Disney's live-action adaptation of its 1992 animated classic Aladdin rolls into theaters nationwide this weekend. However, judging from early reviews, the remake hasn't quite captured the magic of the original.

Directed by Guy Ritchie, from a script by Ritchie and John August, Aladdin tells the story of the charming street rat Aladdin (Mena Massoud), the courageous and self-determined Princess Jasmine (Naomi Scott) and the Genie (Will Smith) who may be the key to their future.

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Based on the beloved 1992 animated film starring Scott Weinger, Robin Williams and Linda Larkin, the new adaptation hasn't quite matched the original. Aladdin now holds a critics' score of 59  percent on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, based on 104 reviews. "Aladdin retells its classic source material's story with sufficient spectacle and skill, even if it never approaches the dazzling splendor of the animated original," reads the critics consensus.

With more reviews still to come, its unlikely Aladdin's Tomatometer score will improve. Here's a selection of some of the harshest reviews:

A.O Scott, The New York Times: "The new live-action re-whatever with a blue Will Smith popping out of the lamp, may not be the worst product of the current era of legacy intellectual property exploitation (it’s likely that the worst is yet to come), but like most of the others it invites a simple question: Why? The answer — spoiler alert: 'money' — may not surprise you. I know it’s pointless to complain about Disney’s drive to wring every last dollar from its various brands. You might as well complain about the animal sidekicks (and I will). But the movie itself, while not entirely terrible — a lot of craft has been purchased, and even a little art — is pointless in a particularly aggressive way."

Aja Romano, Vox: "But the terrible musical sequences, the lackluster CGI, and the strange creative and emotional restraint that permeates the film frequently flatten Disney’s original Aladdin into a cardboard version of itself. The result is a film that’s divided into two entirely different entities. One is pretty cute: a pleasantly bland rom-com, with Massoud’s Aladdin and Naomi Scott’s Jasmine as adorable kids in love. The other is a really crappy musical, presided over by a disappointingly hamstrung Will Smith. These two halves never fully cohere."

Josh Spiegel, Slashfilm: "At a crucial juncture in the new live-action Aladdin, our eponymous hero is in the puffed-up guise of a fancy prince, supposedly encountering the comely Princess Jasmine for the first time. In reality, though, they’ve met before even as Aladdin is trying to pretend otherwise. In this moment, Aladdin is hopelessly tongue-tied, desperate to please but failing at just about every moment, valiant effort aside. Such is the experience of Aladdin in a microcosm. This film is desperate to please, and trying very hard to do so. And it comes up short almost every chance it gets. Like the many jewels and gold pieces in the Cave of Wonders, Aladdin is a hollow gem that falls apart as soon as you touch it."

Aladdin

 

Barry Hertz, The Globe and Mail: "Pure nightmare fuel. Those were the only words that I could conjure when I first laid eyes upon Guy Ritchie’s Aladdin, a sorta-live-action resurrection of Disney’s 1992 animated blockbuster. My horror was twofold. First, I was thrust into a state of unrelenting despair over the studio’s recent habit of remaking its intellectual property with all the enthusiasm of a lip-smacking gravedigger, sometimes adding nothing new (Beauty and the Beast, The Jungle Book) and often making things significantly worse (Dumbo, Cinderella). Second, Ritchie’s new version of Aladdin’s famed Genie scared the hell out of me. Ritchie’s new Genie is similar in spirit, but ghastly in execution. As played by a top-knotted, goateed and go-go-go Will Smith, the all-powerful creature is still blue, but all wrong – an alarming conflation of the artificial and real, almost like the universe detected a defect in our plane of existence and vomited up this aesthetic aberration as evidence of nature’s capacity for error. There are just some things that should not exist in this world, and Smith’s visage pasted onto a floating, endlessly stretchy blue cloud of CGI muscles and sinew is top of the list. So, yeah: pure nightmare fuel."

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William Bibbiani, TheWrap: "This isn’t a movie. It’s a chintzy revival, specifically designed to appeal to audiences who think “that looks familiar” qualifies as entertainment. Ritchie’s Aladdin looks so familiar that, if anything, it’s hard to imagine why Ritchie wanted to make it. Disney seems to have smoothed out all the wrinkles in the director’s familiar, if sometimes oppressive style."

Mark Kennedy, The Associated Press: "It’s pretty clear after watching the new live-action Aladdin that doubts about Will Smith’s casting as the Genie are overblown. It’s the guy behind the camera who should be doubted. And stuffed into a small lamp forever. Guy Ritchie — that lover of gritty gangsters and violent action — was always an odd choice to helm a big Disney romantic musical and proves utterly the wrong guy here. Aladdin, in his hands, is more like The Mummy than Frozen. This is an Aladdin with a torture scene and pointlessly artful fast-slow-motion action scenes."

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: "Aladdin, though, feels pointless. It’s cinematic karaoke. It’s an ice show without the ice. It’s also and foremost an example of directorial miscasting, for this is a Guy Ritchie musical — a frantic, Kismet-adjacent musical — made with the lightness of touch and blithe cinematic charm you’d expect from the man behind Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and the steampunk Sherlock Holmes pictures."

Matt Oakes, Silver Screen Riot: "As far as I’m concerned, Aladdin is the worst movie of the year. There is not one ounce of artistic value in this soiled remake ostensibly from director Guy Ritchie (The Man From U.N.C.L.E.), not one element that was not a clunky and borderline offensive down step from the original 1992 animated film, no attempt to refurbish the material and put any semblance of fresh spin on it. This is “filmmaking” as black magic – the result of someone burying the original Aladdin V/H/S in a Pet Sematary, its shambling resurrected corpse showing up on marquees pretending to be a real movie."

Directed by Guy Ritchie, Aladdin stars Mena Massoud as Aladdin, Will Smith as Genie, Naomi Scott as Princess Jasmine, Marwan Kenzari as Jafar, Navid Negahban as the Sultan of Agrabah, Billy Magnussen as new character Prince Anders, and Frank Welker and Alan Tudyk as the voices of Abu and Iago, respectively. The film opens Friday nationwide.