Rewatchable? Consider the dizzying, elastic miracle wrought by Robin Williams!

Rating: 7/10 (31 December 2009)

ALADDIN premiered November 25th of 1992 and was both produced and distributed by Disney. It was their 31st animated feature coming right behind THE LITTLE MERMAID and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and just before THE LION KING. It is based on the Arab folktale of Aladdin and the magic lamp from One Thousand and One Nights. As of today there are actually 27 film versions of this story. Movie buffs point to the 1924 silent film THE THIEF OF BAGDAD starring Douglas Fairbanks Sr. and the 1940 version which had Sabu & Conrad Veidt as two of the best. Back when Walt Disney was still alive and doing his own casting he never wanted to meet the actors face to face before the role was cast. He would stay in his office and have the actors audition into a microphone in another room and have the sound pumped thru speakers into his office so he could only base his judgment on what he heard. This way he could select the best voice to fit the animated characters as he saw them in his head. During script and storyboard development, the writers were already considering Robin Williams for the role of the Genie but had not approached him for the project. In order to convince Williams to do the role, Eric Goldberg animated the Genie doing several minutes of Williams' stand-up routines and screened it for him. Williams was so impressed that he signed almost immediately. Directors Musker and Clements created the Genie with Robin Williams in mind; even though John Candy, Steve Martin, and Eddie Murphy were considered. Unusually for an animated film, much of Williams' dialogue was ad-libbed: for some scenes, Williams was given topics and dialogue suggestions, but allowed to improvise his lines. It was estimated that Williams improvised 52 characters. Eric Goldberg, the supervising animator for the Genie, then reviewed Williams' 16 hours of recorded dialogue and selected the best gags and lines that his crew would create character animation to match. Most critics' praise went to Robin Williams' performance as Genie, with Janet Maslin of The New York Times declaring that children "needn't know precisely what Mr. Williams is evoking to understand how funny he is". Warner Bros animator Chuck Jones even called the film "the funniest feature ever made." Robin Williams was born in Chicago and educated at Julliard but this stand-up comedian became an over night sensation on TV's Mork & Mindy before going onto acting in films. He has been nominated for four Oscars and won one Academy Award, so far. Roger Ebert said, "All of the film's best moments come from the genie and the other supporting characters, which include a plump little sultan, his scheming vizier, an angry parrot named Iago, a chattering monkey, a friendly flying carpet, and even a magic cave that turns into a fearsome face so that Aladdin has to venture down its throat. Ever since Jiminy Cricket first danced onto the screen, Disney animators have created entertaining supporting casts, and the magic carpet is one of the most ingenious: with only tassels and body language to work with, it somehow possesses a complete personality, whisking Aladdin on terrifying swoops around the kingdom. The scene-stealing monkey Abu (with noises supplied by Frank Welker) is a particular treat, as when he jealously mimics the Princess or otherwise comments on Aladdin's adventures." Janet Maslin of the New York Times said, ""Master, I hear and obey," said the Genie in the storybook version of "Aladdin," and his comments seldom went further than that. For an exercise in contrast, consider the dizzying, elastic miracle wrought by Robin Williams, Walt Disney Pictures' bravura animators and the Oscar-winning songwriting team of Alan Menken and Howard Ashman in "Aladdin," the studio's latest effort to send the standards for animated children's films into the stratosphere. What will children make of a film whose main attraction -- the Genie himself -- has such obvious parent appeal? They needn't know precisely what Mr. Williams is evoking to understand how funny he is. And the crazily antic pacing of the Genie's outbursts will be utterly familiar to small viewers, even if they can't identify a lightning-fast evocation of "The Ed Sullivan Show." What will come through clearly to audiences of any age is the breathless euphoria of Mr. Williams' free associations, in which no subject is off-limits, not even Disney itself." But this film is not with out controversy: In the opening credits song ARABIAN NIGHTS a line is sung, "Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face/It's barbaric, but, hey, it's home," in the original release to video release changed the line to "Where it's flat and immense and the heat is intense/It's barbaric, but, hey, it's home."