we feel in the presence of Max Fleischer and Cab Calloway. On the negative side, the film’s
Disney animators quoting their own history in ALADDIN.
Tom Cruise (though he owes more to David Copperfield, if you ask me), situations culled from every Arabian Nights movie ever filmed (and credited to no less than sixteen story people), a wishy-washy score stuck between Broadway showtunes and MOR [Middle of the Road] radio, a fren­ zied pace, a disappointing cli­ max, and a clutter of warring animation techniques. Better than the much-overrated BEAUTY AND THE BEAST perhaps, but still no classic in the true Disney tradition. But watching ALADDIN on
this CAV disc (which is also avail­ able in a CLV non-letterboxed format with different sleeve art for $29.98) is indeed like having your senses cleansed. It is literally illu­ minating, a veritable feast of color. The pace is not frenzied, but rather quick-witted, peppered with gags and humorous nuances that may not be possible to savor fully without CAV still-frame ac­ cess. (With everything else that’s going on in the frame, did anyone notice on tape that Crazy Hakim, the “Discount Fertilizer” sales­ man, is wearing a clothespin on his nose?) The characters may be derivative of known actors, but
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the film is chock-full of refer­ ences to pop culture (everyone from Jack Nicholson to William F. Buckley and Arsenio Hall). With the animation captured at the sharpest possible focus, one can better appreciate the massive strides made by this film in the area of human character anima­ tion—Aladdin and Princess Jas­ mine represent the studio’s most believable human characters since Gepetto—and their height­ ened delineation enables the score by Alan Menken, Howard Ashman and Tim Rice to soar beyond its MOR shackles to be­ come, at times, lyrically incisive and sweetly moving. ALADDIN is also the first postmodern Disney film, in that it actually makes explicit reference to earlier Disney films (and Disney’s ubiquitous “I’m going to Disneyland” com­ mercials) and, more importantly, other styles of animation. The animation techniques are not cluttered, as they seem on video­ tape, but varied with discernible personality—you can see the in­ fluence of not only Disney, but also Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, John Kricfalusi. During the Genie (Robin Williams)’s tour de force performance of “Friend Like Me,”
climax remains something of a disappointment. When the evil Jafar comes into the possession of the Genie, Aladdin has yet to spend his third wish—giving him the power to free the Genie and void Jafar’s magic. Also, doesn’t Jafar’s second wish—to become an all-powerful sorcerer—tres­ pass on one of the wishes that the Genie cannot grant, namely wish­ ing for more wishes? (Jafar gets an unseemly amount of mileage out of that second wish.) Finally, with Jafar assuming so many other forms during the climax, the film doesn’t really impart a sense of his physical defeat and sprints rather too hastily toward the “group hug” finale. Worst of all, the film never returns to the Narrator who opens the film. This bulbous salesman is also voiced by Robin Williams, and thus we feel deprived of the expected pay­ off that the Narrator is in fact the Genie himself, now grown hap­ pily aged in his freedom. The film is presented in a 1.66:1 letterbox, which appears
to be ideal—with the exception of one early gag [Chapter 2, Frame 4479] when a broken spring bursts out of one of the Narrator’s cheap antiques... al­ most completely offscreen. One of the special pleasures of this CAV edition is randomly isolat­ ing individual frames, which enhances one’s appreciation of subtle stage lighting effects (find 4/15061, press Play, and watch the realistic shadowplay on the wall behind Aladdin’s parachut­ ing form). As “Friend Like Me” ends on a strobing shot of the magic lamp, CAV reveals that the animators were actually changing predominant color tints after single frame expo­ sures. Not even Disney’s CAV PINOCCHIO was this instructive
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