Okay, so I'm gonna take a break with my ideal dland tour before I delve into Fantasyland and talk about Disney sequels. I'm not counting live actions although the second and third Pirates did NOT live up to the first and were dissapointments. And there are a few others but I won't get into them. There's a wiki add here about the sequels. So here's the first part of the list they give: (I say part because I realize that I'll have to do this in sections)...The Return of Jafar (1994)
Belle's Magical World (1998)
Now I have only seen a few of these. In fact, I OWN some of them. First there's Return of Jafar, which I own and actually watched out of complete boredom a few days ago to see if it was as crappy as I remembered it....It was. Even as a kid, I realized that it was lacking. But now, I noticed a lot more. Firstly, the voices. Genie, obviously is lacking. He simply CAN'T be played by anyone other than Robin Williams. But I did look up the other voices and they got most of the characters back, surprisingly. Even Brad Kane, the singing voice for Aladdin came back. Lea Solanga didn't return however. But, Jasmine's singing voice was done by another beloved singing voice of mine, Liz Callaway, who did Anastasia's singing voice (not Disney, I know but still good), Odette's singing voice in The Swan Princess (you know you remember that one and you like it! I own it haha.) and Adult Kiara's voice in Lion King II. So most of the voices were okay and omg, they got Jason Alexander for Abis Mal? Wow. I don't know how they convinced him to do that. Okay, so other than the lack of Robin Williams, the story is just weird. Basically Jafar comes back, gets a retarded owner, Iago turns good, and then they defeat Jafar AGAIN. Thirdly, the graphics suck. If you just compare the carpet, it's so simplified it's not even funny. It looks like one of those disney channel series (like the Aladdin one, in fact haha). It just looks really sloppy and I know it's because the budget wasn't there. So they must have planned it to be straight to video for some extra cash. It wasn't worth it, Disney. Sorry.
Next, I guess Disney wanted to redeem themselves with King of Thieves and they did...slightly. They got Robin back, which made all the difference and they got a better story line, which involved Aladdin's dad (John Rhys-Davies!) and Aladdin and Jasmine FINALLY getting married. In fact, there's a song that says that exact thing. It would have been awesome if they could have gotten Alan Menken back but I suppose he was working on other Disney gems of the golden age at that time (Beauty and the Beast, Pocahontas, Hunchback). I've only seen King of Thieves once or twice so I don't remember much of it but I do remember it being a heck of a lot better than Return of Jafar. Haha, I just remembered that I have some McDonald's toys from when that was released. I've got little figures of Jasmine in her wedding clothes and I think I also got Aladdin's dad. They're probably lost by now but it's funny that I remember those...
I don't really watch Winnie the Pooh stuff so I haven't seen Pooh's grand adventure but there are so many installments of Pooh that I'm guessing it's just as good as the rest of the stuff.
Next is Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas. And, yes I owned that one too although it mysteriously disappeared along with our copy of Hercules unfortunately. So, this is what Wiki calls a "midquel" in that the story occurs somewhere in the course of the first movie's plot. So it happens when the Beast is still a Beast and it's Christmas time (I guess somewhere around the time where Belle and the Beast sing the song "Something There"). It's just random. There were a few new characters added like the evil pipe organ (Tim Curry!) and the little Christmas tree topper "Angelique" played by Bernadette Peters. Haley Joel Osment was Chip! Holy crap haha. That kid... Most of the main voices came back but I just don't understand why or how they convinced Peters and Curry to do it. And it was sort of wasted talent because it's a straight to video Disney movie and it's a midquel so we all know what will eventually happen anyway...
Belle's Magical World? I know nothing about. After the above mentioned sequels I started to notice that they weren't really worth watching and that they kind of dimmed the awesomeness factor of their predecessors. But, Paige O'Hara kept coming back. Props to her for being a trooper I guess.
No comments:
Post a Comment