YMMV / Aladdin and the King of Thieves

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • While Sa'Luk is clearly a Blood Knight with open disdain for Cassim's more merciful leadership, he warns Cassim early on that looting the wedding could be "another wild goose chase". This may suggest that Sa'Luk was once just as loyal to Cassim as the rest of the thieves, but over the years he became frustrated and disillusioned when they kept failing to find the Oracle.
  • Were the other thieves (particularly the fat thief, the last one to fall in line) really convinced by Sa'Luk's arguments that they were happier as Card Carrying Villains, or did some of them just pretend to as Sal'Luk started to win over the others, outnumbering them after he'd already shown himself capable of thrashing them single-handedly.
• Angst? What Angst?: Despite regarding them as family, Cassim is never shown learning or reacting to the majority of his fellow thieves being imprisoned, nor is he overly concerned when the remaining members turn on him and join Sa'Luk.
• Awesome Music:
  • "Party in Agrabah" (including the reprise) serves as a great opening number, setting up the excitement for Aladdin and Jasmine's wedding.
  • The beautiful love ballad "Out of Thin Air", which Jasmine's singing voice for the sequels, Liz Callaway, considers one of her favorites.
  • "Welcome to the Forty Thieves": Never has it sounded so cool to be offered a position in a gang of outlaws.
  • The rousing Villain Song ''Are You In Or Out?"
  • Of course, the ending's reprise of "Arabian Nights". Not only is it a great Bookend from the first movie's opening, but its lyrics hide a very special meaning...
    Come back soon, that's the end! / 'Til another Arabian Night! ^note The story of Aladdin may have ended here, but there's always another Arabian Night - and what's stopping you, the viewer, from watching it all over again?
• Broken Base: Genie's antics in the film. Some found them too annoying, especially the numerous references to other Robin Williams roles. Others found them funny.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Aladdin expressing sadness that he never knew his father, having not mentioned either of his parents before this point, makes it apparent that the film will centre around him and his father reuniting. The Oracle's first vision of Cassim also shows him wearing the same distinct outfit as the King of Thieves, immediately giving away that they're the same person.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • For a sequel villain, Sa'Luk left quite an impact, due to his menacing personality, his striking design, his One-Man Army toughness, and Jerry Orbach's deliciously sinister voice work.
  • Among the Quirky Miniboss Squad thieves, the fat thief and the martial artist are the most popular of the group and have a decent amount of fan art. The former is popular for his Stout Strength, being the last of the remaining thieves to join Sa'Luk, and his menacing yet funny song line about how people will feel fear when the thieves "drop by for cookies and tea." The martial artist is well-liked for his fighting skills and for being one of the more conventionally handsome members of the group.
• Evil Is Cool: Sa'Luk. He's able to defeat and physically dominate the remaining Forty Thieves on his own, all while singing his Villain Song.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Genie dressing Jasmine up as Snow White and Cinderella is amusing when you see how many Disney Princess merchandise dresses Jasmine up in a western style Pimped-Out Dress to match the others.
  • The "or to come back from the dead" line Sa'Luk jokes about. Aladdin and Jasmine's next Disney appearance would be in Hercules: The Animated Series - this time featuring a character (Jafar) coming back from the dead.
  • Genie's "Sand! It's everywhere! Get used to it" outro seems calculated to infuriate Anakin Skywalker, who memetically doesn't like sand.
  • At the beginning of the movie, the Genie says to Aladdin, “Somebody's gonna be late for his own wedding!”. A year later, Robin Williams would play a character who misses his own wedding three times and debatedly doesn’t even make it the fourth time.
• Ho Yay: Between Abu and Iago during "Party in Agrabah", specifically with the way they link arms (er... wings in Iago's case) before getting on the carpet.
• Magnificent Bastard: Cassim is the benevolent and cunning King of the Forty Thieves and Aladdin's thought-to-be long-lost father. Having taken to theft a long time ago to try to provide better for his wife and young son, Cassim set his sights on finding the mystical Hand of Midas in the elusive Vanishing Isle through the magical Oracle. Using a raid on Aladdin and Jasmine’s wedding to divert attention, Cassim nearly succeeds in stealing the Oracle and then later arranges a fight between Aladdin and his vicious associate Sa'Luk to prevent Aladdin from being killed for finding the men's hideout. He then successfully steals the Oracle on a third attempt and rescues Aladdin again from Razoul before later being helped by Aladdin to achieve the Hand of Midas and then tricking Sa'Luk into turning himself into gold with it. Cassim then abandons the Hand and is then able to see his son's wedding from a distance before he and Iago the parrot then escape for good.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "I am the Oracle. I can answer any question you ask."^ExplanationThe Oracle has been the subject of many edits where Aladdin asks a trivial, impossible, and/or odd question. The memes usually have a third panel where the Oracle says "Any question but that" which wasn't actually in the movie.
  • Kod Röv^ExplanationA mishearing from the Swedish dub in the Code Red segment where Dan Ekborg's rapid fire pronunciation of Kod Röd make it sound like he is saying Kod Röv, literally meaning Code Ass.
  • "It's a joke! ...I do that."^ExplanationGenie's response to Jasmine telling him Dude, Not Funny! is often used as a forum weapon towards people who don't understand a person's joke.
• Narm: "Are You In Or Out" is supposed to show the remnants of the Forty Thieves planning to return to their bloodthirsty rampaging roots after Cassim reformed them into Noble Demons. But it's hard to take some of them seriously since several of them are still humorous in design, and the lyrics include "I'm the prince of generosity" and "Imagine the fear on their faces / when we drop by for cookies and tea."
• Spiritual Adaptation: This movie has almost no connection to Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves story-wise, and is more like an Indiana Jones movie with Aladdin characters. A lot of plot elements, including Aladdin's long-lost father and a cursed artifact which punishes the greedy, mirror Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade specifically.^note Funnily enough, years earlier Disney Adventures had accused the original Aladdin of copying Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with its Cave of Wonders escape.
• Squick: During the "Welcome to the Forty Thieves" number, one thief sings "Never have to brush your teeth" as a closeup shows his decaying teeth, several of which break apart when he tries to smile. This is also the In-Universe reaction, as the camera immediately cuts to a flinching Aladdin and Abu.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: While The Return of Jafar isn't exactly bad (compared to many of the Disney DTV sequels), it's more of a pilot for the TV series and the animation is on that level, with a story that is more focused on Iago than Aladdin himself. This film has a much stronger plot featuring Aladdin as the main character, Robin Williams returning as Genie, a genuinely threatening villain who doesn't need to have magic powers like Jafar to still be a terrifying enemy (unlike many of the TV series villains) and much higher quality animation, if nowhere on par with the original film. It's one of the few Disney sequels where the fans don't call Fanon Discontinuity.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Despite the film boasting the highly-anticipated return of Robin Williams, the Genie is Demoted to Extra and has no function in the plot, contributing very little outside of his humor and song numbers.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: After being manipulated by Sa'Luk, the remaining thieves never find out that Cassim didn't actually betray them. They are last seen when the Hand of Midas sinks their ship, and Cassim doesn't even mention them when he and Iago set off on their own in the ending.
• Woolseyism: In the first verse of the Croatian version of "Party in Agrabah", the third line is changed from "People pouring in from near and far" to "There are even guests coming from Zagreb" — with the word "Zagreb" rhyming with "Agrabah" from the first line nearly perfectly and also being the name for Croatia's capital city.

---