The Return of Jafar (1994)

When I was a kid, I hated my mother because she never let me watch the sequels to Disney classic movies. She always said that sequels are usually terrible and it's not worth wasting money on them. Now that I've seen The Return of Jafar, I totally get her. 

After the events of the first film, Aladdin (voiced by Scott Weinger) and Abu (voiced by Frank Welker) have settled in the palace with Princess Jasmine (voiced by Linda Larkin) and her father, the Sultan (Val Bettin). But he still goes around stealing, his victim this time being a thief named Abis Mal (voiced by Jason Alexander) who eventually retreats to the desert and accidentally releases genie Jafar (voiced by Jonathan Freeman), who seeks revenge on Aladdin and, with the help of the thief, plots his revenge. 

And there's also some more stuff going on, like Iago (voiced by Gilbert Gottfried), Jafar's parrot, wanting to befriend Aladdin, and the Sultan trying to make of Aladdin the perfect heir to the throne. 

In spite of all the stuff going on, The Return of Jafar barely has a plot. It's just a lot of storylines put in the same movie. It isn't even nearly as interesting, fun and entertaining as Aladdin was. 

On top of that, the characters are terrible too. They all are way less appealing than they were in the original film, they kind of lost their personalities, and, I don't know why since most of the characters are voiced by the same actors, they all sound so weird and different. I stopped the movie and checked on Wikipedia the cast because of how different the voices were, I kid you not. The Genie is no longer voiced by Robin Williams, which doesn't really surprise me considering the mess this film is, and he is no longer fun. Don Castellaneta is great as Homer Simpson but he barely decent as the Genie. Iago gets way too much screen time and becomes such an annoying character. Worst of all though is the thief/new villain, Abis Mal. He is beyond annoying not to mention how little interesting he is.

Walt Disney Home Video
The songs are pretty bad too. While the first film had so many catchy and memorable songs, this one has none. They aren't dreadful, but they are probably the worst of all the Disney movies I've seen. And I saw a lot of them. 

The animation, on the other hand, isn't terrible. It's pretty good, actually, but it's a bit blander that it was in Aladdin and, at times, it really looks cheap.

2 comments :

  1. I hate straight-to-DVD/video sequels. They're just fucking terrible. I had no interest in seeing a sequel to this film as I felt it was unnecessary.

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    1. I still wonder why they even bother making these movies.

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