Released during Walt Disney Pictures' centennial year, the animated musical
Wish offers references -- visual, musical, and otherwise -- to several Disney classics of the past, but especially to the Oscar-winning song and Disney logo theme "When You Wish Upon Star," which helped inspire the plot. The movie concerns 17-year-old Asha (voiced by
Ariana DeBose), whose wish on behalf of her kingdom results in a magic fallen star helping her go up against their egomaniacal king, Magnifico (
Chris Pine). At the time of its release, movie goers already knew about
DeBose's singing chops from her Academy Award-winning turn as Anita in
Steven Spielberg's
West Side Story (2021);
Pine's Broadway-ready skills were revealed in the 2014 film adaptation of
Into the Woods. Here, the leads set aside
Bernstein and
Sondheim to make way for seven original songs by the newly formed songwriting team of
Julia Michaels and
Benjamin Rice. While
Rice won a Grammy for producing the soundtrack to
A Star Is Born (2018), and
Michaels had written songs for the likes of
Justin Bieber and
Selena Gomez, they are both singers and songwriters in their own right, and
Michaels delivers the end-credits song "A Wish Worth Making." Before that, though, along with three other originals,
DeBose sets the scene with the Latin-flavored "Welcome to Rosas,"
Pine proves a suitable foil with the playful (and ominous) villain song "This Is the Thanks I Get ?!," and the empowering
DeBose ballad "This Wish" is key for launching the film's supernatural story. Happily, the ensuing revolution ("Knowing What I Know Now") makes good on Asha's wish. ~ Marcy Donelson