As soon as I finished watching Disney’s 2019 remake of Aladdin, I went straight home and played back the original. It was something I’d never do under normal circumstances; I had a somewhat fraught relationship with Aladdin growing up. On one hand, him and the other residents of Agrabah were the only brown characters in Disney animated folklore. On the other, Aladdin isn’t actually for or about any of us. It’s a French diplomat’s retelling of a fable set in China heard from a Syrian storyteller. The 1992 film was written by white guys, directed by white guys, and featured an all-white cast of voice actors. Agrabah isn’t a real place; it’s a mash-up of Arab, Middle Eastern, and South Asian stereotypes. Aladdin is a white person’s fantasy of brown culture; a fantasy that doesn’t include any brown people. In 2019, Disney finally added some.

The past few years, Disney has been trying to fix their reputation with representative new minority-driven stories like Moana and Coco, most of which have been extremely successful. Aladdin’s 2019 remake tries to outmaneuver the contradiction of following this new course while remaining true to their beloved original text.

The end result is… a fun time at the movies. Aladdin is colorful, loud, and firmly optimistic. The heroes and villains are well established and simple; it’s predecessor’s final cut runs a tight 90 minutes, after all. What Aladdin lacks in complexity, it makes up for in spectacle and heart. Unfortunately, Disney’s reluctance to deviate from the source material lowers the film’s ceiling considerably.

The main cast is tasked with a lot of heavy lifting, as many of the supporting characters take a backseat. There is less Abu and Magic Carpet; Iago is lost almost entirely. Instead, Aladdin is grounded in human interaction and relationships, shoring up the comic relief with the addition of Saturday Night Live alum Nasim Pedrad and Billy Magnussen as the blissfully moronic token white guy.

The casting process for the film was notoriously long and arduous, speaking to the current state of the film industry and how far Hollywood still has to go developing brown talent (These situations never arise when producing Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, or other films with white leads). The resulting cast is quite representative of what a real life Agrabah might contain; featuring actors of Egyptian, Indian, Tunisian, Iranian, and African descent. Mena Massoud is incredibly charming as Aladdin and has instant chemistry with Naomi Scott, who is undoubtedly the breakout star of the film. Most impressively, he manages to hold his own against Will Smith.

Will Smith is the only A-list actor in the film, taking on the iconic Disney mantle of the Genie. Filling the late Robin Williams’ glass slippers is a tall order, and the results are overall positive. When in his human body the Genie exudes that casual excellence only Will Smith contains. He bounces off Massoud’s hopeful romantic straight man well, injecting some comedy and improvisational banter. When in his blue form, however, Smith feels as shackled to the script as the Genie is to the lamp. The CGI, meant to amplify his presence, only dilutes it. The digital facial movements and vocal enhancements struggle to keep up with his physical comedy and punchlines, and ends up residing somewhere on the fringes of uncanny valley. While Abu, Iago, and Rajah the tiger are extraordinarily realistic (This is the studio that remade The Jungle Book a few years back after all), the big blue Genie just isn’t Will Smith.

Aladdin’s dissonance comes through in its songs as well; far and away the most lasting aspect of the original work. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t had the new soundtrack playing on repeat over the past few days. Naomi Scott is a professional recording artist, and it shows. Her enraged performance of “Speechless”, Jasmine’s original song, is easily the emotional climax of the movie. Even here, things don’t seem to fit exactly in place. “Speechless” is shoehorned awkwardly in the third act, relegated to a dream sequence because there isn’t a clean way to work the new empowering ballad into the actual story. The robust new arrangements of the 1992 Aladdin classics are improvements overall, but still fall short of their potential.

“Friend Like Me”, promoted as Will Smith bringing his Fresh Prince bounce to the cave of wonders, simply doesn’t deliver. “I’m the genie, of the lamp // I can sing, rap, dance, if you give me a chance,” he asks during a tantalizingly brief beatboxing breakdown towards the end of “Friend Like Me”. Sadly he isn’t given that chance, and is stuck covering Robin William’s jazzy showtune line for line. The DJ Khaled produced remix hidden in the end credits earns its spot alongside “Men in Black” and “Wild Wild West” in the pantheon of Will Smith movie raps, only increasing frustration at Disney not letting him do it in the actual movie. “Prince Ali” falls into a similar trap, with Smith clearly pushing the top end of his vocal range. Aside from necessary changes to problematic lyrics like those celebrating Prince Ali’s slaves and calling the people of Agrabah barbaric, Aladdin hamstrings its phenomenal cast by forcing them to toe the line of the old film.

The film’s stars truly shine brightest in the fleeting moments they break free from the original script. The improvised “jams” scene and following harvest party are standouts, despite the Bollywood starter kit dance moves – will we ever move past prayer hands and screwing light bulbs? Watching talented people of color play around with making their own artistic choices is always going to put a smile on my face. And that’s my biggest problem with the movie. Making Aladdin in 2019 was an opportunity to rework it into the unified interdiasporic playground so many of us wished the first one had been; instead, it defers to hinting at a lot of different ideas without doing any of them justice. Despite now featuring brown people, Aladdin still isn’t really for or about them. That’s what you get when you try to paint representation on a framework that, at its core, isn’t properly representative of anything. “The more you gain by pretending, the less you’re actually gonna have,” the Genie advises Aladdin on his third wish. With an opening weekend grossing over $200 million worldwide, Aladdin has gained quite a lot; but still doesn’t have much.