Disney Plus-Or-Minus: Aladdin

Howard Ashman died on March 14, 1991, at the age of 40, a full eight months before the premiere of Beauty And The Beast. He never got to see the finished film, although he’d been such an integral part of its creation that he was able to watch its progress. That’s more than can be said about the movie he really wanted to make, Aladdin. That project’s slow march to theatres meant that Ashman would be unable to complete his own work on the film, much less see any of it brought to life on screen.

Ashman pitched Aladdin to the Disney brass in 1988 as he and Alan Menken were completing work on The Little Mermaid. He’d written a lengthy treatment selling the story as a musical extravaganza and he and Menken had already composed several songs. Nevertheless, it was not an easy sell. Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg had reservations from the start, worrying about the commercial prospects of a movie set in the Middle East and concerned that Ashman hadn’t cracked the story yet.

As Ashman and Menken continued tinkering with Aladdin, Katzenberg asked them to set it aside temporarily to transform Beauty And The Beast into a musical. As the team switched gears, Katzenberg continued assigning writers to work on Aladdin, perhaps simply to reassure Ashman that it hadn’t been abandoned. One of the writers to take a crack at it was Linda Woolverton, who had just written Beauty And The Beast. Her version introduced some characters and story elements borrowed from the 1940 film The Thief Of Bagdad but moved it farther away from Ashman’s vision of an energetic musical comedy.

By this time, directors John Musker and Ron Clements were trying to decide on their follow-up to The Little Mermaid. They chose Aladdin over Swan Lake, which never did get made at Disney, and King Of The Jungle, which would soon be retitled The Lion King. Having already collaborated with Ashman and Menken to great success, Musker and Clements decided to write their own script and figure out how to return the project to its musical roots.

They also suggested approaching Robin Williams about voicing the Genie of the Lamp, a role Ashman had envisioned as an African-American Cab Calloway-style character. They’d seen Williams in a short film called Back To Neverland made for the Magic of Disney Animation attraction in Florida (directed by Jerry Rees of The Brave Little Toaster). They immediately realized that the combination of Robin Williams’ rapid-fire ad-libbing with the limitless possibilities of animation was explosive. If Robin could cram that much into just nine minutes, imagine how much he could pack into a feature film. Ashman wasn’t entirely convinced at first but soon got on board with the idea, although he passed away before any of the music could be recorded. Musker and Clements would later include a little homage to Back To Neverland in Aladdin, dressing the Genie in the Goofy hat and Hawaiian shirt ensemble Robin sported in the short.

Ashman wasn’t the only one who needed to be persuaded. To win over the man himself, Musker and Clements animated a few minutes of the Genie over audio from one of Robin’s stand-up routines. Williams thought it was hysterical and was excited by the possibilities. The only sticking point was money. By this time, Robin Williams’ starting price was a lot higher than what Disney typically paid voice talent.

However, Robin realized that Disney was a big reason why his star had risen so high. Touchstone’s Good Morning, Vietnam had been an enormous hit and turned him into a bankable movie star and an Academy Award nominee. He and the studio followed that up with Dead Poets Society, another blockbuster and another Oscar nomination. Out of gratitude and loyalty to the studio, Williams agreed to do Aladdin for SAG scale.

There were, as he would later say in character, a couple of provisos, a couple of quid pro quos. He asked that neither his name nor his image be used in the film’s marketing, particularly not in commercials for fast food or other tie-ins, and that the Genie take up no more than 25% of the poster and other advertising art. Aladdin wasn’t the only movie Williams had coming out for the 1992 holiday season. He was also reuniting with his Good Morning, Vietnam director, Barry Levinson, on the ambitious and expensive comedy Toys. There was concern, not without cause as it turned out, that the box office wouldn’t support two competing Robin Williams movies.

Despite the loss of Howard Ashman, Aladdin seemed to be on track to meet its November ’92 release date. Then, in April of 1991, Musker and Clements presented a story reel to Jeffrey Katzenberg. Katzenberg hated nearly all of it. He demanded major cuts, eliminating such characters as Aladdin’s mother, and commissioned a rewrite by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, writing partners who would go on to craft quite a few Disney films. But the release date was still set in stone, which did not give the team a lot of time.

Many of the cuts had been elements that were essential to Ashman’s vision for the film. Losing them also meant eliminating some of Ashman’s work, including the song “Proud Of Your Boy”, a particularly painful cut for all involved. To fill in the gaps, Alan Menken teamed up with legendary songwriter Tim Rice, well-known for his work with Andrew Lloyd Webber on such shows as Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita. Rice had been having conversations with Disney about a film version of Evita and was very interested in pursuing more movie work. He and Menken reworked and rewrote some existing songs but their most significant addition was “A Whole New World”, the flying carpet ride duet inspired, according to John Musker, by the “Can You Read My Mind” sequence in Richard Donner’s Superman. No offense to John Williams, Margot Kidder or anyone else involved with Superman but Aladdin did it better.

Apart from “A Whole New World”, which went on to win the Oscar for Best Original Song, a Grammy for Song of the Year and top the Billboard charts as performed by Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle, the music in Aladdin is a bit different from Menken and Ashman’s previous Disney work. Songs like “Prince Ali” and “Friend Like Me” are highly energetic and catchy but they’re not exactly earworms in the same sense as “Under The Sea”. Instead, they serve more as showpieces for Williams’ machine-gun delivery. They’re great in context but definitely lose something with the visual elements removed.

Perhaps the most striking thing about Aladdin is it’s one of the few Disney animated features that can be categorized as a straight-up comedy. Humor had always been an essential element of their brand, of course, but you’d have to go all the way back to something like The Three Caballeros to find anything as madcap and zany. Robin Williams truly dominates the film and the animators seem liberated by having an actor capable of keeping up with the limitless potential of the medium. Caricatures, fourth-wall breaking and in-jokes burst from nearly every frame.

But importantly, Williams isn’t the whole show here, even though it might feel that way at times. Gilbert Gottfried is equally funny as Jafar’s parrot, Iago, and Jonathan Freeman manages to be both sinister and dryly amusing as Jafar himself. Even the carpet delivers an outstanding example of silent comedy acting, an impressive feat for a rectangle with tassels. I would argue that the success of Aladdin encouraged Disney to think outside the box more often, developing projects like Hercules and The Emperor’s New Groove that don’t necessarily conform to the usual Disney template.

It also, for better or worse, led to an increased reliance on celebrity voice talent in animation. Disney had already been inching in that direction with movies like Oliver & Company. And Robin Williams had already worked in animation, as part of the stacked celebrity cast of FernGully: The Last Rainforest. But Aladdin blew the doors open, leading the way for a parade of famous faces behind the mic. And if they were comedians, so much the better. At this point, it would take less time to compile a list of comedians who haven’t dabbled in animation.

Miraculously, given all the last-minute changes, Disney was able to get Aladdin in theatres on time on November 11, 1992. Once again, critics agreed the studio had delivered a winner, although a few complained that it was “just” a comedy and lacked the heart of Beauty And The Beast and The Little Mermaid. But those were outliers in otherwise glowing reviews.

Disney decided to roll the movie out slowly, starting in just two theatres in New York and L.A. on its opening weekend. The film expanded nationwide on Thanksgiving weekend, coming in second to Home Alone 2: Lost In New York. Interestingly, it did not hit number one at all in 1992, held off by A Few Good Men. But on the first weekend of 1993, Aladdin surged ahead. Before long, the film had surpassed Batman Returns to become the highest-grossing movie of ’92 with over $217 million. Disney no doubt hoped the movie would do well but even they must have been a little surprised to see it do that well.

There was at least one person who wasn’t entirely thrilled about how much money the studio was raking in. Robin Williams, who had been pretty clear about his very reasonable demands, was furious to see the Genie become the main focal point of Disney’s marketing, selling not just the movie but Happy Meals and toys. He also had no problem going on talk shows and being hilariously bitter about his experiences with the studio. Katzenberg and Disney tried to make it up to him, sending over a Picasso as a peace offering, which Robin hated. When the studio decided to make the direct-to-video sequel The Return Of Jafar, Williams was a hard pass. Instead, The Simpsons’ Dan Castellaneta was brought in to voice the Genie. It would be years before Robin Williams agreed to have anything else to do with Disney.

Aladdin also did quite well at the Academy Awards, although nothing as impressive as Beauty And The Beast’s Best Picture nomination. In addition to “A Whole New World”, “Friend Like Me” received a nod for Best Original Song. Alan Menken also picked up another Oscar for Best Original Score. Finally, the movie received nominations for Best Sound and Sound Effects Editing, although it lost those to The Last Of The Mohicans and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, respectively.

For a little while, Aladdin reigned supreme as the highest-grossing animated film of all time, although it would relinquish that title within a couple of years to another Disney movie. Nevertheless, the film continues to resonate as one of the biggest, most popular movies the studio ever made. It has been sequelized, adapted to television and the stage and, inevitably, remade, which we’ll have to deal with sooner or later. But the original continues to win fans. It strikes a deft balance between classic Disney timelessness and then-modern timeliness with a classic Robin Williams performance capturing him at his energetic best.

VERDICT: Disney Plus