Let’s talk about the original Aladdin. I remember that Saturday early in January of 1993. I watched some great wrestling on TV in the morning and afternoon, I had a birthday coming up in just three days, and I was taken to watch this movie in the nighttime at a theater in California’s Inland Empire. Granted, I had to go back to school in just two days but this was the very rare year I liked school (thank you Mrs. Sawa!).
Even if none of that other stuff had been true though, life would have felt beautiful the 90 minutes I was transported to this magical version of the Middle East onscreen.
From the very first frames when the funny little man sings enchantingly about The Arabian Nights, to Aladdin’s hilarious first number about his life as a “riff raff/street rat” stealing food to stay alive, to Princess Jasmine’s struggle for independence from her well-meaning father while having no confidant other than her lovable tiger, to the incredible chemistry shared by Aladdin and Jasmine as they bond, to all the humor we get thanks to scruffy Abu, caustic Iago, and charming Carpet, to watching the depths to which Jafar will sink to gain absolute power and the lengths the heroes will rise to foil him, there is not one second in this movie that ISN’T magical.
Of course I still haven’t mentioned the best part of the movie and anyone old enough to remember when it came out knows what that is. Angela Lansbury’s supporting role in Beauty and the Beast the previous year notwithstanding, the norm since the dawn of animation had been for professional voiceover artists to bring the characters to life. Heck, even having Aladdin played by Steve from Full House was a bit out of the ordinary. Thus you can’t overstate the boldness of Disney’s decision to cast Robin Williams, at the time one of Hollywood’s absolute top stars, in the pivotal role of the Genie. Not only that, they let him have free reign. There has never been anyone else like him and he got to act as zany and comically wild as he wanted, complete with all sorts of the funny voices and impressions he could do, and the animators essentially drew whatever he said. Writing this just now I tried to imagine what Aladdin would have been like without Robin Williams as Genie…and I realized the remake kind of gives us the answer. More on that later though.
Of course this movie started a trend of A-list stars becoming the leads in animated movies, starting with Tom Hanks and Tim Allen in Toy Story and continuing for about a decade and a half after that through movies like Megamind (Will Ferell and Brad Pitt), Despicable Me (Steve Carell), and Monsters vs. Aliens (Reese Witherspoon and a WHOLE BUNCH of other). I don’t feel like that’s the case anymore as of this decade though, and it’s probably because studios finally wised up. Robin Williams was the movie Aladdin; as a general rule it doesn’t matter who’s voicing a character, given that by definition we can’t even see that person.
To this day no one’s ever gotten an Academy Award nomination for an animated role, but on the bright side to this day only one has ever deserved it (I was pretty mad at the inexplicable movement to get Ellen DeGeneres a nomination for Finding Nemo!). Williams may not have been honored for this movie at Oscar-time, but months later he did receive the MTV Movie Award for Best Comedic Performance. He couldn’t be there but the person who accepted on his behalf addressed people who felt someone shouldn’t win for a voiceover performance by saying, “Robin worked really hard on this and anyone who thinks he doesn’t deserve it – you make me sick.”
That was almost funny due to the shock. What else was funny had to do with Eddie Murphy, the show’s host, who was also nominated for that award. Must have been for Boomerang or The Distinguished Gentleman but I don’t know. I wasn’t quite in the MTV demographic at the time but my older sister Anila was and when Murphy started to introduce the next person on stage Anila commented “How sad. He’s gotta talk into the microphone after he just lost his award.”
Years later Murphy got his own chance to win the Best Comedic Performance award for an animated role when he was nominated for his turn in Shrek. However, Witherspoon happened to win for Legally Blonde, even though she said her own toddler daughter had been rooting for Donkey. <shrug>
Just goes to show how a movie star providing voiceover talents isn’t necessarily something extraordinary – but it was when Robin Williams played Genie. Seriously, he made the movie more special by many orders of magnitude!
Which is quite a feat, considering as it is it would have still been a wonderful, magical time. Such a classic!
It was in theaters around the time I started monitoring listings in the local paper and I remember being astounded that, week after week, Aladdin was still in our local multiplexes SIX months following its release. Finally it left but second-run theaters were still a big deal back then and it was now on two screens in the second-run theater that had been waiting forever to show it! It wound up shattering Beauty and the Beast’s record from the previous year for highest-grossing animated movie, as it made $208 million.
Aladdin’s longevity in the theaters didn’t compare to what E.T. had back before home video was a big thing. My family took me to it in the theater THREE YEARS after it came out, while it was in one of several rereleases. It certainly didn’t compare to what Gone With the Wind had. Back before even television existed people just wanted to go to the movies every week and picked their favorite offering over and over, given they wouldn’t have a chance to watch it again once it left theaters, so the most popular movies would just get rereleased forever. Still, it seems quaint to imagine anything lasting as long as Aladdin did on the big screen now. Just five years later, the quality of people’s home theater systems got to the point where Titanic, which became the highest grossing movie of all time by a wide margin, only lasted in theaters a few months longer than Aladdin did. Two years after that, once the revolutionary DVD market had taken off, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, despite being having made more than any movie besides Titanic, didn’t make it past four months, even in second-run theaters. Flash forward 20 more years, during which time we’ve seen the rise of HDTVs, Blu Rays, 4K, handheld screens, wifi, and streaming services, and Avengers: Endgame, the current highest grossing movie ever, had to put on a rerelease WITH extra footage just to last THREE months in multiplexes.
While the new Aladdin won’t have kids clamoring for their parents to take them to it over and over for six months (they’ll be too busy watching what they want when they want on their phones), the question is whether it will capture people’s imaginations in the first place the way this one did.
That’s a tall order. This one is incredible.
Agree? Disagree? Feel free to comment.
Up next: Does it measure up?
Bottom line: How much more praise do you want to hear? Tell me and I’ll give it!
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