Disney's Aladdin

The first Disney movie I saw that I really loved as a kid was Aladdin. I saw this when I was nine years old. I saw Beauty and The Beast the year before, but I liked Aladdin better - largely due, I'm sure, to the Genie, and also the fact that the love story was a little bit less important in Aladdin. I'll be doing something special with this entry, attempting to draw scenes and characters from the movie in Paintbrush, starting with Genie.

The Genie

The Genie was totally crazy. He could turn into anything, like a plane, a sheep, a scary dead guy (who I later learned was an impression of Peter Lorre). He was funny loud, and hyperactive, and he sang some catchy songs. Most of the pop culture references he made flew over my head, but he was still my favorite character in the movie.

Aladdin was a thief living in Agrabah, which is a stand-in for Saudi Arabia. He is in love with the princess, Princess Jasmine, who escapes her overbearing father be posing as a street urchin and stealing things. Aladdin rescues her, and that's how he gets to know her.

Aladdin has a pet monkey named Apu, who is especially quick and good at stealing. He can't really talk, but he can mock people by imitating their voices.

Apu stealing an apple and shaking his fist.

Aladdin winds up in the Cave of Wonders after a disguised Jafar (the villain, a powerful wizard) lures him there to try and get the lamp out. Jafar fails to get the lamp at the beginning of the movie, narrowly escaping the cave slamming shut on him as well as the poor sap he lured there. Here's my Paintbrush rendition of that scene:

.

Aladdin gets out with the help of Genie, and from that point in the plot onwards he uses Genie's magic to pose as a prince and woo Princess Jasmine. Jafar tries to manipulate this to his own gain when he finds that Aladdin has the lamp, aided by his obnoxious parrot Iago, voiced by Gilbert Gottfried.

I think I captured the essence of Iago here.

This all leads up to an exciting final showdown where Jafar uses his sorcery to transform into a giant snake, and it eventually defeated when is tricked into taking the powers of a Genie (and thus having to live in a lamp and be a slave).

As far as Disney villains go, Jafar is pretty evil. He has no problem with killing people to get what he wants, tries to freeze Aladdin to death be sending him to Siberia, and tries to kill Jasmine. He's a sadistic villain, and he's also a pretty powerful one in the scale of Disney villains. Here's my masterpiece depiction of Jafar turning into a snake:

I think I made him scarier than in the movie.

A final reason I loved the movie Aladdin was the music. I got the soundtrack as a present and played it at least all day on Christmas day, and probably much more often than that, too. Consequently, I still know most of the songs. My favorites were "One Step Ahead" and "Friend Like Me."

As a final note, although this is a nostalgia blog, Aladdin was a little racist towards Arabs. I was too young to realize it at the time. The way they portray evil characters with more exaggerated and stereotypical ethnic features while making Jasmine and Aladdin have lighter skin could easily be considered racist. It's not as racist as many other Disney movies, but it is there, unfortunately.