The Return of Jafar

You know, this film actually has excellent animation with loads of potential, but every last strand of it's potential is wasted with the film's awful animation direction. It's Saturday morning cartoon standard; for both animation direction and cinematography. In some scenes, specifically the one in which Iago gets pinned against the wall with a watermelon, the animation is disturbingly unrealistic and fake. The whole film showcases possibly the least realistic animation I've yet to see in a Disney film. While the backgrounds are very detailed and expressive, some of the characters, even the main characters look noticeably wonky and off-model in some scenes, As for the humour, it's just plain silly for the most part; silly and childish, which instead of making me laugh, just left me rolling my eyes in contempt. In fact, there's basically nothing until the genie's appearance that seems to even try to be funny. Most of the music is forgettable at best, and when a song is half right decent, what puts me off about it is that it doesn't sound Indian or Aladdin-esquire at all. The only thing that stops me from either falling asleep, or turning of the TV screen, is the genie, which this time, is voiced by Dan Castellaneta (Homer Simpson). His voice-work, as an imitation of Williams', isn't particularly great, and I feel it was a bit of a let down, considering how versatile Dan's voice is in real life, and here, he just sounds like a mildly tweaked version of Homer Simpson. But in the end, it really doesn't matter, considering how many other things that absolutely bomb in this film. This film is worth watching only for Dan's appearance; if you're not a fan of his work, and you are a fan of the original, then seriously, avoid this one if you don't particularly feel like ruining what the first one did to you. This film is only for the Aladdin diehards, and obsessive collectors; everyone else, if you think it might have a chance of living up to the original, think again. On it's own, this film is awful. In comparison to the stunning original, it's not only terrible, but it's an insult to every thing that made the first film so special. The only way I would, and could ever like this film, is if no-one else on the entire planet liked it. Unfortunately, there are going to be people out there that do, so I see it as nothing more than a bad, pointless sequel that did not need to be made.

Disney has a reputation of doing bad sequels. And for the most part they are but this movie is an exception. It's actually pretty entertaining but the flaw of the movie is the absence of Robin Williams. "Homer Simpson" does a good job providing the voice but he isn't Robin Williams. 2(**)out of 4(****)stars