Umm... no, thank you.

Rating: Null/10 (8 June 2003)

This movie was being hyped up the wazoo in all the newspapers in its day by critics all proclaiming that it deserved to do better than BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. Why they all thought that, I honestly had (and still have) no idea.
I wanted to enjoy this movie. I really did. But when it came out in theatres, I found it only merely passable as "Saturday morning cartoon" entertainment and haven't been able to enjoy it since.
After doing such huge leaps of art and faith which finally reached a powerful zenith with BEAST, which deserved to win Best Picture that year and was every bit as deserving of all its praise... what does The New Disney do next? An "over the top" cartoony film, a movie given over almost entirely to Robin Williams, and also... in all honesty... the beginning of the end.

I had at first thought that this movie would be a brief "detour" for the studio in terms of comedic and artistic style, but everything in this movie has been rehashed by Disney so many times in an attempt to copy its success to the point of on-the-nose-predictable formula that it's safe to say ALADDIN completely destroyed the Disney tradition of lyrically beautiful animated films from the mouse house for good. We would never get another BEAUTY AND THE BEAST ever again.
Want to feel alone in the world? Try saying you are unimpressed with ALADDIN. Try saying you don't like its songs. Try saying you think its animation looks cheap and unappealing. Try pointing out that there's no point to the nararrator at the film's beginning if he's never brought back to wrap things up. And, the biggest offense of all, try saying that you were un-wowed by Robin Williams' performance here despite the fact that you had usually enjoyed his work up to this point.
I didn't care for all of Genie's modern-day references in a story that I had loved dearly as a child. I didn't like the self-conscious humour of everything else in it, either. And I also didn't like the sloppy inconsistencies in the art direction regarding the character designs.
Now to be fair, maybe my disappointment had to do with the fact that The Denver Post's reviewer actually gave away the entire dramatic climactic surprise of this movie with the phrase "My favourite part is..." (I later wrote in a complaint to him at the paper saying, "Thanks a heap for giving away the whole surprise ending in one sentence"). That might have taken all the tension out of the finale and such for me. That may be, but, given my reaction to the rest of the movie as a whole, I doubt it.
I'm sorry, don't mean to step on anyone's toes, but I honestly just don't care for it that much.