indulgences, for
example, genies coming out of lamps and
flying carpets, but it doesn’t seem to tolerate
talking animals, right? So a parrot is allowed
to have short sentences but once it turns into
paragraphs you go, hold on, what is this?”
With a runtime of over two hours, compared to
the animated film’s 90 minutes, there are also
additional story elements and a new character
in Jasmine’s handmaiden (played by “Saturday
Night Live” alum Nasim Pedrad). And it leans
into the diversity you’d expect from a story
set in the Middle East, which was personally
important to Massoud.
“Coming from the Middle East and Egypt
we’re just really ecstatic any time we see
positive representation coming from
Hollywood,” Massoud said. “This is certainly
positive representation.”
But, like all films, its primary goal is to entertain.
“It’s a fun film,” said Massoud. “You should
leave feeling good and happy.”