AndrewBloom
CONTAINS SPOILERS5/10 4 years ago
[5.1/10] There used to be an entire genre of what I would term “Confuse a Grandparent” movies. Whenever Disney would release some grand film based on a classic folktale or something in the public domain, other animation studios would churn out some cheap, direct to video knockoff of called something like *The Smallest Mermaid*, in the hopes that less-than-discerning grandmas and grandpas would pick one up for their grandkids in lieu of the genuine article. These movies were chintzy, often ugly, and seemed to do the bare minimum to legally qualify as children’s entertainment.
*Aladdin 2: The Return of the Jafar* feels like one of those “Confuse a Grandparent” releases, except it’s issued by the House of Mouse itself. Almost everything in the film is roughly four steps down from the 1992 classic. The animation is cruddy. The songs are forgettable. The story is airy at best. It’s as though someone took the original film, tossed it in the freezer for two years, and then doused it in sauce and tried to pass the reheated leftovers off as a new meal.
If *Return of Jafar* had simply been an original release, it would just be another unspectacular piece of cheaply-produced children’s entertainment. As a follow-up to one of Walt Disney Animation Studios’s greatest films, it is a complete and utter embarrassment, clearly meant to make the studio a quick buck without the remotest concern for maintaining quality or imagination.
There’s really only two positive things to say about the flick. The first is that it nigh-miraculously manages to give Jafar the great villain song he never really got on the original. One of the many knocks on this movie is that it’s largely content to recapitulate thinly-veiled spiritual cousins of prior songs rather than provide truly original tunes. And yet, while “You’re Only Second Rate”, crooned with an oily baritone by Jonathan Freeman, calls to mind a villainous version of “Friend Like Me” both visually and sonically, that manages to breathe new life into the song. Giving Jafar a bad guy equivalent to the Genie’s musical introduction is one of the few creative choices that works here.
The other is centering the film around a redemption arc for Iago. His moral journey is the one genuine and consistent throughline, and the most built out of any character’s arc here. Why Disney decided that the sequel to *Aladdin* should focus on a secondary, arguably tertiary character turning away from the dark side, I couldn’t tell you, but it is one of the few original moves the movie makes, and it pays off.
Iago saves Aladdin’s life by accident, and despite protestations that he’s only looking out for himself from now on, realizes that he’s moved by altruism and cooperation once he’s had a taste for it. The kindness shown to him by Aladdin, in contrast to the rough treatment he received from Jafar, gives him a sense of guilt when the evil genie returns and threatens his well-being if he doesn’t turn on his friend. Iago’s reluctant but gradually earned evolution toward regret and self-sacrifice, buoyed by Gilbert Gottfried’s comic but emotional performance, is one of the only things that makes this movie worthwhile.
Otherwise, *Return of Jafar* is an hour-long exercise in annoyance and exhaustion. It plays like an overextended T.V. episode, puffed up with bottom-of-the-barrel slapstick and pointless, time-filling interludes. That’s probably unfair. I’m sure many of those interstitial moments are meant to provide levity, humor, or raw entertainment in pauses from the main plot, but it fails on all three counts.
Suffice it to say, everything about the movie feels like a pale imitation of its predecessor. The animation is noticeably worse, with characters seeming off-model and even caricatured, with a duller palette and much less visual panache. As a tremendous *Simpsons* fan, I’m loath to look askance at Dan Castellaneta (Homer), who does his level best to fill in for the irreplaceable Robin Williams and isn’t the problem. But the writing does the character no favors, and the Genie’s presence is all but pointless in this one. That’s true for a lot of the returning characters who, in a story built around Iago, for better or worse, serve little purpose beyond fond recognition.
The only new character of any note is Abis Mal (a pun I totally missed in elementary school), the inept thief who inadvertently becomes Genie Jafar’s unfortunate master. Even he is dead weight though, more a plot device than a character, who just disappears off-screen with no real end to his story or hint at ironic comeuppance.
That sort of aimless approach to character-based storytelling infects the rest of the film too. It is never really clear what exactly Jafar’s plan for revenge is here, or why he has to go to such convoluted lengths to execute it. (As an aside, Jafar seems loosely bound at best to the rules for genies laid out in the prior movie, and this film does a pretty lousy job of skirting around them, making the limitations seem pointless in the first place.) Why he doesn’t try to get his freedom from a sap like Abis Mal first, and then go on a rampage with free reign, is beyond me. Neither his motivation nor his scheme makes any real sense.
The same goes for Aladdin, who seems to have regressed from his character growth in the last movie and is back to lying, keeping secrets, and not offering the totally reasonable explanations for his behavior in lieu of wacky sitcom-esque fibs. This seems to be pointing toward some type of growth for Aladdin in recognizing the value of good judgment in becoming the Sultan’s new vizier, particularly in his ability to recognize the good in Iago like the Sultan saw the good in him. But instead, Aladdin’s story culminates in him rejecting the vizier position to go “see the world”, something that the rest of the movie never even hints at as something he wants.
It speaks to the slapdash vibe that runs through the whole of *Return to Jafar*. Stories just trail off into nothing and nowhere. Songs exist only to remind you of similar, better tunes from the original. And the imagery looks like someone took the film from the prior movie, ran it through a grilled cheese sandwich, and called it a day.
When I watched this one as a kid, I knew it was disappointing, but couldn’t really say why at that precritical age. Now, I can recognize it as a cynical product, meant to give Disney its own cut of that “Confuse a Grandparent” market, since no revenue stream can go untapped. While plenty of additional unavailing DTV Disney sequels would follow, *Return of Jafar* started the trend of substandard follow-ups that only serve to tarnish the good name of their predecessors and reveal a lazy effort to make a quick buck. It’s a movie suitable only for well-intentioned, but less-than-discerning citizens, and woe unto the scores of grandchildren who deserve better.
