THE RETURN OF JAFAR (1994) * Having insinuated himself into the royal family, Aladdin moonlights as a pleasant variation on a theme of Robin Hood: he steals from thieves. That's the best part. It would be easy to say that this film, contrasted with its predecessor, represents the supreme importance of voice talent in animation, but that would be a small part of the story. It's true that all of the good voices are gone (one way or another), replaced by sounds emblematic of idiocy and worse. Linda Larkin, (so winsome and pure in the first-"replaced" only by her own sub par performance-has limitations representative of a post-retirement foghorn). Even my children suggested that it would be best if she didn't sing again, after the first one. But she does, and does, and... And it's too much to blame the entire thing on her. In the first film the songs were catchy little pop diddies, in this one they are...when we were kids we would have called them "retarded." I'm not sure what kids are allowed to call them now, but they are retarded. The scent of the talentless, certain that Broadway awaits them, and blowing their nose. The plot settles down to being a sad effort towards more or less precise replication of the first one, but without any of the brilliance or charm or intellect or joy, or oomph to the mythology. Kind of like a very latter-day Rolling Stones record. I don't know if it's sadder that the Rolling Stones can be reasonably compared to a bad cartoon, or that....no, that's way sadder than even anything in this film. But the film's pretty sad, too.
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