02.06
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljeP0jrpF-w
I mentioned this on the blog once, but Aladdin is one of my very favorite Disney movies. The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast are fine movies, I liked them as a kid too, but I’m not a girl, so there wasn’t as much to attract me to their bandwagons, not to mention that the former came out about a year before I was born and I was barely over a year old when the latter came out. Aladdin I was just about old enough to catch in theaters and revel over it’s video tape. It had it all; a clever male lead with a love interest who wasn’t a sap on top of a smoothly threatening villain and a goofy, shapeshifting genie, with some of the best songs in the Disney canon. As a kid, it hit all the right notes that a movie should, and while The Lion King would do it a little better on top of a much bigger hype train, Aladdin came first and naturally had a spin-off series come out first(don‘t worry, Lion King‘s is next).
Disney started dancing with the idea to make sequels to some of their properties as far back as 1990, when they released The Rescuers Down Under, a modestly budgeted sequel to the 1977 classic. It didn’t set the world apart at the box office, not making anywhere near Little Mermaid or Roger Rabbit money, but at least made it’s budget back to prove that there may be some interest in making more sequels to their animated features.
Rather than spending as much money on the sequels as they do for their original canon titles, as well as distract from their ever-growing theater schedule for these movies, Disney decided to put most of these sequels out straight to video, and rather than having the people behind these movies come back to work on them again and mess with the schedule, Disney usually had the people from their Australia division work on the animation, while various TV people throughout would take over the stories. Since Aladdin broke records as the highest grossing animated movie of all time, also being the first to gross over $200 million, it seemed like a natural choice to use it as their first subject for a second go around.
Even better, why not continue Aladdin, Jasmine, and the gang’s adventures beyond movies? Since Disney’s Little Mermaid show on CBS, which followed Ariel’s life prior to being a part of our world, did well for them, it seemed like a natural idea to do a continuation of Aladdin’s story, following him and Jasmine during their engagement days, while the sequel film would become an opener to the show.
The Return of Jafar, Aladdin’s sequel, went to video on March 20, 1994, while Aladdin’s own series joined the Disney Afternoon block for it’s 1994-1995 season, replacing TaleSpin. It stayed on for the next two and debatably last seasons. During which, it also aired another batch of episodes on CBS’ Saturday morning block, and also aired another season of episodes made for CBS.
I always considered the Aladdin sequels(that wasn’t an error; I’ll get to the other one, later) to be among the best of Disney’s direct to video sequels, since even though the animation in them weren’t as sharp as that of the original’s or later sequels, nor or the songs as memorable as the original, Aladdin and his friends seem to have a rich sense of characteristics that lend them to adventures beyond the movie they premiered in. I feel the same way about the series, but to a lesser extent. Aladdin the TV series tended to have a very hit or miss range, with some episodes containing nearly as much entertainment value and character depth as the movie, but others not as much.
As much as I love Aladdin the movie, I haven’t seen much of Aladdin the series in a while. Doing this article gave me the first chance in years to rediscover the series. I’ve only seen a handful or so of episodes so far, but I have enjoyed what I’ve seen, for the most part.
On the good, the characters are pretty close to their original personas from the movie, from what I’ve seen at least. Even then, it’s mostly the main two I’m talking about. Aladdin has gone through a little bit of a change from the movie. Rather than living on the streets like he did in the film, Aladdin lives in the palace with his beloved Princess Jasmine, who he is still engaged to.
Jasmine is still the desirable beauty that she is. I’ve always considered her to be the most attractive looking princess and when she’s drawn right, she can really strut her stuff. Until we met Tiana from The Princess and the Frog, Jasmine was also my favorite of the Disney Princesses in terms of personality as well, because she didn’t take crap from just about anyone, but wasn’t too aggravating in her plight. She’s mad about having to find a suitor she doesn’t like, but she does want to get married. She just wants a choice in this. She can tend to let her impulses get in the way however, but this also contributes to her being more than a Sue. I don’t get why so few people liked her on the series while Aladdin got the attention of all the ladies. Even the suitors who still go to Jasmine even after she becomes engaged to Al think she’s hard to deal with. Jasmine is still smoking hot and freely speaks her mind.
While Aladdin and Jasmine I still find to be likable, the supporting characters aren’t as much. Maybe it’s because comic relief only can be funny for so long, so characters meant to kill tension with humor can get old. The Sultan is fine, but Iago(who parts with his old master in The Return of Jafar to join Al and his gang) and Abu aren’t as much. Mostly they get departed from the action and work together to get back to Aladdin, which gives Iago enough time to complain about their current predicament and Abu try to calm him down in his creepy monkey voice. I thought Iago was hilarious in the movie, and Abu had really smooth animation on top of humorous side relief, but together they don’t blend well.
The Genie can still be funny, but he grates a little more in the series, since he isn’t always as necessary as a character in the show. What really hurts Genie’s character is losing Robin Williams, who took the best aspects of his stand-up routine and put them into his character. Williams had some dispute with Disney, so Dan Castellaneta, best known as the voice of Homer Simpson, took over as the Genie for Return of Jafar and the sequel. Castellaneta does his best, but sometimes his Genie sounds more like his Homer or Megavolt(which he also voiced) voices, which interfered with his performance.
The original characters don’t gel as much. Since Jafar was done with, they couldn’t rely on him forever in the show, so new villains were made for it, and most of them were lame.
Abis Mal, whose name is pronounced exactly as you read it, came from Return of Jafar. He is a pathetic thief who frequently attempts to earn some kind of wealth in the show. He often gets foiled during his schemes relatively early on, and isn’t much of a threat for the gang. Despite Jason Alexander voicing him(or perhaps in spite of), Abis Mal isn’t a very good character, just kind of a stock villain the writers can come back to when they need someone.
Another popular villain is Mozenrath, a young sorcerer similar to Aladdin in terms of origin and design. More or less an evil Aladdin. Mozenrath has some solid ideas but is ruined by horrendous dialogue and a weak performance by Jonathan Brandis. He sounds more emo than threatening, before emo was a way to describe someone.
Then we have Mirage, who is a catlike Egyptian sorceress. She uses her power to trick the gang with her name sakes, as well as other kinds of trickery. She has some really good episodes but at the end of the day doesn’t really do as much as she can. If she’s so powerful, why can’t she just kill Aladdin and Jasmine and get on her way? She doesn’t even seem to fight back too often.
Probably the series finest episodes involves her, “Eye of the Beholder“. In it, Mirage makes a bet that she can destroy love, which she attempts to do with Aladdin and Jasmine’s. After a recent argument, Jasmine thinks that Aladdin only cares about her looks, so Mirage, in a new human form, tricks her into buying some skin cream. The cream is actually one of Mirage’s potions, which turns Jasmine into a snake. When she discovers this, she starts worrying that Al won’t love her anymore, which Mirage wants. Aladdin tries his hardest to help Jasmine return back to human, to no avail. Jasmine only becomes more unlikely to become human again, and becomes increasingly poisoness. Mirage is hoping that Al will leave her as the chances of her becoming human are next to none, but Aladdin then throws a curveball at her, as he uses the rest of the cream become a snake instead, only proving his dedication.
Episodes this sweet prove that a good story can overshadow a mediocre villain, which Aladdin had to do often.
It’s also worth noting that after the series ended, another direct to video movie was released, Aladdin and the King of Thieves, in 1996. In this one, Aladdin meets his father, who is revealed to be Ali Baba, calling back to his Arabian Nights roots. It’s also important as not only do Aladdin and Jasmine finally get married, but Robin Williams returns as the Genie.
King of Thieves is a solid ending of the Aladdin saga, just as Return of Jafar is a solid continuation, and the Aladdin series is a solid follow-up. Measure in the good and the bad and you have a decent franchise based off of one of Disney’s strongest classics. Now to go to Timon & Pumbaa…
While no actual DVD releases have been made of the show, a few episodes have been put into some of Disney’s Princess DVD titles. I’m not sure which episodes are on which discs, but I’ll assume that they are mostly Jasmine related, and I do know that “Eye of the Beholder” is in one of them. If you’re able to accept buying a Princess DVD, you can look out for those.
Originally posted on Sunday, June 20, 2010.