The Disney Corporation has produced many animated films over the years, ranging from the old classics like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (wow, not available?) to newer films like The Black Cauldron, The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, and many others, some very good, some… not so good.
One of my favorites of all is Aladdin.
The basic plot of this Disney version of the old classic is probably very well known. Street-rat Aladdin (with his sidekick monkey Abu) encounters the runaway princess Jasmine and has a few adventures with her, during which the two come to like each other; Jasmine is weary of her life being constrained to follow whatever other people tell her, and Aladdin has never met anyone outside of his own circle in the lower class.
Our villain Jafar, the Grand Vizier to the Sultan of Agrabah (Jasmine's father), has meanwhile attempted to obtain some item from a magical vault called the Cave of Wonders. When Jasmine is caught with Aladdin, Jafar arranges for the boy to be imprisoned in a location he can access, and convinces Aladdin to enter the Cave for him and retrieve a single object: a particular oil lamp.
Aladdin enters successfully, but his monkey's (long-ingrained and, in other circumstances, useful) greed triggers a trap that causes the cave to collapse. Jafar attempts to wrest the lamp from Aladdin before the collapse is complete, but fails.
Afterward, Aladdin discovers the magic powers of the Lamp – a nigh-omnipotent Genie lives within, who will grant the user three wishes (the only exceptions being he will not, or cannot, kill people directly, force people to fall in love, raise the dead, or grant wishes that ask for more wishes). After tricking the Genie into getting them out of the cave without using a Wish, Aladdin uses his first wish to make himself a prince and thus of a social standing to court Jasmine.
But Jafar quickly sees through the disguise, and now that he knows the Lamp is no longer in the Cave…
There are a lot of points that make Aladdin one of the best of the Disney canon, despite its all-too-Disney aspects in others (the Arabian Nights Days setting, the musical numbers that, while well done, always annoy the heck out of me [aside from Jafar's short, ranty reprise of "Prince Ali"], and so on). Ali himself is one of the primary ones. He really is a thief, and while he is – naturally – a Thief With a Heart of Gold – he's got very much more of the street-rat's attitude than almost any other Disney hero, in a way that makes him more real to me than many of the other Disney headliners (the worst offender being the Prince in Sleeping Beauty – a rather pathetic loser who couldn't even achieve anything without the fairies).
The Genie, played with manic glee by the late Robin Williams, is – justifiably – held up as one of the greatest aspects of this film. He was at his best here, and apparently by the time they were done a lot of the script consisted of "… and here Robin does something funny"; they animated around whatever Williams came up with, and it worked. One of the most obvious aspects of the Genie that wouldn't work well in most other films, but could be excused here, was his topical references – talking about modern era material while ostensibly living a thousand years ago. Well, he's an all-powerful Genie, so seeing into the future must be child's play to him, and it allowed him to make all kinds of visual and verbal jokes that amused the audience… and that the Disney animators had the other characters look at with blank confusion, as one would expect.
Jasmine, while constrained by a lot of the usual Disney Princess conventions, is also more proactive than many of her predecessors, quick on the uptake, not as easily fooled as others think, and never stricken with hesitation at the wrong moment. Even as a Disney Princess she manages to show that she really doesn't want others bossing her or manipulating her.
But no set of heroes works without a good… or should we say bad, villain, and for a Disney Villain, Grand Vizier Jafar delivers very well. Jafar is of course doomed to fail – but he doesn't fail easily. He is clever – if so EEEEVIL looking that it's really hard to imagine how even the rather ineffectual Sultan can't see it – determined, methodical (he actually has a plan that almost succeeds, and then decides to try that same plan again with appropriate changes, something many media villains don't do), and absolutely perfect at CHEWING THE SCENERY when given the chance, courtesy of the marvelous voice acting of Jonathan Freeman.
The movie is also filled with lovely quotable lines – "What… what are you doing?" "Giving you your reward, of course; your ETERNAL reward!" "Phenomenal cosmic POWWWEEEERRRRRRR... itty-bitty living space." (well, honestly, almost anything the Genie says, though Iago and Jafar can get in some marvelous snark lines as well).
What really made my day watching this one, though, was that in the end the bad guy isn't shoved off a cliff or otherwise sent to their doom by an accident. No, this time the hero deliberately and with malice (deserved malice!) aforethought sets up the villain's end, by arranging a "be careful what you wish for" that even the Genie didn't see coming – even though it was the Genie's own words that had given Aladdin the idea.
As a Disney film, this one holds up very well, and is one of the relatively few that I wouldn't feel badly about watching again. Recommended!
Your comments or questions welcomed!
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