Well, with 'The Return of Jafar' doing so well in sales,
and the animated series being a pretty modest hit...
...it only made sense to wrap it all up with one more Aladdin movie: 'Aladdin and the King of Thieves'.
A MUCH better sequel than the last one.
Not only is it more cinematic in both the story and its visual style,
but it actually puts the focus back on Aladdin,
and the troubles hes going through.
does that make it good?
...IIIIII don't know if I can go THAT far,
there are still a lot of things that don't work about it.
But I can at least say I was genuinely entertained, and even kind of impressed.
Aladdin and Jasmine are finally getting married!
...yeah, I guess they pushed that whole 'three days' thing off a bit...
...But like he said, he's the sultan and can change the law... so... why even have a law that she has to be marri-- Oh, who knows?...
Fairy tales, ha ha...!
But Aladdin is feeling sad because he can't invite his father to the wedding, because... well... he never knew his father.
But that all changes when he discovers his father is actually the king of the 40 thieves, and tries to rob the wedding.
He's trying to get the scepter that's in the palace that contains an oracle that can tell him where the greatest treasure of all is: the Hand of Midas.
Aladdin and his father, played by John Rhys-Davies, finally meet up, and don't know what to really make of each other.
The father is confused about how he made it to a place of royalty,
and Aladdin is confused why his father is still a thief.
Both want a relationship to bloom, but both have issues trusting the other,
especially Aladdin trusting his father, and as we find out, kind of rightfully so.
The father still wants to find the Hand of Midas and will do anything to achieve it.
So Aladdin puts off his wedding and goes back and forth trying to figure out
whether or not he wants to help his father and get the treasure,
or if he just wants his father back to be... well... his father.
And... yeah... this is kinda the main problem with the film.
I give them credit for tackling the issue of fathers that aren't very good fathers, as it can be a very tough issue.
Sometimes can turn over a new leaf, but other times are still stuck in this selfish cycle.
But... here's the problem: Aladdin's father's cycle doesn't really make sense.
He says that he left Aladdin because he couldn't provide for him and his wife,
so he goes and joins the 40 thieves, to get his treasure, so that... well, he can support them.
They clearly find a lot of treasures, but he never comes back.
...Well, okay, maybe they are building him up as kind of a deadbeat dad.
But no! They try to give him these sympathetic moments!
Which I'm usually for, except it doesn't match at all what he was talking about.
Anyone that talks like how this father talks about his son wouldn't do the things that he does.
He WOULD be happy to go to the wedding. He WOULDN'T give a crap about the treasure - in fact,
there's really no point to care about the treasure! He can just go and live in the palace!
It's all just a pride thing!
But then at the end: he throws away the treasure! Even though he tried so hard to get it, but--
Wait, Aladdin was helping him find the treasure too! Why does Aladdin suddenly care about this?!
It's so weird to see Aladdin just abandon his wedding, then be like:
"Hey, let's go find this treasure, that... really I don't care about!",
but... he does it really cheerfully! And the father is all OK with it and it... just doesn't add up!
The motivations constantly go back and forth, but not in a way I feel was intentional.
If you wanna see this kind of story done SO much better,
watch 'Adventure Time' and Finn's connection to his father,
...or even, strangely enough, 'Fresh Prince of Bel-Air' and HIS connection with his real father.
These shows get it, and they know how to explain it well.
I don't think this one really does.
It feels more like they wanna do something with Aladdin connecting to his father, but...
... they also want a treasure hunt.
So, they just kinda smash 'em together, and...
...yeah, given the probable short amount of time that they had on this, I guess I can't be surprised what we got...
But that still doesn't mean that the heart and focus works,
and when the heart and focus doesn't work, the film really suffers, and it's hard to get behind it.
But that's not the only problem:
the first Aladdin was very good at balancing out the characters - everybody felt like they got the appropriate amount of screentime.
In this one, it's mostly on Aladdin, which is better than 'Return of Jafar', where it's mostly on Iago...
...but all Jasmine does is show some support and then mostly stay out of the picture, and...
...all the Genie does is want to plan a wedding.
Speaking of which: let's talk about the Genie.
Because Robin Williams is back to voice him, aand... that's both kind of a pro and a con.
It's a pro, because... it's Robin Williams, and his improvising is incredible.
But it's a con because, unlike the first film, they don't always know when to cut him off.
Granted, in the original, they leave the camera on him too long sometimes,
but they knew to keep the focus on Aladdin and the story and so forth.
In this one, I actually kinda dreaded whenever the Genie was gonna come onscreen.
Even when he made me laugh, it just didn't connect to anything.
It's like he comes in and just hijacks the movie,
when we could be spending more time trying to get the motivations of Aladdin and his father down.
Or give Jasmine more time, or make the villain more interesting - just...
Every time he shows up, even when it's hilarious... it still feels out of place.
At first I thought the songs were gonna be really good. The first one really had me tapping my feet and kinda humming it afterwards.
But then, outside of a duet from Aladdin and Jasmine,
they all sound exactly like that.
I swear, it's like the exact same song in the exact same rhythm, just a few notes are missing or changed.
There's very little variety. Which is ironic, because I KNOW more than one songwriter worked on this.
But, for all its problems, like I said, there are a lot of good things.
Williams' jokes, though they do go on too long, are still mostly funny.
They do at least try to tie in some of the characters at the end - Jasmine throws a punch, and the genie gets a few action scenes...
...And like I said, you can tell they're trying to go that extra mile. Look at some of this animation,
this is the same crew that brought the Aladdin TV show to life!
TV shows back then didn't have a big animation budget,
so for them to come together and pull off something that looks this good...
...It's really impressive!
The angles, the movement, the lighting, the colors!
You can tell they knew this was gonna be the last thing Aladdin-related, and they wanted to try their hardest to make it good.
And, give 'em credit, for all the action and singing, there are a lot of times where people just sit down and talk.
When it's actually needed and welcomed!
And those scenes don't feel forced, they flow very naturally.
It's just... *sigh* ...once again, the motivations.
There's a difference between being intentionally complex, and sloppily complex.
I feel like this movie had a lot of really good scenes and ideas...
...but no concentrated narrative to have them connect or flow.
So it's a tough call! I don't see it really working as a film, but I'm also kinda happy I saw it!
It was visually interesting, it was creative... you could tell it was trying to have a real heart and soul.
And I give it credit that it was trying to wrap up both the TV series AND the movies.
It even ends with the merchant singing the song at the end
- those were kinda nice bookends.
I get a feeling if I was a little kid I'd be into it, and... as an adult, there's some neat stuff.
It's just that none of it ever really connected.
But you gotta give props to the directors, and animators, who you know were on a tough deadline for this.
For Disney sequels and shows that are almost never given enough time to be fleshed out,
This was a valiant attempt to justly wrap up
another Arabian night.