Wild Disney Animation Month: Aladdin and the King of Thieves (1996)
Considering how famously and understandably upset Robin Williams was that he agreed to low-key voice the Genie in Aladdin on the condition that Disney not use his presence to advertise the film and then it was sold as a Robin Williams vehicle where Robin Williams did his hilarious Robin Williams shtick in a way that would thrill Robin Williams’ millions of adoring fans, I was more than a little surprised that he returned to the role for 1996’s Aladdin and the King of Thieves.
Disney was surprised as well. They went ahead and finished a version of Aladdin and the King of Thieves with Dan Castellaneta returning as the Genie after taking over the role in 1994’s Return of Jafar.
According to Wikipedia, Return of Jafar made something like 300 million dollars in video revenue off a five million dollar budget but when Robin Williams agreed to play the Genie again for a million dollars they pulled a Shrek and tossed out Castellaneta’s voiceover and replaced it with Williams’ voice and new animation reflecting his manic ad-libs and wild, often perversely kid-unfriendly improvisation.
Castellaneta is about as legendary as voiceover artists come. He’s Homer Simpson for Christ’s sakes. But when you have a choice between Robin Williams and just about anybody else in the known universe you’re almost always going to go with Robin Williams.
That is particularly true if the project in question is an Aladdin sequel and you have the surreal honor of having one of the most beloved entertainers in the world reprising one of his signature roles for a low-budget direct-to-video second sequel.
Within the context of the Aladdin franchise, one million dollars for a few days work strikes me as an exceedingly modest sum of money to pay someone like Robin Williams, whose performance as Aladdin forever changed the art and commerce of big-name voice acting, particularly considering he probably made the house of mouse hundreds of millions, if not billions, for his modestly compensated turn in the 1992 animated classic.
But Williams apparently had a lot of affection for the role because he gives the requisite 110 percent in an utterly delightful tour de force that finds the big blue buddy once again transcending all laws of time, space and reality with a stream-of-consciousness rants overflowing with pop-culture references, in-jokes and non-stop references to Disney’s storied past.
Williams is deliberately, excessively all over the place here, joyfully scribbling in the margins with impersonations and references guaranteed to fly over the heads of the kiddies in the audience, assuming they’re not into Walter Cronkite and Ozzie Nelson impersonations or references to the Cosby-Hope road pictures and Bob Hope specials.
As I have chronicled on this website, my opinion of Robin Williams has changed dramatically with time. I used to find Williams overrated and obnoxious, a fine dramatic actor but an overbearing and unfunny comic performer.
I’ve come to love Williams. So where the old me would roll his eyes in annoyance when Williams’ Genie launches into an impersonation of Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man (every child’s second favorite film, following the original Aladdin) or Forrest Gump or, in a particularly meta moment, morphs into a Genie version of Mrs. Doubtfire I just went with it.
Robin Williams is doing his Robin Williams thing every moment the Genie is onscreen. Williams is clearly having a blast. The pleasure he takes in his machine-gun comic inventiveness is palpable and infectious.
The problem is that the Genie is by definition a supporting character and whenever the Genie is offscreen, which is most of the film, the movie suffers terribly for his absence.
He may be the name in the title but Aladdin and the King of Thieves unfortunately highlights what a stiff Aladdin is compared to his friendly blue hype-man/wish-granter/side-kick/best friend.
Aladdin and the King of Thieves is consequently a curious proposition: a cheap, not terribly imaginative direct-to-video video store shelf filler from the wildly lucrative if not terribly prestigious Disney sequels factory distinguished by a wonderful performance from one of the biggest and most beloved stars in the world, reprising a role that defined him every bit as much as Mork from Ork or Mrs. Doubtfire.
Aladdin and the King of Thieves is also distinguished, unfortunately, by casual racism. Disney+ has been a real boon for Wild Disney Animation Month and the second sequel to Aladdin joins Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros in being accompanied by a warning that the movie contains negative, stereotypical depictions of minorities that were not okay at the time and most assuredly are not okay now.
I understood Disney movies from the 1940s having that disclaimer but Aladdin and the King of Thieves came out a mere quarter century ago. Then I remembered that Aladdin and the King of Thieves was a sequel to a movie that was pretty damn racist even after they cut the most racist parts out.
Like Jafar, the titular forty thieves look like they could have been taken whole cloth from anti-Muslim propaganda. Main bad guy Sa’luk (Jerry Orbach) in particular looks and acts like the worst nightmare of every FOX-watching, Trump-worshipping, Islam-hating MAGA Chud.
Like all great stories, Aladdin and the King of Thieves opens with its characters happy and content, having accomplished all of their goals and gotten everything they’ve ever dreamed of. You know a franchise is really hitting its stride when all of its conflicts have been resolved.
As the film opens, former street rat Aladdin, a dead ringer for handsome Hollywood movie star Tom Cruise, only slightly more ethnic, is marrying slinky, sultry Princess Jasmine. Then the titular forty thieves descend upon the wedding and wreak havoc.
Aladdin eventually learns that his father is Cassim (John Rhys-Davies), the titular King of Thieves and the sworn enemy of the nefarious Sa’luk, who sees him as weak and wants to usurp his place in the hierarchy of the forty thieves.
Aladdin and the King of Thieves gets off to a promising start with some vintage Robin Williams riffs and rants and random foolishness. Then the movie makes the mistake of separating Aladdin and the Genie for long periods of time, then focussing on a painfully bland hero and his by the numbers daddy issues rather than the volcanic force that is Robin Williams in this role.
King of Thieves really learns into the fantasy elements of this story with a fantastical, wish-granting oracle, a Hand of Midas and various other supernatural nonsense. But Williams’ heartfelt and hilarious performance as the Genie is the only aspect of the movie that does not feel arbitrary.
I went into King of Thieves wondering whether or not a single voiceover performance could make a disposable bit of product like a direct-to-video second sequel to Aladdin worth watching.
I came away suitably impressed by Williams’ star turn and underwhelmed by everything surrounding it. So if you miss Robin Williams and have Disney+ there are much more painful ways to spend 85 minutes than watching the late comedy icon do his Robin Williams genie thing all over again even if the film itself is patently unworthy of the Oscar-winner’s anarchic genius.
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