Sekai Meisaku Douwa: Aladdin to Mahou no Lamp

Up nest for this year's film festival week, we have a film from 1982 based on the story of Aladdin. For you youngsters out there, this has nothing to do with the Disney version aside from the fact that they both drew inspiration from the same public domain story. In fact, this came out a decade before Disney's version. You see, Disney loves to base their films off of public domain stories while hypocritically fucking over the concept of the public domain. But that's a conversation for another time. Let's jump into Toei's version of Aladdin. Story: Aladdin is a poor beggar boy who, along withhis friends, steals food to keep his belly full only going home to his poor old mother at night. One day, he's approached by a wizard who offers him a pouch of silver coins in exchange for doing a task for him. This task involves going into a mystical cavern that wizards can't enter and retrieving an old lamp. Which we all know turns out to be a magic lamp with a djinn in it. Aladdin uses the djinn's power to become a prince and woo the sultan's daughter which draws the ire of the wizard. Let's start with the problems with the film. The first thing that bothers me is that Aladdin steals so that he and his friends can have little treats to snack on but he never takes anything home to his poor mother Which makes him come across as a bit unlikeable. The second thing that bothers me is that the film leaves out a lot of the wizard's duplicity. In the original story, he gains Aladdin's trust by pretending to be a relative of his father's. In this he just shows up looking very suspicious and Aladdin just follows him with very little hesitation. Which does weaken the narrative a little bit. On the positive side, the film does get most of the original story's plot pretty much nailed. Including the exact trick the wizard uses to get the lamp and the lesser djinn of the ring. The film also has its fun moments, a lot of which revolve around a little desert rat that Aladdin picks up. I also kind of like the story arc about Aladdin trying to leave his former life behind and become more virtuous. Characters: The characters are pretty much the very basic, simplified variety that you get in old morality tales like Aladdin. They work perfectly fine but don't have much in terms of complexity. I will say, my favourite character was the little dessert rat, which doesn't have a name but I'm going to call Squeakers. It just has so much fun whenever its on screen and saves the day at least twice during the climax. Squeakers is the hero this story needed. Art: I will give this film credit in that it's not dated in a way that doesn't hold up that well, unlike some older works I've reviewed. That being said, there are a few things that bother me. The first is that Aladdin and the Princess are both drawn in such a way that they look to be around thirteen but then they get married and she's also being pursued by the old wizard and the grand vizier's son. I know that historically some young girls have been married off, including to much older men, but that's not a historical factoid that makes for good entertainment. The second thing that bothers me is that none of the major characters actually look like they're from that region. Both Aladdin and the princess have the brightest of bright blue eyes. The princess is also literally as pale as me and I'm a very pale white guy who barely goes outside. Aladdin has a slight tan, at least. Sound: The acting is pretty well done. Kimaya Kazuo, Suzuka Keiko & Kaneuchi Kikuo all perform well. The music is fine. It's not anything special that you'd listen to outside of the film, but it's fine. Ho-yay: There's none to be found. Areas of Improvement: 1. Include the part of the story where the antagonist actually tricks Aladdin. Look, this film is barely over an hour. You could take an extra five minutes to build the whole thing up a bit and have much better execution. 2. The characters could definitely use some depth. 3. Make the characters look less white and older. Final Thoughts: Sekai Meisaku Douwa: Aladdin to Mahou no Lamp isn't a bad adaptation of the classic tale. It's pretty faithful to the original but doesn't really add much aside from little Squeakers the desert rat. I'll give it a 6/10 because it does have some enjoyable moments but it's also not the best version of the story out there.

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