Movie Review // Adam Green's Aladdin
Through a series of events I found this film on special edition Blu-Ray from Vinegar Syndrome and purchased it right away. I did not know that this film even existed prior to my seeing it on the Vinegar Syndrome website and buying it, but now I am glad that I did. A bizarre adventure, a re-telling of a classic tale, part animation, somewhat funny and just overall something I couldn't take my eyes off of the entire time I was watching it, "Adam Green's Aladdin" is a modern day masterpiece, the type of film all other films should strive to be like.
To put things into perspective first, Adam Green is one half of The Moldy Peaches. This comes into play when you realize just how much singing there will be in this movie. I'm not one who is fond of musicals, but this is weird enough to where the songs do get stuck in my head, as "Interested in Music" did (I'd like to hear the eleven minute version of it. So, if nothing else, think of this as a grand musical opus, like "Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat".
A lot of the actors in this sold me on it as well. Macaulay Culkin in perhaps his finest role. Alia Shawkat, Natasha Lyonne and Nicole LaLiberte all bring such life to their characters. And at times, that doesn't feel easy as the dialogue can feel as if it was written in English, translated to Russian and then translated back to English. Sometimes the lines in the film are just odd enough for Aladdin to say something like "I just want to be bad enough to get spanked".
Within all of these bits of fragmented poetry comes what is one of the brightest and best films I've ever witnessed just from a purely looking at it standpoint. Much of this film is like a play where sets are painted but there are other objects painted as well. So this does have this overall vibe of humans being inside of an animated universe, though it isn't exactly animated and is rather the result of what I feel like must have taken months or years to create.
Holding onto that idea behind every movie made about "Aladdin", this version does seem to explore it with a different message though. It could be along the lines of "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" but there is also that idea of just how getting everything you've ever wanted without really working for it can feel empty. But at times, I also think of the lamp and all of the power which comes with it as being like a drug, an addiction, and that also puts a lot of other aspects of life and vices into perspective.
"Adam Green's Aladdin" is the type of film that might not be for everyone, but it is also the type of film that you can tell a lot of work went into. When making a film, especially when doing a re-telling of sorts, one of the biggest factors has to be what you as a writer/director bring to it that others haven't. That is one of the qualities which also makes "Adam Green's Aladdin" so special- only Adam Green could have made this film in this way. If others try to do something similar now, they're just going to be compared with this.
To do something completely unique, having something for the first time, is just rare in the 21st Century, but that in and of itself doesn't make something good. The acting, the visuals, the overall story and how it unfolds plus the musical aspects of this film are what make it one of the very best that I have ever seen. I could watch this film a hundred times and pick up something new each time, it's just that layered and complex, but even if you only watch it once you'll still walk away feeling something.
Comments
Post a Comment