This'll be my very first double review, because I feel like
The Return of Jafar really doesn't deserve much of a review, so I'm packing it into this post.
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The Return of Jafar is the first sequel I'm at a lose of words on. It isn't horrible by any means, but it's still pretty damn bad. The problem with this movie is that, simply, barely anything happens in it to talk about.
I'm aware
The Return of Jafar is meant to be a prequel to the animated series. In a lot of ways, it works very well as that. As a movie, however, it really doesn't.
The Bad:
Humor - None of the jokes in this movie are funny, which while I thought Genie was annoying at times in
Aladdin, he takes it to the next level here by not only being annoying but having some really unfunny jokes. This whole movie relies on humor, and this is it's biggest downfall. The whole character arc of Iago is completely humor based, who while at the end redeems himself for kicking Jafar's lamp into the lava at a time where his death felt immanent, that doesn't make up for the hour and 5 minutes the movie encompasses where he isn't like that.
Iago really doesn't deserve what he was rewarded with in the movie, though I guess they had to set up all of this shit for
Aladdin TV series...
The Good:
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Jafar's new design is pretty cool. He really steals the show of
The Return of Jafar, which is no surprise cause his name is in the movie rather than Aladdin's. All of his new genie powers are enjoyable to watch, and to see him get creative with them throughout the whole movie rather than at the end of a movie like
Aladdin was justfun to watch.
But that is alternatively one of the biggest problems with this movie. The movie tries too hard to develop Aladdin and Jasmine as characters and end up falling flat, when the story was mainly about Jafar and Iago.
It also has some really nice
Action sequences in the final bits of the last two acts.
Conclusion:
As I said in the opening sentence, I don't have anything really to say about
The Return of Jafar because, truly, this is a movie where literally nothing really happens. This is really disappointing, as after
Cinderella II: Dreams Come True and
The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea - which are so bad yet have so much to say - this movie is just bad and doesn't have much to talk about. It's a movie about Jafar, and that's all that can be said. It's full of unfunny jokes after unfunny jokes, badly developed characterization, and really just...
nothing. They should've just called this
Aladdin: Hijinks Ensues cause that's basically what this movie is in it's most concentrated form. Some people may enjoy the fact that Iago is the main focus of the movie, but I don't. He really isn't funny nor does he really deserve to be added amongst the main good-guy cast of Aladdin. And that, my friend, is
The Return of Jafar. It isn't worth watching if you're a fan of
Aladdin, but it is worth watching if you're planning on watching the
Aladdin TV series I guess.
4/10
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Aladdin and the King of Thieves is a drastically different story from
The Return of Jafar. While this movie wasn't as good as the original
Aladdin, and is in no way a masterpiece, I'm shocked it's rated so lowly on many sites as I think this is a great supplement to the original
Aladdin much like how
The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning is to
The Little Mermaid. While the story itself, in concept, feels like it doesn't need to be told, when you watch
Aladdin and the King of Thieves it becomes something very convincing and provides a good ending for
Aladdin's story.
The Good:
This is a movie where I can't help to say nothing but good things. After watching it I was pleased with the result, and found the movie to be quite touching. While I think the ending could've been wrapped up better than it was, the movie was really well-written and worthwhile, I felt.
Story/Characters - Well the first thing that's really great about
Aladdin and the King of Thieves is it's story and characters. As I said in the opening paragraph, in concept it isn't very appealing. Who really cares about Aladdin's backstory anyway? It's already established that he's a thief with a heart of gold, who wants to escape from his thieving ways for a better life. His goes through a character arc in the original
Aladdin that establishes all went well for him and Jasmine at the end, so in all honesty there isn't much left to the established character.
Aladdin and the King of Thieves destroys this notion but turning Aladdin into a different character by placing him in a completely different story, and it works effectively in the hyper-Arabian world of Agrabah that already barely has a resemblance to the original Aladdin story in setting, style, and tone. It works cause the setting itself is quite unique and original, but unfortunately falls under the trope of what I call "It's all the same shit." in connecting the two really different stories from
1001 Arabian Nights.
Now when I say turning Aladdin into a "different character" I don't exactly mean his personality, I mean all of a sudden his backstory is attributed to something even greater than we thought, that is related to a different character: Ali Baba (as we all know). This works really well with the movie, cause it makes Aladdin's backstory much more interesting than it needs to be. We're suddenly introduced to these group of characters called the 40 Thieves, lead by Cassim, who turns out to be Aladdin's father and the "King of Thieves." Throughout the whole film, Aladdin and Cassim interact with each other in a very dynamic and interesting way. Aladdin has matured from his old thieving ways, but is still young; Cassim - on the other hand - has matured in age, but not in mentality. These contrasting character traits really cause these two characters to shine, and brings their development towards each other stronger than one may epect. It's handled very carefully in this movie, and you can tell not only the writers were having fun with these characters, but were also putting a real effort into expanding Aladdin's character.
I dunno about most people, but I just really felt the relationship between the two was pretty heartwarming and down-to-earth (but not necessarily realistic). This makes the movie for me, and is the main reason why I really enjoyed watching
Aladdin and the King of Thieves.
Action - Now while this would usually be addressed in the
Story section, I feel like I should make an exclusive section for this cause I really liked the action sequences in this movie. While this part of the review will be short cause one can only go so far when praising an action scene with, "It's awesome!" or "It's amazing!" I will say that the whole
Plot itself is paced by action-sequence-after-action-sequence. Basically what I'm saying is that what "hilarious" hijinks did for
The Return of Jafar as a device to move the plot along, action sequences did for
Aladdin and the King of Thieves, and I think this works really well as it shows that the movie is making an attempt to reach out to various audiences. In all honesty, I think it works effectively, as every action sequence holds weight to it in some form or another; whether it's related to the story or the characters in it, all of the sequences in this movie has a very clear meaning and path. This makes it far more streamlined than
The Return of Jafar and most Disney sequels out there, telling a very linear and to-the-point story that makes it clear to the audience that it means business.
Now I'm not saying that all movies should be linear and "to-the-point," but with movies with simple designed settings and characters like
Aladdin it works the best that way than scattering the plot all over the place like they did with
The Return of Jafar.
Music - The music in this is really good! Really memorable stuff, which was surprising to me. While not on par with
Aladdin or pretty much any other Renaissance classic, it's still better than
Hercules.
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And then there's real stinkers like this shit:
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ALADDIN AND CASSIM PLAYING B-BALL?! WHAT THE FUCK?!</center>
While it isn't particularly amazingly written, these tracks are catchy as hell, and stick with you, which is more than can what be said with every movie I've been watching so far except for maybe
There Will be Life from
Bambi II.
Animation - The animation in this movie is great, and is the very first
DisneyToon Studios movie that has them actually caring about the quality of the animation. While not as good as later efforts -
and there are plenty of animation errors and janky animations throughout the movie - the actual expressions and animations of all of the characters are accurate to what you'd see in
Aladdin. None of the character designs have changed, which is different from the previous film
The Return of Jafar where all of the characters have been altered for the television series that followed (which isn't really enough to complain about, but whatever). All of the original characters like Cassim, Sa'luk, and various other minor characters stay on model to
Aladdin tradition without resorting to rehashing concepts.
Humor - Genie is hilarious in this, and might just be the funniest incarnation of him yet. While he's really all over the place, he never bores the viewers, and all of his jokes are genuinely funny in how off-beat the references are. Just looking at the list of references his character covers on wikipedia is ridiculous.
Genie's Guises<hr>
- Williams' many impersonations included a live-action character he portrayed: The title character of the 1993 comedy film Mrs. Doubtfire.
- At the very end of the credits, the Genie appears in front of the black screen and says, "Game Over, man! Game Over!" This is a spoof of an identical line by the character Private William Hudson in the movie Aliens.
- The "security system" set up by the Genie has the classic Cylon "sweep eye" found in Battlestar Galactica.
- During the first song, the Genie turns into Rocky.
- Ali Baba and the forty thieves are mentioned at the beginning of the song Friend Like Me from the first Aladdin movie.
- During the song "Father and Son", Genie references The Jetsons.
- Various references included Pocahontas, Pumbaa from The Lion King, Rocky Balboa, ED-209 from RoboCop, and Mickey Mouse from Steamboat Willie, all of which Genie turned into or made with magic.
- Genie transforms into a parody of Forrest Gump during the wedding fight scene and says "Mama always said, 'Magic is magic does.'"
Genie also turns into various things in the film: a ninja, an old man, a baby, Tinker Bell, a construction worker, Rainman, Elvis Presley, the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, Copernicus, Sagittarius, Castor and Pollux, Walter Cronkite, Albert Einstein, The Godfather, Shaquille O'Neal, Mickey Mouse's dog Pluto, a fat farmer, a wrestler, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Donald Duck, Baloo the Bear, Ozzie Nelson, Woody Allen, and simultaneously, the Marx Brothers Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.
- There is a scene where he turns Jasmine's wedding dresses into that of Cinderella's and Snow White's. He also contemplates what she would look like as Ariel, Minnie Mouse, and Jessica Rabbit. During these scenes, Bambi and Roger Rabbit make brief appearances.
I've been thinking about why Genie is allowed to exist with all of these popculture references...
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Agrabah takes place 10,000 years into the future in an alternate reality where the world itself has been destroyed by a super volcano, and humanity itself has dwindled down to small numbers. The world has be mutated by powerful science from the past over thousands of years, emulating what people call "magic." Civilizations from across the world are emulated carbon copies of past civilizations, with modern and misplaced elements scattered across the place hence why Roman civilization is able to live amongst Mesopotamian civilization, and why the Hercules universe is the same as the Aladdin universe, and why pop culture references exist at all. Genie himself is a relic of our time, representing all of the knowledge of past history, and 10,000 years ago he was sealed into a lamp so his powers can never be used again as his powers were deemed dangerous. Genies themselves are all able to bend reality to their very will, making their sealing in a lamp important in keeping their power restricted to a human master.
Genie is potentially able to destroy the universe itself. Genie has displayed that he's associated with science (in an Einstein parody), so most likely his powers are also related to science, but one that is higher from our own understanding of the universe. Genie is a being who exists in dimensions outside of the 3rd dimension, making his appearance appear random and crazy to the human eye when - in fact - it's very natural to him and other genie. To us, we just think it's a comic relief character, but he's - in fact - a reality bending alien god, like all other genie. Aladdin made a huge mistake, however, when he freed him as this gives Genie free reign over his chaos. One day, the Aladdin universe will be destroyed, because of Genie's tampering with the laws of physics and reality itself. He'll be the only one left, laughing like it was all some type of joke, and just recreate the universe in his own image just because he thinks it's funny.
There is an infinite amount of possible universes. This means that in one universe, there's is a world just like Aladdin, with Genie. This also means there's an infinite amount of possible universes where Genie exists, and the very fact that Genie is able to travel amongst space-time itself means that ONE DAY GENIE COULD BE REAL. TIME TO PREPARE FOR THE APOCALYPSE, 2012! PACK YO THINGS, BUY CANNED FOODS, BUT LOTS AND LOTS OF BOTTLED WATER CAUSE THE WORLD WILL END BECAUSE OF GENIE SOMEDAY!
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Conclusion:
I have no problems with this movie. I guess the only real problem is, while everything in the movie is well-made and good, it's still not really as good as a good portion of Disney films. One will not look back at
Aladdin and the King of Thieves and think of it as a masterpiece like some people do with
Aladdin, but I will say that - without a doubt -
Aladdin and the King of Thieves is the best of the Disney sequels and is worth watching if you're a fan of the original
Aladdin, whether it's for the humor, good action, or great characters.
7/10
Up next: The Fox and the Hound 2
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I really loved the score to that one scene though, where Ariel runs aways from home. And I for one actually liked Marina, barring the climactic scene where she's in army gear. 
Thank goodness I overcame the painful memories of the cash-ins by my teens so that Aladdin became a top favourite of mine again. 
