El retorno de Jafar

Following the huge success of Aladdin in 1992, Disney commissioned its television animation studio to create a show successor. When the creators of the series decided to make the pilot about Jafar seeking revenge on Aladdin and rule all of Agrabah, Disney chose to market the pilot as a direct to video sequel entitled The Return of Jafar. Released nearly 2 years after the first film, the sequel sold over $300 million on VHS sales alone and soon prompted a whole slew of straight to home video Disney sequels. That being said, it is today deemed one of the worst examples of such work, and for good reason too.

The film follows Jafar, now an all powerful genie, seeking vengeance towards Aladdin and his friends. At the same time, Iago turns against Jafar by means of going back to the palace, causing much turmoil towards the protagonists. With a premise like that, one would hope for a thoroughly engaging revenge story with the good and evil duking it out. Sadly, the biggest issue with Return of Jafar is how rushed and unfocused it is, as it would rather focus more on Iago trying to make amends with Aladdin and the gang than on Jafar plotting his master plan to rule all of Agrabah. It doesn't help that the person Jafar manipulates to help with his plan is a dreadfully annoying dimwitted thief Abis Mal whose only purpose is to get back at Aladdin for foiling his criminal activities. As a result, the story feels too fast paced for its own good in getting from plot point to plot point that the only amount of substance we get is the conflicting relation between Aladdin and Iago. At merely an hour runtime, Gilbert Gottfried has too much material for his own good that Iago is worth groaning at rather than rooting for.

Speaking of Gottfried, while the cast from the original do their best with the subpar material they have, the inclusion of Jason Alexander as Abis Mal is way too distracting. While Alexander can be very funny in the right role, Abis Mal comes off more as George Costanza in an Arabian thief disguise rather than a fully realized character, sadly aided by too much dialogue for the character's tolerance. It's sad when Dan Castellaneta doing the Genie is far more likable in his role than Alexander is as a villain, since at least there are times when he does sound close to matching Williams' energy. Even the singing talents of Liz Callaway and Brad Kane feel completely wasted on insipid musical numbers that feel more at place in a Saturday morning adventure series than a Disney sequel. It's bad enough that poor Gilbert has two songs to handle on his own, the movie doesn't need to shoehorn more forgettable material on sheer talent. Sometimes the cast of a feature can save a fairly weak feature with their talents, but when they fall short, it's not really their fault as much as the work itself.

As for the film being intended for television from the start, it goes without saying that the animation quality in Return of Jafar is lower than that of the first film. It's hard to be critical of the visual work when a whole different studio is working on a followup to a feature like Aladdin, especially when the people at Disney Animation Australia and Japan had done some fantastic work in later endeavors. Unfortunately, the difference in art direction can be sighted from the background art looking more like oddly painted backdrops than a full fledged Arabian landscape. Seeing the characters drawn hastily for efficient production is probably the worst offender as it shows just how it is to draw a Disney character, let alone get them to move. While the layouts are definitely ambitious enough, they're sadly undermined by grotesquely flat color palettes. Arguably, the biggest highlight in the animation comes from the effects department, as the broad range of lights and power create a lot of tension in the film's climax. Otherwise, we're left with a feature that should've stayed on television instead of VHS.

As a followup to Aladdin and as the first direct to video Disney sequel, The Return of Jafar pales in comparison in every single regard. While the cast and crew did their best with the rushed schedule and subpar material they had, the result is nothing more than Disney shamelessly cashing in on the success of one of their most popular films at the time without much care for who would see the film or not. Unless you're a die hard Aladdin fan or curious to get through all those weird Disney sequels of back then, you're better off pretending this never happened and hope that Jafar remained in the cave of wonders.

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

I think if you enjoy hearing Gilbert Gottfried's incessant screeching as a performer, as I genuinely do (no, really, for a character like Iago it woks!) then Return to Jafar will be a good effort. Very good, great? Maybe not. I don't even know how necessary it might have been, but as a little kid coming off of Aladdin, which was a triumph for Disney at the time, this was a good way to bridge between the first movie and the animated series that was to come for many years on the Disney channel. It picks up right where the first one left off and follows Iago on his journey from being an awful "I'm looking out for me" kind of stooge and into being, well, semi-heroic.

Of course not having Robin Williams as the Genie, and as a kid as soon as I heard it, it was something of a shock (only once though, during the Genie's first song, does he sound a lot like Homer Simpson). But he does a good enough job and makes it entertaining. I don't know what could have been improved on aside from, you know, the animation (it's not the Hollywood group, it was done overseas), or Williams but... for what it is, I like it. It may not be a strong recommendation, but it's more-so compared to the dirge of ridiculous direct-to-video garbage that Disney pumped out over the next two decades (including things like Bambi 2 and Beauty and the Beast Christmas specials). At least Aladdin, through this sequel and one more and the series, got to be its own thing in continuity and follow arcs and characters in decent timing for children of the period.

The original is one of my favourite Disney movies. This movie isn't terrible, but it is fair to say, it is the worst out of the Aladdin trilogy. If you want a really good DTV sequel, check out Aladdin and the King of Thieves (the best DTV sequel) or Beauty and the Beast:The Enchanted Christmas.

The characters were less appealing here.Most of the voice actors return, but all of them sound different. Aladdin and Jasmine were less mature here, as well as the Sultan. Jafar wasn't as frightening or as humorous as he was in the first movie, and Iago is sometimes annoying, unlike King of Thieves, when he is actually funny. Dan Castellanetta does a serviceable job as the genie(he is funny at times), but it just isn't the same without Robin Williams. The worst character was Abis Mal, I absolutely hate that character. He just grates on my nerves. The animation sometimes looks nice, but at other times, it has a rather nasty quality about it. Almost all the characters look poorly drawn, and I really didn't want to say this. Even the Genie wasn't up to top animation standard. It wasn't the backgrounds as such, some were very nice, it was the character animation that was the problem.

As for the songs, they aren't dreadful, but they are the weakest batch in any Disney movie. Iago's singing made my ears bleed, and "Second Rate" sounded as though Jonathan Freeman was struggling with the song. (No wonder, it is very hard)I don't know about you but the old woman in the chair bit I found creepy as a kid. The best song in my opinion is "there is nothing in the world quite like a Friend" which has a decent melody. Also Liz Callaway has a nice singing voice. I really liked the incidental music though, and the scene of the winged horses.

The story was the biggest problem, it went at such a slow pace. Also the villain back for revenge formula was over-familiar, and has been done so much better before. I also disliked the fact that Iago seemed to be the main character, when he was truly irritating here, and some of the dialogue is very lame, there was one part when Aladdin says something that is meant to be funny and he raises his eyebrows cheekily, but I found myself groaning than laughing. I'm sorry, that's my view. On a positive note, this film actually has one of the best climaxes in a DTV sequel, and the voice acting if different was decent especially Jonathan Freeman as Jafar.

This is a very disappointing sequel, especially when it was released two years after the original. but on the bright side, it isn't as bad as the Cinderella and Jungle Book sequels, which are both thinly plotted. 6/10. Bethany Cox

Whenever disney makes a sequel that went straight to dvd, I always ask one question when watching one, DISNEY, WHY DO YOU MAKE THESE? This movie in ten words is, what if we made the same movie again, but worse. The runtime is only 69 minutes, the genie is not voiced by Robin Williams anymore, etc, while this isn't quite as terrible as some of the others in this heap of Disney sequels, it's still bad.