From the land of myths and legends – India – comes a fantasy adventure for the entire family. Directed by Sujoy Ghosh, Aladin is a modern re-imagining of the classic tale of ‘Aladin and the Magic Lamp’. Aladin movie review…
Aladin Chatterjee (Riteish Deshmukh) lives in the city of Khwaish, an orphan who has been bullied since childhood by Kasim (Sahil Khan) and his gang for being the namesake of the fairy tale character. Often his classmates ridicule him by making him rub lamps through which no genie emerges. Poor Aladin.
One fine day, his life changes when Jasmine (Jacqueline Fernandez) gives him a magic lamp – because it lets lose the genie Genius (Amitabh Bachchan).
Much to his disbelief, the Genie (Amitabh Bachchan) does come out of the lamp. Genius is on the verge of retirement and has his last three wishes to grant to his final master Aladin.
Ideally one would expect Aladin to make magnanimous wishes from the Genie. Unfortunately all of his wishes are expended only in winning his ladylove Jasmine (Jacqueline Fernandez).
Jasmine is the new entrant in college who Aladin dreams of but doesn’t dare to propose as he feels that he doesn’t want to win his love through downright magic despite having the choice.
Desperate to grant him 3 wishes and seek the end of his contract with the Magic Lamp, the rock-star Genius makes Aladin’s life difficult until the real threat looms on the horizon: the ex-genie Ringmaster (Sanjay Dutt).
So there’s a villain in the form of Ringmaster who keeps clowning around with his gang of circus extras. Being an ex-genie, the Ringmaster now wants to use the magic of lamp for himself over humankind.
There are other characters of Marjina, Qasim and even a female frog loosely referring to the other fairy tales which make the going on more lively..
Does Ringmaster succeed in killing Aladin? What is the dark secret about Aladin’s past that Genius is carrying? And what is Aladin’s destiny?
Sabu Cyril’s art direction gives a fantasy feel to the hill-station town. Vishal-Shekhar’s musical score is just passable. There are some dazzling scenes created by VFX supervised by Charles Darby (of Matrix & Harry Potter fame).
Riteish Deshmukh is the right choice for the character of Aladin with the kind of expressions he is capable of. Amitabh Bachchan is energetic as the Genie but gets too loud and animated. Sanjay Dutt entertains through the buffoonery of his character. The gorgeous debutante Jacqueline Fernandez is absolutely beautiful while Ratna Pathak Shah and Mita Vashisht are almost not there.
Wish the director could have come up with an extremely entertaining story with such a vast open subject matter in hand.
Cast of Aladin :
Amitabh Bachchan – Genius
Sanjay Dutt – Ring Master
Riteish Deshmukh – Aladin
Jacqueling Fernandez – Jasmine
Victor Bannerjee – Grandfather
Ratha Pathak Shah – Marjina
Sahil Khan – Kasim
Mita Vashisht – Karate Instructor
Joy Sengupta – Arun Chatterjee
Sohini Ghosh – Riya Chatterjee
Arif Zakariya – Prof. Nazir
Kasim Gang – Anit Vaswani, Ajay Singh, Siddharth Sharma, Vivek Malik
Master Shubhanker Atre – Baby Aladin
Master Ahan Desai – Young Aladin
Master Dev Kantawala – Young Kasim
Young Kasim Gang – Master Parth Hingu, Master Siddhesh Hede, Pritesh Roy,
Nawab Khan – Lion Tamer
Erina – Flame Thrower
Dharmindar Kumar Rajput – Knife Thrower
Madan Singh Rao – Muscle Man
Bimal Ranjit Sarkar – Clown
Dhaval Barbhaya – Egg Head
Vineet Kapoor – Truck Driver
Vinay Kumar Yadav – Cleaner
Peter Wong – Chinese Scientist
William Ong – Xi Guang Lee
Arti Kapoor Singh – News Reader
Students – Faizal Gazi, Himanshu Parekh
Kriti Dhawan – News Reporter
Michael Chang – Antique Shop Owner
Credits:
Directed by Sujoy Ghosh
Produced by Sunil A. Lulla, Sujoy Ghosh
Story / Dialogues – Sujoy Ghosh, Ritesh Shah
Screenplay – Sujoy Ghosh
Additional Story – Suresh Nair
Cinematography – Sirsha Ray
Original Music by Vishal Dadlani, Shekhar Ravijiani
Original Background Score – Jody K. Jenkins
Art Director – Sabu Cyril
Crew:
Senior VFX Supervisor – Charles Darby (for Eyeqube)
Action Director – William Ong
Film Editing by Suresh Pai
Sound Designing – Hari Dwarak Warrior, Madhu Apsara
Film Mix Engineer – Leslie Fernandes
Costume Designer – Narendra Kumar Ahmed
Publicity Design – Glamour Design Studio
Concept Design – Sucharita S. Suri
Choreographers – Bosco Ceaser, Piyush Panchal, Shiamak Davar, Geeta Kapur
Concept Designers – Sicharita Sengupta, Shashank Acharya, Rahul Chemburkar
Executive Producer – Sameer Rajendran (for Boundscript)
Lyrics – Vishal Dadlani, Anvita Dutt Gutan
Audio – Eros Music
Line Producer – Sameer Shaikh (for Boundscript)
First Assistant Director – Abhishek Vaidya, Keith Gomes, Vinay Waikul
Assistant Director – Gargi Mukherjee
Aladin, movie review