Mufasa: The Lion King has enough going for it that it stands on its own with pride.

As much as I wish the filmmaking team had refrained from splitting the story into pieces and delivered one three-hour musical adventure, Wicked: Part One won me over. There is magic here — elements that defy conventional cinematic gravity — and I’m not about to let my reservations bring me down.

I still don’t think Joker: Folie à Deux works. But because of its ambition, and in large part because it gave me something I felt was worth the time and effort to think about after I left the theater, I’m willing to give Phillips and his creative team props for shaking things up.

No matter how successful it may have been on Broadway, the same can’t be said about this new Mean Girls. I wish I could bake the film a cake filled with rainbows and smiles and everyone would eat and be happy, but that’s not the case. Heck, I’m pretty sure we don’t even go to the same school.

The magic spell Wish casts is minimal at best, and it only lasts about as long as it takes for the end credits to complete their crawl.

I will give Trolls Band Together this much: it is the first film in the series that did not give me a headache.

For the poor, unfortunate souls hoping this The Little Mermaid will either equal or surpass the animated version, disappointment will be their unhappy bedfellow. But younger audiences will likely enjoy themselves quite a bit, and I can almost guarantee they’re going to fall euphorically in love (and deservedly so) with Bailey’s Ariel.

Whitney Houston was a singular talent, and she deserves an equally unique motion picture chronicling her life. But this isn’t it, and that’s downright heartbreaking.

Grease 2: 40 years of wanting more than the boy next door with Michelle Pfeiffer and the Pink Ladies