"Arabian Nights" (1994) - the worst H-B cartoon ever?

Since this TV film is going to be 20 years old this year (I can't believe it!), I thought I'd post about this.
For those who never saw (or heard of) the film, it was produced in 1994 during Hanna-Barbera's "struggling" period before they began producing new material for Cartoon Network in 1995. It features Scooby-Doo and Shaggy, who are not solving mysteries or in any creepy locations, and are hired in some Arabian country (Agrabah?) to be royal food-tasters for a young caliph. But naturally, they pig out and try to hide, but they choose to hide in the Caliph's harem, where Shaggy goes into drag and tries to bore the Caliph to sleep with a couple of stories. The first one is a no-brain gender-bent parody of Disney's Aladdin with the genders switched, with a girl named Aliyah-Din, a prince and a sultan in failing health, a Jafar-type vizier named Haman, and Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo as genies. The second story is a take on "Sinbad the Sailor," with Magilla Gorilla as Sinbad going on a ride with an evil captain using him as his crew to commit bad deeds.

Despite featuring those classic characters, the film turns out as just plain crap. Not only are Shaggy and Scooby only briefly featured in the film (they appear for ten minutes at the beginning, two minutes in the middle, and two minutes at the end), but they make practically no mentioning that the "Aliyah-Din" and "Sinbad" stories are actually stories being told by Shaggy (he doesn't narrate them, and we don't cut away to Shaggy in the middle of the stories). And the stories are LONG, I forgot to mention. The film is basically a rip-off of "Animaniacs," its sister series "Tiny Toons" and a hint of Disney as well (it makes sense, as H-B was losing out in the competition to Warner and Disney during this period). It's full of bad predictable jokes, some of the dialogue is even read without any enthusiasm, and the use of running gags and breaking-the-fourth-wall doesn't help either. The music is basically just the same Tiny Toons/Animaniacs Carl Stalling imitation scores we've been hearing for 20 years now on Warner Bros. Animation and Hanna-Barbera's productions since at least 1994. But to be fair, the music on Tiny Toons and Animaniacs was MUCH better than the score here. The Carl Stalling-style score here keeps stopping and starting with every knee jerk, eye blink or any kind of movement for the whole film, and it doesn't work. According to the booklet that came with H-B's Pic-a-Nic Basket of Cartoon Classics CD set from 1996, previous Hanna-Barbera productions simply had the music play underneath the action, not often matching up with the actions, and usually fit pretty well with the cartoon. And the sound effects are another factor, they don't use the classic Hanna-Barbera sound effects very frequently, and when they do, it's the same ten or twenty effects repeated over and over. The rest are just the old Looney Tunes/WB sound effects, and the same sound effects that virtually every cartoon produced in 1994 was using too (and at times they aren't even used properly)! And the animation isn't any better either. They attempted to do fuller animation, but it doesn't look so great, and there are lots of crude digital pans and zooms abound too. Here are pics to showcase this:

I don't really like the way Shaggy and Scooby are drawn in this film. Shaggy has a smaller-than-usual beard, and a rather angular design, and my dad thinks he seems to resemble the young version from "A Pup Named Scooby-Doo." As for Scooby, his eyes look kinda strange, and he is missing quite a few whiskers!


Ugh, look at this shot when Shaggy and Scooby overreact to tasting the food to see if it was poisoned. When their skin goes to green they become semi-transparent for a second as they do so! Either Scooby and Shaggy were meant to be acting like ghosts at that part, or it was just sloppiness during production.


What you are seeing is not DVNR. For this close-up, all they did was use a digital zoom into the characters a bit, hence the pixelated look, then slowly zoom out. It looks VERY un-professional, the same results if you tried using digital zoom on a camera.


The geeky Caliph. He looks like the lovechild of Mandark (of "Dexter's Laboratory") and Mr. Crocker (of "The Fairly Oddparents")! As if that weren't enough, he was even voiced by Eddie Deezen, the voice of Mandark, as well as Gibby Norton (of "What's New, Scooby-Doo?") Earlier on in the film, he wears thick coke-bottle glasses, but then he falls down and completely breaks his glasses, doesn't bother to get them fixed or replaced, and thus suffers vision problems for the rest of the movie (I guess he's just a cheapskate or he just plain hates glasses!)


On the right is Haman, the Jafar knock-off. He also seems to look a bit like Dick Dastardly. And on the right is the sultan.


The Lord of the Amulet. He was voiced by the late Tony Jay, which probably explains why his voice greatly reminds me of Dr. Lipschitz of "Rugrats" and the Chief from the 1990s "Secret Squirrel" revival.


Aliyah-Din (voiced by Jennifer "Thorn" Hale) and the Prince. They are actually designed quite decently, if a bit simple. Here's a good example of how overstylized and angular all the backgrounds are in this film. All the clouds look overstylized, too.


Though you can't really tell by looking at a still, this Disneyesque spinaround shot is flawed by the background, which simply pans from one spot to another without the "rotating" look. It looks quite awkward this way.

(t0 be continued in Part 2)

Yogi as the Genie. He actually looks kinda lumpy compared to the streamlined 1950s/1960s Yogi Bear.


Here is a shot of Yogi with Boo-Boo, who is constantly referred to as a “genie in training.” A REALLY annoying running gag is that Yogi keeps hoping Aliyah-Din will ask for a food wish, and it gets tiring after ten minutes.


Aliyah-Din as a hot-looking princess. I have to admit that she’s probably the best-designed character in the whole film, but not as attractive as Princess Jasmine.


After wishing to be sultan among acquiring the lamp (ala Jafar), Haman wishes to be RULER OF THE UNIVERSE. His third wish is to live forever so he can rule the universe for all eternity, but Yogi and Boo-Boo refuse, since Aliyah-Din is attempting to steal back the lamp. Then the tale ends the same way it’s supposed to (but I won’t ruin it).


The second story, “Sinbad the Sailor,” features Magilla Gorilla (in his final animated appearance to date), voiced by Alan Melvin reprising the original role. Magilla looks OK in a few shots, but at other parts he looks a little strange.


The evil captain. He is voiced by Charlie Adler, using his Ickis voice. The captain does annoy me a bit at times, though.


During the rhuk egg sequence, they do a rip-off of Wile E. Coyote's famous cliff falls. The camera angle and the style of the captain falling is the exact same style, the small puff of dust in the distance when he lands is the exact same too, and they even use the SAME SOUND EFFECT of Wile E. landing too! You can tell H-B was desperate if they are even attempting to imitate the old WB cartoons (and this was two years before WB bought out Hanna-Barbera!)


Look at the way these tourists are drawn. To me they look kinda like comic strip characters, and their designs also seem to remind me of some of the 1990s “What a Cartoon” segments.


Here is an even MORE annoying running gag that keeps occurring during the story. After each long scene, the ship sinks (usually by something crashing into it)…


…and after each time it sinks, the cruise ship Magilla was supposed to go on passes by! It’s honestly a lot like those running gags they always do on “The Fairly Oddparents" (where's Cosmo and Wanda when we need them?)

Even though it isn’t very obvious by just looking at a still screenshot, Magilla’s walk cycle at this scene is VERY lazy. All they did was just animate him walking in one place, and then digitally move it a little upward and zoom it out a bit. It looks VERY awkward and sloppy, and reminds me of the worst of early H-B’s animation.


The upper-class Cyclops from the same story. His design somewhat reminds me of someone that would appear on an episode of "Tiny Toons" or “Animaniacs.” He’s voiced by Maurice LaMarche (in one of his very few H-B voice roles), using his Toucan Sam voice. Now all we need is him saying "Part of this nutririous breakfast!" A semi-running gag on his part is that he complains that Magilla and the Captain's shenanigans will cause him to miss "Cats" (yes, THE "Cats".)


At this part, Magilla Gorilla tells us, “Amazing how things happen right on cue in a cartoon, isn't it?” It sounds rather strange hearing a line that would be associated with Bugs Bunny or Yakko Warner being spoken by a Hanna-Barbera character.


BTW, I also forgot to mention that Shaggy’s not the only character in the film with four fingers. The chef in the bridging sequences also has four fingers too! I honestly don’t get it why those two characters have four fingers, while all the other characters have three fingers!

And of course, the final line ever uttered in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon featuring the classic non-Flintstones characters is…

“Scooby-dooby-doooooooooooooooooo!"

Ah come on, Scooby. You didn’t even do much in this film! Why'd you have to close the film by saying that for the millionth time?

This film premiered on September 3, 1994. THIS was when Hanna-Barbera had hit the bottom of the barrel IMO, with the exception of the “What a Cartoon” segments they did in 1995-1997, and some of the series they co-produced with Cartoon Network Studios until 1999. In fact, if it weren't for the Cartoon Network originals, Hanna-Barbera probably would have been dead after 1994.
The animation for this movie was outsourced to Wang Film Productions in Taiwan, which also did overseas animation for “Tiny Toon Adventures” and “Animaniacs.” Unlike this movie, though, Wang’s animation on those shows was actually pretty good, but not as good as TMS Entertainment (which H-B probably could not afford during this time.)
And as if that weren't bad enough, this film seems to have inspired that awful 2006-2008 TV series "Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue," not just by only featuring out-of-character versions of Scooby and Shaggy, but also by featuring extremely bad animation!

So in short, this was pretty much Hanna-Barbera's equivalent to "Titanic: the Animated Musical," but without a rapping dog. (In fact, I'd like to see the Nostalgia Critic review this; it'd be pretty funny!) Even my YouTube Poop of this movie has gotten rather popular, mainly from people that had never seen the movie before but wanted to check it out (and got a taste on how bad it was!)

Any comments?