"A whole new world ..."
Hello everyone!
I am BACK after taking a bit of a break and heading off to a vacation which consisted of no computer but a whole lot of books and rewatching movies I hadn't seen in years.
Harry Potter, I'm looking at you.
But then once I got back home I felt like there were other movies I should probably take a look at after I caught up with all my shows, and one of the first that caught my attention was a live-action retelling.
There's something to be said about those.
Disney has been punching them out like they're being made on one of those conveyor belts that goes round a manufacturing plant and people add things one after another in rapid succession. I do have to admit they're entertaining to watch, however.
So grab your flying carpet and hold on to your monkey, everyone, because it's time for a whole new world.
Or in other words, Aladdin.
The mula is real, people!
Ahem.
So obviously everyone knows the story of Aladdin. Unless you've been living under a rock for the past twenty or so years and somehow missed out on the cartoon which features Iago the parrot dressing up as a flamingo, among other things.
This one skipped on the flamingo part, but I gotta tell you, Will Smith's hat had its own makeup trailer.
Our story begins a little differently than the cartoon, with a man (namely, the Genie) telling his two children about a princess, a thief and a lamp when they clamour for a story.
That's when we hit the road to Agrabah and finally get the show started.
Jafar is eagerly looking for the lamp and attempting to extract it from the Cave of Wonders, but unfortunately for him, this 'diamond in the rough' business is harder than he thought it would be. I mean, how difficult can it be to find one of those in Agrabah???
Meanwhile, Aladdin is having a day of it in the streets, where he steals and barters and shares his bag of dates with some really, really hungry children while Abu cleverly hides his own under his hat.
Among the stalls, however, a young woman makes the fatal mistake of giving some bread to another starving child without the means to pay for it, which starts a rather funny trek across the city when Aladdin comes to drag her out of trouble.
The woman is none other than Princess Jasmine, out of the palace and just sort of exploring the city because her father has pretty much locked her up, and she's supposed to be seen but not heard.
Yeah Naomi Scott will go quietly. Uh-huh.
Anyway, Aladdin and Abu rescue her, but she has to head back to the palace (after introducing herself as her handmaiden) because a prince's entourage has entered Agrabah. Sadly, she also has to say goodbye to her mother's bracelet, which was used in the ruse of fleeing and Abu sort of actually stole, against what Aladdin wished, and he concocts a plan to return it.
In the palace, the sultan is pleased with the new visitor, though Rajah, the tiger Jasmine owns, is a little less so, and kind of ... does a munch, shall we say.
Ahem.
Apparently, Jasmine's mother was murdered and since then, the sultan has been keeping his daughter close, terrified she'll meet the same fate. She, on the other hand, has been studying everything she can to eventually become sultan, not that it's going to help her since only her husband will become sultan - hence the whole marry the prince plot.
In the other corner, Jafar is spoiling for a fight and wants Agrabah to invade its neighbour, Shirabad, trying to put a spell on the sultan with his serpent staff, though it's broken by Jasmine just in time.
Jafar is getting impatient and extremely annoyed that he hasn't managed to climb, murder and trick his way onto the throne of the sultan yet, but his chance comes when he spies Aladdin jumping across rooftops in the palace when he goes to return the bracelet to Jasmine, still thinking she's the handmaiden (the real handmaiden has a blast with that, let me tell you).
Unfortunately he gets caught by Jafar and Jafar tricks him into going into the Cave of Wonders, where he mustn't take anything but the lamp that's been in question the entire movie. This kinda works, only Abu sort of takes a ruby and the whole cave collapses, but not before Jafar kicks Aladdin back into it to cover his tracks, and loses the lamp when Abu swipes it from him.
The lamp reveals the Genie, who explains Aladdin now has three wishes, and for the first one, which isn't actually the first, he cons the Genie to take them out into the open. See, you have to be holding the lamp when you say 'I wish', and Genie'll pay attention now.
He's surprised to learn Aladdin isn't the same as the usual masters of the lamp, and grants his actual first wish (after some hilarious explanation about semantics) to make him a prince, so the two (along with Abu and the magic carpet they found and rescued in the Cave) take off to Agrabah, where Aladdin is introduced as Prince Ali of Ababwah (The Prince Ali sequence is my favourite in the entire film, especially Iago vocalizing along and the Genie being like WE WAITIN ON U BOY while the sultan just smiles along the lines of 'oh you'll be waiting a bit, BOY').
Initially unimpressed, Jasmine's opinion of Ali changes through a dance (which I found EXTREMELY cool, and I only figured out she's wearing a remake of the iconic Jasmine costume after a second watch!) and when she recognizes him as Aladdin, but he sort of lies and explains he'd been undercover in Agrabah. They do their little song and dance on the carpet and things are starting to look up.
Only, Jafar's caught on to the monkey thing as well, and recognized Aladdin.
He doesn't buy the prince explanation, either, and chucks the kid out of the palace into the sea all tied up to a chair.
The Genie (who was tossed in there via lamp by Abu) fumbles and gets a sort of second wish out of Aladdin to rescue him, and then it's off to stop Jafar before he does something everyone will regret, at which point the staff gets broken, the spell over the sultan ceases, and Jafar is thrown into the dungeon while the sultan is pretty much ready to marry Jasmine to Aladdin on the spot.
But there's a problem.
Jafar won't go quietly and gets out, swipes the lamp, and reveals Aladdin for who he is before sending him off to die in a cold place, and demands the Genie make him the sultan. While the Genie machinates to send the carpet to help Aladdin and Abu, Sultan Jafar somehow skips the memo about marrying Jasmine and has her towed away, which gives Scott the opportunity to belt out the best song of the entire movie, Speechless, a new creation and SO GOOD Y'ALL.
She defies Jafar and proves loyalty is something you earn, not bought, when she turns the captain of the guard and the soldiers against this would-be sultan, also proving she has both the backbone and the strength to tell Jafar just where he can shove it.
He then asks to become the most powerful sorcerer in the world.
Yeah ...
Sometime during this point Aladdin returns, and he, Jasmine and Abu try to make a run for it with the lamp so they can take the Genie from him, to no luck since Iago somehow gets bigger and meaner through a spell and chases them all through the town.
There's some talk about marriage to Jasmine because Jafar tortures the sultan, but really, he's so far gone on the power hungry scale that Aladdin finally resorts to plain old trickery.
He convinces Jafar to ask the Genie to make him the most powerful being in the universe.
Unfortunately, there's a catch.
Itty-bitty living space.
Jafar and Iago get sucked into their own lamp and Genie sends it off to the Cave of Wonders, then goes to fulfill Aladdin's final wish.
Aladdin, much to the Genie's surprise, does exactly as he promised in the beginning: he frees the Genie, who is then free to pursue a romantic relationship with Jasmine's handmaiden, and the two decide to travel the world in a ship with their two children.
Meanwhile, the sultan makes Jasmine his heir and tells her she can change the law about who she marries (so he can change the law of succession but not the marriage one? This is a funny solution, but alright) and she rushes off after Aladdin, who apologised to the sultan about lying and then quietly slipped off. The pair kiss and the scene shifts to their wedding, and a happily ever after for Agrabah, even though Jafar promised it isn't over yet, but he's locked up, so yay!
I'll admit it took me a little while to get into the flow of the movie, I sort of felt like it was only about a third of the way in that it caught its stride and really got going, but it's still an entertaining story just like in the cartoon one, with several differences.
The feminist movement found its way in here with major changes to Jasmine's character, and I suppose I'm okay with that? Naomi Scott delivers, which is a massive plus, but, really. Can we just ...
Jafar was a bit overdone, I think. His motives are pretty thin and I prefer the suave version from the cartoon where he was never as aggressive or as direct, or even seeming so unhinged as this one! This one needed a session with Dr. Phil and a lot of chill pills somewhere, for real.
Will Smith as the Genie is a GEM. I was unsure about it after hearing about the casting, but oh my word was I wrong!
Overall it's an enjoyable family movie that'll hopefully bring Aladdin to a whole new generation of children, like the cartoon did with us.
xx
*images and video not mine
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