If Only You Could Bottle Williams
Princess Jasmine is tired of being ordered around by her parents who are trying to find a Prince for her to marry, so she sneaks out of the Royal palace and in to the bustling marketplace. It is there that street urchin Aladdin comes to the Princess's rescue when a trader accuses her of stealing. But things don't turn out well when the King's guards arrive and the under the order of the sultan's advisor, Jafar, has Aladdin tossed in to the tower. But Jafar has plans to rule the kingdom and tricks Aladdin in trying to retrieve a magic lamp containing a Genie.
I've mentioned this before but at the start of the 90s I had out grown animations and for many years I went out of my way to avoid watching them. As such "Aladdin" was one of those movies I never saw on its original release although it was impossible to avoid knowing about it due to its popularity. But now having finally gotten around to watching it I can't say that "Aladdin" did a great deal for me and from the storyline to the musical aspects I was not so much disappointed but not wowed. Now in fairness I reckon if I had been under 13 in 1992 I would have loved "Aladdin" and can appreciate why so many do love it.
But there was one aspect of "Aladdin" which did blow me away, that was the work of Robin Williams as they allowed Williams to ad-lib much of his dialogue and that was when he delivered the best stuff. It is why as the Genie he is so memorable because can you imagine the Genie being as much fun if Williams was just doing the jokes written for him, it would have been too stilted. As such the animators of the Genie deserve a lot of praise as well as they bring to life the anarchic ad-libbing with some great comical animation.
What this all boils down to is that "Aladdin" didn't do a great deal for me as it is an animation from the era which didn't do a lot for me. But the work of Robin Williams, his ad-libbing and the animation of the Genie is what makes "Aladdin" fun for those who like me were not wowed by the story.
