Aladdin Review: 4 Ups & 5 Downs

3. The Painfully Lazy Script

Guy Ritchie has always been a majorly mixed bag as a writer-director, so it's little surprise that his script here - co-written with John August (Charlie's Angels, Dark Shadows) - is all over the place.

It's no exaggeration to say that a solid two-thirds of the script is comprised of ham-fisted exposition, forcing the poor cast to try and rattle off the robotic spoon-feeding of plot with some sense of naturalism.

The audience is never given the benefit of the doubt and allowed to observe events for themselves - everything is cynically spoken aloud, and even basic, obvious character beats are needlessly verbalised to cater to the very lowest common denominator.

There are so few memorable lines in this movie, but an utter avalanche of scribbled-by-committee placeholder dialogue.