Aladdin is a street-urchin who lives in a large and busy town long ago with his faithful monkey friend Abu. When Princess Jasmine gets tired of being forced to remain in the palace that overlooks the city, she sneaks out to the marketplace, where she accidentally meets Aladdin. Under the orders of the evil Jafar (the sultan’s advisor), Aladdin is thrown in jail and becomes caught up in Jafar’s plot to rule the land with the aid of a mysterious lamp. Legend has it that only a person who is a “diamond in the rough” can retrieve the lamp from the Cave of Wonders. Aladdin might fight that description, but that’s not enough to marry the princess, who must (by law) marry a prince.
One of the more energetic entries in the Disney Renaissance, perhaps not entirely to its benefit when compared with the grace and majesty of Beauty and the Beast or The Lion King. Still, the whiz-bang art direction and the memorable soundtrack counter the more buffoonish antics in the script (the exception being Williams, whose presence marvellously invigorates the piece), as does the perpetual nostalgia it all easily induces.
Although I very much prefer The Thief and the Cobbler, Disney sure knew how to tell a story a lot better than Richard Williams did.
Aladdin was the third film in Disney’s rebirth as animation king and is a beautifully animated film full of mystery, joy, and thrills, if also a bit insensitive. Still, you have to give Disney some… read review