This is in all likelihood the end of my personal little trail of devotion. Like several other Ghibli enthusiasts, I’ve tracked down all the significant feature films of Miyazaki Hayao’s career, some much more difficult to find than others, and found myself happily watching some golden-age Toei in the process.
But while others uncovering this half-lost little gem, seemingly only disseminated at present as English dub Ali Baba’s Revenge (which is more or less the direct opposite of what this film is about), have raved about its frenetic action and quirkiness, I must confess how disappointed I was. By 1971, when this film was released, Toei had already released Hols, with a scope and tone that hinted at great things to come. Puss In Boots was slightly limited by its time, but it was slick, clever, funny and satisfying. Doubutsu Takarajima looked good and moved at a nice pace. So why, around the same time, with Miyazaki working on key animation, was Ali Baba so crushingly awful?
Awful? Yes indeed. This is simply a very bad piece of animation. While it has a nice premise – with the riches found in the cave, Ali Baba seized control of a whole kingdom, and begat a dynasty of tyrants, until finally the descendent of the murdered head thief (the part about his killing Ali Baba’s brother conveniently left out) leads a rather feline rebellion – the execution is horrible. For one thing, it looks terrible, apparently aiming for an American comic strip aesthetic, with round eyes that mostly stay crossed in a horribly unfunny way, the most ugly yellow cats I’ve ever seen and a genie apparently traced from the cover of a Dr Seuss book, only with all the charm surgically excised. For another, it moves horribly, full of recycled animation and always changing between shots with nasty, choppy editing. For a third, it’s dull, with no characters actually having stories that are in any way interesting: the king’s character changes in almost every scene, and the little thief boy is just swept along by events and an exposition-spewing mouse.
It sounds terrible, too, especially the musical numbers, but since this is the English dub, the original may be better.
While it’s true that in the chase scenes at the end, there is a faint glimmer of Miyazaki’s hand, but I’d hesitate to call it ‘undoubtedly Miyazaki’s animated choreography’ as Nausicaa.net does, unless they have read things I have not (quite possible as they almost never cite their sources), for it’s much more generic and less distinctive than the chase scenes in the earlier Puss in Boots, and totally lacks his distinctive sense of weight and momentum.
Ugly, annoying and dull, this is by far the worst of the pre-Ghibli films Miyazaki worked on. But of course, a film is determined by its director, script and budget, and a key animator’s influence will always be limited. But this is nothing like as good as the other films from Toei at the time. It’s not even as good as the peculiar and dated Gulliver. Indeed, even the mess that is The Flying Ghost Ship was far more watchable than Ali Baba was. A shame, but there it is.
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