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| By PJ Hruschak |
The hysterical Aladdin, for example, had the much less funny to-vid sequel Aladdin: The Return of Jafar which features lesser voice talent (red: not Robin Williams) and vastly inferior art quality and shoddy execution.
It was, however, successful enough to warrant a second to-vid movie, Aladdin and the King of Thieves, with better voice talent (read: Williams came back) and slightly improved quality. Both had the name recognition in its favor which was enough for parents to scoop up copies for their kids. And thus began the blight of Disney's straight-to-video franchise.
So, when presented with a trifecta of flicks on Blu-ray, I was a bit surprised Disney decided to bundle it's feature films with the home video sequels. It seems a bit generous considering most companies would try to use it as an upsell or second retail movie.
Maybe Disney simply realized most people would avoid these typically shorter, often sub-par movies.
Even so, in at least two cases, these to-vid movies proved to be surprisingly good additions and, for one, is even a bit better than the original.
Even better, it seems that Disney learned from that early mistake and, as often as possible, manages to retain nearly all of the voice cast members from the feature films.
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