Wish has received Disney's worst Rotten Tomatoes score in nearly two decades. The upcoming movie is the 62nd feature released by Walt Disney Animation Studios and the only one to be released during the company's centennial celebration in 2023. The company's iconic wishing star is a character in the movie, descending to the kingdom of Rosas when teenager Asha (Ariana DeBose) makes a wish to save the land from impending doom.

Rotten Tomatoes has now aggregated an official score for Disney's Wish from 55 different critics' reviews. While the score will fluctuate as more reviews are added in the days leading up to the movie's theatrical premiere, at the time of writing it is Rotten at 58%. This marks the first time that any Walt Disney Animation Studios movie has received a Rotten score since 2005's Chicken Little, which has a score of 37%.

Wish's Rotten Tomatoes Score Is An Anomaly for Disney

One mathematical issue with the movie's Rotten Tomatoes score is the way the service aggregates reviews. A large number of the reviews considered "negative" are giving the movie middling scores of C, 5/10, or 2.5/5, largely praising the Wish cast and musical score despite finding its overall presentation bland. This is a different case from Chicken Little, which got more consistently negative reviews across the board, even earning an F score from one critic.

However, even taking the aggregation process into account, this is still a surprisingly bad result for a Disney animated movie. Typically, the company earns more effusive praise for its animated features, even ones that were financial flops like last year's Strange World (72%). In fact, only nine of the company's previous 61 releases have Rotten scores, including 1946's Make Mine Music (58%), 1973's Robin Hood (58%), 1985's The Black Cauldron (57%), 1988's Oliver & Company (54%), and 1995's Pocahontas (54%).

The company's biggest stretch of bad reviews came at the turn of the millennium with 2001's Atlantis: The Lost Empire (49%), 2003's Brother Bear (37%), 2004's Home on the Range (52%), and Chicken Little. However, that slump was put to bed when the subsequent 15 releases earned Fresh scores. The score for the Wish movie doesn't necessarily indicate that another slump is impending, especially considering its middling but not egregious reviews, but it does break the precedent set by Disney's modern era in a shocking way.

Source: Rotten Tomatoes