As animated adaptations of the Aladdin tale go, ALADDIN AND THE MAGIC LAMP (1982), a Japanese-produced version, offers better-than-average character design and background art and a more serious, dramatic tone. It also offers greater spectacle in the climactic battle with the Wizard, including giant demon warriors, a giant bird (presumably the Roc of Arabian Nights lore), and a catastrophic fate for the Wizard's castle. The only version I've seen that surpasses it in these areas is Disney's ALADDIN (1992). However, this version suffers from making Aladdin such an unsympathetic character. When we first see him, he's a street urchin who steals from honest merchants. He shows a profound lack of respect for his hard-working mother, who seems to have spoiled him. At some point after acquiring the magic lamp, he laments the lack of "purpose" in his life, but then he never does anything about it. The riches from the lamp don't seem to change his character at all. Even after he wins the hand of the Princess by building a palace for her with the help of the genie of the lamp, he goes right back to hanging out with his no-good street buddies, with whom he's found when the Sultan's men come and get him after the palace and the Princess are taken away by the Wizard and Aladdin is blamed. For all this to work we've got to feel that Aladdin deserves his good fortune and is ready to step up to the plate. This Aladdin is simply undeserving. It doesn't help that the voice acting of the two lead characters is so lifeless.
The version I saw of this film was shown on the American Movie Classics cable channel in 1992 and features the voices of well-known American actors, starting off with Christopher Atkins and Kristy McNichol, the stars of THE PIRATE MOVIE (1982), as Aladdin and the Princess, followed by John Carradine as the Wizard and June Lockhart as Aladdin's mom. The remaining voice actors include Ardwight Chamberlain and Mike Reynolds, familiar English dubbers from many anime voice casts. Some of the other comments here mention an opening theme song that wasn't heard in the version I saw. The opening music I heard was "Angel's Flight," a New Age-style instrumental written by Chuck Greenberg and performed by Shadow Fax and released on Windham Hill, an American New Age label popular in the 1980s. According to Clements/McCarthy's "The Anime Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese Animation Since 1917" (Stone Bridge Press, 2001), this film was a co-production with the American TV production company, Rankin-Bass, which would explain the character design that looks distinctly unlike traditional anime character design. However, the version I saw lists the Samuel Goldwyn Company as the distributor and makes no mention of Rankin-Bass.
Other versions to compare this to include 1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS (1959), featuring Mr. Magoo as Aladdin's uncle; ALADDIN AND HIS MAGIC LAMP (1970), a French-produced version directed by Jean Image; and, of course, Disney's musical version, ALADDIN (1992), which, in my extreme-minority opinion, suffers terribly from Robin Williams' anachronistic pop culture-infused genie, which completely destroys any semblance of original Arabian Nights flavor.
