Good work, though it is starting to look dated.

Rating: Null/10 (10 September 2002)

I hadn't seen this one in some 4 or 5 years and decided to revisit it... Unfortunately it doesn't hold up well over time, as a lot of the "pop culture" references are already outdated. (Remember when Arsenio had his own show? Remember when Jack Nicholson was thin?) A lot of Genie's impressions of Golden Age actors and TV stars, and even the more recent ones, are showing their age and will probably be wholly obsolete within another 10 or 15 years. As I watched this movie again I found that the funniest moments were those that didn't exploit the "present day" to get their point across. Iago saying "NOT!"?.. Ugh. Does that smack of the early 90s or what? (Very unpleasantly reminiscent of Little John's "That's a Gas!" in Robin Hood..) This will not be one of those timeless movies your grandkids will like 30 years from now, and that's a shame because they could have made it funny *without* branding it with "1992". .. Still, it's enjoyable for a romp nowadays, especially among young adults who actually *remember* when "Not" was the height of fashion. (And, by the way, it wouldn't surprise me a bit if the Disney suits decided to just edit that out in future releases of this film...) It's a very colorful movie, too, action packed and almost neon-bright, with CGI that's obvious and glaring and even *more* fun for the people old enough to remember when CGI first came on the scene in animated films.. And later when everybody was so excited about the Ballroom Scene in Beauty and the Beast? And then everybody started using CGI everywhere and they didn't even bother to blend it in with the rest of the movie because people were so excited about it that they didn't care that it looked obvious? Remember that? Yeah, it was right around 1992, wasn't it..?
The animation in 'Aladdin' is nice, but it's another one of those examples of how much LESS energy is put into Disney's yearly releases, as compared to earlier films like Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, etc.. Even in 'The Jungle Book' and '101 Dalmatians', both of which are handpainted and "sketchy-looking", you can see the difference in quality without even trying. Hands down, they just took the time to put in more drawings per second, to yield much smoother action. Some moments in Aladdin look positively cartoony...With Genie especially, the drawings sometimes get a little too loose for comfort.
Some saving graces in 'Aladdin,' though, are the songs and the delightful Magic Carpet, who manages to be funny and quirky-cute without saying a word... (Mercifully so, as the writers would probably have him yakking more damning but wannabe-funny '92isms if only he had a mouth. "Carpet's in the HOUSE, Yo! On the floor!" Ugh. (Shudders.) Carpet is a curious character to find in a movie like "Aladdin," exactly because his charming mannerisms are a relaxed and timeless joy amid the frantic pace and pop-reliant humor of the rest of the film. I'd wager that, in the future, he and Abu will garner more of the adoration as Genie's shtick starts to go gray. And please.. PLEASE!! No more Jim Cummings!! Please make it stop!