COMMENT

Disney's Aladdin was the first film I saw in cinemas - and it was, in the parlance of the day, pretty "rad".

It had swashbuckling in marketplaces and funny monkeys for the boys, and romantic magic carpet rides and a fiercely independent princess for the girls.

And for everyone, old and young, it had Robin Williams' Genie.

Bursting forth from his golden lamp in the Cave of Wonders with a roaring "10,000 years will give you such a crick in the neck!", Williams' Genie set a new standard in cinema for stealing the show. The Genie might have just been a shape-shifting blur with some top show-stopping numbers - Friend Like Me and Prince Ali (I know all the words) - but, as voiced by Williams, he redefined what an animated character could be: manic, full of punch, as real as anything in a live-action flick, firing off one-liners like he was... well, like he was Robin Williams on a late-night talk show.

It was a landmark vocal performance (mostly ad-libbed) and a gamechanger. But I didn't know any of that at the time. All I knew at the age of eight was that this sometimes-floating, sometimes-walking blue guy was giving me my first experience of what it was like to sit in a cinema and laugh with a group of people.

Williams  continued to keep me laughing as I grew up and I came to know his famous face. Some of my favourite Williams' movies make up what might be considered a holy trinity for children who came of age watching films in the early 1990s: Aladdin, our introduction to the man; Mrs Doubtfire, which tackled the issue of divorce in a sweet, humorous way; and Jumanji, the one where he runs around a lot. Hilariously.

Ask a '90s kid and they'll likely be able to tell you where and when they first saw each.

Doubtfire is, for many, the favourite. You'll have your reasons for loving it, and I have mine - that universal dream all children of divorce have (that mum and dad will get back together), paired with Pierce Brosnan getting hit by a piece of fruit. And Williams, a year after he gave us the genie, playing a voice actor.

It was one of the first movies I went to with my family, including my then stepdad, and it was that kind of flick: a real family film, one that had me laughing along with mum... and wondering why she kept nodding so vigorously whenever Sally Field's put-upon wife gave her ex-husband a spray.

Moments that have stuck, like that bit where Williams comes out of fridge with cream ("Hello dear!") on his face and that immortal line, "He's a she! She's a he! He's a she-she".

More than that, Doubtfire is perhaps the film that best captured Williams' ability to mix sentiment and slapstick, to contort that same face that had us cackling in Doubtfire's flaming kitchen into a pinched smile, his eyes moist, that had us wondering: Sally, why won't you just give him one more chance?

Jumanji was pure escapism, somehow mining my 11-year-old dreams of a board game coming to life, and Williams being there for the ride.

But perhaps my softest Williams spot, and his '90s flick that gets me almost every time, is The Birdcage.

Playing one half of a Miami gay couple, Williams was the sterner 'straight' man to Nathan Lane's flamboyant queen. There were great moments of Williams energy - "Madonna, Madonna, Madonna" he proclaimed, flapping his arms as he directed a dance - but, just as his character advised his dancers, he kept it mostly inside.

But here's what I saw as I watched, even then: the Genie, the guy from Jumanji, that bloke from that Vietnam movie my father loved, playing a gay guy on the big screen and everyone in my cinema in the suburbs absolutely loving him for it. I'm not sure I really put it together back then, but something about the OK-ness of it all, that audience acceptance, has always stuck.

I lost track of Williams as the century ended. In movies like Patch Adams, the fine line that he  had once walked so well between genuinely moving and cloyingly saccharine might have been pushed a little too hard. I took some notice of him in darker roles just after 2000 (One Hour Photo, Insomnia), but Williams for me will always be blue and blobby, or sporting a strap-on set of boobs.

I suspect that's true of most people my age.

Ten thousand years will give you a crick in the neck; for us, a decade of Robin Williams gave us a lifetime of laughs.