Box office Wish grossed $64 million in the United States and Canada, and $191 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $255 million. The film made $8.3 million on its first day, including $2.3 million from Tuesday night previews. After Thanksgiving Day ($3.9 million) and
Black Friday ($8 million), projections were lowered to $32–33 million. It went on to debut to $19.5 million (and a total of $31.7 million over the five days), finishing in third behind holdover
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes and
Napoleon.
Variety attributed the low opening to a lack of social media marketing and divided word-of-mouth, but suggested that the film could leg out as
Pixar's
Elemental did earlier in the year. The film finished in fifth in the subsequent two weeks, with grosses of $7.4 million in its second weekend, and $5.3 million in its third weekend.
Critical response It was the first Walt Disney Animation Studios film to be classified as "Rotten" on the site since
Chicken Little (2005).
Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 47 out of 100, based on 45 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews, becoming the lowest-rated Walt Disney Animation Studios film on the site. Audiences polled by
CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale, while those polled by
PostTrak gave it a 71% overall positive score. Brian Truitt of
USA Today gave it three stars out of four and wrote that the film "entertains and unabashedly owns being a safe paean to old-school Disney, shamelessly aiming for all your nostalgic feels. And it makes no difference who you are." John Nugent of
Empire called it "An appropriate tribute to Disney, by itself. It hardly breaks any ground—it's simply there to celebrate the ground the studio was built on," but felt that "the jokes largely land a little flatly, to be appreciated by only the youngest audiences (although props must be given to the cadre of breakdancing chickens, a genuine highlight)." Sarah El-Mahmoud of
CinemaBlend awarded the film 4 out of 5 stars, writing, "From gorgeous watercolor-like settings, to adorable talking animals, to earworm pop songs,
Wish goes to the Disney mainstays." Kristen Lopez of
TheWrap called it "a darling film with fantastic music and amazing voice performances, but the story does feel a bit like a house of cards waiting to be poked." Johnny Oleksinski of the
New York Post gave the film a 1.5 out of 4 rating and said, "As far as birthday celebrations go,
Wish is about as special as throwing your "I'm a century old!" bash at a rest-stop
Arby's."
Kevin Maher of
The Times earned a rating of 1 out of 4, saying, "Just like
The Marvels,
Wish is an emotionally inert and personality-free movie that appears to have been assembled from the outside in." Bill Goodykoontz of
The Arizona Republic wrote that "What saves the film from being nothing but a rehash are DeBose, whose singing voice unsurprisingly shines, and Pine (who sang in
Into the Woods), who makes an excellent villain, as well as some of the songs, most of which they're involved in." Michael O'Sullivan of
The Washington Post gave 2 stars out of 5 in a review: "what
Wish feels like at times: not a movie made by filmmakers with an original vision, but one assembled by focus group, with an eye more on fan service than on fresh ideas. [...] It all feels familiar, which is another word for comforting. And
Wish, however recycled it may be, is at least that: warm, funny-ish and with its heart in the right place." Damon Wise of
Deadline Hollywoods review was mixed, saying that "Disney used to make this kind of film all the time, but now the studio seems a bit bamboozled as to how to do it in the modern age, which might explain why it lifts quite a lot from
DreamWorks'
Shrek—starting with a tongue-in-cheek fairytale-book opening—and takes its musical direction from
The Greatest Showman, which means lots of tub-thumping numbers that sound like variations on a theme from a YA adaptation of
Les Misérables. Like that film's bombastic "
This Is Me," every song here feels like an overreaction, and the verbosity of the lyrics ("hesitations" rhymes with "reservations") jars with the simplicity of the animation and its
Snow White palette." He concluded that "Thankfully, it doesn't outstay its welcome, but to cap 100 years with a few throwaway quips about
Bambi,
Mary Poppins and
Peter Pan (plus a whole roll call of more recent characters during the end credits) seems to be a hell of a disappointing way to capitalize on such a formidable back catalog." Lovia Gyarkye of
The Hollywood Reporter wrote that "Even during its more successful moments,
Wishs magic falls flat. The film is weighed down by its purpose: to revel in Disney nostalgia while soaring into the future."
Owen Gleiberman of
Variety wrote "The strategy behind
Wish seems to be: If we do an homage to enchantment, the audience will be enchanted. True magic, however, can't be recycled." Tim Grierson of
Screen International wrote that the film "...is a strained animated musical which overtly references the company's most beloved films, a strategy that mostly exposes how singular the studio's productions used to be."
Amy Nicholson of
The New York Times wrote that "Oddly—and rather fascinatingly—this is a film about a spiritual revolution. Can Asha, a humanist, convince the islanders to reject the man in the embroidered robe who preaches that he alone is a conduit for miracles?"
Accolades ==Notes==