The musical loosely follows the film's plot, but for obvious reasons, makes a number of changes. Its still the same story about a street rat who wants a better life and finds a magic lamp where releases a genie and with 3 wishes, his life changes forever. So as for the changes, there are no animals. Iago is a human being, but remains being Jafar's sidekick while Abu is replaced by 3 men who are Al's friends and Rajah the tiger is written out entirely. Genie serves as the narrator at the beginning which replaces the Peddler as seen in the film (but that alone may make some theorists go nuts). Aladdin has a scene dedicated to his mother where we hear a song that was originally going to be in the film, but was deleted for unknown reasons. And some other noticeable, but in some way, necessary changes are in there too.
It is a great musical that is faithful to the film and expands upon certain things that the film never addressed such as why Aladdin never talks about his family, whether he has human companions as well as a monkey for a sidekick and if Jasmine has some friends of her own aside from her pet tiger. But while that is good, there are some things that don't go down well for me. For a start, the finale feels too rushed and not as epic as the film (though this being live action, things like that happen) and much like the film, the Genie steals the show though in this case, I feel that he can be too camp and flamboyant than Robin Williams's take on him and also, there's not as many pop culture references than there were in the film which was what I liked about the character to begin with. But despite that, I like everything else about it and I enjoyed it for what it was. The film will always be the best take on the story in my opinion, but its nice to feel nostalgic and like being in the 90s again. Its good. 9/10
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