On Oct. 1, customers in video stores will reach for Disney's "Aladdin," which distributors say could eventually sell some 30 million copies and become the best-selling video ever. In fact, though, many people have been grabbing another "Aladdin" since March, and therein lies a dispute just ruled upon in Federal District Court in Manhattan.
The "Aladdin" in question is not Disney's but the "Aladdin" issued six months ago by Good Times Entertainment, a large distributor in Manhattan.
The story of Aladdin is in the public domain, so any distributor is free to produce any version it wants. The trouble arose over packaging.
In a lawsuit, Disney charged that Good Times designed its container and label to resemble the packaging of Disney titles like "Fantasia" and "Beauty and the Beast," and that the similarity might cause consumers to think the Good Times "Aladdin" was Disney's.
In a decision issued on Aug. 27, Judge Miriam Goldman Cederbaum ruled against Disney.
The company had argued that the Good Times "Aladdin" packaging -- which included a white box like the ones used by Disney and similar artwork on the cover -- had the "overall look" of a Disney title. Judge Cederbaum's decision said a general resemblance wasn't enough and that for Disney to make its case, the packages for all its own films had to be consistent with one another. Though generally uniform, Disney packaging varies somewhat from title to title.
A statement issued by Disney after the ruling said, "Since consumers have been misled, and have contacted us directly, we feel that such parasite product is causing confusion."
Joe Cayre, the president of Good Times, responded that most retailers were careful to keep his company's "Aladdin" separate from Disney titles. "Some stores put up signs saying, 'this is not Disney's 'Aladdin,' " he said.
Disney's film was released in theaters in November and has earned more than $200 million at the box office. Mr. Cayre makes no apology for taking advantage of Disney's promotion and advertising for that movie to market his own, which had no theatrical release.
"If they spent so much money to create a big to-do," he said, "what better time to put it out? And it being a public-domain vehicle, there's nothing wrong with that."
In a similar case in 1992, also heard by Judge Cederbaum, Disney sued over the packaging of a Good Times version of "Beauty and the Beast," which was released during Disney's theatrical run of its "Beauty and the Beast."
That case was settled in favor of Disney, but there was no penalty for Good Times. "The judge said that in future we should put our name prominently on the front cover, preferably on top, and so with 'Aladdin' we did exactly that," Mr. Cayre said. "We were shocked when they sued us."
Good Times, he added, is producing a line of 26 animated titles. "We'll put each of them out in a package that has a quarter-inch-wide border with stars and little G.T.'s all around it," Mr. Cayre said. "We don't want someone to look for ours and take someone else's." NEW VIDEO RELEASES Map of the Human Heart 1993. HBO. $93.45. 109 minutes. Closed captioned. R.
Recurring motifs and symbols run through Vincent Ward's film about the life of a young Eskimo named Avik (Robert Joamie). Raised in the Arctic during the 1930's, Avik learns map reading from a benefactor (Patrick Bergin) and then, in a sudden shift of locales, lands in Montreal, where he meets and parts with a wild-spirited half-French, half-Indian girl named Albertine (Annie Galipeau). Years later, during World War II, they meet again in England, where Avik (Jason Scott Lee) is a fighter pilot and Albertine (Anne Parillaud) a photo analyst. With the makings of a saga, the film instead settles down to an almost fussy examination of items like maps, planes and photographs as symbols of passage and loss, contributing to, as Janet Maslin wrote in The New York Times, "a daringly peculiar tale." The Temp 1993. Paramount. $95.25. 99 minutes. Closed captioned. R.
To the gallery of too-good-to-be-true female characters from hell in films like "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" and "Single White Female," add Kris Bolin (Lara Flynn Boyle). A temporary secretary, the murderously ambitious Kris slides neatly and deviously into the life of Peter Derns (Timothy Hutton), an executive who could use mid-course correction in his career at a cookie company. "Anyone planning a dissertation on Hollywood's fling with yuppie demonology will want to include 'The Temp' in their calculations" (Maslin). Army of Darkness 1993. MCA/Universal. $94.98. Laser disk, $34.98. 81 minutes. Closed captioned. R.
With an assist from Introvision, a visual-effects process that creates huge scenes without elaborate sets, Sam Raimi's tale of swords and sorcery cruises the Middle Ages looking for causes and conquests with a wise-cracking hero named Ash (Mr. Raimi). Eventually, though, visual ploys prove tiresome in a film aimed at pre-adolescents that may display some wit but doesn't come up with "nearly enough to lend it a broad appeal" (Maslin). National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon I 1993. New Line. $95.25. Laser disk, $39.99. 83 minutes. Closed captioned. PG-13.
No gag is too tired, tasteless, atrociously timed or just plain stupid to deserve consignment to the cutting-room floor in Gene Quintano's spoof of the "Lethal Weapon" movies. Emilio Estevez is the loose-cannon Mel Gibson type, Samuel Jackson is the buttoned-down Danny Glover character, and the bodies fly slo-mo through the shattering glass just like they do with the big boys in the blockbusters. But Mr. Quintano doesn't limit himself to the "Weapon" flicks, moving on to a steamily erotic interrogation scene a la "Basic Instinct" and F. Murray Abraham doing Anthony Hopkins doing Hannibal Lecter. Most fun of all, though, is the brazen style, "which, like a fast-food restaurant, emphasizes speed, filler material and functional glitz" (Vincent Canby). FROM YEARS PAST Movies That Take Shots At Other Movies
Movies that spoof other movies don't make up a particularly distinguished line of film making, but some stand steadily in their own right. Here are a few of them on tape. CAT BALLOU. In Elliot Silverstein's send-up of westerns, Jane Fonda is a schoolteacher in distress and Lee Marvin a drunken gunslinger to the rescue. 1965. Columbia Tri-Star. $14.98. 112 minutes. No rating. YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN. The monster genre gets a working over in the Mel Brooks classic. 1974. Fox. $19.98. 108 minutes. PG. MURDER BY DEATH. Neil Simon's spoof of the whodunit stars Truman Capote, Alec Guinness, Peter Falk, Peter Sellers, Maggie Smith, James Coco and David Niven. 1976. Columbia Tri-Star. $19.98. 94 minutes. PG. AIRPLANE! Dean Martin flew the bird home in "Airport," but in this take-off the pilot is a has-been and the passengers a bunch of lunatics with food poisoning. 1980. Paramount. $14.98. 88 minutes. PG. DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID. Shot in black and white, Carl Reiner's spoof of 1940's detective movies stars Steve Martin and Rachel Ward, with shots from old detective films spliced into the action. 1982. MCA/ Universal. $14.98. 89 minutes. PG. THE MAN WITH TWO BRAINS. The Reiner-Martin team strikes again in a mad-scientist parody about a doctor (Mr. Martin) who falls for a talking brain (the voice of Sissy Spacek). 1983. MCA/Universal. $19.98. 93 minutes. R. THIS IS SPINAL TAP. A scruffy crew rises to become "one of England's loudest bands" in Rob Reiner's riotous send-up of the rock music business. 1983. Columbia Tri-Star. $14.98. 93 minutes. R. ZELIG. A student of many genres, Woody Allen selects the documentary for his film about a character with multiple personalities. 1983. Warner. $19.98. 79 minutes. PG.