Movie Review: Aladdin

Michael's Movie Grade: D-

Review: Everything that is wrong with this movie can be summed up in the character of the genie. This character is trying to find his own personality separate from the character in the 1992, but fails for the simple reason that he spends too much time copying the previous Genie. He sings the same songs, says lines directly from the 1992 film and redoes various comedy bits. The problem is this cannot be replicated here. Much of the original Genie's charm comes from two places. The first is the vocal performance of Robin Williams, and the second is the high energy animation (supervised by Eric Goldberg). Since neither of those are possible in a live action remake after Robin Williams passed away, the scene copying what the Genie did in the first version is bound to fall way short. When the Genie is allowed to be a different character from the 1992 version, it is often too little and feels out of place. It is hard to picture the Genie you see in these scenes as the same character that was in the You Never Had a Friend Like Me or Prince Ali musical numbers.

The rest of the film's problems come from the exact same situation. The movie cannot have it both ways. In other words it can't be both a carbon copy of the 1992 film and have its own identity as well. Whenever this movie tries to add something new to the story it is unbelievably forced in. Ideas like Jasmine wanting to be Sultan or Genie having a love interest are not bad ideas at all. In fact if done right they could be quite interesting. They are not done right though. They are given too little time to be fleshed out or leave much of an impact, and add nothing to the story whatsoever. These interesting ideas simply feel out of place and like they are simply there to make the movie longer than the 1992 version (why this would be necessary is a mystery to me). A new musical number called Speechless on the other hand doesn't try to give the film any different identity. Instead it sounds like songwriters trying too hard to sound just like the songs you hear in the Disney films of the 1990's. When the film takes scenes directly from the 1992 movie, it is often done in a very lifeless way, falling way short of the 1992 movie. The musical numbers lack energy, the comedy lacks real laughs, the romance feels generic and the whole film lacks a sense of heart or magic.

Movies like this beg the simple question, "why?" There is no reason for this movie to exist besides money. It is simply a weaker version of the 1992 film, with no reason to recommend it over that film.

-Michael J. Ruhland