NOTE: Please do not take any of the little nitpicks in this review (or any of my other reviews, for that matter) seriously. I write these reviews in the hopes of making people laugh. Those nitpicks are really just dumb little observations that I'm attempting to make jokes out of, not complaints that add to whether or not I like something.
NOTE #2: No disrespect is meant towards anyone who worked on the movie I am reviewing today. I'm sure they are all very nice and talented people.
NOTE #3: If you like this movie, that is great. Go ahead and like it. I'm not judging you.
I know what you're thinking: "was there a fourth Aladdin movie that I don't know about?". Well, the answer to that is no. No, Disney did not make a fourth Aladdin movie (the live action remake doesn't count). This movie has nothing to do with Disney, though its adaptation of Aladdin is likely the only reason it exists.
Aladdin and the Adventure of All Time is a Filipino-American direct to video movie directed by Cirio H. Santiago. It has been saved from falling into obscurity by Phelous' review of it which I hadn't seen beefore writing this, so any similarities between my review and his are completely coincidental. And wouldn't you know it? The whole thing is on YouTube! And the description reads as follows: "What if Aladdin, The Pagemaster, Beauty and the Beast, and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure were blended, animated like the CD-I games, and brought to us by the guy who gave us half of the Mystery Science Theater movies? You'd get pure hilarity in this cult classic animated movie!"
So... yeah, not exactly filled with confidence. If nothing else, it has a great voice cast... Cathy Cavadini, E.G. Daily, Jim Cummings, Ed Gilbert... but as previous movies we've reviewed on this blog like Delhi Safari and The Nuttiest Nutcracker show, good voice casts do not automatically equal good movies. But hey, have obscure animated film, will review. Let's hop a carpet and fly to another arabian night. This is Aladdin and the Adventure of All Time.
The movie begins in a heirlooms shop. As he dusts all the crap he has in stock, the shopkeeper says, "Most fairy tales begin with four magic words: 'Once upon a time'. But the story you're about to hear happened more than once. It happened more than twice. In fact, somewhere, it's still happening. Over and over again. That's because this story is about time itself. And time has no ending. But it DOES have a beginning. And the beginning is as good a place as any to start a fairy tale..."
This is where the film's first problem rears its ugly head - the animation is lousy. That comparison to the CD-I games (y'know, those Legend of Zelda games that are always used in YouTube Poops?) was preeeeeeeeeetty accurate. I don't know what this film's budget was, but clearly most of it went to getting people like Jim Cummings and E.G. Daily to lend their voices to it.
I should also mention that this shop has some pretty ugly heirlooms for sale. A gumball machine with a clown's head sticking out of it? Three monkeys sitting on a chest doing the "Hear no evil speak no evil see no evil" thing? Who would want to buy THAT?
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| Would you happen to have a combination hookah and coffee maker that also makes julienne fries in stock? |
Anyway, the shopkeeper fixes the hands on a clock and we transition to the outside of a school. Students pour out of the building, among them our main character, Paige. She sings about how she's so different from the other kids because she - GASP! - likes to read. Then the other kids join in, singing about how Paige is a bore and an introvert. Even a police officer, a pizza delivery guy, a bus driver, and some woman in a car start singing about her. It's basically a worse version of "Belle" from Beauty and the Beast.
By the way, the girl named Paige likes to read. "Paige" sounds like "page". Pages are what you find in a book. Just in case you didn't pick up on that.
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| "There must be more than this provincial life..." |
Considering how everyone else is treating Paige, I don't blame her for preferring books over the company of people. Seriously, EVERYONE IN TOWN - not just the kids, EVERYONE - is singing about how there's something wrong with her because she reads a lot. Even the townsfolk in Beauty and the Beast weren't this harsh to Belle.
Paige takes refuge in that heirlooms shop from earlier. It is here that we learn the shopkeeper is her grandfather, Gramps. Interestingly, Paige's speaking voice is provided by E.G. Daily, but her singing voice is provided by Hynden Walch. I'm not sure why they felt the need to have someone else do the singing, seeing as E.G. is a good singer (she's even released some albums).
Anyhow, when the subject of Paige being bullied comes up, Gramps encourages her to stand up for herself. But she's too insecure. Perhaps Paige's parents can help her gain self-confidence... where the heck are they?
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| The characters legitimately look like they've been pasted onto the far more detailed background. |
That night, Paige reads the story of Aladdin, and how he searched for treasure inside the Cave of Riches... wait a minute, I thought it was the Cave of WONDERS. Maybe "Cave of Riches" is what it was called in the original story, I don't know... and found a magic lamp that he used to rescue a princess from the clutches of an evil sorcerer.
Then we cut to a cobra and an evil sorcerer writing down the very same story in a book. Say hello to our villain, everybody - Scheherazade. Yes, the same Scheherazade who, according to the Genie, had "a thousand tales".
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| I don't think she was evil in the original Arabian Nights stories, though... |
She and her pet cobra, Tambor, are holding Aladdin (who even SOUNDS like a Scott Weigner impression, by the way), the princess, and the sultan prisoner. You see, she stole Aladdin's magic lamp and used it to make the Sultan fall in love with her. Didn't the Genie say that he couldn't make anyone fall in love with anybody else? I know, I know, this isn't THAT version of Aladdin, but the jokes are just too easy to make...
Scheherazade is the one who wrote the story that everyone is familiar with - solely to cover her tracks. Now she is in control of Not-Agrabah, and the Sultan is too cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs to stop her from doing eeeeeeeeeeeevil stuff. Judging by the expression on the Sultan's face, maybe the Genie DIDN'T make him fall in love with her - maybe he just gave the Sultan a lobotomy.
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| "Durr hurr hurr, I'm wearing a funny hat!" |
"But why go to all the trouble of writing that... that FAIRY TALE?" Aladdin asks. "Because people believe whatever they read!" Scheherazade claims, and now that she has everything she wants, she's going to hide the lamp in a place where it can never be found - the future!
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| This is Tambor. He's the closest thing this movie has to a charming character thus far. |
Scheherazade commands the lamp to "vanish until some distant day", and guess where it winds up? In the heirlooms shop, of course! Gee, I do wonder if Paige will find the lamp and wind up defeating Scheherazade...
Spoiler alert: yes. Yes, she does indeed find the lamp and says she wishes that she knew where it came from. This is why you should be more specific, Scheherazade. If you'd told the lamp to disappear until, for example, June 1st, 2020, you probably would've been fine - everyone would've been too busy ordering toilet paper and hand sanitizer online to notice it, wherever it wound up.
Smoke pours out of the lamp, and the image of Aladdin being dragged away to be beheaded appears in a nearby crystal ball. "It's Aladdin! And he's in trouble!" Paige exclaims. "If only I could give him his lamp... wait a minute! I can!" So she wishes that Aladdin were in the heirloom shop and not, y'know, about to have his head chopped off. It would seem that here, there's no genie inside the lamp - the lamp itself is what grants the wishes. Maybe Paige could wish that this movie had much better animation.
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| Scheherazade gives her rating of the movie. |
Bibbity-bobbity-boo, Aladdin is teleported through space and time into the heirloom shop.
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| "I'm free! Now I don't have to star in a lousy live action remake of my movie!" |
Aladdin is relieved that he still has his head, then proceeds to comment that Paige's name is funny because it "makes [her] sound like a book". He also puts on an Indiana Jones hat for some reason.
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| "It belongs in a museum!" |
Paige tells Aladdin about how she has a book about his adventures, and how she summoned him to the heirloom shop by making a wish with the magic lamp. Meanwhile, back in Aladdin's time, the Sultan, Tambor, and Scheherazade consult an enchanted hourglass so they'll know where Aladdin is. At the moment, he's telling Paige that he'll grant her a wish to thank her for saving his life. She wishes that the books could talk to her. Careful what you wish for, Paige - you might wind up with a book in a tutu voiced by Whoopi Goldberg making jokes about her Little Mermaid underwear.
And sure enough, she DOES wind up with a talking book. His name is Wordsworth and he's a world history book. Why do I have the feeling this character is going to make a lot of book puns?
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| "I hope you don't want me to go on a fantastic adventure with you. My week is already BOOKED." |
Then characters start popping out of other books. Jack of and the Beanstalk fame appears first, then Sleeping Beauty, Rumplestiltskin, Cinderella, Dorothy and Toto from The Wizard of Oz, Humpty Dumpty... who kind of sounds like Sylvester Stallone, oddly enough... and Alice from Alice in Wonderland.
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| Who I initially thought was supposed to be Goldilocks... |
This isn't so much the books talking to Paige as it is the characters inside them talking to her, but whatever. The fairy tale characters sing an admittedly not too bad song begging Paige to read their stories first. After the musical number, Aladdin fills Paige in as to what Scheherazade has been up to... just before she teleports into the heirloom shop and conjures up a sandstorm. Quick question, where the heck is Gramps while all of this is going on?
Fortunately, Aladdin manages to smash her magic hourglass and stop the storm. But she escapes with the magic lamp and half of the hourglass - but Paige and Aladdin have the other half, so maybe they can use it to send Aladdin home. But first he has to find the magic lamp, which could be any place in history. Wordsworth says that he knows where it is, but he refuses to tell them because he's bitter that nobody ever reads him. So Paige and Aladdin trick him into revealing to them where it is - on the dinner table of Henry the Eighth.
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| "It says here that the character of Aladdin is copyrighted by the Walt Disney Company. Wait, does that make me a bootleg?" |
Aladdin encourages Paige to come with him to see Henry the Eighth. He says, "It'll be the adventure of all time!" Get it? 'Cause that's the title of the movie?
The hourglass half transports Paige, Aladdin and Wordsworth to Henry the Eighth's kingdom. They meet his family, who are all incredibly fat, and get roped into cooking dinner for him. If he doesn't like what they make, they'll get fed to lions.
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| "Be prepared... to be our lunch!" |
And how's this for a plot twist? Unlike his family, Henry the Eighth - voiced by Jim Cummings - isn't fat... he's skinny! This is the movie's attempt at being subversive.
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| After this, Henry the Eighth went on to star in ads for Burger King. |
So, the reason why Henry the Eighth is so thin is because trying to live up to his family name has left him without much of an appetite. The first few Henrys were larger than life, and he can't even go outside without children tying a string around him and using him for a kite. Paige tells him that his weight has nothing to do with how good of a king he is, but it doesn't do any good. But what's that on the table in front of him? Why, it's the magic lamp! And he says that he wishes he were hungry, and it does its thing. Suddenly, Henry the Eigthth is the size of a blimp and as hungry as a bear.
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| Paige and Aladdin should've never introduced the king to Tasty Paste... |
Back in Aladdin's time, Tambor spots Henry the Eighth with the lamp through the half of the hourglass that Scheherazade has. He tells Scheherazade, who's busy playing chess with an orangutan. This makes just as much sense in context.
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| Maybe the punchline here is that since orangutans are highly intelligent, they'd actually be worthy opponents in a game of chess? Or is it just "primates are funny, LOL"? I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the latter. |
Aladdin, Paige, and Wordsworth get into some WHACKY SHENANIGANS trying to get out of there with the lamp, and as soon as they get away Scheherazade shows up and swipes it. She teleports away with it, but once again Wordsworth knows where the lamp is now - with Captain Blackbeard. So they use the half of the hourglass to go to Blackbeard's ship... or should I say BLONDEbeard?
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| Not the most menacing Blackbeard that I've ever seen. Especially seeing as he sounds like Ringo Starr. |
Blondebeard, also voiced by Jim Cummings, tells Paige and Aladdin that nobody follows his orders. "Nobody's scared of a pretty pirate. Real pirates have eyepatches and peg legs! But all I have is a gorgeous blonde beard," he laments. "And a treasure chest full of sand." Then he finds the lamp inside his treasure chest, but before he can make any wishes the ship comes under attack! Long John Silver is around, and he wants whatever treasure Blondebeard has.
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| Wait, isn't Long John Silver a fictional character? What's he doing here? |
Blondebeard initially wants to give Long John the lamp since it's the only treasure he has. Aladdin and Paige encourage him to fight back, and... you know where this is going, right?
Yep, Blondebeard wishes that he were the fearsome Blackbeard and the lamp turns him into the fearsome Blackbeard.
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| I feel like I should make a Pirates of the Caribbean joke, but I can't think of anything clever enough. |
Confusingly, Blackbeard's singing voice is provided by Randy Crenshaw despite the fact that Jim Cummings is a great singer. In fact, his singing for Henry the Eighth was dubbed too, by Stuart Pankin. Well, anyway, Blackbeard tries to make Paige walk the plank, but Aladdin gets into a swordfight with him and his now sentient beard. Wordsworth defeats another pirate with just a pen, then quips, "Haven't you ever heard that the pen is mightier than the sword?"
Aladdin gets his hands on the lamp and wishes that Paige were safe. Then they're swept off the boat by a giant wave, courtesy of Scheherazade... and did I mention that they're in shark-infested waters? Which are also sea monster-infested waters?
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| Don't worry, it's just a giant oil painting. |
The sea monster swallows them and the lamp whole, and then the sea monster blows the lamp out of its... blowhole, I guess, and it's snatched up by Long John's parrot. So what now, is the parrot gonna wish for a year's supply of crackers or something? Nope, it's actually Scheherazade in disguise. Hey, remember the princess? The Sultan's daughter? Aladdin's girlfriend? Whatever happened to her?
Scheherazade sings an awful song where she straight-up admits that the reason she's evil is because it's fun. Back in the sea monster's stomach, Aladdin tells Paige about Scheherazade and her evil ways, then admits that he never learned how to read. He was too busy having adventures to go to school. "But going to school IS an adventure!" Paige claims.
...yeah, no. Sorry, Paige, but I can tell you that going to school is not, in fact, an adventure. At best it's a fun field trip, at worst it's you being stuck in a room having to do a bunch of math problems you don't know how to do (and yet I STILL somehow got good grades!).
Where's the lamp now? Scheherazade hid it with Cleopatra. Why does she keep hiding it? Wouldn't it make more sense for her to hold onto it and put it in a vault or something? So it's off to Egypt, where Cleopatra's father, the Pharaoh, is sentencing a prince to a lifetime inside the Sphinx for not wanting to marry his daughter... just before Paige, Aladdin, and Wordsworth's boat falls on top of him, flattening the Pharaoh into a pancake. Wow, not every day you watch an animated movie where the good guys have a body count...
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| I'd like to take this moment to, on behalf of the filmmakers, apologize to Egyptians everywhere. |
Paige, Aladdin, and Annoying Talking Book are brought to Cleopatra, and when she calls them out for squashing her father like a beetle, Aladdin just chuckles nervously and says "Whoops." The least you could do is show a little remorse, Al. Cleopatra declares that Paige and Wordsworth must be sacrificed to the Sphinx, but lets Aladdin have the choice of either spending his life in prison or being her husband. Aladdin is all over the latter option - "Hey, either way it's the ol' ball and chain, huh?" he quips (nyuck nyuck nyuck). Isn't Aladdin dating the princess? Did he forget about her just like the movie did?
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| Also, Cleopatra is okay with marrying somebody who squashed her father like a beetle? Seems a bit odd... |
Paige and Wordsworth are taken to the Sphinx, who is waaaaaaaaaaaaay way too awesome to be a character in this movie. A giant lion-headed being with the voice of Jim Cummings? Yes, please.
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| "WHO DISTURBS MY... WHOOPS, WRONG ALADDIN ADAPTATION." |
The Sphinx channels Kirby and sucks Paige and Wordsworth into his mouth, trapping them in "the blackness of eternity". Now it's up to Aladdin to save them... provided he's not too busy getting it on with Cleopatra, that is.
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| Jeez, this movie is long... |
Actually, they might not have to worry about that after all. You see, this is what Cleopatra looks like...
...and Aladdin is incredibly shallow, because as soon as he sees her all of her attraction towards her goes out the window. He asks if she can call him a cab... how does somebody who comes from ancient Arabia know what a taxi is?
Paige and Wordsworth learn that the only way to escape the Sphinx is by - of course - solving its riddle. "What creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?" he asks Paige. Do YOU know the answer? Is it...
A) A human being
B) A dog that figures out how to walk on two legs
OR C) A camel?
If you picked B or C, you're not very good at riddles, are you? Paige guesses correctly, resulting in her and Wordsworth escaping the Sphinx. Wordsworth then figures out that the lamp might be in the Pharaoh's tomb. They find it, and Paige wishes that they were with Aladdin... who's currently being chased around by a horny Cleopatra.
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| "TELL ME MOOOOOOOOOORE ABOUT MY EYES!" |
When Wordsworth sees Cleopatra, he snarks, "Cleo-FAT-tra is more like it." Tsk tsk tsk, Wordsworth. That's fat-shaming, and that's frowned upon in today's society. Cleopatra sobs that nobody wants to marry her because she's ugly, and Paige feels sorry for her (after all, back home she gets teased because she wears glasses) so she allows her to make a wish. So Cleopatra wishes that she were pretty. And so... you can see where this is going, right?
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| So, they're trying to say that if you're fat, you can NEVER be beautiful? Great lesson for the kids, movie... |
Now that Cleopatra is hot, Aladdin (who as we've established is very shallow) wants to marry her again... as does Wordsworth. Which is very disturbing because he is a book and she is a human being. Also, he suggests that Cleopatra "curl up with a good book"... The Pagemaster did that joke a lot better.
Cleopatra gives Paige back the lamp. For once, letting a famous figure in history make a wish DIDN'T backfire on the good guys... alas, Scheherazade finds out that they have the lamp. But she doesn't bother to steal the lamp and hide it again - she lets them come to her because, when they do, she'll have a surprise waiting for them.
Meanwhile, Aladdin suggests that he and Paige do some more time-traveling... instead of, y'know, stopping Scheherazade, which is the reason they were traveling through time in the first place. Paige wishes that they had more time, and the lamp grants her wish by conjuring up some sort of giant rainbow-butterfly thing, allowing the film to blatantly plagarize "A Whole New World". I'm not even joking, this entire musical number is a complete knockoff of "A Whole New World". And they don't even try to hide it.
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| They even copy the gag where the bird sees Aladdin and Jasmine on the carpet and reacts with confusion. This is shameful. |
Oh, and I know I've already pointed this out, but WHAT ABOUT THE PRINCESS? Y'know, Aladdin's GIRLFRIEND?! Why is Aladdin singing what is for all intents and purposes A LOVE BALLAD with Paige when he already has a girlfriend?!
So after the song that alone should have had Disney's lawyers coming after the studio that made this movie with the intent to sue, Aladdin, Paige, and Wordsworth arrive back in Aladdin's time to discover that Scheherazade has turned his home turf into a wasteland. Then she conjures up a tyrannosaurus rex for them to deal with.
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| I don't think we should expect this guy to start singing "I Love You, You Love Me". |
Aladdin is about to wish that the Tyrannosaurus Rex would... I don't know, turn into a harmless bunny rabbit or something, but before he can, the ground opens up and the lamp falls in. And I will admit, Scheherazade's over-the-top reaction to that did get a chuckle out of me. She sends Tambor to go down after it. Paige and Wordsworth use the magic hourglass sand to go back five minutes ago... which sends them to the center of the earth somehow. This allows Paige to catch the lamp when it falls in. Okay, Paige, now just make sure you don't run into your past self. That could result in some kind of time paradox.
Actually, she won't have to worry about that. After a tug-of-war for the lamp with Tambor, Paige wishes that she and Wordsworth were with Aladdin just as Past Paige and Past Wordsworth were using the sand to go back five minutes ago.
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| Oy, even the TYRANNOSAURUS REX in this movie is boring... |
Aladdin wishes for a glacier to trap the dinosaur, then goes to deal with Scheherazade. She's all "No, please, have mercy!" but he's not having any of that, so he wishes that she were a flea, a harmless little flea, and then he puts that flea in a box, and then he puts that box inside of another box, and then he mails that box to himself, and when it arrives, he smashes it with a hammer.
Nah, just kidding. Instead, Aladdin wishes that Scheherazade were a good guy. So the lamp does that. And it also gives him some new duds.
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| You sure you don't want to turn her into a ladybug or something? |
So Scheherazade becomes nice and sings about doing nice things for everyone. Aladdin is reunited with his princess. Y'know, I keep harping on how the Princess was basically a non-entity in this movie, but why couldn't they have had her come along with Aladdin and Paige on the adventure? For Pete's sake, they didn't even give her a name.
Aladdin thanks Paige and Wordsworth for their help, and Scheherazade reveals that she fixed the hourglass so they can go home whenever they're ready. Paige gives a big speech about how she's learned that it doesn't matter what you are, everybody is insecure about something, and now that she knows that she isn't afraid of the folks picking on her back home. Maybe they should let her keep the lamp - that way if they still make fun of her, she can use it to conjure up a dinosaur and sic it on them.
Paige heads home, and of course they're ambiguous as to whether or not it was a dream. Regardless, now she has the courage to stand up to those bullies. And she meets a new kid who just so happens to look and sound exactly like Aladdin.
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| No, Aladdin isn't a time traveler. This kid's name is ALAN. Maybe he's Aladdin's descendant? |
Gramps watches Paige and the Aladdin-esque kid hit it off from the window, then tries to wrap up the film, only for Wordsworth to come alive and try to stop him. For whatever reason, Gramps doesn't freak out over the fact that there's, y'know, a TALKING BOOK. The end.
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| "Oh, hey, a book is talking to me. This is the best high EVER..." |
What's the Verdict?
To be honest, I'm kind of disappointed.
You see, from the film's online reputation, I was expecting something far, far worse. Something so bad, it was actually kind of entertaining in how bad it was. Or at least something as bad as Foodfight!. But the film's not that bad, it's just... bad animated movie bad. About on par with something like Alpha and Omega or Sahara. As a result, I frequently found myself having difficulty coming up with jokes to make about it.
Let's get the negatives out of the way first: the animation is lousy. Sometimes it's just mediocre and looks like one of Disney's direct-to-video sequels (the ones with really bad animation like The Return of Jafar and The Hunchback of Notre Dame II, I mean), other times it's almost Dingo Pictures-level bad. Also, the movie is long. Very, very long. And it just DRAGS. The film does a very bad job of hiding that it desperately wants to be a Disney movie - ignoring the fact that it stars a character whose biggest claim to fame is having a beloved Disney movie about him, the film pilfers from Beauty and the Beast as well. Even the songs (most of which qualify as padding, especially the villain's songs) sound like they're desperately trying to sound like Disney's, most notably the opening song about Paige and the blatant "A Whole New World" knockoff. Paige isn't a very interesting protagonist, nor is this version of Aladdin, the villain is dull, and I found Wordsworth kind of annoying. I will say that the voice actors all do a good job, though with a cast like this, that's to be expected.
So, would I recommend Aladdin and the Adventure of All Time? No, I wouldn't. There's nothing here that wasn't already done better in The Pagemaster, and it's not even one of those movies that's fun to mock. My recommendation would be to just rewatch Disney's Aladdin, it'd be a much better way to spend your time (get it? Time? I'm clever, aren't I?).
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