ALADDIN (1992) *** The consensus choice of my three daughters during their growing years. I've witnessed portions of this film at least a few hundred times, and some of the songs are so pleasantly catchy that I still actually think they're funny. The one they play during Aladdin's triumphant entry into Baghdad, "Prince Ali, handsome is he..." and the crowd's going wild. That's how Donald Rumseld told the troops they'd be welcomed. Liar. But this film's too clever and wonderful to allow consideration of it to slide into the vulgar or mundane. The animation's just incredible: not revolutionary, but I defy you to find any other cartoon where so much is expressed through the lips and the eyes. Just phenomenal. And then you throw in the reality that Robin Williams is going off on these relentlessly rapid-fire rocket sled improvisational tangents, covering turf from De Niro to Schwarzenegger to William F. Buckley to Rodney Dangerfield (!) to Jack Nicholson and all points in between in mere milliseconds, and somehow the animators pop it all into form...not only in a timely fashion, but an incredibly rhythmic one. The clever animators, incidentally, have gone on record as saying that they modeled the evil Jafar on Nancy Reagan. So it's one of the smartest cartoons ever, one of the most cultured and anti-cultural, flawless production so varied that they never ran out of space going back and forth over a few simple themes. As immutably amorphous as Williams' performance is, I'm willing to agree that Gilbert Gottfried steals much of the show, with his single gear, almost single note, agro parrot schtick. If you got an attitude you got an act, and if you got a winning act don't change.
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