Word: aladdin
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From the first moments, when a merchant (voiced, as is the Genie, by Robin Williams) offers to sell the viewer a "combination hookah and coffee maker -- also makes julienne fries," Aladdin is a ravishing thrill ride pulsing at MTV-video tempo. You have to go twice -- and that's a treat, not a chore -- to catch the wit in the decor, the throwaway gags, the edges of the action. Blink, and you'll miss the pile of "discount fertilizer" Aladdin's pursuers land in; or the fire eater with an upset stomach; or half of Williams' convulsing asides. Chuck Jones...
...studio was just regaining its animation stride in 1989 when lyricist Howard Ashman (who with Menken wrote the songs for The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast before dying of AIDS last year) suggested a Disney cartoon musical of the Aladdin story. After he wrote six songs and a story treatment, Musker and Clements (The Adventures of the Great Mouse Detective, The Little Mermaid) took over. But something was wrong with the story. "It just wasn't compelling," Katzenberg says. "Aladdin's journey didn't engage." At first, the hero had a mother with a personality forceful enough...
Screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio made Aladdin "a little rougher, like a young Harrison Ford," and dispensed with the mother. Jasmine was also made stronger, and the Genie's wish capacity was reduced from "unlimited" to the traditional three...
Casting is as crucial a decision for cartoons as for live-action films. Aladdin's voice cast includes curmudgeonly comic Gilbert Gottfried as Jafar's parrot and Lea Salonga, the original Miss Saigon, as the singing voice of Jasmine. But the true inspiration was to have the Genie voiced by Williams, whose comedy routines pinball from one manic impression to another. Every time Williams would lurch into a new character, even if for a second, the Genie would assume that form. In five recording sessions spanning 15 months, Williams simply revolutionized cartoon voice acting. "Until now," Katzenberg notes, "we have...
...mere tassels for hands and feet. Yet it has a personality that puts most live- action stars to shame. It can mope, strut, cringe. It is a gentleman and a matchmaker. It holds and kisses Jasmine's hand. It makes zigzag stairs of itself at the end of Aladdin's ride with Jasmine and, as she stands on her balcony, coaxes the lad up to kissing level with the princess. "He's very sensitive," says Cartwright, "and always trying to please. It's abstract pantomime...