A Kid in Aladdin's Palace
There's more shtick than you can shake a stick at in this goofy sequel to the 1995 comedyA Kid in King Arthur's Court. Thomas Ian Nicholas returns as Calvin, a deceptively commonplace '90s teen whose pizza-delivery job gets him mixed up in an ancient quest to help Ali Baba save Aladdin--and all of Arabia--from the evil schemes of Aladdin's brother, Luxor. Just as Calvin relied on rollerblades and CD players to help him in the previous movie, his stash of contemporary gizmos gets him out of more than one jam when Luxor's henchmen come looking for him. There's a fair amount of F/X magic here--including the traditional opening of Ali Baba's hideaway at the command "open sesame"--but silliness is the real engine of this movie. (Ali Baba and his Forty Thieves? Try Ali and his Three Lamebrained Brothers.) Comic actor Taylor Negron is very funny as Aladdin's smart-aleck genie, stuck inside a lamp for a thousand years but hip enough to describe Luxor as "gone postal."--Tom Keogh