#10 ‘Sleeping Beauty’/’Aladdin’

Movie night date – 29/05/19. Post date – 31/05/19.

Live from the edge of sanity, it’s me! I’m back guys! I swear! First of all, I would like to begin this post by thanking my family for helping me as I crossed off the production I was in from my bucket list; I may have very well come out of it broken without their help. Well…more broken, I’ll be honest. It’s been a rough return to normal routine…but not much I can do about that. Movie-ing on from that sad topic though (heh, get it?), Movie Night returns! And Disney ones no less! I watched the 1959 ‘Sleeping Beauty’ by Clyde Geronimi, and the 1992 ‘Aladdin’ by Ron Clements and John Musker.

Sleeping Beauty – 1959 – Clyde Geronimi- 75 Mins

‘Sleeping Beauty’ is one of the older Disney movies I never watched as a kid. I watched some old ones; I remember watching a VHS (that’s a video cassette for the younger audience. It had annoying black tape that could get tangled and ruin the film forever) many times of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’, I still have a DVD of ‘Basil The Great Mouse Detective’ I love and I remember watching ‘The Sword In The Stone’ at a friends as well. Revisiting that last one however these days was…uhhh…interesting. I didn’t remember it as well as I thought. Anyway, returning to the 2D Disney animation style after playing ‘Kingdom Hearts 3’ was interesting and incredibly nostalgic after the last few Disney movies I watched being the new 3D animations like ‘Moana’, ‘Frozen’ and ‘Tangled’.

Also, I’ll cover this now before I get to ‘Aladdin’ because I’m sure you think I picked it because of this. The live action remakes. I’ve seen none completely and am not really into the idea of seeing any of them. They don’t excite me. I don’t think they are bad; I’m sure people love them and they are well crafted and good movies. They just do nothing for me. Having said that, watching this for the first time and only seeing trailers for ‘Maleficent’, I can see why Angelina Jolie would be cast for her. She must make a really decent Maleficent. I will say though, her voice reminded me of Mom from ‘Futurama’. Might just be me, but that’s what came to mind when I heard her. Speaking of which, my only interactions with her before this were her scumbag boss fight from ‘Kingdom Hearts 1’ and her appearances in ‘Kingdom Hearts 2’. She wasn’t a boss in the second one, was she? Someone fact check me on that one. Anyhoo, seeing her in this movie showed me how she got her status as such a hard boss battle. Seeing her powers and evilness made me understand that now.

I will say though, for a Disney princess, Aurora was really hardly in it. Either sleeping or being talked about. I guess that’s not really being absent from the story, but eh. I don’t know; it’s not gonna topple my favourite Disney movies any time soon. I will say what surprised me was seeing the story of Aurora and Prince Philip falling in love with people they thought they couldn’t marry, then fast forward 33 years and bring out ‘Aladdin’ with a new story from a new culture and those rules being changed to accommodate for love, as opposed to getting lucky and actually falling in love with your betrothed. I don’t know. Made me have a small chuckle…which means I mentally went ‘Huh’ when I thought about it.

Overall, I liked the movie. The three fairies were pretty funny, even if the names irked me. I don’t know what it was between having two similar names and one different one, or if it was not being alliteration, but it just made me go ‘Awww’. Before I wrap up, I want to acknowledge that the film, like most Disney movies was based on a folk tale. This one being based on the story of ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ by Charles Perrault. The music was made with and adapted from the ballet of ‘The Sleeping Beauty’ by the main man or one of my favourite classical music creators Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. I would say, even though I haven’t read the original or heard/seen the ballet that Disney did a good job.

Aladdin – 1992 – Ron Clements and John Musker- 90 Mins

Ah ‘Aladdin’…my personal all time favourite Disney movie. While most people I know at least generally go for ‘The Lion King’, this is my favourite one. I don’t even know if I could tell you why. My top three are ‘Aladdin’, ‘Hercules’, followed by…it’s close between ‘James and the Giant Peach’ and ‘Basil The Great Mouse Detective’ but I think James wins that argument. Regardless, I love Aladdin. I had a friend who had it better than me and I would watch or borrow this movie from them a lot. What is it I like about it? I don’t know…if you asked me back in the day, I’d probably say the Genie, but now days I think Aladdin is the Disney I would know the most words to. I mean, I know a good portion of ‘Frozen’, ‘Hercules’ and ‘Moana’, but I would say this tops both of them.

I will address it again; I’m not into the live action remakes. Having said that, ‘Aladdin’ has been the one that has peaked my non-interest the most. I mean, whoever they cast as the Genie was going to have a hard time competing against Robin Williams performance; if anything I feel it turning into a Heather Ledger Joker being the standard sort of acting. Will Smith, at least from what I’ve seen has made the role his own and doing a pretty good job at modernising the role. Genie in the original references older things modern kids might not get, like Jack Nicolson, Rodney Dangerfield, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Ed Sullivan. So I like him. I’ll be interested to see how it does box office wise. I also like that the Pink Ranger from the rebooted ‘Power Rangers’ is Princess Jasmine. Also, anyone who can make it happen who happens upon this blog, make more ‘Power Rangers’ movies. My sister likes them and I didn’t find them that bad.

Genie aside, I also love the magic carpet. A real showing of the Disney skill to show how a mute generally inanimate object can be so vocal and have such personality through its animation. Aside from the characters I mean, I love the songs from ‘Aladdin’. I would say Jafar’s little reprise of ‘Prince Ali’ would be the fourth best Disney villain song, behind ‘Poor Unfortunate Souls’, ‘Be Prepared’, ‘Gaston’, and tied with ‘Mother Knows Best’ and maybe ‘Friends On The Other Side’. Also like the last one, I want to acknowledge the story is based on the story ‘Aladdin from the collected works known as ‘The Arabian Nights’ and was originally written by Youhenna Diab. Huh, that collected works has the ‘The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor’ in it too. Also a movie I had on VHS as a kid and watched a lot. Good movie as well. Maybe in future.

Closing Thoughts

Am I at 100% again following from losing my theatre family and getting back to that sad existence that is my life? Nah. Not by a long shot. Will doing these movies help? Hell yeah! I can’t say I have any ideas on what to watch next week. I’ll find something. Who knows? I might even branch out and binge a miniseries and review that. I have one I have been meaning to rewatch cause I hunted down a copy of it. Anyway, I’m doing fine…well, as fine as I can do but don’t worry. I’m back baby! Yeah! Pyrotechnics and neon signs! Bring on the movies! And as always…

Hope you’re having a wonderful day and keep smiling.