Word: aladdin
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Almost despite itself, The Prince of Egypt recalls familiar cartoon motifs. Like The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and The Lion King (and for that matter, Gone With the Wind, Star Wars, Forrest Gump and Hamlet), this is a coming-of-age story, a tale of youth pressed into troubled maturity during a national cataclysm. As for the film's basic plot--a bright misfit goes undercover to save his people from foreign domination--it's pure Mulan. You'll also find echoes of Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 essay in panoramic kitsch, The Ten Commandments (including the climactic Red Sea parting...
Whatever the quality, the quantity is certainly up this year. Disney virtually created, and for a decade has owned, the kidophilic Thanksgiving period with its animated films (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin) and live-action retreads (101 Dalmatians, Flubber). But this year turkey time looks like a family free-for-all, and The Rugrats Movie could grab the golden drumstick...
...hackneyed plot, Antz fails to fully engage. If computer animation was begging for something with epic, imperialistic proportions, where the miracle of 3-D animation could be unleashed onto big battle and mob scenes, it got it. Plotwise however, Antz is virtually indistinguishable from the recent Mulan and earlier Aladdin. Having Woody Allen's trademark quips and Sylvester Stallone's kindhearted brawn in place of accustomedmediocre musical numbers makes Antzdifferent from its Disney predecessors, but notdifferent enough...
...Prince of Egypt--the story of Moses, a project very dear to Katzenberg's heart. Katzenberg is hoping his Bible epic will be enough of a critical and commercial success to prove he actually did play a crucial role in the making of such Disney animated hits as Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King--all released while he ran the Disney roost...
...Aladdin couldn't have found a more magical carpet than the one painted on the stage of the Vivian Beaumont Theater in Manhattan's Lincoln Center. Rich, rosy and speckled with peacocks, it stretches back for what seems like miles--into the past, into the fantastic topography of Shakespeare's Illyria, into a delicious dreamworld. A last perfect touch: the carpet is flanked by two small pools, suitable for bathing and wallowing, where villains can be dunked and lovers share a kiss. The set is the playgoer's first cue to enchantment; before a word is spoken in this rapturous...