Review of Aladdin and the King of Thieves (1996) by Andy G — 10 Jun 2011

MUCH better than The Return of Jafar. This is the movie I was expecting for Aladdin 2. In fact, let's forget Return of Jafar even existed. THIS is Aladdin 2 in my book. In fact, it easily could be. There is only one minor detail that would seem odd going from Aladdin to this, and that's why Iago was living in the palace again, but that's not super important anyway.

Strangely, this movie is made by the same team as Return of Jafar, because it feels nothing like it. The team must have noticed all the problems in the last movie and fixed them all with this. Robin Williams returns as the voice of Genie (and resurrects the character, without Williams genie was really bad). Other voices from the original return that were missing in the second as well. The other voices simply did not work.

The animation is much better. While it still doesn't compare with the original, the characters look much better, the animation is much more... ANIMATED. The music is also much more enjoyable. While not as amazing as the original's music, is much more catchy that the last, which I always dreaded whenever song came on.

If there was one thing that made this movie better than the last, it had to be Robin Williams. Robin Williams adds a spontaneity to the Genie character that no one cn easily emulate. He also brought a ton of hilarious jokes and references, and without him this movie would have been much worse. However, as I said before, it also improved in several areas, not just casting.

I also enjoyed the story much more, and like I said, it would have made more sense to have this story as a direct sequel to Aladdin, since the story revolves around Aladdin and Jasmine's marriage, and if you recall the end of Aladdin, the Sultan says they will be married "at once", not several years later.

Overall, I gave this film 8.2/10* MUCH better than the turd that was Return of Jafar, largely in part to Robin William's return.

* I tend to rate movies higher than most people (sometimes even going over 10/10), simply because I tend to enjoy movies more often than others. To help put my rating in perspective, this movie scored better than approximately 53% of the movies I have reviewed since joining this site.