Aladdin (thing)

Release Date: 11 November 1992

The directors of The Great Mouse Detective and The Little Mermaid, Ron Clements and John Musker, chose for their next trick the ancient tale of Aladdin.

The new age of Disney animation was still maturing, and Clements and Musker were eager to experiment. For Aladdin, they decided to play up the comedy aspect of the film. While their previous films had plenty of comedic material, it generally took a back seat to the adventure or the romance. Here, it took front stage.

I don't know how they decided to make the Genie of the lamp the main comic character in the film, but casting Robin Williams in the role was a stroke of genius. Williams even worked for scale (Actor's Guild minimum wage), preventing the film's cost from skyrocketing. Williams' performance was worth much more than he was paid, of course, as the directors allowed him to ad-lib extensively. Animator Eric Goldberg also did a great job of animating the images to go along with the rapid-fire delivery. The result is one of Disney's funniest animated characters, and the key to this film's success.

The rest of the film is fairly standard, but solid. Aladdin is a young man in the Middle Eastern city of Agrabah. The sultan's vizier, the evil Jafar, recruits Aladdin to retrieve a magic lamp from The Cave of Wonders. See, only a diamond in the rough -- someone with a pure heart behind a tough exterior -- is allowed to enter the Cave. Aladdin retrieves the lamp, sure enough, and asks the Genie inside to make him a prince.

As a prince, Aladdin would be allowed to marry the princess Jasmine, who has been dissatisfied with all other suitors. The two hit it off, but Jafar still wants the lamp and the Genie's power for himself...

The voice work for Aladdin, led by Williams, was as good as ever. Comedian Gilbert Gottfried lent his distinctive voice to Jafar's hypertensive parrot Iago, providing additional comic relief. Broadway actress/singer Lea Salonga provided Jasmine's singing voice, as she would six years later for Mulan. Animal-voice expert Frank Welker supplied the voice of Aladdin's monkey buddy Abu, and Disney stalwart Jim Cummings had a bit part. The rest of the voice actors are largely unknown, but all did a fine job, as usual. Most of them continue to voice the same characters today (for sequels and cartoons, including House of Mouse), with the notable exception of Robin Williams.

An interesting side note about the voices. In nearly all (if not all) previous Disney animated musicals, the voice actors did all of their own singing. When your voice actors are Phil Harris or Peggy Lee or Angela Lansbury, that's not a big deal. But for Aladdin, Disney hired two non-singers for the lead roles, so they also hired two singers (including Lea Salonga for Jasmine) to take over for the songs. Ever since, Disney has freely used this technique, allowing non-singers (such as Demi Moore and Ming-Na) to take lead parts without worrying about their singing ability.

The music was perhaps a step below that of Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid. Halfway through the composition of the songs for Aladdin, Alan Menken's long-time lyricist, Howard Ashman, died of complications from AIDS. The songs completed before his death are the opening "Arabian Nights," the comic Genie-feature "Friend Like Me," and the rousing march (also led by Genie) "Prince Ali." Disney hired Tony award winning lyricist Tim Rice to help Menken on the final three songs, a reprise of "Prince Ali," the pedestrian "One Jump Ahead," and the award-winning ballad "A Whole New World." Rice's lyrics are adequate, but not his best work. Like the song "Beauty and the Beast," "A Whole New World" was recorded as a pop duet by Peabo Bryson, this time with Regina Bell, and played over the end credits.

Aladdin, like its predecessor, was nominated for and won many awards, too many to list explicitly here. It won Academy Awards for Best Music, Original Score and Best Music, Song ("A Whole New World"). It was nominated for Best Effects, Sound Effects Editing; Best Music, Song ("Friend Like Me"); and Best Sound. Robin Williams won a special Golden Globe for his role.

Aladdin has had two direct-to-video sequels. The first, The Return of Jafar, was the first Disney Animated sequel to go direct-to-video, the beginning of a very, very long trend. Dan Castellaneta (the voice of Homer Simpson) voiced the Genie in that film. The second was Aladdin and the King of Thieves, with Robin Williams returning to his role. Aladdin, following in the footsteps of The Little Mermaid, was also turned into an animated series, following the adventures of the whole gang, including Iago, between the events from the two sequels. Castellaneta voiced the Genie for the cartoon.

Aladdin is an excellent film, incorporating elements of adventure and romance on top of the obvious comedy. It's probably the most humorous of Disney's animated features, at least until The Emperor's New Groove, and so is also one of the most entertaining. But it wasn't the instant classic that Mermaid or Beauty was, and it didn't really break any new ground in animation. It was just very good and very funny. Nothing to sneeze at, but compared to the revolutionary films before it (including Who Framed Roger Rabbit), it seems today to be less important historically.

But soon to come... Disney's greatest animated film ever?

Information for the Disney Animated Features series of nodes comes from the IMDb (www.imdb.com), Frank's Disney Page (http://www.fpx.de/fp/Disney/), and the dark recesses of my own memory.