Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

## Stats

***Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves*** is the second episode of the third season of Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child, and the twenty-eighth episode in total. It aired on July 14, 1999.

## Summary

Once in a village in the sand, lived Ali Baba, who lived with her grandmother and brother Cassim after her parents died. Ali Baba loved helping out, but Cassim would rather help himself to goods in the villages, such as an orange that Ali Baba pays with her own coin that Cassim eats. Ali Baba's grandma reminds her not to sell the kindling wood at the market, but Ali Baba knows not to. In fact, she knows exactly what her grandma says before she even says it. Ali Baba gets her baby camel Bahja and they head off, passing Cassim who is with his giggling girlfriends. Ali Baba also finds her snake friend Kibwe who has a grasshopper in the mouth, but she says she likes her grasshoppers "deep fried, with salt". Ali Baba and her pals find a group of men sword fighting each other, when their leader tells them to stop. He then says "Open sesame!" which opens up a rock, plus closes it with "Closed sesame!".

Ali Baba, Bahja, and Kibwe walk up to it. Ali Baba tries to open it with her hands, when the rock opens up and the men all come out with their camels. Ali Baba finds a golden bracelet and says the phrase to open the rock. Inside it is a mysterious cave full of golden goodies, which is all stolen. Ali Baba decides they should give all the treasure to the poor who needs it the most, which she tells the two would be their little secret. Back at home, Ali Baba gives her grandma the food purchased with her goods, and Cassim is suspicious on where Ali Baba found this particular treasure used to buy goods. When Ali Baba and her animals go back to the cave, Cassim had followed Ali Baba to the area and learned what he needed to see and hear. As her waits on her to exit, he enters the cave himself and is ecstatic to find all the treasure. He helps himself with more valuable gold and jewels by stuffing it in his pants. When he goes to the exit, he can't remember what the phrase was to open the door. The night passes and he remembers it being "open sesame" after it is said by the leader of the forty thieves, and they all find him there. For a punishment, liquid gold is poured on Cassim.

When Ali Baba returns back to the cave, she finds Cassim solidified and hanging and laughs at him. With the only thing free being his lips, he tries to escape but can't. Ali Baba drops him down and tows him back to her house, where they have to keep secret because if the forty thieves know he's gone, they'll find the other person who knows their secret. Ali Baba covers Cassim and gets Baba Mustafa's help, the local shoemaker. Baba Mustafa knows "a secret work is evil work", but Ali Baba gets him in with a genuine gold coin. She blindfolds him and takes him to the golden Cassim. He is lucky enough to remove the gold coating from his body, but Cassim has a problem and he is now bald. The next morning, when the team of thieves discover Cassim is missing, one of the thieves named Mamet enter the shop with a pair of shoes and figures Baba Mustafa's hands are too old to do anything. Baba Mustafa tells him those hands could do anything, telling him they had also freed Cassim from gold. Mamet wants him to show him where this boy is, and gives him a coin.

Blindfolded, Baba Mustafa guides Mamet to Ali Baba's house, crashing and invading other people's homes on the way. Seeing the gold pieces on the ground, Mamet marks an X on the door for revenge. Ali Baba noticed it and knows that trouble is on the way. Getting an idea, she marked all the houses with Xs, which confuses the forty thieves that run into town that night, and more or less, makes the leader angry at Mamet. The leader himself returns to Baba Mustafa's shop and wants him to show them the house again. At Ali Baba's house, Cassim runs into the house and wants Ali Baba and his grandma to tell him he's not there when two girls look for him. After they come, Cassim runs away to the desert until his hair grows back. The leader, disguised as a poor old man, requests help from Ali Baba and her grandma. Ali Baba could see behind him, but grandma tells her to not be suspicious of people and lets him in. That night, he tells his people hiding inside pots that they'll have their revenge. Ali Baba decides to get more oil from the pots, and finds the sleeping thieves. Ali Baba runs along to get her friends, and they all roll the pots out of the village. She wakes up the leader who is sleeping in her house, and he runs away scared when Kibwe is under his feet. The forty thieves were gone forever and the magic of the cave later disappeared. Nevertheless, Ali Baba, and her village, lived happily ever after together.

## Cast

Jurnee Smollett as Ali Baba

Tommy Davidson as Cassim

Marla Gibbs as Grandmother

Will Ferrell as Mamet

George Wallace as Baba Mustafa

Bruno Kirby as Great One

## Songs

* Who We Want to Be
* The Dance of Thieves