Comment on “Aladdin” review: An embarrassment for Disney, Will Smith and Guy Ritchie

Rating: 1 star, Rated PG, 128 minutes Outside of Disney fare, children’s entertainment used to be pretty terrible. Poor production values, lame jokes, shoddy editing and a general feeling of low standards pervaded the films and TV shows aimed at developing eyeballs. Movies like “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” “The Muppet Movie,” “E.T.” or “The Sandlot” were exceptions — heartfelt stories with adult-quality follow-through — and their places in the kids’-entertainment canon reflect that. This was before the epoch of Pixar, the Marvel Cinematic Universe and everything else we’ve come to accept (and frequently enjoy) from all the pop-culture vending machines Disney owns these days.