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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘If Only’ On Netflix, Where A Divorcing Woman Gets To Relive 2008 As Her 2018 Self

Where to stream:.

• If Only (2022)
• time travel

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Flashback’ on Netflix, A Short Film In Need of Feature Expansion

Stream it or skip it: ‘loki’ season 2 on disney+, where the trickster god and his allies traipse through time and the marvel multiverse, stream it or skip it: ‘totally killer’ on amazon prime video, a consistently funny satirical mashup of horror, sci-fi and teen-comedy tropes, ‘totally killer’ ending explained: who killed kiernan shipka’s mom.

Time travel conceits, like what we see in the new Netflix drama If Only, get tricky because the person doing the time travel not only has to deal with the mind-bending fact that he or she knows about things that are about to happen that everyone else does not, but the whole “butterfly effect” thing, where changes they make affect the outcomes of many, many lives. Maybe the characters are so charming they overcome some time-hopping plot holes. But that’s not always the case. Does this new Spanish series manage to navigate this tricky landscape?

IF ONLY : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A couple make out, and start down the road of having some hot, romantic sex. Then we pan back and see that’s a scene from a movie on TV, watched by a teary woman on one sofa and a sleeping man on the other.

The Gist: It’s July 25, 2018. Emma (Megan Montaner) and Nando (Miquel Fernández) are the couple having this decidedly unromantic evening. She ends up throwing the remote at him and telling him to go snore in the bedroom. What we don’t realize is that it’s a) their wedding anniversary, and b) she just asked him for a divorce.

Emma has been unsatisfied with her marriage and life for awhile. “Years go by, all of us grow up, and I became a woman, but I’m not half the woman I was,” she tells her best friend Deme (Eduardo Lloveras), who is dating Isa (Jael Pascual), who works with Nando and is also one of Emma’s closest friends. She and Deme never dated, but there is definitely something between them that’s more than just friendship.

She thinks back to August 23, 2008, when Nando asked him to marry her. They had taken a break and he had dated someone else for a few months, but after the break, he felt he was ready to commit. Ten years later, they have 9-year-old twins that seem to favor him over her, he has a belly, and all the love is gone.

A rare “blood moon” lunar eclipse is happening that night, and Emma is going to join Nando and all of their friends at the same restaurant where he proposed to her. At some point, though, as she looks up at the moon and makes her blood moon wish, something changes. She’s back in her old car, wearing the outfit she wore on that night in ’08. She’s back in 2008, only with the foreknowledge gained by a decade with Nando.

At the restaurant, she decides to turn Nando down, mentioning things like their kids and their life together, which of course makes Nando look at her like she’s hit her head or something equally strange. She feels great that she’s somehow recaptured her old life and short-circuited her miserable marriage, but there are other implications to this trip back in time.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of?   If Only  (original title:  Si lo hubiera sabido ) has a distinct  13 Going On 30   feel, though in this case, it would likely be more like 40 going on 30 (or 30 going on 20, if the description of the show is accurate).

Our Take:  We’re not completely sure If Only , created by Irma Correa and Ece Yörenç, is able to handle the trickiness of its time-travel conceit, but then again, we only see 2018 Emma navigating 2008 for the last ten minutes of the episode. Montaner does a good job of showing just how miserable Emma is, though we don’t quite see enough evidence from Nando or her kids about why things have become so miserable. We know that Emma recently lost her father, which is also why she’s wondering about the rest of her life. But does her misery just stem from forgetting about who she was, and that she and Nando have grown apart? Or is there something else going on?

What we do know is that this isn’t a  Sliding Doors -style scenario, where if one tiny thing didn’t happen, Emma’s life would be completely different. The change is huge — she turns Nando’s proposal down — and the changes are going to be obvious, including Emma dating a man named Ruben (Michel Noher). We see Ruben in the first episode; he’s the guy who Emma almost hits with her car on the way to the restaurant in both ’18 and ’08. How the two of them will connect is still up in the air, but Emma’s detachment from Nando will set her down the path to meet him, which should be interesting.

But she also has to deal with the fact that her kids aren’t there and now won’t exist because she turned Nando down, and the home they lived in as a family hasn’t been built yet. Will all of these implications be explored, or will this just be a straightforward romantic story? How will 2018 Emma navigate the world in 2008 Emma’s body? Those answers will determine how engaging  If Only turns out to be.

Sex and Skin: Nothing beyond that first scene that Emma and Nando watch on TV.

Parting Shot: Emma calls her mom, and is shocked to her her father in the background of the call. This is when she realizes she’s not in a dream.

Sleeper Star: Jael Pascual plays Isa, and it seems like the relationship she has with Nando and Emma is muddled at best; it does seem that in the alternate version of 2008, she’ll have a much different role in Emma’s life.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Emma and Nando’s twins find out that their parents are getting a divorce, the boy is elated. “I’ll finally get my own room!” How does he know that?

Our Call: STREAM IT.  If Only is intriguing, but a bit unsure of itself in its first episode. How it manages its time-travel theme and its implications will go a long way to determining whether the series is a worth viewers’ time.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

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Film Review: ‘If Only’

Accomplished producer and first-time feature director Ginevra Elkann draws on her own childhood for a loose, likable dysfunctional family portrait.

By Guy Lodge

Film Critic

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“ Magari ” is an Italian word without a precise English-language equivalent: somewhere between “maybe” and “I wish,” backed by a particularly Italian tone of cheerful, shrugging flexibility. It’s the original title of Ginevra Elkann ‘s sweetly ruminative debut feature, though the more blandly whimsical “If Only” has been chosen as its English moniker, which is neither wrong nor quite right. Yet that elusiveness is apt enough in the case of Elkann’s semi-autobiographical film, which presents family tensions and divisions that are at once universally recognizable and firmly rooted in her Franco-Italian upbringing: Following a splintered family’s reconciliation over the course of one shambolic Christmas vacation, it’s a gentle, cool breeze of a memory piece made pleasurable by its richly and specifically accented telling. That might not translate into major global distribution, but this year’s Locarno opener will win friends on the festival circuit.

Elkann has already established herself on the European arthouse scene as an intrepid producer of bold, border-crossing projects, including Noaz Deshe’s “White Shadow” and Babak Jalali’s “Frontier Blues.” Her first feature as a writer-director — coming 14 years after the first short — is perhaps less formally adventurous than her production résumé might suggest, though it’s clearly a work of intimate personal investment, likely to inspire comparisons to Mia Hansen-Løve’s early films in its talky, wistful quality and flirtation with memoir.

The superficial resemblances between Elkann’s upbringing and that of the film’s eight-year-old narrator Alma (appealing newcomer Oro De Commarque) are clear enough in this mid-1980s period piece: Like the helmer, Alma is the youngest child of divorced parents, raised in Paris with two older brothers by her devoutly Catholic mother and a Russian stepfather, while her writer father resides in Rome. Other details are fictionalized around these parallel points, as if in some “magari” spirit of the film’s own: While Elkann was born into a pair of wealthy industrialist dynasties, Alma’s father Carlo (Riccardo Scamarcio) is a feckless, seemingly penniless chancer, keen to imbue his estranged, somewhat uptight kids with a measure of his happy-go-lucky energy.

As their mother plans an imminent family move from Paris to Canada, she sends an enthused Alma and her more reluctant brothers Seb (Milo Roussel) and Jean (Ettore Giustiniani) to Rome to spend the holidays with Carlo, whom they haven’t seen in some time. (“It’s hard to speak Italian every two years,” Seb pithily points out on being admonished by his father for speaking French.) It’s a frosty reunion from the off, though fanciful romantic Alma doesn’t see this faultlines: Imagining that she can engineer a reconciliation between her parents, who separated before she can remember, she idealizes a nuclear family unit at the expense of shaggier reality. Elkann’s script, co-written with Chiara Barzini, has a wry understanding of how children perceive adult relationships, naively simplifying some dynamics and wildly over-complicating others — not realizing that the emotional impulses of children and their parents aren’t always that far apart.

Things go from bad to worse when it emerges that Carlo can’t afford the skiing trip the kids have been promised, instead whisking them off to a shabby coastal cottage owned by his bohemian American pal Bruce (Brett Gelman, relishing a more affably flamboyant role than his oily villain from TV’s “Fleabag”). That’s not the only change of plan: Alma is young and ingenuous enough to buy Carlo’s claim that Benedetta, the glamorous fur-hatted woman accompanying them on their trip, is merely his esteemed co-writer on a planned screenplay project, but Seb and Jean are less forgiving. Played with droll loucheness by Italian indie godmother Alba Rohrwacher, cast amusingly against type, Benedetta turns out to be the disruptive element that heals more than she hurts. Even in their child’s-eye view of dysfunctional family life, Elkann and Barzini are disinclined toward easy stereotyping or pat moral judgments.

From the low-key chaos of this setup, the sketchy story ambles along in pleasantly episodic fashion: a first crush here, a rash act of teenage rebellion there, with stretches of hard-won harmony punctuated by shouty blowouts. “If Only” gets that family life doesn’t proceed according to a narrative arc; rather, it ebbs and flows, each day subject to mood swings and fleeting surges of rage or joy. There are no grand revelations here, just comforting, cumulatively moving observations we can all recognize: that our parents are rarely either the heroes or monsters we make them out to be at critical points in our childhoods, and that no amount of “magari” thinking can change the families we’re given or the shape they take.

Elkann handles a charismatic, freewheeling ensemble — including her trio of non-pro child performers — with apparent ease, while her filmmaking is no less casually assured. Desideria Rayner’s intuitive editing lends proceedings a spiky, diary-like rhythm, while d.p. Vladan Radovic, shooting on film, conjures a grainy, tactile aesthetic without straying into Instagram-filter kitsch. Indeed, much of the film exudes the milky, sun-faded sheen of old family photographs — perfect for these 30-year-old memories, whether they all belong to the director or not.

Reviewed at Soho Screening Rooms, London, July 31, 2019. (In Locarno Film Festival — Piazza Grande, opener.) Running time: 99 MINS. 

• Production: (Italy-France) A Wildside production in co-production with Tribus P Films, Iconoclast, in association with Rai Cinema. (International sales: Rai Com, Rome.) Producers: Lorenzo Mieli, Mario Gianani, Lorenzo Gangarossa. Executive producer: Elena Recchia. Co-producer: Paul-Dominique Vacharasinthu.
• Crew: Director: Ginevra Elkann. Screenplay: Elkann, Chiara Barzini. Camera (color): Vladan Radovic. Editor: Desideria Rayner. Music: Riccardo Sinigallia.
• With: Riccardo Scamarcio, Alba Rohrwacher, Oro De Commarque, Milo Roussel, Ettore Giustiniani, Brett Gelman , Céline Sallette, Benjamin Baroche. (Italian, French dialogue)

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Follow the story of a 30-year-old woman who, when feeling dissatisfied with her marriage and family life, finds herself sent back in time 10 years following a lunar eclipse. Follow the story of a 30-year-old woman who, when feeling dissatisfied with her marriage and family life, finds herself sent back in time 10 years following a lunar eclipse. Follow the story of a 30-year-old woman who, when feeling dissatisfied with her marriage and family life, finds herself sent back in time 10 years following a lunar eclipse.

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• Trivia During the whole series the number 407 is recurring. It's the number of Rubén's room in the hospital, the number of the grave at the cemetery in which rubén's girlfriend is buried, the number of Emma's room at the hospital. The number appears also when Emma suddenly wakes up in the middle of the night. In those scenes the digital clock near Emma's bed show the time 4:07.

User reviews 20

• Jul 3, 2023
• October 28, 2022 (United States)
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If only   photos.

Andrea is about to marry a man she does not love when a mysterious guest arrives and reminds her of the man she truly loves.

Genre: Drama

Original Language: Tagalog

Director: Jerrold Tarog

Producer: Daphne Chiu , Jerrold Tarog

Writer: Jerrold Tarog

Runtime: 1h 40m

Cast & Crew

Paulo Avelino

T.J. Trinidad

Benjamin Alves

Chinggoy Alonzo

Nico Antonio

Liesl Batucan

Noni Buencamino

Jerrold Tarog

Screenwriter

Jose Mari Abacan

Executive Producer

Daphne Chiu

Original Music

Mackie Galvez

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Film Editing

Ericson Navarro

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Erwin Sanchez

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‘If Only I Could Hibernate’: Cannes Review

By Nikki Baughan 2023-05-21T16:00:00+01:00

A teenage boy attempts to study his way out of poverty in this assured debut from Mongolia

Source: Urban Sales

‘If Only I Could Hibernate’

Dir/scr: Zoljargal Puevdash. Mongolia/France. 2023. 98mins

In the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar, an impoverished teenage boy finds himself torn between his loyalty to his family and dreams of a better future for himself. This assured feature debut from Mongolian filmmaker Zoljargal Puevdash sees these personal experiences become a microcosm of the tensions felt throughout this developing country, where traditions are being abandoned in the march for progress — leaving many stranded well beneath the poverty line. 

Puevdash and her cast approach this subject with a gentle touch

Premiering in Un Certain Regard, this first Mongolian film to play in Cannes official selection is a drama which is rooted in the political but is never heavy-handed. Puevdash and her cast, particularly charismatic newcomer Batsooj Uurtsaikh in the lead, approach this subject with a gentle touch, which could well appeal to further festivals and, possibly, distributors with a global focus. 

Puevdash won several festival prizes for her 2020 short Stairs , also set in Ulaanbaatar, about a disabled man struggling to overcome daily obstacles. That theme is expanded on here, although for 15-year-old Ulzii (Uurtsaikh) the hurdles are more cultural than physical. A gifted physics student, he is training for a national competition with the prize of a scholarship to one of the country’s best schools. Yet his focus is constantly being pulled away  by the challenges of life in a yurt on the outskirts of the capital.

Ulzii shares this small space with his mother (Ganchimeg Sandagdordorj) and three younger siblings, his late father having moved the family from the countryside in search of work. (The fact that he then had the audacity to die, leaving his now-alcoholic wife to struggle alone, is a particular bone of contention with her.) Ariantugs Tserenpil’s sensitive production design renders this space as cosy rather than rundown — this is a family home, after all, and there are photos on the wall, toys scattered on the floor and a television in the corner. Indeed, the whole film is careful to portray its characters as dynamic individuals attempting to break free of economic shackles rather than victims of circumstance.

For Ulzii, that means balancing the pursuit of his dreams with caring for his brother and sister after his illiterate mother returns to agricultural work in the country (and deposits her youngest son with a family member). There’s a genuine tenderness between these siblings that brings moments of laughter and warmth; the only kind to be found in the freezing Mongolian winter, which soon infiltrates the yurt. The endless need for coal and wood to fuel the small fire becomes all-consuming; if only, bemoans his brother, they could hibernate until summer, like bears. Too proud to ask for help — and further encumbered by his own outdated notions of masculinity — Ulzii is eventually forced to take logging work that jeopardises his academic prospects. 

There’s a constant push-pull dynamic here, both within Ulzii and the wider environment. The dichotomy of daily life is often captured by cinematographer Davaanyam Delgerjargal in a single frame : Ulzii’s adult sister undertaking a traditional remedy for her son’s mouth infection — involving a horse bridle and Ulzii’s toe — in the luxurious confines of the high-rise apartment in which she now lives; Ulzii’s box-fresh neon green trainers (paid for by a summer of construction) gleaming in the meagre light of his yurt. In the sparkling city centre, well-dressed protestors march against the oppressive air pollution which blankets the landscape— yet, posits Puevdash, widespread poverty is even more of a threat to life.

Composer Johanni Curtet combines the distinctive and culturally-specific sounds of throat singing with hiphop, beatbox and, occasionally, plaintive country-style strings, suggesting something of an identity crisis. Indeed, like Ulzii, Mongolia is a country struggling to find its place in a changing world.

Production companies: Amygdala Films, Urban Factory

International sales: Urban Sales [email protected]

Producers: Zoljargal Puevdash, Frederic Corvez, Maeva Savinien

Cinematographer: Davaanyam Delgerjargal

Production design: Ariantugs Tserenpil

Editing: Alexandra Strauss

Music: Johanni Curtet

Main cast: Batsooj Uurtsaikh, Ganchimeg Sandagdordorj, Nominjiguur Tsend, Tuguldur Batsaikhan

• Un Certain Regard

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Disney’s “Wish” is the most aggressive piece of Disney propaganda in years. Sure, they all are to a certain extent, but films like “The Lion King” or even “ Encanto ” stand on their own as stories, whereas “Wish” feels more closely tied to the history of the Mouse House and the power of imagination that fans have found in it than anything the company has ever produced. It’s not just the abundant references to everything from “ Peter Pan ” to “Mary Poppins” to “Bambi” and beyond, but the sense that the entire production is about how we really need to keep wishing on not just stars, but Disney-branded ones, to make ourselves happy. There’s also a reading of a film about a political leader that crushes the dreams of Disney adults that made me think of Ron DeSantis (and even a little Joseph McCarthy), but that’s a different piece.

So where does all this very intentional Disney magic get us? Not as far as when the creators behind Disney films allow the magic to come organically from its characters. I feel like anyone with an annual pass to one of the parks will flip for a movie that my 12-year-old correctly noted was basically a commercial for the Disney 100 anniversary event still unfolding, but there’s still a sense that this is all not just manufactured magic but hollow magic, too. A couple of very strong musical numbers ultimately get “Wish” off the ground after a rocky opening act, but the biggest problem here is that the film ends up being something true magic can never be: forgettable.

Set in an undefined era—although the creators have argued this is the origin for the “wishing star” of Disney fame so a long time ago—“Wish” unfolds in a place called Rosas, a setting that is woefully undefined despite the attractive animation that blends CGI dimension with techniques that look more hand-drawn. Asha (Oscar winner Ariana DeBose of “West Side Story”) is a 17-year-old about to interview for an apprenticeship with the beloved King Magnifico ( Chris Pine ). The King is the keeper of magic in Rosas, a man who can extract the wishes of his flock, keeping them in a chamber high above the city, and choosing one wish in a ceremony to allow to come true. Asha hopes that her 100-year-old grandfather Sabino ( Victor Garber ) will finally have his wish granted, but she discovers that Magnifico isn’t, well, magnificent. He’s more of a hoarder of wishes than a granter, and the most interesting thematic aspect of “Wish” is about how people who promise the world can be manipulative in the fulfillment of those promises.

Of course, Asha isn’t just an ordinary girl who learns about the absolute corruption of absolute power—she becomes a magical figure herself when a wishing star grants her abilities that turn her into a leader for her people. Asha literally wishes on a Star, and said Star comes down to cause chaos and help Asha start a revolution. The first major sequence with the silent Star—a clever choice that feels like something out of Studio Ghibli instead of the typically anthropomorphic exaggerated style of Disney—is a standout as woodland creatures come to life not to assist Asha but to empower her. The idea is that wishes shouldn’t be co-opted by others—they should be what drive us to love, laugh, and live. And when Asha realizes the star is within her, she can overcome evil. A goat voiced by Alan Tudyk helps.

The songs by Dave Metzger , Julia Michaels , and Benjamin Rice likely won’t produce a hit on the level of “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” but there are a couple of numbers that work thanks to clever musical composition and thematic thrust. The empowerment song in the woods after finding the wishing star is a bit muddled in storytelling—is she the magical star, or has she been gifted something?—but it’s playful and engaging in a way the movie is too rarely allowed to be. The film also gets a needed boost near the end from another group number in which Asha’s allies sing about what they know now. I could see both of these being a part of a Magic Kingdom stage show before Christmas.

And that probably-planned stage show is at the root of the overall problem with “Wish”—it's all so heavily processed, almost like an A.I. version of a Disney animated movie designed to make not more wishes but more sellable items and experiences. Yes, the machine that is Disney has felt increasingly manufactured in the 2020s—and the truth is that when they go off-book with projects like “ Strange World ,” the families don’t show up—but this one has an almost cynical cash grab air to it. Magnifico’s evil color palette is green, as if the creators are portraying not just politicians but money-focused leaders as the enemy, which is rich coming from a company that is more of an industry than an artistic venture lately.

And that’s what’s disheartening about “Wish.” I’m old enough to have seen several cycles of Disney success and failure—old enough to remember when “The Little Mermaid” was a comeback for the company—and so I’ve seen how the animated canon for this industry giant has shifted and changed. The good stuff comes from within artistic ventures, not from focus-grouped nostalgia. I also love the joy in my kids when they see a Disney movie that really moves them—for the record, my youngest (10) dug this one, my middle (12) was mixed, and my eldest (14) said he almost forgot it before he got home—but the best animated films will always come from a less hollow place than “Wish.” This wish feels like it didn’t fall from the sky but was crafted by a producers' room with an eye for the highest profit margin. It leaves one wishing for something that feels human and true.

In theaters on Wednesday, November 22 nd .

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Wish (2023)

Ariana DeBose as Asha (voice)

Chris Pine as Magnifico (voice)

Alan Tudyk as Valentino (voice)

Angelique Cabral as Amaya (voice)

Victor Garber as Sabino (voice)

Natasha Rothwell as Sakina (voice)

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Harvey Guillén as Gabo (voice)

Niko Vargas as Hal (voice)

Ramy Youssef as Safi (voice)

Evan Peters as Simon (voice)

Jon Rudnitsky as Dario (voice)

Della Saba as Bazeema (voice)

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• Allison Moore
• Jennifer Lee

Original Music Composer

• Dave Metzger

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Love Hallmark Christmas movies? This company is hiring a reviewer for $2,000

Do your post-Thanksgiving plans involve binging Hallmark movies and getting in the winter feels? Lucky for you Christmas came a little earlier this year and a flower company is offering to pay one person $2,000 to review Christmas films .

BloomsyBox , an online flower subscription service, is looking to hire their first ever “Hallmark Christmas Movie Reviewer” to watch 12 festive Hallmark films in just as many days and give a verdict on them. In return, Bloomsybox will pay the reviewer $2,000 as well as box of additional prizes worth over $500.

“The countdown to Christmas is fast approaching, so we at BloomsyBox want to settle the debate: what’s the greatest piece of Hallmark holiday cinema ever created?” says BloomsyBox on the application page . “To find out, we’re looking for one special Christmas movie maven to watch and rate 12 different Hallmark Christmas favorites in 12 days.”

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Here's everything you need to know about the position and application.

What movies are included in the review?

BloomsyBox's Hallmark holiday movie line-up includes:

• “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year” (2008)
• “Crown for Christmas” (2015)
• “The Nine Lives of Christmas” (2014)
• “Christmas Getaway” (2017)
• “Journey Back to Christmas” (2016)
• “Ghosts of Christmas Always” (2022)
• “Family for Christmas” (2015)
• “Christmas Under Wraps” (2014)
• “Three Wise Men and a Baby” (2022)
• “A Royal Christmas” (2014)
• “Northpole” (2014)
• “The Christmas Train” (2017)

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Rating the films

The reviewer will have to rate the film on a scale of 1 to 10 according to five different criteria including “Festivity Factor,” “Predictability Quotient,” “Chemistry Check,” “Tear-Jerker Test” and “Replay Value.”

What are the prizes?

BloomsyBox's first ever Hallmark Christmas Movie Reviewer will receive $2,000 in pay, which will be given upon completion of the reviews. The chosen applicant will also be provided with hot cocoa, two pairs of socks from UGG, $60 to purchase a one-year subscription to Peacock, and a 12-month flower subscription from BloomsyBox.

Where I apply to be the Hallmark Christmas Moview Reviewer?

Hallmark fans and those wishing to apply for this positions can send in their application on BloomsyBox's website through Dec. 3. The competition is open to residents of the United States aged 18 or over, excluding employees of any entity that owns or operates BloomsyBox, their families, or agents, businesses or anyone else professionally connected with a competition and/or BloomsyBox.

Additional details, including terms, conditions and requirements of the role, can be found at the BloomsyBox site.

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Saman Shafiq is a trending news reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at [email protected] and follow her on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter @saman_shafiq7.

Wish: Everything We Know About the New Disney Movie

Disney's latest animated film has almost arrived..

Walt Disney Animation Studios is celebrating 100 years of delivering spell-binding animated movies with unique storytelling to audiences young and old around the world, adapting and creating original fairy tales that are all about making wishes come true. What better way to celebrate that century-long message than to create a new movie aptly named Wish.

Wish dives into the origins of the bright star in the night sky that has been present in almost every Disney movie, there to grant the wishes and desires of the characters who speak to it. The lore of the star goes even deeper than that, however. Here’s everything we know so far about Wish, including its release date and most recent trailer.

• Wish Release Date

Wish Movie Cast

• Story Details

Latest Official Trailer for Wish

Wish movie release date.

Wish is set to release in theaters on November 22, 2023 – just in time for Thanksgiving. Development on the film started in 2018, with the animation style originally intended to be in traditional 2D as a way to honor Disney’s roots in hand-drawn animation. Walt Disney Animation Studios ultimately decided to blend watercolor illustration with CGI animation due to the limitations 2D animation alone imposes on artists.

Are you still excited for new animated Disney movies?

As Wish executive producer/writer Jennifer Lee explained to IGN back in September, “What happens in hand-drawn is that you have the incredible hand of the artist, but also limitations in what you could do on screen. What happened in CG is you'd have incredible, boundless opportunities, visually, that elevated it — even to the point for some — into realism, which is not what we wanted to do. The more important thing to us was to have a way to find technology that can do everything. Connect to the true vision of the artist, but bring in technology that could finally take away limitations.”

During the 2022 D23 Expo, Ariana DeBose (Hamilton, West Side Story) and Alan Tudyk (Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen, Zootopia) were announced to have been cast as Asha and Valentino, respectively. Asha is a 17-year-old girl who makes a wish to the stars after sensing a darkness in the kingdom that is oblivious to everyone else, and Valentino is Asha’s pet goat who gains the ability to talk after wishing to communicate. At CinemaCon 2023, Chris Pine (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Don’t Worry Darling) was revealed to be the voice of the charismatic King Magnifico, the ruler of Rosas who takes the wishes of people from all over the world and keeps them in wish bubbles, giving them a false sense of hope that their wishes will be granted. Angelique Cabral (Life in Pieces, Big Sky) was revealed on September 18 to be the voice of Queen Amaya, King Magnifico’s wife and sounding board.

The rest of the cast was revealed in the official trailer for Wish, including Victor Garber (Titanic, Legally Blonde, Argo), who voices Asha’s 100-year-old grandfather Sabino; Natasha Rothwell (Sonic the Hedgehog film series), who voice’s Asha’s loving and supportive mother Sakina; and Jennifer Kumiyama, who voices Asha’s disabled best friend Dahlia, who is an accomplished baker and unofficial leader of their tight-knit friend group, which comprises Simon (Evan Peters); Gabo (Harvey Guillen); Safi (Ramy Youseff); Hal (Niko Vargas); Bazeema (Della Saba), and Dario (Jon Rudnitsky). Each of Asha’s friends have personality traits that are inspired by the dwarves in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Disney’s very first full-length animated feature.

Wish Story Details

The initial marketing for Wish revolves around the origins of the star that has been present in most Disney movies for the last 100 years. The story of Wish goes even deeper than that.

Wish takes place in the Kingdom of Rosas off the Iberian Peninsula between 1200 and 1300, where Asha senses something off about King Magnifico, who has the power to take and grant wishes – even though he does more of the former than the latter. When Asha makes a passionate wish to the stars in the night sky in a time of great need, an actual star named Star falls from the sky and answers Asha’s wish. Together, they team up to face King Magnifico and fight for a better future in the kingdom.

Looking for news about other upcoming Disney movies? Check out everything we know about Frozen 3 .

Cristina Alexander is a freelance writer for IGN. She has contributed her work to various publications, including Digital Trends, TheGamer, Twinfinite, Mega Visions, and The Escapist. To paraphrase Calvin Harris, she wears her love for Sonic the Hedgehog on her sleeve like a big deal. Follow her on Twitter @SonicPrincess15.

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NAPOLEON (2023)

"the general’s greatest hits".

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NAPOLEON stars Joaquin Phoenix as the famous French general and Emperor of France in Director Ridley Scott’s ambitious movie about Napoleon, which focuses on Napoleon’s military career and his relationship with his wife, Josephine, the love of Napoleon’s life. NAPOLEON is beautifully filmed, with spectacular, though violent, battle sequences and incredible attention to period detail, costuming and set design, but the movie reduces Napoleon Bonaparte to animalistic appetites of ambition, sex and power, skipping over his desire for social order, his patriotic allegiance to France and his commitment to the values of the French Enlightenment, which was mitigated by his government’s reconciliation the Catholic Church.

The movie opens with the French Revolution in 1789, the brutal execution of Marie Antionette and the Reign of Terror under Maximilian Robespierre in 1793. In September, Napoleon is appointed Artillery Commander during the siege of the southern French city of Toulon, where French royalists were being supported by British naval ships. In December, Napoleon carries out a plan to capture a hill and drive the British Navy away so that the French Republic could take the city. He was appointed Brigadier General, then in July of 1794, Robespierre was removed from office and executed, along with his brother Augustin, Napoleon’s patron in the government.

Cut to October 1795, when General Napoleon is appointed by Paul Barras, a government leader, to put down a royalist revolt. Napoleon fires a round of artillery shells into a crowd of protestors, leading to bloody results. Napoleon’s actions strengthen the new French government. Meanwhile, Barras invites Napoleon to a party, where he meets Josephine, a widow with two children. They become romantically involved and get married six months later, even though it’s clear that Josephine’s feelings are not as strong as Napoleon’s.

The movie suddenly cuts to three years later, where Napoleon is staring at the Sphinx in Egypt. He hurries home to Paris when he learns that Josephine is cheating on him with a young officer. They hash things out. Then, in November 1799, he leads a coup against the French government and is appointed First Consul, effectively a military dictator.

The rest of the movie tells how Napoleon meets several military challenges to his reign. It culminates in Napoleon being declared Emperor of France in 1804. This led to victories over Britain, Austria and Russia in the next five years. War broke out again in 1812 against Russia. Napoleon decides to invade Russia. However, after a great initial success, Naoleon’s army undergoes a disastrous retreat, including plague, that killed some 350,000 troops. The retreat awakened hope in the other European countries, including Britain, Prussia, Austria, and Sweden, and a new coalition to defeat Napoleon was formed.

Meanwhile, Napoleon divorces Josephine in 1810 when she fails to produce an heir, and he marries an 18-year-old Austrian princess to cement the victory he won over Austria in 1809. At that time, Napoleon was still sitting pretty, at the top, but his downfall would come soon, and swiftly.

NAPOLEON is beautifully filmed by Director Ridley Scott and his team, with spectacular battle sequences and incredible attention to period detail, costuming and set design. Perhaps the most impressive battle sequence is Napoleon’s victory at Austerlitz, where the movie depicts Austrian and Russian troops being shelled by French troops and falling through the ice of some large ponds.

However, as a biography, NAPOLEON reduces Napoleon Bonaparte’s character to animalistic, sometimes childlike appetites of ambition, sex and power. It skips over Napoleon’s desire for social order, as seen in his adoption of the Napoleonic Code in legal matters and his many public works in Paris, which helped make the city the jewel it’s known as today. Nor does it say much about Napoleon’s patriotic allegiance to France, which was totally tied to his infamous personal ambition. The movie also doesn’t say much about Napoleon’s commitment to the French Revolution and its Enlightenment values and ideals. Also, during the early days of his rule, Napoleon reconciled with the Catholic Church, recognizing it as the majority church of France. The power still tilted toward the State, of course.

The upshot of all this is that viewers don’t really get much new insight into Napoleon the man.

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