Reviews by JxSxPx

Judy Holliday was a comedic genius who died too young from breast cancer. That she only made a handful of movies before her untimely death is a shame, that she made only one musical-comedy is an injustice. Bells Are Ringing was her final film performance. She gives one hell of a performance – ringing laughs when a small, polite chuckle would have otherwise occurred, singing and dancing her heart out, and generally being utterly charming and charismatic – as Ella Peterson, a phone operator who can make everyone happy but herself.

Vincente Minnelli, normally a director who loved to be extravagant and vibrant, turns in an oddly subdued performance. The sets look a bit stagey, some of the sequences could have been better and never really breathes the way that other stage-to-screen musicals he directed were allowed to. Minnelli was also one of the premiere directors of the MGM musical department, Meet Me in St. Louis, An American in Paris and Gigi burst and crackle with energy, why doesn’t Bells? It’s a competent and cute effort, but not one of his best. Maybe it’s the songbook. It’s not exactly full of memorable tunes, no matter how well-sung and acted they are.

Jean Stapleton and Eddie Foy Jr. deliver great supporting performances, but Dean Martin phones it in as a creatively blocked playwright who is the object of Holliday’s affections. He could play this effortless cool, slightly tipsy, charming boozer in his sleep. And here it seems like he is. Their romance generates more polite flushes than sexual sparks.

But the real reason to watch is Judy Holliday. Her kewpie doll voice and supermodel height (she was 5’10”) could have provided the easy laughs, but she was a masterful actor. Comedy isn’t easy, no matter how effortlessly she makes it look. Holliday was also blessed with a great musical voice – her voice might not have been like that of Judy Garland, but she could give the same commitment and energy. The way that she delivers a line in a song is enough to make you laugh. Combine that with her faces and gifts in physical comedy and you have a winning performance. Her immense talents and commitment to this role (she won a Tony for her stage performance) shine through consistently. If for no other reason, her luminous magic is the reason to see Bells Are Ringing.

In a role that could have been nothing more than a cliché, Jeff Bridges brings his years of experience and mastery of his craft to create one of the greatest character portraits of last year. While the story might be filled with country music clichés and tropes, they maintain a certain level of dignity, intelligence and spark. These are real people; they’re just stuck in a storyline that’s been used in how many other films, songs and short stories? Certain details might be different, but the beats remain exactly the same. That doesn’t mean that it’s not good.

Crazy Heart is best as an observation of a broken, disillusioned man. Once we are presented with the redemptive love story, we are saddled with the moments that are recycled and obvious. There are even moments within the love story that work as an observation. The scene where he tells Jean that she makes his hotel room look so bad is a classic example of southern charm, even if it is buried within a permanently drunken gait and a strict diet of cigarettes. They both know that he is better than the dive-bars and bowling alleys he has been reduced to, he should be too famous for her tiny little newspaper…but, alas, life intervenes and choices are made, some better made than others. The emotions are always bubbling under the surface, never coming out in big hysterical emotions. That is an asset to the film. Scenes of alcoholism are played close to the bone and with much intelligence about the disease.

Everyone in the cast delivers an incredibly strong performance, except for one poor casting decision. Robert Duvall, in a glorified cameo, plays a recovering alcoholic who’s also a bar owner. He’s wise in the way that life can make you if you’ve been through hell and back. Maggie Gyllenhaal, a warm and committed actress in any role, is pitch-perfect as a single-mother who can’t help falling for broken and damaged men despite being smart enough to know better. She deservedly got an Academy Award nomination for her performance, it should have been her second or third after Secretary and Sherrybaby. Colin Farrell, not really bad just never convincing, does his best to make his physical appearance and character mesh. He tries hard, but never really pulls the trick off. Perhaps they should have gone with a real country musician, or a southern actor. Their relationship is never clichéd; he never abandons Bad despite Bad’s resenting him for achieving greater success. He always offers support and champions Bad’s talents and gifts. It’s a great dynamic, and with a better casting decision would have elevated parts of the film to another level.

But the real reason to see Crazy Heart, if you haven’t already, is to see Jeff Bridges’ committed essay of Bad Blake. With his cracked skin, bloated gut and grey scruff, Bridges resembles the type of character perfectly. We’ve all see one person who looks like Bad Blake in our lives, perhaps even known them. You can tell he was once handsome and rascally, a hell-raising good ol’ boy. Time and personal problems, four failed marriages and an abandoned child have taken their toll. Bridges can project all of this by the way he drinks and smokes, which it seems are his lifelines. Never once, even while vomiting up his previous lunch meals of cigarettes and whiskey, does he lose the dignity within Bad Blake. There is a bruised and battered humanity within him, Crazy Heart is about rediscovering the human inside his song lyrics.

In theory this should have been a slam-dunk; a perfect combination of auteur and material. And for much of the running time is a fun excursion into Wonderland until the final twenty minutes or so takes us on a strange detour. While not the best literary adaptation in Burton’s repertoire, nor is it his best film, it is an enjoyable, utterly charming, and visually stunning film for much of the running time.

The story, which has been told so many times that you’ll probably feel like you’ve read the book a half-dozen times even if you haven’t read it…ever, concerns a young girl’s journey into adolescence, and, eventually, adulthood. She is smart, logical, questions the rules yet tries to enforce them, and she is prone to flights of wild imagination. That is the Alice of both the film and the novel. But here is where her character differs: no longer is she the plucky girl of seven-and-a-half who envisions Wonderland as a beautiful topsy-turvy nonsensical fever dream, but a young woman of nineteen who is trying to reinforce, to rediscovery her purpose and sense of self-worth.

It works really well. The Alice tales were never really, entirely, for children. They taught no lessons, they had no real logic, but they could inspire the imagination to take flight. And John Tenniel’s drawings were quirky, mordantly witty, and frightening all at the same time. I loved it as a child, but I cherish the story more as an adult. The story is strong enough to work as a parable for reclaiming your strength and sense of wonder in your inner child to propel you into adulthood, to reclaim your power and freedom to live without fear.

Burton visually captures Carroll’s words and Tenniel’s illustrations and brings his own mad-cap, darkly quirky vision to it all. It makes logical sense that Alice has pallor this side of death, Burton loves to make people as close to grey as possible. That her eyes appear sunken in is from Tenniel’s drawings. The Bette Davis-esque styling of the Red Queen (a combination of the Queen of Hearts and the chess piece from Looking Glass) is Burton, but her bulbous head is Tenniel. Each character’s design meets somewhere in the middle of these two different yet similar aesthetics. I loved to just immerse myself in the world that was unfolding in front of me. It was how I had always pictured Wonderland in my head. (The Mad Hatter is close to a visual depiction of what I always say in my head, but lets not talk much about Johnny Depp's performance.)

So why does it have to end in such a silly little action scene?

The Joan of Arc armor Alice wears is visually stunning, and a close match-up to the armor that the (male) knight wears in the poem. And the Jabberwock, a scary and menacing sight, is a literal interpretation of the illustration provided in Through the Looking Glass. (Minus the vest, of course.) Watching the chess pieces square off against the card pieces was cute enough. So was seeing fellow “Jabberwocky” mythological creatures the Bandersnatch, which looks like what would happen if a bulldog mated with a prehistoric bear, and the Jubjub bird, which has a strong resemble to a Phorusrhacos. But must it end in such a busy way? Was Disney worried that little ones wouldn’t have held their attention if the movie didn’t feature a prominent battle scene? It’s possible. We have been conditioned within the last few years to expect every movie to feature grand battles and huge explosions. We know the battle scene is coming as we've been warned about it from the beginning, but it's so lifeless and dull in comparison to the quieter scenes like Anne Hathaway's White Queen making a potion, or the reunion tea party with a tweaked out March Hare and violent, manic Dormouse. 

But the battle scene is not the only problem. The futterwaken, or the silly little dance that the Mad Hatter does, sounds like a dirty term and looks like a dance that has been beamed in from a different film. It doesn’t fit the tone of a film which earlier had Alice making her way through a moat of served heads to get to the Red Queen’s castle. And that is why this version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland isn’t the definitive one that it could have been. After perfectly capturing the tone, essence, and spirit of Daniel Wallace's paternal conflict in Big Fish and Roald Dahl's wicked fairy tale world in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Burton, probably because of decisions by Disney, made some odd choices for this film. It’s still utterly charming and a fun time, visually stunning, and a decent expansion of the characters and story, but not as great as it could have or should have been.

What has happened to my beloved TV characters? They were once so smart, tart and sexy. They proved that women could be all of these things at any age. When the series started they were already in their thirties, which was well past the sell-by date on most other television shows. Unless they were about smart-but-excessively-neurotic lawyers, doctors or other high-powered professionals, and then they often had ONE love interest that they dragged out a will-they-won’t-they past any reasonable amount of time to come to a conclusion. Sex and the City was bold and daring television – it enticed you with frank, often hilarious, discussions of sex, scenes of pure raunch, but kept you watching because of the way that it portrayed female friendship and relationships. Which leads me to ask, once again, what has happened to my beloved TV characters and who has replaced them?

It should be noted that there are four great things about this movie, and they are all as superficial as things could possibly be in film criticism. Here is my list:

1. Max Ryan, who plays Samantha’s love interest, is impossibly attractive. His nude scene (however brief) is a highlight.
2. The Australian soccer team that takes a brief detour into the pool is filmed in such a soft-core porno fashion that it’s almost impossible not to ogle and drool along with the girls.
3. Model-cum-actor Noah Mills shows up briefly, utters very few lines of dialogue and shows off the goods. His nude scene is another highlight.
4. The best part of the entire film is seeing Liza Minnelli officiate a gay wedding and then perform “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It).” You read that sentence correctly. It is an unhealthy mixture of cringe-inducing awkward and camp-tastic awesome. Someone should tell Liza (with a Z) that while she was once one of the greatest musical performers of all-time, years of booze, marriages and drugs have taken their toll on her voice and overall demeanor.

The rest of the film is two and a half hours of promising topics, but turgid and ludicrous scripting and practically no development. These girls who New York girls (despite being mostly transplants) to their core, they lived and breathed the city life and were in-tune with its heartbeat. To see them outside was always a debatable and questionable episode. The film’s choice of transplanting them to Abu Dhabi isn’t just questionable, it’s downright offensive. Not because they are going to the Middle East, but you know exactly where the story points will take us and you prepare for the ham-fisted approach. We are given architecture porn at Abu Dhabi and little else. Aside from borderline-racist depictions of Muslim men and don’t get me started on the waifer-thin (and possibly offensive) thought that women practically have a group cum-shot over our NY girls pissing off the men-folk. They also strip to reveal this past season’s latest fashion offerings in a scene so ridiculous you have to chuckle, at least a tiny bit.

But these Looney Tunes-level antics are just one big problem in a movie seemingly built out of big problems. The characters themselves bare the faintest resemblance to their TV counterparts. Remember Miranda the sarcastic, tough but secretly vulnerable high-powered attorney? There’s one scene in the film where a real Miranda moment occurs outside of her relationship with the girls. Miranda quits her job (fans of the show are thinking: “What? She would never!” I know, bear with me), and makes it to Brady’s school to see that he has won a science fair competition. She naturally chokes up and is elated to know that she ‘made it.’ Once she got pregnant with Brady, Miranda’s character, who always felt the closest to a real person, was torn between her duties at work, wanting to have a social life and being a mother. She struggled with that balance. That one scene was her only moment in character. Other than that she is happy-go-lucky, uber-perky tour guide. Who is this woman? And Charlotte, the most traditional and conservative of the group, has descended into a hysterical cartoon version of herself at an alarming rate. It slowly started towards the end of the last season, escalated throughout the first so-so film, and is now completed. Samantha has a menopausal storyline, I know TV show fans, I thought we already covered that with her breast cancer treatments kicking her into early-menopause, but apparently not. The less said about it the better. And Carrie and Big are given drama that is obvious and like trying to get blood from a stone. Her arguments about becoming domesticated are real, honest and feel like a totally vulnerable conversation. How it plays out is annoying. Who knew Mr. Big was a stay-at-home kind of guy? And guess which two gays are getting married! That’s right, Stanford and Anthony. Why? Because they’re the only two gay reoccurring characters from the show. That’s why. This film is a disservice and insult to the fans who helped make the show and the first film such a success. Sex and the City 2 hasn’t fared as well as the box office for this reason and this reason alone. It is an established property that is, essentially, critic-proof. But when you disenfranchise the fans, then you are killing your franchise.

There is ONE other scene which feels like a real moment from the show. We watched the show for the outrageous, sometimes garish, fashion, the frank sex talk and raunchy comedy and explicit scenes, but we stayed for the empowering images of female friendship and women in the work force doing something that they loved. Carrie is barely glimpsed writing, Samantha barely does anything PR related and Miranda is barely glimpsed in the office. But there is a scene between Miranda and Charlotte that feels so note-perfect you wonder what happened with every other scene between them. They share the horror stories, stresses and emotional distresses of raising children. Every time one of them shares, they have a drink. It’s funny, it’s painfully honest and numerous people can connect with the experiences and stories that they are saying. That was the magic of the show. This movie has a lot of sparkle and flash, but no heart and definitely no magic.

Guy Ritchie’s revisionist take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s infamous detective is a fun balls-to-the-wall action film. The basic storyline follows any of the traditional Sherlock Holmes stories, it’s just been pumped with so many steroids and action-movie clichés that it comes across more as a living cartoon version of the myth and not as a live-action film. Again, nothing wrong with that since it proves to be so rip-roaringly fun.

Robert Downey Jr., on paper, might sound like the oddest choice for Holmes, but it invests the character with the same eccentric braininess and darkness beneath the surface. Holmes was a drug addicted sleuth after all. That he got a Golden Globe nomination for this speaks to the level of his work. Even in big budget popcorn entertainment RDJ delivers performances that are quirky and engaging. And Mark Strong seems to have become the latest in the long line of British character actors who seem to portray every evil character in an established franchise or a reboot (Alan Rickman, Jason Isaacs and Gary Oldman all spring to mind). I’m waiting for him to appear in one of the final installments of Harry Potter, but that could just be me being silly. The main cast is rounded out by Jude Law – charming as ever and proving himself adept at action – and Rachel McAdams – beautiful, tough, pitch-perfect and terribly underutilized. She’s great at what she is asked to do and delivers the goods, but isn’t asked to deliver or do that much. Law, on the other hand, helps RDJ find that almost-but-not-quite gay streak within the characters that’s just too hilariously embellished in this outing.

And while it is a grand ol’ time to be had, it also ever-so-slightly ridiculous and could have benefited from a few more scenes of comedic interplay between Holmes and Watson or barely contained sensuality between Holmes and Irene Adler (the way McAdams can part her lips or arch an eyebrow can make any man melt). If not so the audience could breathe, then so all of the slow-motion set pieces and bare-knuckle boxing didn’t mesh into one supremely long fight scene.

I would also like to have seen a more quiet scenes to fully envelope and experience the richly textured and detailed world that Guy Ritchie has created for this version of the world’s most famous sleuth. It plays like something between a Victorian horror film, a Victorian film noir and graphic novelized version of the real thing. It’s quite lovely to behold and to just watch, but so much of it is given way to a manic energy that’s more eager to give a roller-coaster ride feeling than room to breath between screams as it twists, turns and drops you this way and that.

Sherlock Holmes plays like a summer movie, but it came out in time for awards season. It sounds like a contradiction in terms, but it somehow worked. It just goes to prove that summer popcorn entertainment need not be brainless and FX heavy to be a hit or enjoyable. It’s a fun little ride, and an interesting revisionist take on a century old character.

The Grapes of Wrath is an almost-perfect adaptation one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Henry Fonda and Jane Darwell head a cast that firmly roots the movie in a realistic depiction of the tribulations and hardships experienced by Okies traveling to California. Their acting is not a series of scenes in which they get to loudly expose their acting muscles; it is a series of scenes in which they make you believe that they are real people.

Time was also a factor in the success of this adaptation. The novel was written only a year earlier, and the Great Depression was only slowly starting to come around. This was a fresh story line that had played out in people’s backyards, in their newspapers and newsreels. This was real life. The movie even plays as something akin to a documentary. Often times approaching near observational/docu-drama cinema in the ways in which characters often forgo makeup and soft lighting in order to look authentically dirty and road weary.

The cinematography approaches something so close to reality that is still an astounding accomplishment (how it lost that year's Oscar is a great question and that it wasn't even nominated is a joke). Characters are often seen in what is referred to as ‘natural lighting,’ meaning that the light that illuminates them is often from a lowly candle, the outdoor sunlight or a fire. The use of shadows is just as effective as the use of daylight. The stark, barren wasteland of Middle America is a disturbing sight to behold. How anyone managed to survive in that environment is beyond my comprehension. Even more unnerving are the numerous scenes of life on the road in the middle of the night or in a makeshift camp or in a home with no electricity. The rustling of a bush could mean so much if you can’t make out where the bush even is. You are there with the Joads throughout this entire ordeal. And it is an ordeal.

And the Joads – truly one of the fullest realized families in all of literature, even the minor characters like grandpa and grandma speak so much with so few scenes. They come from a time and an area when as man’s life, work and worth were determined by his land. They would rather die than see something happen to it. It’s all right there. And the actors speak those unsaid volumes with great acting economy. Henry Fonda gets all the praise for his performance, and it is indeed a splendid performance, perhaps his greatest (along with On Golden Pond and The Wrong Man). Fonda had the tremendous ability to always ‘be’ as an actor. You never saw him trying to become these people, he always ‘was.’ But the performance that struck me the most was Jane Darwell as Ma Joad. Specifically the scene where she sits examining odds-and-ends before they must leave their house and start the long journey to California, she pulls out a pair of earrings, holds them up to her ears and examines herself in the mirror. What she does with her face is an emotional sucker-punch with just the slightest fluctuations in her eyes.

But we now must discuss those final twenty minutes which left me confused and a little dumbstruck. Up until that point the film had followed the spirit and letter of the novel to a surprising degree. Then we come to a point in which Fonda must deliver a rousing speech that doesn't feel natural. What he speaks about is uplifting, but it comes across as a Cliff’s Notes abbreviation to what is unsaid about his character in the book. What Steinbeck accomplished through action, the filmmakers accomplish through a speech that screams Inspirational Dialogue 101. And Darwell is forced to wrap up the film in a similar fashion. The ending of the novel – a confounding, bruising, moving thing – is drastically changed to have her explicitly state what is obvious to anyone who has read the book or been paying attention during the film.

Surely, these are downgrades from the source material. Yet this ending doesn't diminish or destroy any of the good-will and artistry that the preceding experience has given us. It is an inelegant and abbreviated ending yet other than this brief but concluding detour The Grapes of Wrath is the American classic that it has been hyped to be.

Julie Christie gives a five-star performance in a two-and-a-half-star film. I decided to split the difference in my rating and give it a three. Christie’s performance is truly stunning as Diana; a woman whose sense of entitlement and willingness to do whatever it takes to get famous is disturbingly current. The rest of the film has aged terribly.

A few attempts at satire of the then-current “Swinging London” crowd are quickly tossed aside in favor of giving us a character portrait. It is in these moments that the film sparkles. The biting satire of her vacuous and gold-digging nature, of that inflated ego, show that behind it and her sense of ambition/boredom there is nothing more. She is a supreme creation of artifice and fame-hungry ambitions without true talent to back it up. You can find the current examples of people like her parading around Andy Cohen in the Real Housewives franchise.

Shame then that the satire is so toothless. The panorama of her jet-setter friends and their lifestyle is pure limp noodle since all of the naughty bits are elliptical or censored. When we follow Diana around from one affair to the next it feels shallow, as if the lusty propulsion and narrative drive are lacking in sufficient tires to really burn skidmarks on the road. We can’t get as dirty and gritty as we would like. Most of the dirty things are alluded to, never really shown.

But there is always Christie’s performance. Diana Scott works a bit as a model, then as an actress, a good deal of her fame is for no reason other than she is the epitome of the “Swinging Londoner.” And Christie excels at playing a woman who is practically all surface. There are cracks when Diana begins to realize that her actions have consequences, but she soon reverts back to her shallowness seemingly never having gained insight or real human emotions.

Darling does have its merits – images are often striking, the costumes are delicious, the cast is well assembled and performs fantastically across the board. At the time this was probably some controversial and dark material, but it comes across as stilted and shallow today. Never sexy enough, never dirty enough, never dark enough, but Christie deservedly won the Oscar for Best Actress.

Lacking much of the brains and heart of Iron Man, Iron Man 2 mistakes more for better and chaotic, often headache-inducing over-indulgence for thrilling action set pieces. There is still much to like, but it just isn’t quite as tart, smart or breezy as the first time around. It never betters its predecessor, but it does offer two hours of fun blockbuster entertainment, however thin an endorsement that may be. And, thankfully, there’s no craptacular 3D version of to be found.

Whatever the specific problems with Iron Man 2 are, it is not the cast. Each performer seems game and strikes the correct note, even if one or two seem slightly miscast, they still manage to give it their best shot and seem to be having a good time. Robert Downey Jr. embeds the same sense of manic narcissism and rock star-level theatricality to the role, and goes deeper to showcase the self-destructive alcoholism and neediness hidden beneath the charming playboy veneer. Gwyneth Paltrow returns as Pepper Potts and generates the kind of sparks with RDJ that haven’t been seen since His Girl Friday. Should they ever decide to remake that movie (shudder), sign up Paltrow and RDJ immediately because their quick back-and-forth is a pleasure. Don Cheadle, in a needless bit of recasting, doesn’t do anything better or worse than Terrence Howard in the same role. Sam Rockwell, normally so reliable, tended to grate my nerves with his simpering, whiny little-boy-playing-dress-up performance, I’m not sure if the fault is with the performance or the character. The truth is possibly somewhere in-between. And Scarlett Johansson, under-used and not given much to do besides pout and kick-ass, gives it her best. It’s nice to see a girl kick ass and show that she can take down all of the boys in a genre predominantly focused on male-centric action.

The best performance belongs to Mickey Rourke as Whiplash, a composite character of Blacklash and Crimson Dynamo. With his too-tanned skin, covered in tattoos, bad teeth and bleary-eyed-yet-pinpoint-focus, he makes the character seem far too real and dark for the rest of the proceedings. He is also underutilized, completely forgotten after a great set-up, awesome reveal (that outfit can only be described as gladiator BDSM-chic) and the best action sequence in the film. While Rockwell’s character gets a satisfying resolve, Rourke goes out cheaply and appears briefly which speaks to the biggest problem with the film: the script.

Iron Man 2 either has too much story or not enough to fit the run time. Since plot lines and characters are dropped, forgotten, tossed aside or so poorly utilized shows that maybe it’s a combination of both. With so many main characters and storyline vying for attention things are bound to get lost in the shuffle. That the film ends with a ridiculously long, ear-bleeding loud fight sequences between Iron Man and War Machine and hordes of robotic soldiers is a chance at finally firing off the action sequence load the film so sporadically stroked itself off towards.

When the dust finally settled, Iron Man 2 wasn’t awful. It was disappointing, forgettable but entertaining. Sporadically featuring the same tart and sharp wit in the original, but bogging itself down too much with unnecessary filler, Iron Man 2 plays like a stop-gap before the Avengers film.

Aladdin and the King of Thieves wraps up not only the storyline from the first film, but from the animated series as well. It is miles better than Return of Jafar, and probably the best of the direct-to-video sequels. It is an enjoyable, breezy and fun romp with these familiar characters. And, unlike Jafar, it expands the mythology in a unique and interesting way. It never comes close to the heights of the original, but it is mindless fun. And it features the return of Robin Williams as the Genie.

As we all know by now, King of Thieves features the big reveal over who Aladdin’s father is, take a wild guess! But, it also brings in another of the 1001 Arabian Nights stories into the Disney-version continuity. This time around we have a variation of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, no Ali Baba, but we’ve got a band of thieves who hide in a cave that can only be accessed by proclaiming those two magic words. Do I really need to tell you what they are?

This by far the better of the two sequels, but it still suffers from poor animation and musical numbers. None of the songs are terribly memorable, and the animation seems to get cheaper and noticeably off-model in certain sequences. Budgetary issues? Seems likely, I can’t imagine a lot of time, care and money were poured into these things. But it’s harmless entertainment. I was entertained by it as a kid, I still kind of like it as an adult. But it doesn’t compare to the 1992 original.

The Return of Jafar is a seventy minute pilot for the utterly enjoyable Aladdin television series, and despite its skimpy running time feels like it’s about three times longer. Everything from the animation to the storyline just gets progressively worse as it shuffles along, joylessly, towards the ending.

Perhaps the biggest problem is the choice of characters to focus on: Iago, the shrill voiced parrot, and the newly created Abis Mal, that name says it all. Iago, and other characters like him, are not meant to be the focus of a feature length film. They work as ancillary characters, and beefing up their screentime in twenty-two minute episodes sporadically is fine, over seventy minutes is pushing it. And the less said about Abis Mal the better. Luckily, the producers seem to have forgotten about him halfway through and only occasionally return to him. Once Jafar returns, and whenever he’s onscreen, the interest and pace pick up. Pity he’s not used effectively enough.

And now for the elephant in the room. Dan Castellaneta does a serviceable job replacing Robin Williams, but while Williams’ Genie was fueled by the comic’s own manic comedy style, Castellaneta feels like forced zaniness and madcap humor.

The Return of Jafar started the recently stopped practice of creating inferior direct-to-video sequels for some of their most beloved projects. Unfortunately, it also set the template for just how awful they could really be.