Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp

Plot

This short features Olive as a screenwriter for Surprise Pictures ("if it's a good picture, it's a Surprise"), working on a treatment of the story of Aladdin that will feature herself as the beautiful princess and Popeye as Aladdin, all the while speaking in rhyme. As she types, her adaptation of Aladdin comes to life on the screen, with Popeye having to use his wits against an evil vizier who seeks to control a magic lamp inhabited by a powerful genie. After completing the script, Olive gets a termination of employment notice from the front office, which reads "Your story of Aladdin is being thrown out...and so are you! [signed] Surprise."

As in many Popeye cartoons, many of the gags are conveyed using dialogue. As Princess Olive awaits Popeye/Aladdin's declaration of his love, he turns to the camera and remarks "I don't know what to say...I've never made love in Technicolor before!" During the climatic battle between Aladdin and the vizier, Olive screams out "Help! Popeye—I mean Aladdin—save me!!"

Release and reception

This short was the last of the three Popeye Color Specials, which were, at over sixteen minutes each, three times(x) as long as a regular Popeye cartoon, and were often billed in theatres alongside or above the main feature. Unlike the first two films, Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp is more Disney-esque in plot and pacing, and does not make use of the Fleischer Tabletop 3D background process. This Popeye Color Special is also the only one produced at the relocated Fleischer Studios location in Miami, Florida.

Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp takes some liberties with the source material. The 1992 Disney version of Aladdin took many of those same liberties, including simplifying the numbers of genies and removing Aladdin's family from the plot.

Over twenty one minutes, Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp is the longest entry in the series.

Today, this short and the other two Popeye Color Specials, Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor and Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves (both of which were also adapted from a story featured in One Thousand and One Nights), are in the public domain, and are widely available on home video and DVD. Warner Bros. has fully restored this cartoon with the original Paramount mountain logo opening and closing titles and is included in Popeye the Sailor: 1938-1940, Volume 2 which was released on June 17, 2008. It also includes a documentary on the making of this cartoon as a bonus feature in this collection.