Aladdin 2

This sequel to Arthur Benzaken's film (The New Adventures of Aladdin, 2015) is a dud. It lacks visual scope. Here, the staging is designed for the tablet or the iPhone, not for the cinema. The shots are closer together, and the characters are less well thought out in the frame. This film is more reminiscent of sequences from TV shows or short films for Internet video clips.

The screenplay (still credited to Daive Cohen) manipulates fewer characters than the first in the series, and seems constructed solely as a pretext for Jamel Debbouze's performances. Jamel Bebbouze is far too present, and his character unbalances the film: Aladin has become a secondary character, even an extra. Jamel Debbouze puts on a show, which is all very well, but it doesn't serve the film. Moreover, each sequence taken individually is sympathetic, even effective on a comic level, but taken together they don't give the whole a coherent approach, a feeling of togetherness. For example, the space/time travel gag, in which they come across Christopher Columbus, is a good idea, but of no interest to the film as a whole. There are a lot of good individual ideas, but there's no overall artistic direction.